My Foolish Heart (15 page)

“How's practice going?” Mike picked up Seb's drink and sniffed it, made a face.

Seb took it back. “Good. I finally put them into positions today. First two days, I ran them until they couldn't see anymore.”

P-Train sank another shot, then leaned on his cue. “I went by the field after my shift at the sawmill. Saw your guys running the bleachers. I hated those. You have any pukers?”

“No. I hated the feeling of being wrung out. But I still worked 'em hard. Had them run some drills, too. Then we played a little touch, just to have some fun.”

Bam came off his stool. “Fun? Is football fun?”

“When you win!” Deej said and sank the eight ball.

P-Train chalked his cue. “So we got a state championship team, Seb?”

“Dunno. Depends on the other half—Coach Knight's team. He's got the senior QB, Jared Ryan, on his team. I'm still trying to figure out who can throw the ball on mine.”

When Seb woke up this morning, he'd had the strongest urge to drive by World's Best Donuts. Instead, he'd driven to Coach Knight's practice, watched him run some drills, made a mental game plan of how he might do the same. Then he drove down to the beach and pitched rocks into the water for a good hour, the fear settling into his bones before deciding to put his players into positions, see what they could do.

Complain, was what. He didn't remember ever complaining when Coach Presley made them run.

Seb hadn't a clue how to turn these boys into a disciplined championship team. Sure, Knight might have sat on the bench sometimes, but most of the time Seb saw him standing out in the field with a clipboard. He'd gestured to his running back, drawn him in to speak close, then sent him back out. And sure enough, next time out, the kid sold his fake.

Seb saw improvement on Knight's team already and it was only day three.

He clearly needed help. So he'd come to the VFW to track it down.

“What if Coach Knight's team slaughters us? That can't happen, guys. I want to be the coach. I want to be the best, to see us get another trophy in the case by the gym. So . . . I need your help.”

P-Train smiled. “I'm all over that. What time?”

“If I move practice to after dinner, you think you can come out? Mike and P-Train can teach some running plays. Bam, you could teach them how to tackle while Deej works the receivers. I'll focus on the QB.”

“What's the plan?” Mike asked.

“Knight is teaching them fundamentals. We're going to outplay him. I have the secret weapon: all of Coach's trick plays, right here.” Seb tapped his head. “And we're going to teach them to our boys.”

Bam raised his glass.

Mike gave him a fist bump. “See, we just needed real Husky blood back at the helm. And who better than our all-state QB?” He picked up a cue. “What took you so long, bro?”

Seb kept his smile. “After college, I got into a few things.” A few things? Sometimes his own words curdled his insides, but he'd already started the play—he had to finish it. “Started a couple businesses.” If you could count selling coupons door-to-door as his own business. That had certainly been a dark time. Or perhaps, part of the darkness.

“Hey, really? You owned your own company?” Bam took Mike's place as P-Train racked the balls for a new game. “Ever made a business plan?”

“Sure, dozens of them. Business was my major.” Okay, one of them. He'd done a lot of switching, declaring . . . failing. He took a drink and tasted his lies. “Actually—”

“We had someone come in today who needs a loan. But she hasn't a clue what she's doing, and she needs a business plan for me to approve the loan.” Bam slapped ten dollars on the table. “That's on P-Train.”

Mike glared at him.

“I . . . I guess so. I have some time before school starts,” Seb said. Couldn't hurt, right? He fished out a five, added it to the pile. “On Train.”

“Great. I'll tell her you'll stop by. You two will have fun catching up, I'm sure.” He glanced at Seb, gave him a wink.

A darkness slid through him even as he asked, “What's her name?”

Mike broke and pocketed two balls. He grinned shark teeth at Seb.

Bam finished off his beer. “Oh, sorry, man. I thought I said. It's Lucy. Lucy Maguire.”

Seb closed his eyes. Of course it was.

* * *

It didn't matter that BoyNextDoor hadn't called again, right?

Really, it didn't matter.

Issy sat in the family room, feet propped on a wooden coffee table, painting her toenails deep pink. ABBA's “The Winner Takes It All” played on her iPod docking system. With the windows open, the fragrances of the lake, the pine, and the roses that twined up her front porch stewed a heady brew of summer, especially mixed with the aroma of freshly cut grass.

Her neighbor had mowed. And not just the front—as she might have expected—but this morning she'd awakened to the chewing of the mower as it devoured the savanna grasses of his backyard. She climbed to her office, peered down on him.

And probably peered for too long, really, but Coach Knight had great shoulders, strong and bronzed, marred only by the burned skin that covered his right arm and a good portion of his neck. She was a little embarrassed to admit that she'd winced, again, at his scars. But she'd stopped seeing them by the time he finished the yard and mostly noticed that, when he took off his baseball cap to wipe his forehead, he had a nice head. A sort of distinguished, even solid look about him.

Still, sweat glistened off him, dripping into his now-scraggly beard, which seemed oddly incongruent with his clean-cut head.

She did appreciate a clean-cut man.

That's when she forced herself away from the window.

She'd visited the forum while he finished mowing and discovered that not only she had missed hearing from BoyNextDoor again. The forum lit up with scenarios about his absence.

Cupid87: I'll bet he didn't do anything Miss Foolish Heart said. He probably got off the phone, plopped onto the sofa, and fell asleep with the remote in his hand. He was too embarrassed to show his face.

Proverbs31: No way. He wouldn't have called in if he didn't want to get her attention. I'll bet he spent the day working on her list of complaints, probably fell into an exhausted lump.

DorothyP: I only wish my boyfriend would do one thing on my list.

Issy had logged in and pointed out that maybe the girl had noticed what he'd done to impress her and they were out for dinner all night long.

“Issy?” Lucy's voice came through the open screen door. She stepped inside without waiting for a reply.

“Over here.” Issy applied the last of Berry Blast on her toes, then leaned back. Uh-oh, the way Lucy shuffled in, practically threw her donut bag on the table, and plopped into Coach Presley's favorite recliner . . . well, someone probably needed a donut more than Issy did.

“You okay?” Issy picked up the bag, opened it. A glazed raised.

“Mark Bammer turned me down for a loan.” Lucy leaned her head back on the chair. “I can't believe it. He says that if I want a loan to build a drive-through, or even an outside serving counter, I need a business plan.”

“So write a business plan.”

“I stink at math, at numbers . . . at business in general. I make donuts. I sell them to people. I smile and ask about their grandchildren or their dogs. I don't write business plans. I've never had to.” Lucy drew up her legs and rolled up her pant legs.

“You can learn. There's so much information on the Internet—”

“That's your world, not mine. I wouldn't even know where to start.”

“What if you hired an accountant?”

“
Money.
It's a word I know you're unconcerned about, but I can't pay an accountant in donuts.” She reached over and grabbed the nail polish.

“Ha.” In fact, Issy tried very hard
not
to think about money. The settlement from the trucking company felt like blood money, and she hated the fact that it paid her father's bills, even if he needed it. She wanted to provide for him. “I don't know. You do make great donuts.”

Lucy gave her a narrowed-eye look as she propped her foot on the table and began to paint her toenails. “I'll go to my grave with the words
She made great donuts
written on my tombstone.”

Issy pulled the glazed raised out of the bag and bit into it. “What's so bad about that? Mine will read,
She helped others fall in love but never had a date
.”

For a second they stared at each other; then Lucy smiled. “The good news is, Bam left a message on my machine at work this afternoon. He says he has someone who can help me. Without the donut payment. I'm meeting him for coffee at the Blue Moose tonight.”

“Hence the fresh coat of polish.”

“He's probably a retiree from the Cities, looking to fill his time. But I'll take any help I can get. You can't imagine what it felt like to sit across Bam's desk and hear him say, ‘No, I won't loan you the money.'”

“He always had a thing for you. Couldn't believe you shot him down sophomore year, then went out with Seb a year later.”

“He does have a hard time with
no
.” She didn't look at Issy as she finished her toenails. She finally capped the polish. “Anyway, I came to take you to the grocery store.”

“I feel like I'm an old lady.”

Lucy raised an eyebrow. Issy threw a pillow at her.

“Hey, who's grilling?” Lucy asked, waving her hands over her toes.

Indeed, the redolence of hamburgers smoking on a grill drew Issy from the sofa. She turned to look out the window. “Now he's grilling. He actually moved the grill off the porch, put it in the middle of the yard. He's sitting there in a lawn chair throwing a football to Duncan.”

And she had to notice that he handled the ball well, balancing it with one hand, pitching it underhanded high into the air as the dog crouched, then bounded after it, crazy as it zagged around the yard. Duncan picked it up in his massive jowls, returned it to—

“He was at the library earlier this week. I found out his name.”

“What did you do? Steal his library card?”

Issy made a face.

“You are pitiful.”

“Knight. Can you believe that? Caleb Knight. And that's not all—he's the new football coach.”

“You're kidding me. The new coach? See, the perfect romance might be right next door.” Lucy winked.

“Are you here all week? Because you're downright hilarious.” Issy turned back to the window.

Caleb held out the ball, faking the throw, the dog jerking with anticipation.

Lucy came over to join her at the window. Watched him for a long time. “Too bad about rule number three, huh?”

Issy glanced at her. “Maybe football players aren't all alike.”

Lucy settled onto the arm of the sofa. “You come up with that yourself? Because you're simply profound.”

Issy sighed. “I'm just saying, maybe I could modify rule number three. Maybe I don't date
some
football players. The stars-in-their-eyes kind. Maybe I date football players who didn't win state championships.”

“
Losing
football players.” Lucy raised an eyebrow. “I see where you're going with this. Maybe only the ones who had to sit the bench for half the season.”

“Most of the season. Four games, minimum.” Issy smiled. “Okay, fine. Dumb rule. We'll scratch it. But seriously, for a coach, the guy is a mess. He needs a shave, and how about wearing a shirt that isn't ripped? And ditch the hat. Can you imagine how it smells?”

Lucy made the appropriate face.

Issy glanced at him again. He'd pushed himself out of the chair, now lifted the lid to the grill, flipping the burgers. “It's probably the only thing he knows how to cook. Charbroiled meat.”

In a different world, a different life, she might have gone next door, asked him over for dinner. How many times did her father have the entire team over for burgers on a Thursday night before the Friday game?

Issy sat back on the sofa and grabbed a pillow. “Wouldn't it be nice if you could just . . . I don't know, order up the perfect man? Give your specifications to God and wait for Him to wrap him up and deposit him on your doorstep?”

“Or next door?” A smile played on Lucy's lips.

Funny. “Don't you have an old man to meet?”

“Number nine.” As Lucy stood, she slipped her feet into her flip-flops. “He has to be able to cook.”

“Something else besides burgers!”

“You are hopeless.”

“Not hopeless . . . just . . . well, better safe than brokenhearted, right?”

Lucy's smile dimmed. “Right. Yes. C'mon. It's time to face your fears.”

8

This was not the Lucy he remembered, the one who made him stand on a picnic table and recite Rochester's impassioned speech when he asked Jane to marry him.

Nor the Lucy who wouldn't even look at him in the hallways at school. Wouldn't let him chase her down to apologize.

Had he done that? Apologized?

No, this wasn't pretty, shy Lucy. Nor wounded Lucy. This Lucy wore a decade of determination in her eyes when she'd walked into the Blue Moose, spotted him sitting in the back booth, and come over to say, “Are you the one Bam sent to help me?”

For a long, panicked moment, all breath left him. Just sucked right out of him, along with his heart, and all he could do was nod. Like he still might be seventeen years old and assigned to work with her on their English project.

Then she sighed and offered what looked like a sincere smile.

The band of pain around his chest loosened. “Hey, Lucy. Uh, how are you?” He stood, extended his hand. She held hers out too, and it fit so perfectly in his, he held it too long.