Page 71 of Off the Clock
“Nah. That’s the kids. I’m just the guy who stepped in to coach?—”
“And win,” Coach Willard said from my other side. We’d moved a few chairs to make room for his new wheelchair.Beverly sat at his other side. “You did mighty fine, Coach Capo. Made this old boy proud.”
“Thanks, Coach. You feeling better is the real win.” My voice came out all croaky. After a summer’s worth of testing and several more health scares in the fall, he finally had a diagnosis of COPD and a treatment plan that was making a huge difference in his quality of life.
From our shaky beginning forward, he’d been one of my biggest supporters, and a few days before Thanksgiving, the school board had made my hire for the next school year official. Some said the board didn’t want to risk national media attention had they made an issue out of my being bisexual, but I liked to think the strong support of my team and their parents was what made the real difference.
“Y’all will come over for our Super Bowl party after the holidays?” Beverly pointed at Caleb. “I hear you’re a big fan.”
“Lies.” Caleb groaned and made a show of holding his head. But for a guy who claimed to not like team sports, he sure had watched an awful lot of it that fall. “I’ll bring my mom’s seven-layer dip.”
“Excellent.” Beverly and Coach Willard beamed. “And has that brother of yours announced his school pick?”
“No.” Caleb shook his head, glancing over at their mom, who was talking with Scotty and his friends. “He’s keeping his cards super close to the vest. But the number of recruiter visits keeps going up.”
“Including West Point.” Coach Willard could hardly contain his pride.
“It’ll be Scotty’s decision in the end,” Caleb said firmly. His attitude had changed in the past few months, coming more from a place of acceptance and understanding that Scotty had to blaze his own path forward.
“And when do you get to put up that room for rent sign?” Beverly teased Eric as he came over to our table.
“Eh. We’re happy to make Tony Caleb’s problem now.” Eric joked, but his laugh was strained.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. He’d been fine when we’d privately discussed me moving in with Caleb after the first of the year since I was there most nights anyway.
“Don’t want to bring the celebration down, but Jonas just left to take Sean and Denver to the airport. Declan was in a motocross accident.”
“Oh no.” A murmur of sympathy went around the whole table.
“Bet he’s a tough one like his old man.” Coach Willard was a big fan of Sean’s, and in this case, I hoped like hell he was right.
Later, much later, after the watch party and celebration had disbanded, after Eric and John had headed back to the house to wait for news from Sean, after a quick dinner from Pinball Pizza with Caleb and Scotty’s mom, I lay in Caleb’s bed.
“Luck is such a weird thing, isn’t it?” I mused, resting my head on his chest. We were both in T-shirts and flannel pants. Sleeping rather than fooling around was a much more likely outcome. Their mother was installed in the living room on the new air mattress Caleb had acquired for her frequent visits. Even if she hadn’t been visiting, the news of Declan’s injury, combined with poor sleep leading up to the championship, was a definite mood damper.
“It is,” Caleb said quietly. “Pretty sure I’m lucky to have literally crashed into you.”
“And I’m lucky to have been in the wrong place at the right time.” I rolled so I could give him a quick kiss. “You can run into me anytime.”
“But I know what you mean.” He laced our fingers together. “Our luck—the chance thing that brought us together—makes me appreciate little things more.”
“Yeah. So much of this season was luck. We played Rainbow Cove in the semifinals right after their quarterback went down in the quarterfinals with an ACL injury. We won a couple of coin-flip calls in other games. And now we’re champions, and don’t get me wrong, the kids worked tremendously hard for it?—”
“And you. You worked hard too,” Caleb reminded me.
“We all worked hard, but luck plays a role. And then Declan was on top of the standings for his league, and now bad luck.”
“He’ll be okay.” Caleb held me a little tighter. “And we’ll all be here for him, Sean, and Denver. That’s luck too. Having such a good group of friends.”
“That’s not luck. That’s what happens when friends become closer than family.”
“True.” Caleb went quiet for a bit. “It blows my mind that I’ve gone from the kid with no friends to more than I can count between work, your group, the parent club… Damn, I am the lucky one.”
“Nah. That’s me.” I kissed him again. “And out of all my friends, you’re my favorite. My best friend.”
“Aww.” He looked up at the ceiling, but his blush gave him away. “You’re my favorite too.”
Someday, likely very soon, on a corny occasion like Christmas Eve or Valentine’s Day, I’d do the asking. And he’d say yes. He could beat me to the punch, of course, but he’d always been a little more cautious about laying his heart on the line. That was okay. I could take a risk for us both. What mattered was that we loved each other. Of that, I had zero doubt. Exactly how I didn’t doubt that he truly was my best friend, my soulmate, and the one person on earth I wanted to make it official with.