Page 32 of Yes, Coach (Bluebell Bruisers #2)

CHAPTER

FOURTEEN

CLARA JUNE

My stomach has been in knots all week.

A few different kinds of knots.

First, nervous knots.

Tanner returned to school and practice on Monday, and while he said it all went well, I am still nervous. He loves football and takes the impending scholarship so seriously that I’m not sure he would tell me if he was a little too sore, or if he went back a little too soon.

I’m scared for him that if he overdoes it, he’ll be out additional weeks, and mentally, I’m not sure he can take that.

As it is, it was very hard to keep him home the last week of his recovery.

Dr. Denton called to remind Tanner that his brain is still recovering from the concussion, and it’s not just the collarbone injury he’s nursing.

Still, I don’t think the doctor’s stern warning even slowed Tanner down.

The other knots in my belly? Dean.

Dean McAllister. Just saying his name brings a little dreamy sigh out of me.

He’s one of those men that you don’t really think exist until you meet him for yourself.

And I still can’t even believe that he’s single.

A hunk with great employment is one thing, but add in height, muscles, a great smile, a love for his community, the way he bonds with his students and players, his drive to help them—I’m practically pregnant just thinking about him.

Seriously.

We’re going to see him tonight.

We, as in, me and the boys invited Coach McAllister to have chili dogs with us after practice.

The thing is, I like Dean, and Dean likes me.

This much I know based on the frequency in which we talk to each other, and the way he talks to me, too.

I don’t know what will happen between us, but I’m hopeful, and with that hope and excitement, I’m also honest.

I don’t try to hide things from the boys. I’ve never brought a man into this house, I’ve never introduced them to anyone else, I’ve never had to have a talk with them about the possibilities of someone new.

But with Dean? It’s different. We’re getting closer by the day, and I want the boys to know about our friendship directly. I want them to be aware and communicate with me about how it makes them feel, be it good or bad.

So before we invited Dean to dinner tonight (can you call eating something at a standing table dinner?) I sat Rawley, Tanner and Archie down, and shot them straight-ish.

“Coach McAllister and I have become friends. Are you guys okay with me and Coach McAllister seeing each other? Is it okay if he’s at the house sometimes? You know, you can tell me if you don’t like it. I would never bring anyone in our home if you guys didn’t like him.”

I rattled that all off in one breath, making Tanner extend a fist toward Rawley, who in turn pressed his own into his brother’s.

“Ten bucks, pay up, sucka,” he gloated, after Rawley slapped a ten dollar bill into his palm.

When I’d asked what the bet was about, it wasn’t what I thought. I thought maybe Rawley didn’t believe that Dean and I were getting closer, but that Tanner did.

Nope.

Tanner bet I’d come clean, Rawley thought I’d cover it up.

Archie on the other hand? He hadn’t given any of it thought, and I’m not sure he still is. But he high-fived me, told me Dean is “real cool” and went off to catch lizards and probably, in all reality, eat the forbidden fruit: stolen peaches.

All in all, they said they like Coach Dean, that they’re fine if the two of us become “maybe more than friends” (Tanner’s words), and that everything on their end was fine.

I wasn’t surprised, but I was relieved. But today?

All I am is nervous.

I don’t know why.

It’s chili dogs on a school night. It’s not a big deal.

But also, it’s kind of a huge, massive, way big deal. Because Dean is the first .

The first in years.

The first and only since Troy that I care about.

The first man I can see doing life with.

And that’s nerve-wracking.

But, as my best friend Jackie tells me, “Exciting. It’s exciting, Clara June.

Try to be excited instead of nervous.” She pops her gum, the line filled with the sound of her long nails tapping at her keyboard.

She works in IT, and more specifically, she’s a web developer, writing and testing code for new web applications.

And yet, even with working on a computer all day, where each keystroke means make or break, she has insanely long nails. I don’t know how she does it.

“I am excited,” I tell her as I scoop out warm clothes from the inside of the dryer drum, dumping them into an already pretty full basket.

Despite the fact that I spent an hour folding laundry last night after I got home from my double shift, there is still unfolded laundry.

In fact, at my feet, there are three heaping piles of dirty laundry.

Laundry is kind of my life.

“Then why do you sound all a really hot hunk is interested in me and all of my chaos but I’d rather be hoe hum instead?

” she questions, the typing still backfilling her words.

I don’t know how she does her job while talking to me, but like all things Jackie, I live in wonder.

The woman can put down seemingly endless shots of tequila and still pass as sober, she’s never had a run in her nylons (how?).

She knows how to code and tie a necktie, all the men adore her and all the women want to be her friend, she’s both incredibly fit but also disarmingly curvy and gorgeous, and she speaks three languages.

I blow out a breath. “I don’t know.” I pinch the phone to my shoulder, toss the wet clothes into the dryer, and add a knock-off Bounce sheet.

Slamming the door, I set the dryer to quick dry and begin pulling dirty clothes from the floor into the washer.

“I guess I’m battling a little imposter syndrome, like, you know… I’m just me, and he’s all… him .”

“He’s all him,” Jackie repeats back, completely unable to relate to the feeling of being underwhelming, or being afraid that you may wake up one day and find out you’re someone’s regret.

It’s happened to me before, so now I know, without a doubt, it can happen.

Before Troy left me, I never thought he would. I thought, despite our issues and his tendencies to think about only himself, we’d stay together. Forever.

I let myself believe I had a right to forever, and in that same light, I force myself to accept reality: Dean may have interest now, but he may not have it forever.

“You know what I mean,” I hum, tossing in a tube sock so stiff that I opt to wash my hands after starting the washing machine.

“No, I don’t know what you mean by I’m just me and he’s all him.” Now the typing stops, and I think I’m really in trouble.

Whenever Jackie stops multi-tasking to give me all of her attention, it’s usually serious.

Like the night I called her, when Archie was just 3 days old and Troy had only been gone that long, too.

I asked her, “If he comes home, should I take him back?” and not only did she stop typing but she got in her car and drove to my house at one forty three in the morning.

She took my face in her hands and told me point blank: “if you take back Troy, you will ruin your life and any shot you have at happiness. Troy is a piece of shit, and there’s no way to turn a turd into a prince.

Thank God, seriously, get on your hands and knees now and thank God with every breath that he took your problem from you. ”

It was hard to see the truth in her words. After all, at that point, I had just had a baby, and had two other kids on my hands. I just wanted help. And sleep. And a hug.

I’ve come to see in the years since then that Jackie was completely right. Troy leaving was a good thing, good even for the boys.

He shouted so much, the boys and I would often camp out in the backyard just to avoid him. Adventures, excursions, I always made things fun, but I also realize now that my boys are older, they were aware of Troy’s shitty attitude and propensity for screaming.

We’re all better off.

“You think because you’re a waitress and your house is small and needs work that you’re somehow less worthy of a man like Dean?” she prods, hitting me in the truth epicenter, the way only best friends can do.

“No,” I lie, and she knows it because of course that’s how I feel.

Society tells me I should, after all. Just a waitress — even Ross judged Rachel, the love of his life, over her job.

And a small home that needs new paint, new windows and a complete overhaul of the yard?

That’s the slum stereotype, and I’m living it.

Like water atop a hard pan—eventually, it seeps in.

Of course all of those things have permeated my thick skin over time.

“You do, too. You think those things, and I’m here to tell you why believing that shit is wrong.” She takes a breath, and launches full steam ahead. “First of all, you work insanely hard to pay a mortgage and bills that you never expected to pay. That in and of itself makes you goddamn incredible.”

My eyes sting and my nostrils flare, but I keep focused on my housework as I listen, because I don’t have time not to multitask.

I sink into the couch with a basket of freshly laundered towels next to me.

I dive in, pulling out a faded Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles bath towel, and start folding. “Thank you for saying so.”

He steamrolls my appreciation with a “Please, I’m only trying to make you see yourself the way everyone else does.

So let me keep talking, got it?” It’s rhetorical, so I stay quiet and keep listening, moving onto a blue and white striped beach towel that Archie took from the kick-board rental station last summer.