Page 17 of Coached By the Grumpy Gargoyle

"There's something I need to talk to you about."

"Don't." She's already shifting her weight back toward the driver's door, the keys clicking in her fist. "You don't have to say anything, okay? Really. It's fine. You have nothing to worry about."

Worry? Is that what she thinks? That I've been trying to talk to her because I'm worried she'll want more? I want more, damn it. I draw a breath to tell her, but she's still talking.

"The other night was a one-time thing." Her chin is up. Usually her hands move when she talks. Now they're pressed flat against her coat, the keys trapped under one palm. The words come quickly, without a pause. She sounds as if she's rehearsed this, too. "It was a mistake. People make mistakes. It's fine. It meant nothing."

My hands close into fists. The leather pulls tight across the band.

It meant nothing.

Her feelings surge through the bond, so strong this close that I can hardly bear to stand still. I can't tell if she's angry or frightened or as hurt as I am. All I have to go on is what she's saying, and she's saying it in the same bright, capable voice she uses with parents. I knew she might regret Sunday. I wasn't ready to hear her say it so easily.

"I have a rule." She takes a breath and starts again before I can answer. "A firm rule, and it's not about you, it's everyone: I don't date coworkers. Ever. It's the one rule I don't break, so..." She glances toward the car, then back at me. "This can never happen again. Okay? We're good. Monday through Friday, colleagues, like always. It's already forgotten."

I don't need to give her my entire speech. I need to tell her that it meant something to me. That much, surely. I can manage that much.

But nothing comes.

This is the part of me I've never fixed. Give me a whiteboard and a room of teenagers and I'll talk for fifty minutes on the Missouri Compromise without notes. Put one small woman in front of me telling me she doesn't want me, and I can't tell her what she means to me. My throat is tight, my wings pulled hard against my back. I must look as if I'm waiting for her to finish so I can leave.

I open my mouth. Rory stops moving toward the car and waits, her eyes on my face. She has her hand on the door handle, but she hasn't pulled it yet. I could still say something. Ask her to stay for a minute. Tell her I don't want to forget.

I close my mouth again.

She waits. One second, maybe two, her eyes moving over my face. The hum under my skin spikes, sharp enough to make my fingers twitch toward her. I keep my hand at my side. Then she nods, like we agreed on something.

"Good night, Coach."

She opens the door and gets in. I stand there while she pulls on her seat belt and starts the engine. The headlights throw my shadow forty feet up the lot, and I step out of the lane to let her pass. She drives through the gate and down the hill toward town. I watch until her taillights disappear behind the pines.

With every yard she gains, the warmth fades from my chest and along my wings, until the wind feels cold against the membranes again.

Thirty-two years of being cold. It never felt like this.

I stand alone in the orange-white light. Then I pull off my left glove and look at the band. It's still there.

Good talk.

Chapter 7

Rory

The glasses come out of Eli’s hoodie pocket in two pieces.

He lays them on his knee one half at a time, careful, and I lean forward in the chair beside the couch. The round wire frames have snapped at the bridge. He was wearing them when I waved at him by the cafeteria this morning. Now he sits with his shoulders hunched, looking down at the broken halves of his glasses, and I wonder how long he’s been trying to get by without them.

He didn’t knock, either. Eli Navarro always knocks, even when my door is open. Today he just appeared a while after the final bell, went straight to the two-seat couch, and pulled the folded throw off the armrest onto his lap. He’s said nothing for the better part of an hour while the building empties around us. The buses have gone. The lockers have stopped slamming. Somewhere down the hall, a floor buffer has started up. I let him sit. Silence in my office is allowed to take as long as it needs.

His mouth twists, and he rubs a sleeve under his nose. I turn my gaze to the corkboard, giving him a little privacy. Among the notes and doodles is the diagram Eli drew me last year of the sideline gear cart, labeled in the world’s tiniest handwriting so I’d understand his job.

He’s one of my kids. This room has been his place to come for a year, and I hate that he looks so miserable in it now.

His shoulders start to shake. Then Eli comes apart on my couch, both hands over his eyes, the broken glasses sliding off his knee onto the cushion. The sobs are ugly and heaving, too hard for him to speak through. The split in his lip from last week has faded to a thin dark line. I look at it and want to put my arms around him. I stay where I am, close enough for him to reach if he wants to.

“It’s Cole.” It comes out wet and wrecked from behind his hands, so small I almost miss it. Then he takes his hands down and says it again, at the floor. “Cole. It’s Cole Braddock.” His breath drags. “He’s been bullying me since September. I don’t even know why. I never did anything to him. Why does he do this to me?”

Cole Braddock. The star quarterback, the boy whose name is on every football poster in the building. All this time, Eli has been turning up to wash his gear and fill his water bottle. I look down at the glasses on the cushion, and Eli’s hand shoots out and grabs my wrist.