Unexpected: Secret Baby of a Star Athlete Page 7

  “Why not?” I demanded. “We’ve been together two years. I won’t even be gone that long!”

  “It’s not you going,” he sighed. “It’s that you don’t…you obviously don’t want to settle down yet.”

  It took me by surprise, but he was right. He had ten years on me, and he would be looking at starting a family and getting married and here I was, running off across the country to pursue a story and leaving him behind.

  So we broke up, and I packed a bag full of clothes and pictures, throwing everything into the back of my car. At least I didn’t have to worry about finding a place to stay. The paper was paying for my accommodation, so I wouldn’t have to slink back to my family and ask to crash on their couch for a while. Still, it felt as though my heart physically ached. I had thought we were forever, in the foolish, certain way you think your first love will last. I had known that it was wrong from the start, if I was honest with myself, known that we were at different places in our lives, but I had ignored it in the hopes that we could figure something out one day down the line. Turns out I had just been putting off the inevitable.

  It was a seven-hour drive, and I did it in a day, desperate to put as much distance between myself and him as I could. I had been given the name of the town and the location of the training ground that I’d be hanging out at for the next few months, and that was it. The team management had agreed for me to come cover the team in the hopes of attracting a few sponsors, but Paul reminded me that that didn’t mean I had to produce a flattering story. I hadn’t written an investigative piece on this level before, and I was nervous about pissing someone off- the team, the players, my editors. I just had to trust that they wouldn’t have sent me here if they didn’t think I could do it.

  It was late when I pulled up to the apartment they had put aside for me. I fumbled in my pocket for the key I’d been sent a few days prior, unlocked the door, and made my way upstairs.

  I found my apartment, opened the door, and flicked on the light. It was small, a studio, but it was just what I needed after leaving Joel. I didn’t want acres of empty space that only I could fill. The smallness of the place made me feel a little less lonely.

  I dumped my suitcase next to the bed, and fell face-first into the threadbare mattress. And, although I’d been fighting the urge to cry since I left the city, I found that the tears weren’t forthcoming. Maybe I was too tired, maybe I was too nervous about tomorrow, but I didn’t want to cry. I flipped onto my back, stared at the ceiling, and wondered if this escape might have been a better decision that I thought.

  Chapter Two

  “Hey man, you coming out tonight?”

  As I pulled off my pads and stripped out of my sweaty clothes, I shook my head.

  “Nah,” I replied with a shrug. “Boss wants to talk to me.”

  “What have you done now?” Derrick rolled his eyes teasingly at me and closed his locker, leaning up against the cold metal and observing me with amusement.

  “Nothing!” I protested.

  “That you remember,” he flashed me a smile, and went to grab his stuff. “I’ll see you tomorrow, right?”

  “Yeah,” I waved him off. “Catch you then.”

  I slammed my locker door shut, and stared at my distorted reflection in the metal in front of me. I flashed myself a smile, trying to psych myself up. The boss wouldn’t want anything serious with me. I was killing it in training, and I’d scored four times in our last couple of matches.

  I wondered if this had anything to do with the guy in the stands I hadn’t recognized. He’d sat in at training today, and seemed to be paying plenty of attention to me. I didn’t think much of it at the time, too focused on the game at hand, but now I thought about it. It was kind of out of character for the boss to let anyone else see our training methods. It must have been something big.

  I made my way through to his office, pausing for a moment when I found myself face-to-face with the plaque on his door: Johnson Mapplethorpe, Coach. We always joked among ourselves that he had two last names for a name, and I smirked slightly at the memory. I wiped it hurriedly from my face. The last thing I wanted was to be caught out grinning like an idiot at some joke at his expense. He wouldn’t take kindly to that.

  I pushed open the door, and Johnson looked up. His glasses were pushed to the top of his head, and he quickly whipped them off. He never liked to be seen with his glasses on.

  “Sam, come in,” he nodded to the seat opposite him. “Take a seat.”

  I did as I was told, glancing down at the paperwork on his desk. It was covered up by an enormous unfolded newspaper, something called the Herald. He had it open to the sports pages, with a column circled in blue pen. I looked back up at him, and managed a smile.

  “What’s up?” I asked, hoping that I was going to like whatever answer he gave me.

  “Sam,” he steepled his fingers and looked over the top. “I’m not going to beat around the bush here. An offer has come in.”

  “Huh?” I wrinkled my nose. We were barely out of the local leagues. Surely, no one was paying that much attention to us?

  “A scout from the Philadelphia Soars was in the stadium today,” he continued matter-of-factly. “He liked what he saw, and they’d like to make an offer for you.”

  “What the fuck?” My eyes widened. The Soars? They’d been around for decades, one of the best teams in the country. I had to be getting screwed with. Johnson cocked an eyebrow at my language, and I lowered my eyes apologetically.

  “You don’t have to go,” his voice was a little softer, hopeful, as though he didn’t want me to leave. “But they’ll need a decision by the end of the month.”

  “This month?” I exclaimed, parroting every word that came out of his mouth in my surprise. He nodded.

  “That’s right,” he affirmed. “If you go…they’re offering quite a price for you, Sam. It would be a big boost to the team’s finances if you went…”

  My jaw hung open, and he quickly dismissed that line of reasoning.

  “But it’s up to you, Sam,” he promised, reverting to the Dad-like kindness and sympathy that he could occasionally display for his players.

  “Is that it?” I asked. I needed to get out. It felt as though the walls of his office were closing in on me, and I might be trapped forever unless I got out now.

  “That’s it,” he nodded, and I got to my feet.

  “Sam?”

  I turned to look at him, my fingers already wrapped around the door handle.

  “Take your time with this.”

  I nodded sharply but didn’t answer, opening the door and heading out into the corridor. I could hear the squeaking of the shoes of the kids who came in to practice after we did. I headed to my locker to grab my stuff, and then out to my car. I sat there for a few minutes, my brain spinning. How had this happened?

  I looked over to the doors of the stadium, and thought back to the first time I’d walked through them. It had been almost ten years ago, when I was in middle school, that I first picked up a hockey stick, and I loved it at once. I got picked up for the high school team, and, when I left, I declined college and instead went to join the Kingstown Crows. Back then, we were a tiny team, hardly even notable on a local level, known by practically no one. We barely even existed. I had always hoped to move up from them one day, as did everyone who had started out there. And then, something strange happened” we started to win.

  It started with just a few games here and there, enough to land us in the upper half of our state-wide league for the first time in a few years. Though I wanted us to go further, I put it down to luck, used my bonus to move into my own place and go out for way too many nights on the town. The next year, we ended up at the top of the state league, getting promoted to a tri-state table that we hadn’t seen the likes of in more than two decades. And now, we were slowly crawling our way up that. Where other teams seemed hung up on what they might lose, we were focused on what we could gain, and it was thrillingly exciting to wa
tch our stock slowly increase as we put away goal after goal, to see our stadium begin to fill out as coming to watch us play on a Saturday night became a legitimate pastime for the people of Kingstown. We turned from town wide punchlines into something people could be proud of, and I wasn’t ready to leave that behind.

  The thought of going had long since drifted from my mind after we started doing well. This was the town I grew up in, the place my family lived, my home. I didn’t want to go. But could I, in good faith, turn down a role at a place like the Soars? It was so far away. My chest felt hollow at the thought of the distance between me and here if I went. I started the car, and pulled out of the parking lot. Instead of heading down to the bar to join the guys, I found myself driving across town to my Mom’s place. And I wasn’t even sure why.

  Chapter Three

  I fell asleep where I lay, and woke up the next morning with a start to the light trickling in through the windows- I sat up straight, fumbling for my phone in my pocket and squinting at the screen. Thank God it was only seven. I forced myself up, and made my way over to the cupboards, hoping I’d find something vaguely edible inside. No such luck. They were bare, and I had made my way through all the snacks I’d packed for the trip a long time ago. My stomach grumbled, but I forced myself into a shower before I went out. I wanted to look presentable for my first day on this job. I had worked in sports reporting long enough to know that if you were dealing with dudes, you wanted to look as presentable as possible. It was amazing what they would say to a pretty girl, especially when they didn’t realize that she was the journalist their manager had warned them about.

  I blew out my hair, dabbed on a little make-up, and pulled on some smart clothes- a shirt, and a pressed pair of narrow pants with polished black pumps. The only mirror in the place was a tiny square in the bathroom, and I had to jump up and down to see what I looked like. I could see the dark rings under my eyes, a reminder that I’d spent the whole night dreaming about Joel. Other than that, I felt like I looked pretty good. I grabbed a hair tie, and pulled back my brown-black hair into a high ponytail. I felt my most at home with a hairstyle that kept it all out of my face, so I could focus on taking notes. I grabbed my Dictaphone and my notebook, and headed out the door, barely remembering to pick up my new keys as I did so.

  There was a small coffee shop around the corner from my new apartment, and I gratefully ducked inside and ordered a latte and a slice of toast. I wasn’t hungry, but the last thing I wanted was to pass out in front of my new charges the first time I met them. The caffeine perked me up, and I forced down the dry toast while I stared out the window, taking in my new home.

  I’d always lived in a city before. My entire life, I’d grown up around the hustle and bustle of things and people and places. Kingstown was the first time I’d ever lived anywhere with a population of less than fifty thousand. I observed the people walking by outside, wondering if this was how I should start my article, with commentary on the smallness of the place, on the fact that only a handful of community members were outside at this time in the morning. In an hour or so, I imagined that this place would flood with parents getting their kids to school before they hurried off to work, but for now, I found it quite relaxing to peer out the window and wonder what everyone was up to, where they were going. Maybe I was even looking at one of the players or coaches I’d be interviewing somewhere down the line. I hadn’t had a lot of time to do research on the team before I came out. I read the press release and a couple of local sports reports on the subject, but that was pretty much it. I had no idea who I was looking for or who the big stars were in the Kingstown Crows.

  I finished up my coffee at a leisurely place, glad that I had woken up early enough to take my time. I double-checked the address of the stadium where I was headed, hopped in my car, and began to make the long drive across town.

  I was glad, in some ways, that so much had happened in the run-up to me coming out here. It had taken my mind off the fact that I was nervous, fucking terrified, if I was being honest with myself. I had never taken on a project this big before in my life, and it was starting to get to me. My career could get a massive boost from this, or it could come crashing down around my ears if they felt as though I’d written something too fluffy or not in-depth enough. As I pulled up to the stadium, I closed my eyes and reached for my Dictaphone, wrapping my fingers around the cold metal and plastic. It fit with a comforting familiarity into my hands, and I took a deep breath in an attempt to steady myself. I knew I was probably over-thinking this, but I needed to keep calm. The last thing I wanted was for these guys to think I was nothing more than a hysterical woman. It was a response you didn’t see as much these days, but once in a while I’d have to face up to some asshole who thought that they sent the replacement reporter out when I walked through the door.

  I strode into the stadium, and found myself facing a receptionist behind a glass panel.

  “Hi, Emily Tennison, I’m…?”

  Before I could finish my sentence, the receptionist was waving me through with a polite smile.

  “Mr. Mapplethorpe is waiting for you in his office,” she nodded down the hall, through a pair of slightly faded blue doors. I nodded my thanks at her and made my way down the corridor, finding myself face-to-face with an office door emblazoned with “Johnson Mapplethorpe.”

  There’s a small-town name, if I ever heard one, I thought to myself, hesitating for a split second before I rapped my knuckles on the door. I heard a rustling inside, and a few seconds later, the door opened. Behind it stood a man about the age of my father, almost a full foot taller than me, with dark hair peppered with grey and a kind if no-bullshit expression on his face.

  “Miss Tennison?” He stepped aside so I could make my way into his office. I waved my hand at him politely.

  “Please, call me Emily,” I replied, looking around the office. It was papered with newspaper cuttings and pictures, most of them taken from about thirty years ago (which, as I remembered in that instant, was the last time the Crows had any real success), all but a handful of them, the ones closest to his desk, very recent shots. He sat down with a small grunt, and I took my seat opposite him.

  “So, the newspaper sent you, right?” he confirmed, and I nodded.

  “That’s right.”

  He eyed me suspiciously for a moment, then shook his head and took off his glasses, pinching the bridge of his nose for a moment.

  “Sorry if I seem standoffish,” he commented. “I just didn’t ever think we’d be notable enough to get a reporter round here for a whole month, you know?”

  I laughed, and pulled out my Dictaphone, placing it on the table between us.

  “You’ve signed all the release forms, right?” I confirmed, my finger hovering over the play button, and he nodded.

  “Yeah.”

  I began my recording, leaning towards him slightly over the table. This was the side of journalism I loved; I had started off terrified by it, convinced that I was going to fuck things up and manage to ask some question that would get me kicked out, or worse, clam up entirely and end up not asking an interesting question at all.

  “So, when did you start coaching for the Crows?”

  The conversation flowed naturally from there. I was surprised at how talkative he was. Most of the coaches I’d encountered had been a little more defensive, a little more careful about what came out of their mouths- I guessed that his inexperience with the press made him a bit more chatty, and I didn’t mind one little bit. He spoke easily and happily on his history with the club, from player to coach, and I found myself growing fond of him even over the course of the conversation. He was smart and sharp, even if he was a little naïve about what the big leagues might mean for them.

  An hour of conversation flew by like it was nothing, and he looked down at his watch.

  “Shit,” he cursed, and then held up his hand in apology. “The guys’ll be here any second. You want to wait out on the court and I’ll introduce you?”<
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  “Sure thing,” I agreed, following him as he opened the door for me and then led me down the corridor to the pitch. The place was a little run-down and in need of a new coat of paint, but it had a nice atmosphere, warm and communal. I sat in one of the seats closest to the pitch and pulled out my notebook, hoping something interesting would happen, something that would give me the hook I needed to get things going.

  After a few minutes, Johnson reappeared, this time followed by a ragtag line-up of fifteen or so guys. I didn’t recognize any of them from the cuttings I’d received in my press packet- except one. I couldn’t place his name, but I remembered his face- peppered with a little dark stubble, dark eyes peering out from a pale face. I couldn’t see his hair under his helmet, but I remembered it being dark and thick. He stood a little taller than me, and even under his armor I could tell that he was relatively slim. I frowned slightly, making a mental note to re-read all my notes so I had a better idea of who I was looking at when I got back to my apartment.

  Training began, and Johnson started by getting all of them to run drills, little two-versus-two games, some ball control, some stick control. I could tell that he was showing off a little, making sure I knew what his team could do. I had seen it so many times before when I came to cover a team, the coach wanting to make sure that I left with a perfect opinion of his team’s skill. And they were good, I had to admit. I had covered my local hockey team when I was back in college, and watching them practice brought me straight back to how that felt. How grown-up and new it all was back then. I tucked my hands into my pockets. Now that was one thing I had forgotten, how fucking cold it always was at places like this. No surprise, thanks to the hundred or so feet of ice sharing the room with us, but still.

  A training match started up, with Johnson calling direction from the sidelines, and the guy I’d noticed before, there was a reason they’d pushed him so much in the press pack, obviously. He was good. Really good. Fast, aggressive, moving up the left side of the field like it was nothing. He made it all look so easy- I found myself watching his every move, focusing in on the way his stick darted across the ice, the way he seemed to square up to his teammates before plunging past them and putting another goal away. Yeah, this was just training, but the boy had real talent.