Page 4 of When It Burns

The boys let out a loud groan of frustration but immediately run to the end of the field and start rolling on their stomachs. It occurs to me that this gives the players another reason to hate me. Great. I may be frustrated, but I can’t ignore the fact that this team and these players are my ticket to staying in Springside, and this isn’t winning me any fans. I remember having to do this as a player a few times and it sucked. Between the grass, the dizziness, and the sore body it brought, I know these kids won’t be questioning Coach Thompson again anytime soon.

I walk over to the coach and stick my hand out. “Good afternoon, I’m Chief Johnson, but you can call me Theo,” I say.

The man looks at my hand for a moment before deciding to shake it begrudgingly. “Coach Thompson. I guess you can call me Will. And before we get started I want to get one thing out of the way. The mayor is one of our biggest supporters here at Springside, and I couldn’t turn him down. But Caroline and I have been friends for years, and I don’t appreciate the way you spoke to her this morning. I said yes to giving you a shot, but you’re gonna have to prove to me and everyone else that you’re not the asshole everyone thinks you are.”

I nod at him. “I understand.”

He looks at me and continues, “So, the mayor told me you're Jake Johnson’s little brother huh? That man was a legend. My dad took me to my first game at Bryant Denny in 2009 against Arkansas, and I still remember that eighty-yard catch your brother made.”

I shake my head in a sign of affirmation. “Yeah, that’s me,” I reply, trying to keep the tightness out of my voice. Just like any other time that I think about my brother, I can feel my chest constricting and my pulse quickening.

Will seems to notice that I would rather do anything else than continue this line of conversation and takes pity on me. He changes the subject by saying, “As for the team, I think we’re showing signs of promise. Last year was a bit of a rebuilding year. But we’ve got a young team with some real potential. If you’ve got half the talent your brother had, I think you can help us out. But to be clear, I still don’t like you very much.”

Realizing that this is as close to a proverbial olive branch as I am going to get from him, I nod quickly. “Thanks, man. I understand, and I apologize.”

He looks at me sharply and says, “I am not the one you need to be apologizing to. You find a way to make it up to Caroline, and I’ll think about easing up on you.”

“Got it,” I respond as he jogs out to join the team. I sit on the bleacher set up on the field and settle in to watch practice. I wait for the panic of missing my brother to set in, but the longer I sit here the more at ease I feel. I realize I’ve been putting off this moment for far too long. I had expected to feel like I was suffocating sitting on the field. But the reality is I feel much closer to Jake than I have in years. Brian was right when he said that this is what Jake would have wanted.

Clinging to that thought, I focus on practice and try to figure out how to fix the mess I made today.

CHAPTER THREE

CAROLINE

The only thing I can think as I walk into Maracas is that I have never needed a Margarita Monday more than I do tonight. I walk into the familiar Mexican restaurant feeling like I can finally take a deep breath. This day has sucked. I’ve been coming here for dinner on Mondays with Hannah since we moved back to Springside. Maracas is small, but it’s within walking distance to the old, downtown building the city made into apartments where I live, and their food is incredible. The restaurant was once a gas station, but when the original owner decided to retire, the building was purchased and transformed into a local hangout. The antique gas pumps still sit outside, adding to the restaurant’s charm.

I smile at the trademark “Save water, drink tequila” neon sign that takes up the entire back wall, and let out a little laugh.Don’t have to tell me twice,I think to myself.

After the fire fiasco, I struggled all day getting my students to focus in class. After the second period it had only got worse, since the news had spread through all of the kid’s group chats. Those things spread gossip faster than anything else I have ever seen before. If they weren’t so annoying I would almost admire their power.

By the time lunch rolled around I’d gotten texts from two cheer parents, some friends in town, and my Aunt Sue asking if I was okay. The preacher from church also reached out to see if he could pray for me. Sometimes living in Springside really is like a cliché Hallmark movie, but after living here all my life I tend not to notice.

Even my parents, who had moved to Brazil years ago and only messaged on my birthday, heard the news from one of their old friends and sent an email to check on me. I don’t necessarily have a bad relationship with my parents, but we’ve never had much in common. I drifted apart from them pretty quickly after high school, and I was okay with where our relationship stood.

After all that, cheer practice rolled around. I took over the Springside Varsity squad three years ago, and it is one of my favorite parts of my job. After convincing Hannah to come on as a tumbling coach the following year, we’ve become unstoppable. I am incredibly proud of the program we’ve built. Pushing the girls to try new stunts or tumbling passes and helping them develop the confidence to carry themselves through life never fails to excite me.

But today the girls only wanted to talk about the hot new fire chief and how much of a jerk he’d been. By the time four o’clock rolled around, I banned the topic of conversation and the girls had run too many laps to count.

As usual, I arrive to Maracas before Hannah so I grab us a table and order my first peach margarita of the night and some queso. Hannah is my best friend, but she’s notorious for running late.

Some people think it is because she’s flighty or rude, but I know it’s due to her efforts to take care of her grandfather's farm. His health has been declining slowly for years, but he refuses to sell any of the animals. Hannah’s parents moved away when she was in middle school and left her with her grandparents, which meant she now bore the responsibility of taking care of the farm.

Hannah and I both attended Springside High, and while we’ve always been best friends, our decision to room together at Alabama freshman year cemented her place as the closest thing I have to a sister. Our shared love of teaching, nineties country music, and smutty romance novels, combined with the fact that both of our parents wanted a life far away from us, makes our bond pretty much unbreakable now.

Hannah used to be the most carefree person I knew, but lately the farm has added a ton of stress to her life. She tried hiring a couple of caretakers to sit with her grandfather around the clock to keep him company, but as his health problems grew more serious, she’d been forced to put him in a nursing home. Most of her teaching salary goes to his medical expenses and farm equipment. That being said, she can’t afford to pay someone for the farm work as well. Members of the community help out on occasion, but Hannah is too proud to ask for help unless she is desperate. There is no telling what she’d gotten into between practice and dinner.

I sip my drink and snack away on chips while I wait for her to arrive. Picking up the Kindle that I always keep stashed in my purse, I start to read my latest cowboy romance.

I’ve had a fascination with cowboys for as long as I can remember, but the only cowboys I know in Springside are pushing seventy. Just last month Mr. Wilkerson passed away leaving the most beautiful farm in the county up for sale. I’d heard last week someone purchased it, but I haven’t met them yet.Maybe it’s a sexy cowboy in his early thirties looking for someone to take a ride on his bronco, I think to myself knowing that was like hoping to find a needle in a haystack.

I get lost in my book and before I realize it, I’ve finished the first small bowl of chips and the margarita. I am a bit of a lightweight, so I know I need to slow down, but after the day I’ve had, I can’t find it in myself to care.

I order another drink as Mrs. Sally, the town gossip, stops by my table. I swear that woman is in her seventies, but she still gossips worse than any of my students at school. She tries to look nonchalant but I know she’s dying for all the details of what happened at the school today. I skirt around her questions with a bit of success, attempting to tune her out and wanting nothing more than to get back to the sexy cowboy railing his love interest underneath the stars after a long day on the farm.

However, my interest skyrockets when she says, “Can you believe the school agreed to let him volunteer as a coach on the football team? Such a damn shame. I don’t know if someone with a temper like that should even be allowed around children.”

While it’s news to me that he was helping with the football team, I try not to let it show on my face. I may not be the mystery fire chief’s biggest fan, but after living in Springside my entire life I knew how it felt to be dragged through the town’s gossip mill. It makes me crazy when people like Mrs. Sally start sticking their nose in other people’s business just to cause problems. Especially when they start making accusations that have absolutely no basis. I have grown accustomed to the meddling, but after the day I had and the tequila making its way through my system, I’m at my limit.

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