Page 97 of Falling into Place
Coach McKee stopped at the hood of Brooks’s car and leaned against it, everything about him radiating disappointment.
“What are you doing here?” Brooks asked.
“Greg called me. We’re friends, go way back.”
Greg must be the cop.
“Said he’d pulled over someone I might know, and if I wanted to come pick him up it would save him a hell of a lot of paperwork.” Coach crossed his arms and leveled a hard stare. “You reek of alcohol, kid.”
Brooks said nothing.
“What the fuck were you thinking, driving like this?”
He’d been yelled at by Coach enough during practice to know it was best to stay silent.
“You realize you could have killed yourself? Is that what you want?”
Brooks shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Stop mumbling and talk to me like a man. You’re eighteen and acting like you think you’re some big shot now, huh? Prove it.”
“Go to hell.” Yeah, he was still plenty drunk. No matter how pissed he was, he’d never have said that to Coach sober.
“What did you say?”
Brooks clenched his jaw and looked up, rage and pain burning a hole through his veins. “I said it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what happens to me.”
Coach pushed off the car and strode forward, leaning down to get in Brooks’s face. “The hell it doesn’t. You could have killed someone else, did you think about that, you selfish kid? You want someone else to end up like your mom because you thought you’d get wasted and get behind the wheel?”
Brooks shot to his feet. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the police cruiser door swing open, but Coach glanced that way and held his palm out, shaking his head.
“Don’t you dare talk about my mom,” he seethed.
Coach didn’t back down. “Look at yourself. You think she’d be proud of you? Proud of this? If your mother saw you now, she’d be ashamed of you. Don’t taint her memory this way. Don’t shame her with the man you’re turning into.”
Of course she’d be ashamed of him. She’d look at him like Coach was now, with disbelief and disappointment and despair. And it would hurt like a motherfucker.
But she’d still love him. No matter what he said, no matter what he did, no matter where he went. Mothers were the only people in the world who were supposed to love their kids with total abandon. Without condition. He used to think his dad felt that way, too, but he wasn’t so sure anymore.
If his mom saw him right now, he’d want to crawl into a hole and hide.
But she would have loved him.
That realization is what broke him.
Coach saw it coming and his arms were open when Brooks fell into them, sobs racking his body.
He wailed and screamed while Coach kept him upright, his hands still locked behind his back. A year’s worth of suppressed grief poured out all at once, and his tears for a beloved parent lost was enough to fill the ocean seven times over.
He cried for the pain she might have felt, though the doctors had said it had been instant. He cried for his sisters. He cried for the memories they’d never made and the advice he desperately needed from his dad but would never hear. He cried because he wanted to hug his mom just one more time, breathe her perfume into his lungs again.
He cried for the kid he was before she died and before his dad may as well have, because he’d been happy and kind and good, but he was gone. And he cried because he’d become a person he wouldn’t have wanted his mom to see, but he didn’t know how to be anything else. Everything hurt and the things he’d done over the past year had been the only things he could to numb the pain.
“It’s okay.” Coach’s voice broke, and Brooks cried harder. “You’re okay. I’ve got you, son.”
“I hate this,” he hiccupped. “I hate it.”
“I know.”
