False Start (Eastshore Tigers Book 2)

C
opyright
© 2016 by Alison Hendricks All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

I
t doesn’t matter
what I do. I can never seem to get ahead.

Summer conditioning has already started, and for me, it should be a chance to start the season off right — get the attention of recruiters as early as possible. My pads and helmet should act as a special sort of armor that blocks out more than physical pain. From July to January, my family and I should be protected from the bullshit of life.

But that’s not reality. Not for my mom, and not for me.

So the night before the first real practice of the season, I’m at my mom’s place at the edge of St. John’s County, making sure she’s taking care of herself and getting a chance to relax.

When people think of Eastshore, they think of the beaches or the college. They think of the football stadium, or the old Spanish buildings designed for naval defense. They think of Main Street with its cobblestone paths, and the many senior living communities that have cropped up over the past forty years or so.

They don’t think of this side of things. They don’t think of the fact that the sudden interest in this city hasn’t exactly been kind to its lifelong residents. They don’t think of the fact that people are being pushed out of their homes because the price tag for living here just keeps climbing higher and higher.

People like my mom.

I turn onto Chase Street, my lights catching the facade of my family home; the place my mom and dad started renting after I was born. The place where I grew up.

The properties to the left and right both have For Sale signs stuck in the recently-mowed lawns. One’s going for almost $200,000—twice what it would’ve been worth just five years ago. And in the middle of it all, my mom’s place just serves as a way for her greedy-ass landlord to milk her for as much money as possible before inevitably kicking her out so he can sell the place.

In the past three years, he’s raised the rent by a total of almost $500. My mom went from working one job when my dad was alive, to picking up two when he passed. Now she’s told me she might have to sneak in another one if she doesn’t want to go back on assistance. And I know she doesn’t. The second people found out she needed assistance—because God forbid a widow need a little fucking help—they started treating her differently.

Her car is in the driveway, and I make a mental note that I need to change the oil for her tomorrow and check under the hood as I pass by it on the way to the front door. I step onto the porch and pull out my phone, looking at the time. 11:31 PM probably wouldn’t be anybody’s idea of a good time to drop by unannounced, but I know Mom just got off work at 11.

I give a little knock to announce myself, then use the same key that used to be attached to a lanyard when I was in middle school.

“Ma, you still up?” I ask by way of greeting.

The kitchen light’s on, so I know she is.

“Dante?” Her voice is muffled before she ducks out from behind a counter. “What are you doing here? I didn’t expect you until Sunday!”

She pulls me into her patented bear hug and I can’t help but smile. I’m not above admitting that my mama’s arms still have some sort of magical property to them. Even if she can barely wrap them around me.

“I remember you saying you didn’t have a day off this week. Figured I’d drop by.”

She pulls back and looks at me with suspicion. “That’s very sweet of you, but I know what you’re playing at, baby boy.”

I feign innocence. “What? I can’t come over to see you?”

“You’re not here to see me, you’re here to make sure I’m not wasting away.
I’m
the one who raised
you
, remember?”

Sure, but back then, everything wasn’t on her shoulders. I may be grown, but she still acts like she has to provide for me; she still works her ass off to make sure I have whatever my scholarship doesn’t pay for. The least I can do is make sure she’s taking care of herself.

The strong scent of chemicals hits my nose and my brow furrows. I glance to the kitchen and see the mop in the sink. “Are you cleaning at 11:30 at night?”

“When else am I going to do it?”

I give her a look. “Did you eat dinner?”

“Dante Mills, I am more than capable of taking care of myself. I came home, saw the kitchen was a mess, and decided to clean up. I’d already be done and fixing something if you hadn’t barged in here.”

Her words are harsh, but her expression is teasing, and the smack on the arm she gives me even more so. It should lighten my mood, but when I take a look at the kitchen, I don’t see the disaster she apparently sees. It’s more likely that she decided to clean for the next time I came over.

Something she shouldn’t be worrying about, let alone doing before she even eats.

“All right, I’m either going to mop, or cook. Which is it?”

“And what exactly do you propose to cook?”

She’s got me there. I shrug, glancing at the cabinets. “You’ve still got some of those rice sides, right? I can cook those.”

She scoffs at me. “That is not dinner!”

I can’t help but grin. I was hoping my terrible cooking skills would distract her, and sure enough, they have. “Mopping it is, then.”

She hovers for a bit as I grab the mop and wring it out. Eventually, she seems to come to terms with the fact that I’m just as stubborn as she is, and she cooks up a little something for both of us, even though I didn’t ask her for a plate.

She shifts her weight while she cooks, and I can tell her back is bothering her again. Years ago, it was so bad she came home in tears half the time. I can’t imagine it’s gotten any better, and seeing her in pain makes my heart ache.

This is why I throw everything I have into football. I’m not good at anything else in the world, but I know how to be an LB. I know how to be an aggressive powerhouse who can stop a drive before it even gets off the ground. And I know that if I work hard enough, I can make it into the NFL.

And then I can finally get my mom out of this place and away from her asshole landlord. Or hell, buy it out from him if she wants to keep it, just so long as he’s gone. I can make it so she’ll never have to work again; so she can paint like she always wanted to. I can get the doctors to take her seriously; I can make sure they do something about her injuries instead of just casting her off from the get-go.

She finishes dinner, and we sit and talk while we eat. I can see that bone-deep exhaustion in her eyes, and it’s a wonder she’s even able to stay awake. She fights me on it—tries to tell me she’s fine, that she wants to stay up so we can talk some more—but I eventually convince her to go to sleep.

I tuck her in and kiss her forehead, just like she used to do for me. Then I quietly close her door and head back out into the dark house, feeling like I’m just treading water. Tomorrow, she’ll get up and she’ll do it all over again. And nothing I can say or do right now will change that.

One more year of this. Just one more year, and I’ll be able to give her the kind of life she gave me.

W
hen it comes
to my family, I’ve always been the one on the outside looking in.

My father isn’t what anyone would describe as an environmentalist, and yet I find myself attending a benefit gala in his name. Usually that “honor” is reserved for dead people, but my father’s given enough money to be worthy of his own research building: The Gregory Erickson Conservation Center.

I’m not sure he even knows what happens at the Gregory Erickson Conservation Center. I’m not sure anyone here knows, and yet the largest benefactors have already gifted tens of thousands of dollars toward the conservation of
something.

Lydia would joke that it’s for some rare species of spotted slug. But Lydia isn’t here, and that leaves me as the resident black sheep of the family.

Oh, I look like I belong here. Mostly. I took care to wear a pressed, three-piece suit. Crisp and clean and never worn before this occasion, because my mother can sniff out “recycled” wardrobe from a mile away. My shoes have been shined to a fine polish, I’m wearing cuff links and a tie clip, my hair is tied back neatly, and I even shaved and put on a dab of inoffensive cologne.

But the fact that I stand several inches taller than anyone else at the gathering doesn’t go unnoticed. Nor does the fact that my suit—despite being custom-tailored—pinches at the shoulders because the tailor underestimated my size.

It isn’t just the physical aspects, though. Nerves tangle in the pit of my stomach. I feel completely at ease on the football field when tasked with stopping a quarterback from completing a game-winning drive. But here I’m outmatched, and I know it.

So does my family.

My older brothers, Aidan and Greg Jr., work the crowd, driving outward from our father’s central position in a way that suggests they planned it all from the beginning. Either that or they were born knowing how to do it. It’s a talent I don’t have, and so I stand off to the side, close enough to make it look like I’m interacting, but far enough away to escape attention.

Most attention.

I catch the eye of a woman I vaguely recognize. She smiles at me, and my stomach turns. She’s pretty, but I get the sinking feeling my father’s gone and told every single woman here that I’m in need of a wife.

I’m not in need of a wife. Or a woman.

He just refuses to acknowledge it.

When she approaches, though, I see she’s older than I first thought. Her concealer does a good job of living up to its name. The scent of peppermint follows her, and my memory grasps at a few scattered pictures.

“Mrs. Johnston?” I ask with an uncertain smile.

“So you do remember me. I’m surprised.”

Mrs. Johnston is one of my mother’s friends. I used to be close with her son, years ago. He hasn’t called me since I came out to my parents at a benefit just like this one last year.

Funny, that.

“Of course I do,” I say politely.

I’m not sure why she’s even talking to me. She must know by now. Her son probably heard it from her.

“I’m more surprised to see you alone. I expected to see some pretty little blonde on your arm tonight.”

I open my mouth to reply to that, my throat practically itching to expel the sarcasm lodged in it. It’s a waste, though. There are two possibilities here: She’s purposefully saying it to hurt me, or she’s oblivious.

Either way, my joke of ‘if I had a boyfriend, he might not appreciate you calling him a pretty little blonde’ will just be met with a polite chuckle.

“I’m afraid you only get me tonight,” I say instead.

She pouts in a way that makes her seem younger than she is, but quickly recovers.

“I hear you’re going to school out of state. How exciting! You’re attending Dartmouth, aren’t you?”

Again I open my mouth to answer, but this time my father’s rumbling voice cuts me off.

“Mitchell is attending a college in Florida for the time being.”

He says the word ‘college’ with such disdain that I almost flinch. And of course there’s no mention of why I’m going to Eastshore. He’d just as soon forget that I play football.

It’s one of the few things that makes me feel accomplished, and my father doesn’t even acknowledge it. I shouldn’t be surprised. I shouldn’t be hurt.

But I still am.

I made the deal with him right out of high school. Eastshore was one of the few schools to show an interest in a boy who played in a closed league instead of on a high school team. They didn’t offer me a scholarship, but they didn’t need to. I was sold from the first meeting with the recruiter.

My father, on the other hand, was not. I was supposed to go to Yale, just like every other Erickson. I was supposed to get an MBA and join his company, along with my brothers.

It took all spring to get him to agree to new terms. I have one year to prove that Eastshore is worthy of the Erickson legacy. If I don’t excel—and I know by excel he means start in and win a national title game—then I’m bound for Yale.

It’s a raw deal, but he won’t budge on it. And I guess I still have this crazy, pervasive hope that if I can win a championship with Eastshore, my dad will finally take me seriously. So I agreed. We shook on it and everything.

My father and Mrs. Johnston continue to chatter while I smile politely, but it doesn’t take much for me to slip off and slink away.

I don’t know what I was thinking, coming out here. I took an early morning flight to Hartford, and I’ll be taking the redeye to Jacksonville, then driving back to Eastshore from there. And all for the honor of being the one crooked plaque in my father’s perfect lineup of accomplishments.

What did I think he’d say about me?

That’s my son, Mitchell. He was considerate enough to come support me, even though he has practice in the morning.

To him, football is just a hobby, like Aidan’s golf game. It’s a phase I’m going to grow out of, just like being gay. It’s violent and dirty and not the sort of thing an Erickson should do.

But that’s why I love it.

The first time I scraped up my knees and got mud all over my clothes while playing with friends, I decided it was something worth pursuing. The first time I stopped a touchdown and was named Game MVP to the sound of a few hundred cheering onlookers, I decided it was what I was meant to do.

I’ll get a degree. But if I get an NFL contract, I won’t need my father’s money. I can do post-grad afterward, and settle into the boring life that awaits me.

My dress shoes start to pinch my toes, so I take a seat, glancing at my phone. One hour until I absolutely have to leave, though no one will miss me if I go now. I consider it, but before I can get up, a man approaches me. He looks exactly like the type of person who belongs here. In fact, I think I saw him make a donation earlier.

“Excuse me, are you Mitchell Erickson?”

Inwardly, I cringe. Outwardly, I present a polite smile. “I am.”

I expect him to start talking about my father. Most people do when they pick me out by my name.

“You played in the Junior League Championship, didn’t you?”

That catches me off guard. I can feel myself perking up. He’s talking about football. Someone at this boring-ass event is talking about football. My tension starts to ease, and even my words become something other than the stilted speech I’ve learned to use around my father’s colleagues.

“Yeah, I played defense. Did you see it?”

“I saw you flatten that sorry excuse for a quarterback,” he says with a grin.

I can’t help but match the expression. I don’t get many opportunities to boast, but I’m not about to let this one pass me by.

“God, my heart was pounding that whole play. He took forever calling that audible.”

“I can’t believe he held onto it as long as he did,” the man says. “And that he thought he could run it afterward.”

I couldn’t believe it either. The blocker held me so long that I didn’t think I was going to be able to break past the line. He grabbed my mask at one point, but the ref didn’t call it. Even still, I barreled through a gap, my focus set on that QB. I went for the strip-hit, swiping the ball out of his hands. One of my teammates recovered it, ran it in for a touchdown, and we won the game because of it.

I’ve never experienced anything like it in my life.

I just wish my family had been there to see it.

I speak with him—Chris, he tells me—for almost a full hour. We talk about college and pro football, compare our favorites, and even get the chance to rib each other about our choices. My tie almost seems to loosen, and I breathe easier.

When the alarm on my phone beeps to alert me that it’s time to catch my flight, I leave feeling uplifted. As I grab my things from the car and board the plane, a fine tremor of excitement winds through me.

Tomorrow is the day I prove myself. Tomorrow is the day I show everyone what I can do.