Page 43 of Caught Running
“I’d like to,” Brandon murmured, stepping away from the door and Jake. He immediately felt cooler away from the coach’s body heat.
Jake spared a moment to give Brandon a predatory once over, and then smiled and nodded. He took the stick away from the door and his “Coach” mask fell back into place. He took abite of his stolen apple and nodded at the table in the corner. Brandon wandered in that direction after greeting the two teachers who came in. He stopped at the Coke machine for a diet soda while Jake went to the mini-fridge and retrieved his water. They’d actually done this a few times already, to talk baseball, so it wasn’t new. But it felt new.
Jake took another bite of his apple and grinned as he chewed. The door to the lounge opened, but Jake didn’t turn to see who entered.
“Brandon, aren’t you checking your messages? I called you this weekend about the A.P. paperwork,” Rhonda said, moving to stand at their table, where she flipped her shoulder forward seductively. “Hi Jake,” she said with a pretty smile. “I don’t think we’ve actually been introduced.” She turned an expectant look toward Brandon.
The science teacher cleared his throat. “Rhonda, this is Jake Campbell, P.E. teacher and head coach for football, weightlifting and baseball. Jake, this is Rhonda Anderson, chemistry teacher and academic team coach.”
Rhonda stuck out her hand. “Jake,” she practically gushed. “Brandon has told me so much about you.” Brandon gave her a clear look of disbelief.
“Has he?” Jake responded with a glance at Brandon and a barely restrained smirk as he took the woman’s hand. Brandon resisted rolling his eyes.
“Oh yes. And the kids love you as a coach. I’d love to know some of your secrets,” Rhonda cooed.
Jake smiled as he extracted his hand and cleared his throat. “Then they wouldn’t be secrets,” he told her, leaning back in his chair, away from the table and from her.
Brandon pressed his lips together as Rhonda’s face fell. “Well, maybe another time. See you, Jake.” Rhonda turned awayand fled, so embarrassed she didn’t even say goodbye to her fellow science teacher.
Jake lowered his head a little, watching the door close out of the corner of his eye. When it shut he rolled his eyes and sighed. Brandon bit his lip and looked at Jake apologetically. Jake just shrugged and leaned forward again, resting his elbows on the table and taking another bite of his stolen apple.
Unwrapping an overstuffed roast beef sandwich, Brandon set half on a napkin and nudged it toward the center of the table. “Remember what I said about that girlish figure?” he murmured before taking a bite.
“Not really,” Jake answered dubiously, sniffing at the sandwich. “What, you want me to eat that?” he asked in an incredulous voice.
Brandon frowned at him. “Ihaveseen you eat.”
Jake waved his apple around in evidence of the fact that he was eating and raised an eyebrow. “I ate about three dozen fries in the lunch room, too,” he snickered before taking another loud bite of the apple.
Brandon turned up his nose. “Girlish figure,” he muttered. “I can’t eat that shit. I’d gain ten pounds.”
“Well, lucky for me, I ain’t a girl,” Jake returned with a cheeky shake of his head and a grin. Knowing it was an insult, Brandon picked a grape up and chucked it at Jake, hitting him right on the nose. “Oomph,” Jake muttered as the grape bounced off his nose and rolled across the floor. “Foul! I call foul!” he shouted as he stood up and pointed at Brandon.
Brandon cackled and leaned back in his chair, not even thinking about the teachers across the lounge who looked at them in surprise. Although it was becoming more common to see Campbell and Bartlett working together, this was new. Jake reached his walking stick across the table and poked Brandon in the shoulder with it. “Bully,” he sulked as he sat back down.
Laughing harder, Brandon swung his hand ineffectually at the stick and took another bite of his sandwich. “Wuss,” he poked, knowing it was anything but true.
Jake gave an outraged little squeak and held his hand to his heart as if he’d been wounded to his very soul. “I’m going back to my office,” he huffed as he stood up again, poking Brandon with the stick once more and grinning. “Don’t forget to bring your pocket protector to the game,” he told Brandon as he made his way to the door, noticeably not limping in the presence of the other teachers.
“Funny, Campbell. Ha ha,” Brandon sniped, but he watched him all the way to the door before going back to his sandwich, sighing silently. Huh. That went well. They’d managed to be together in public without jumping each other; they’d even had normal conversation. Relieved, Brandon turned his mind to the next class period.
Brandon groaned and covered his eyes as he leaned against the dugout fence. Another error. What a nightmare. They were down 9-1, 7 hits to 1, zero errors to 4. The kids were dejected when they jogged in from the field for the last inning. Brandon glanced to Jake. His jaw was visibly grinding and his left eye was twitching.
There wasn’t much a coach could do for a team in a game like this. Jake leaned against the dugout wall in the far corner and stood glaring out at the field, the kids giving him a wide berth.
Watching as the terrible game ended, Brandon urged the players out to walk the line to offer the other team congratulations, and he had quiet words with their senior pitcher, who was about to have a shit fit in the dugout. After a minute or so of Brandon’s reasoning, the kid nodded and joinedthe end of the line before mutely returning to pack up his gear. The assistant coach directed them to the bus immediately, knowing none of them wanted to stick around any longer than they had to.
Brandon stood at the door to the bus as the kids climbed in, and blanched as he saw Misty and a passel of cheerleaders approaching as Jake loaded gear into the bus storage compartments. Shit. This had disaster written all over it.
Jake chucked the bat bag into the compartment and straightened, reaching up to close the heavy door when he saw the woman coming toward him out of the corner of his eye. He growled under his breath and pushed the door down and shoved his shoulder into it to shut it, pretending he didn’t see her.
Brandon swallowed hard. This was likely to be very, very ugly. For Misty, anyway. He jogged over to Jake, speaking loudly enough that the woman approaching could hear. “Hey, Coach, Jeremy needs to talk to you on the bus, some kind of minor meltdown,” he said, voice deep with concern. For Jake, but hey, it worked. He glanced up to see Misty faltering. At least she had some decency where the kids were concerned.
“Coming,” Jake grunted in relief, turning his back on Misty as if he had never even noticed her.
Raising a hand to wave at Misty as though he’d just seen her, Brandon took a few seconds to shut the other storage compartments and shoo the last couple of players onto the bus. He climbed in last and sat in the front seat across from where Jake sat in the driver’s seat. “Let’s get out of here before she decides to climb on and ride back with us,” he muttered.
Jake closed the bus doors quickly and then glanced over his shoulder at Brandon. “We got a count?” he asked.