Neither of them went to college. Dad worked on the ranch with Grandpa until he died. He and Mom got married right out of high school. Normally, Dad would have been pushing me to do the same, but too many years spent with too little money had changed his mind on what was best for me.
“You sound like my daughter,” Coach says.
I don’t reply. I only heard bits and pieces of their fight, but it’s not something I have any intention of weighing in on.
After a few moments of silence, he claps me on the shoulder once more.
“Go home, McClain. Get some rest. Today was supposed to be an easy day.”
I resist the urge to laugh at the thought of a bleeding day being called easy just because it was shorter than normal. Somehow I don’t think he’d take that too well.
“There are no easy days, sir.”
He smiles grimly. “You are right about that, McClain. Too right.”
I SHOW UP outside Dallas’s dorm even though she texted me to cancel. I don’t know what I plan to do there or how I’ll get her to talk to me, but I can’t make myself just roll over and pretend none of it ever happened.
I stand outside, watching a few people smoking just outside the doors, and I text her.
I’m here for our walk.
She doesn’t reply, so after a few minutes, I call her instead.
It rings, three, four, five times, and I’m getting ready to hang up when she answers, “What?”
“I’m downstairs.”
I’m coincidentally looking up at the building when I notice a set of blinds on the third floor being pulled up, and a familiar face peeking out of the glass. I wave, and she steps back from the window until I can’t see her anymore.
“You didn’t get the hint when I didn’t answer any of your calls or when I texted to cancel?”
“I just want to talk,” I say. If I’d had a dozen reasons before that we couldn’t date, I had a hundred now. But I keep hearing what she said outside her dad’s office.
I found out something that upset me.
I keep hearing the break in her voice when she said it, and it’s eating me from the inside out.
“So talk.”
“Can you come down?”
“No.”
I sigh, but she steps up to the window again, her arms crossed over her chest, and I guess that will have to do.
Now . . . I just need to figure out what to say.
The silence stretches on for several long moments and she adds, “This is you talking?”
I snap, “I’m sorry, okay? You’re not the only one who got a shock today.”
“If you’re worried that I’m going to tell him, don’t. I know how to keep my mouth shut.”
“Dallas, that’s not it. I don’t care about that.”
“You should. You think he’s tough on you in practice now? It can get much worse. Trust me.”
“I do trust you.”
She makes a noise on the other end that I can’t quite identify.
“This is complicated, I know.”
“Let me uncomplicate it. Whatever might have been going to happen between us, isn’t. I don’t date football players.”
“I don’t want to date you.” I wince. “That came out wrong.” And I realize when I say it, just how much of a lie it is, too. “I like you, have liked you from the moment I met you. But the whole reason I wanted to go on a walk tonight was to explain that despite wanting to date you, I can’t. I decided that long before I knew you were Coach Cole’s daughter.”
“I have a name, you know. God, I’m so sick of just being Coach Cole’s daughter.”
“Before I knew you were Dallas Cole, then. I’m not a scholarship player, Dallas. I could be cut at any moment. And I’m not the best student in the world, which puts me even more at risk. If I want to stay on the team, I have to stay focused. I have to work hard. And for now at least, that means no dating.”
“Isn’t this kind of a moot point now? We’re both well aware that no dating will be taking place.”
I sigh. “I wanted to go for a walk and explain things because I hoped we could still be friends.”
She disappears from the window. I wonder if she’s pacing or just tired of me when she says, “Seriously?”
“I know it sounds stupid. But I told you the truth on Friday night. I’m a transfer. I’m nonscholarship. I’m an outsider on the team, and at this school. I think you’re pretty great, and I’d hate to lose that because our situation is . . . complicated.”
She snorts. “Complicated. Right.”
I wish she would come back to the window so I could see her face.
“Is that a no?”
She doesn’t say anything, and it drives me crazy not being able to know what she’s thinking. Damn it, why don’t dorms have balconies?
“It’s an I don’t know.”
“Can I help you figure it out?”
“No. Not tonight. I’ll text you or something.”
She hangs up the phone, the blinds drop, and I have no choice but to drag myself home.
I DON’T SEE Dallas again that week, not even when I stick around the environmental science building trying to catch her before whatever class she has there. She sure as hell never comes back to practice, and even though I want to obsess over it, there’s no time.
On Wednesday, Coach tells me I’m traveling with the team, and the rest of the week speeds by, until I walk out on a football field in a Rusk University jersey for the first time. Mom and Dad are supposed to try to come since this away game is closer to home than Rusk, but Granny is sick again, so they don’t make it after all.