Tomorrow was the first day of high school for our small town of Stratford, Tennessee — and I had a team of football players to whip into shape.
I scrubbed my hands over my face, body aching as I lifted it from the chair I’d been living in all evening. It was normal for me to be anxious before the first day of school, the first day of football, but I was even more wired than usual.
Maybe it was the pressure of walking into a new season with two state championships under my belt. This entire town expected our team to keep winning, expected me to keep winning, which was a completely different kind of pressure than when you were the coach taking a team that rarely ever won all the way to state. That had been a driving kind of pressure.
This, however, was more on the crippling side.
Maybe part of my anxiety came from my youngest brother, Michael, moving across the country to New York City with his girlfriend. We’d all flown up to help get him settled, and while I knew he would be okay — mostly because Kylie would make sure of it — I worried about our mother, who was now in the house alone for the first time.
The same house she bought with my father.
The weight of responsibility I’d always felt for my mother pressed heavy on my chest, but I forced a deep breath, going through my nightly routine of brushing my teeth and flossing and lotioning from head to toe. When all that was left to do was crawl into bed, I splayed my large hands on the bathroom counter instead, staring at my reflection.
I didn’t know the two human beings responsible for making the man who stared back at me.
I didn’t know if I had my mother’s eyes — gray-blue, with a brown burst surrounding the iris — or if I had my father’s nose, the bridge slightly bent, nostrils wide. Was it his scowl that mine mirrored, thick eyebrows forever in a bent state of determination? Was it her freckles that broke through the dark complexion of my cheeks in the summertime?
Which one was black, and which one was white?
How did they find each other, and where were they now?
They were questions I’d asked myself hundreds of times throughout the course of my life, questions I knew I’d never have answers to. But one thing I did know was that I wasn’t anxious about the first day of school because I felt pressure to win, or because my little brother was in New York, or because my mom was sleeping soundly on her own across town.
The truth was my anxiety was rooted in the newest addition to my staff.
A woman.
A very attractive, very distracting to young, hormonal boys, very newly divorced woman.
She would be the first woman on our staff, and the first new blood to come onto our team since I took over as head coach.
Everything I’d worked for, all the synchrony I’d developed over the years, all the trust and rhythm and comfort we’d grown accustomed to was about to be shaken up.
By the police chief’s ex-wife.
Before I could fall into another spiral, I shook my head, pushing off the counter and swiping the bathroom light switch with my palm. I peeled my shirt off, stripped my sweatpants off next, and climbed into my flannel sheets in my boxer briefs, setting an alarm on my phone before I plugged it in and turned it face down on my nightstand.
Then, I laid awake for hours, tossing and turning, pretending that I was still in control and everything would be fine.
By the time I finally fell asleep, the alarm rang.Stratford, Tennessee, was a small map dot southeast of Nashville. It had a population of two-thousand-one-hundred-and-seventy-two people, according to the most recent census — and almost half of those residents worked at the Scooter Whiskey Distillery on the edge of town. It was where my grandfather had built his career, where my father had worked his entire life, and where two of my brothers worked still.
Noah was a barrel-raiser, with skillfully quick hands and muscles lining every inch of his arms. Logan was a tour guide, the face of our town to the tourists who passed through. And, before he left, Michael had worked in the gift shop.
It was a family tradition.
And though I was the oldest, and perhaps the one Dad most expected to follow in his footsteps, working at a whiskey distillery was the last thing on my mind growing up.
For me, it was all about football.
Mom had always told me that the first time I held a football, I couldn’t even walk yet. Dad had been tossing one in the backyard with a friend of his, and when he missed a catch, it rolled over to where I was sitting on a blanket with Mom. She said I picked it up with both hands, stared at it with both brows bent, and then I looked up at her and smiled.