Page 8 of Caught Running

Brandon nodded and let it drop, pleased that the other man had at least replied civilly. “Any ideas about what I might be doing with the team?” he asked after Jake directed him through another turn.

Jake gave a short, sharp laugh. “My God, he wants me to think!” he exclaimed sarcastically, glancing over at Brandon and smiling to let him know he was joking. “If I had to say right now, I’d tell you you’re going to be working with me on varsity. Third base coach, probably, since you mentioned at least being a fan, right?” He paused. “You were taught to run, weren’t you?” he asked suddenly. He recognized training when he saw it.

Blinking at the sharp segue, Brandon stopped the car at a light and looked at Jake, one brow raised. “Yeah. In college. How did you know that?”

Jake shrugged and looked out the window. They were at the intersection he’d been crossing this morning when his heel had suddenly decided to have a shit fit. “You have the look,” heanswered vaguely. It was difficult to describe how one athlete was able to spot another. “Sorta like gaydar for athletes,” he offered, laughing a little.

Brandon’s mouth pulled into a smile. If only Jake knew how true that was. “Nobody’s ever told me I had ‘the look’,” he commented, starting to drive again at the green light. “I wanted something to do at school to counteract the classes and workload, and my adviser introduced me to some guys on the track team. Figured running was good for focus. Turned out I was better at the endurance races, so I switched to cross country.”

“You still run?” Jake asked, glancing over at the man. To be honest, he had never had much respect for track and field. In high school and college the joke had been that they had no “balls.”

“Yeah, I try to get in at least an hour a day. Seven, eight miles maybe. Helps me clear my head,” Brandon said distractedly as he made a turn into a nice neighborhood. “Usually in the park at home or around the lake if it’s nice. It’s a chunk of time I really need for other things sometimes, but I try hard to resist skipping it. I feel like shit if I do.” He had no idea why he was chattering so much. Maybe it was because it had been so long since anyone asked about him directly. He didn’t have friends outside a few teachers at the school because he worked too much to socialize. It didn’t look like that would be changing anytime soon.

“I never got much out of running,” Jake admitted. “I always wound up talking to myself,” he said with a slight blush.

“Yeah, I had that problem at first. Too much going on in my head. To really get into it you have to get past that, sort of zone out. For distance running, I mean,” Brandon said as he pulled the car into a driveway. They were about a mile from the school, half a mile as the crow flies, in an older, upper-class subdivisionwith large, wooded lots. It reminded him of Mountain Park a little. He leaned forward to look at the house with green trim. “Nice house,” he complimented.

“Thanks,” Jake responded, reaching for the door handle. “You want a drink or something?” he offered as he popped the door open.

Brandon’s stomach chose that moment to growl loudly. His lips twitched. “I’m thinking I better go look for some dinner. Thanks, though.” He tilted his head, a thought occurring. Surely Jake was just as hungry as he was. “You going to eat?”

“Sometimes I do, yeah,” Jake laughed softly. Truth was, if he didn’t eat dinner then whatever he took for his aches would hit him quicker. But he didn’t say that. “I’ve got sandwich stuff,” he offered with a shrug.

“Well, I was going to suggest Mimi’s after you got some ice, but sandwiches would be fine,” Brandon said. “I’m not much of a cook myself. Cold cuts, microwave. Roll-out cookies from a can,” he said self-deprecatingly.

“Hey, I’m a great cook. All I need to fix a meal is a phone and someone to answer the door,” Jake responded as he got out of the car and closed the door. He opened up the back and retrieved his bag. “I need beer,” he added before closing the back door.

“Unless Mimi’s got a liquor license, you’ll have to provide that,” Brandon said, climbing out of the car. “But if you want to get your ice, I can make the sandwiches.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Jake agreed as he straightened his back and popped it slowly. “I’m not helping you do teachery things,” he warned with a wave of his finger as he dug out his keys and turned to head for the door.

Brandon paused at the hood of the car. “Teachery things?” he asked, wondering if that was a hint that he could bring his grading in to work on while they ate.

“Yeah, you know, with pens and papers,” Jake said with a wave of his hand over his shoulder as he mounted the stairs. “I don’t do those,” he said with a shake of his head.

Figuring that was as close to a sign as he was going to get, Brandon ducked into the rear seat to grab his back pack and jogged to catch up. “How can you not do pens and papers? I remember taking tests in P.E.,” he said, curious. How could he get away with giving grades without giving tests?

“Tests?” Jake asked incredulously. “No, no, they moved that to health and somewhere else,” he answered as he pushed the door open and stepped into his house. It smelled cool, with an undercurrent of something that might have been a melon of some sort. He snapped on the lights and headed for the kitchen, trusting that Brandon would follow. “The only tests we do in P.E. are the President’s Fitness tests, and those are usually 8th grade, I think,” he added. “P.E.’s just pass-fail.”

Brandon looked around as he followed. It was a really, really nice house. Not at all what he would have expected for a ... Brandon winced at the track his thoughts were taking. He figuratively kicked himself and entered the kitchen behind Jake. Once another set of lights flipped on, he slung his backpack onto the bench of the breakfast nook. He needed to work on changing his preconceptions. They’d already been tilted several times today.

“I grew up here. My parents moved to Florida about five years ago,” Jake told the man, knowing he had to be wondering how he afforded this house on a teacher’s salary. “I took the house in exchange for hauling all their shit down there for them,” he smiled as he went to the refrigerator and opened it. “Want a beer?”

“Sure,” Brandon said, looking around a little more and out at a rolling, wooded back yard. The neighbors looked to be a good fifty yards or more away. “Got my house pretty much the sameway. Well, inherited it, I mean,” he said, pausing for a moment as he remembered his parents, some years gone now. He turned back to Jake abruptly. “Okay—ice? Blender? What do you need?” he asked efficiently.

“Heh,” Jake laughed as he tossed Brandon a beer. “Rookie,” he scoffed as he opened up the freezer and pulled out a frozen gel pack. He plopped it onto the counter and reached in for another, and with it pulled out a wrap that was specially made to have one of the gel packs inserted into it and then fit over his ankle.

Brandon nodded—he’d seen braces like that before. “Modern technology is a wonderful thing,” he commented, setting the beer on the table. “Sandwich fixings?” Brandon was trying very hard to distract himself from looking at Jake’s close-cropped dark hair, the curve of his neck. Oh, not a good thing. Nope. Move on, Bartlett. Nothing here to see. He walked over to the bread box, lifting the door experimentally and pulling out the loaf he found there.

“Everything else is in the fridge there,” Jake said with a nod at the stainless steel appliance as he lifted his foot onto a stool and gave his sore ankle a brief rub before sliding into the compression pack. He gave all the Velcro pieces some tugs and made sure the ice was on his heel, then slid around Brandon and reached into the freezer again for a wrap that went around his knee.

Brandon had mayo and mustard in the crook of his arm, and he was picking up packages of deli meat when he felt the other man’s body close, so he shifted his hips over so Jake could open the freezer door. He rifled through the cold-storage drawers, finding a couple kinds of sliced cheese, some shredded lettuce, even a few tomatoes. He pulled it all out in a huge armful and spread it out on the table, nabbing the bread. “Plates? Knife? Cutting board?” he asked as he watched the coach adjust thewrap. By the looks of his movements, he was very well-versed in putting the things on. He suddenly wondered if Jake had continued to pitch in college, or if he’d played outfield or first base instead.

Jake tapped a drawer to signify the knives were in there and reached behind him as he stood on one leg, his hand holding the knee piece together while he plucked out a cutting board and set it on the counter. “I’ll get the plates in a sec,” he muttered as he pulled the compression brace tight and felt the cold of the ice pack within press around the inside of his knee. He smoothed out the Velcro and then sighed heavily as he straightened back up.

Watching the production, Brandon began to understand a little bit of what Jake was going through all without saying anything. He would never have thought the coach hurt that much until less than an hour ago, but now it was getting obvious. He’d learned this afternoon, though, that with Jake silence was more valued than chatter, so he kept quiet about it, taking the cutting board and a knife he’d pulled out to the nook table where he started slicing the tomatoes.

Jake glanced up at the man as he reached into one of the glass-fronted cabinets and retrieved the plates. “I blew out my knee freshman year,” he told the man in answer to the unasked questions. “It still aches on me sometimes, when it’s cold like it is now.”