A/N: Thank you for all feedback. I am going on vacation, so it may be a week before I update this story.
Chapter Sixteen
One morning, as Eric was just beginning his junior year of college, Angie approached him in the kitchen.
"I know," he said. "It was my turn to mop the kitchen floor yesterday. I forgot."
She leaned against the counter. "It's okay. Listen, my youngest brother is a quarterback in Pop Warner." Angie was from Houston, and her family lived nearby. "I was wondering if you could give him a few pointers? He'd really appreciate it."
Eric agreed, and she told him where to meet the next morning, early, in a park a couple of miles outside campus. When he got there, he saw that the park had fields, and there was an entire Junior Pee Wee team of kids aged eight to ten milling around. Angie was nowhere to be found.
A man in a silver cap that sported the logo of a bullet approached him. "Are you Eric Taylor?" he asked.
"Uh…yeah."
"Good, then you must be my new volunteer assistant coach." He held out his hand. "Pablo Martinez."
"What?" asked Eric, shaking his hand absently.
"It's just the two of us handling this team. Practices are four days a week, Tuesday through Friday, 6:00 AM sharp, before school to beat the heat. Angie said you didn't have any classes until 9:00, right?"
"Uh, no…I don't…but…she didn't say anything about – "
"- Games are on Thursday afternoons. Great to have you on board." Coach Martinez turned to the milling team. "Bullets! This here is Coach Eric Taylor. You listen to what he has to say, and you show him some respect. Now let's welcome our new coach."
"Welcome, Coach Taylor!" the boys all shouted in unison.
As shocked as Eric was by the turn of events, he felt a strange surge of excitement when they chanted his name like that.
"So let's get started!" Coach Martinez hollered. "Bullets! Line up!" He turned to Eric. "You'll be working with the offense today."
[*]
The junior high where Tami worked was three miles from the park. Eric went to Tami's office and shut the door. Her school wouldn't start until next week, so only staff was in the building currently, and he still had forty minutes before his first class started.
"I can't believe Angie did that to me!" he said after explaining what had happened. He whipped off the silver cap the head coach had given him and tossed it on her desk. "Marketing major. I should have known she was selling me something. That's just damn sneaky is what that is."
Angie had graduated and now worked as a "promotional assistant" for the accounting firm where Grady had also recently been hired. Eric was the only one in the apartment who was still in college. With two jobs, Grady and Angie could easily have moved to their own apartment, but they'd decided to scrimp and save until they could put 20% down on a house.
Tami picked up his cap. "It's not a bad color on you. And you know, you want to be a coach. So it's a great experience."
"I didn't know what the hell I was doing with those kids half the time. And it's not a paid position. It's hours and hours a week, and I won't see a dime."
"You'll get the hang of it. Just try it for one season, sugar. I have a good feeling about this."
"Wait." He pointed a finger at her. "You knew about this, didn't you? You were in on it!"
She smiled and put the cap back on his head. "You look cute in a coach's cap," she said. "I bet you'll get laid after every game."
"I get laid anyway."
"Yeah, but I bet now you'll get to call all the plays."
He smiled. "You should have been the marketing major."
Tami was right – Eric did get the hang of it. He fell in love with coaching and with those kids that season, and he volunteered again for the next; only, the next year, the head coach moved away and Eric was asked to fill the top slot. He talked Grady into volunteering to be his assistant.
[*]
At the end of his senior year of college, Eric managed to graduate "with honors."
"Not high honors like your wife, though," Eric's dad told him over dinner at an upscale French restaurant in Houston. It was where Eric's mother had wanted to celebrate his graduation. She'd read about it in some guide book. It was not the sort of place Eric and Tami could afford if the Taylors weren't paying.
"Well," Tami said, "he was a little busy taking the Bullets to the Regional Championships."
Mr. Taylor smiled indulgently. "He should have been going with the Cougars to a bowl game instead. He might have been, if he hadn't quit the team."
"James!" Mrs. Taylor scolded him. "You know his injury never really healed properly. I didn't like him playing on it that one season anyway. Besides, he did a good job with those Bullets. Remember when you coached Eric's Pee Wee team that one year?"
Mr. Taylor nodded. "It wasn't easy," he admitted. "And it did take a lot of time." He looked at Eric. "So what's your plan for the future, son?"
"I've started sending out resumes to schools all across Houston. I figure I'll teach history full-time and coach football part-time. I think I can get on as an assistant, at least at a junior high. Eventually, I want to be the head coach of a college team."
"All the way from an assistant coach at a junior high to the head coach of a university team." Mr. Taylor laughed. He glanced at his wife. "I guess I did give our son ambition after all."
[*]
"Sometimes I hate my father," Eric told Tami in bed later that night. She was sitting up and reading a book on ADHD and education, and he was just sitting, his hands folded over his bare stomach just above his boxers.
"Don't make that mistake, sugar." She slid a marker in and closed her book. "I know he can be an ass sometimes. But he's dependable. And he adores your mom. You gotta give him that much credit."
He sighed. "I guess."
"Listen. I know how bad a father can be. Yours isn't that bad." She shrugged. "And even I've forgiven mine. It's easier that way."
"Well, it's easy to forgive someone you never see. I still have to listen to him criticize me. I never want to be like that with my kids. Make them feel like…you know…they aren't good enough. I'm afraid sometimes that I will. That I'll just say things I shouldn't."
She put a hand on his shoulder. "You won't. You'll be an amazing father."
"Well, we have another five or six years before I have to worry about that. I'm so glad we're not having kids in our early twenties, like my parents did." He switched off the light and kissed her in the dim glow of the moonlight filtering through the blinds. "You...uh...have a graduation gift for me?"
"What did you have in mind?" she asked. "Your call, Coach Taylor."
