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Well, holy fucking shit.
Hopperville had been undefeated nearly halfway through the season, an achievement that the school hadn’t seen before. Cornell knew the team was more talented than last year. But he also knew that talent didn’t win games on its own. Evan had been at the heart of it.
And a winning record came with a target on the back, one that Odessa was ready to smack straight off every Hopperville jersey.
“Evan—”
“I’m your offensive coordinator tonight. Got a bit of laryngitis.” Evan feigned a cough. “Get your team ready. I’ll see you on the field.”
Cornell watched Evan walk away from the locker room, back toward the door that led to the stadium. This is a joke. He’s coming back, right? Evan kept walking. And even when he disappeared out the door, Cornell still waited just in case.
But the noise down the opposite end of the hall—a locker room full of thirty guys amping themselves up—made him realize that Evan wasn’t coming back.
I got this, Cornell told himself with a nod.
When he entered the locker room, no one noticed. The noise didn’t simmer into silence the way it did whenever Evan walked in before a game.
“Hey!” he shouted, smacking his hand on a table by the door. There were some looks but still some lingering voices. “Shut the hell up and gather around,” Cornell motioned to the space in front of him and waited as some confused players approached.
“Your coach is talking,” Julian shouted. “Take a damn knee.”
Cornell shot Julian a look of appreciation and cleared his throat.
“Listen up,” Cornell began, placing his hands on his hips. Dozens of eyes focused on him, and Cornell closed his mouth, biting the inside of his cheek. He could hear the chants from Odessa’s team in the visiting locker room—tougher, louder, and ready to put up a fight.
“I’m not going to tell you what you already know,” Cornell said. “You’re on your way to doing something this school—this town—has never seen before. But you know who cares about that more than you? Them.” He pointed to the wall. “Those guys have lost two games already. They’re not going to make playoffs. They’ve got nothing to lose. But you guys do.”
Taking a deep breath, Cornell looked around. “They’re going to come out ready to smack you all with their helmets and get inside your heads. They’ll be dirty. This won’t be a game about playing. It will be about the fight. Let them be loud. Let them be dirty. Don’t be like that. Wait for it. Wait for your moment and take that ball to the house every damn time and run that fucking scoreboard higher than any of them have ever seen.”
Howls and whoops echoed throughout the locker room, but Cornell raised his voice.
“You keep your cool tonight, and you won’t just open that door to playoffs. You’ll blow it the fuck down.”
And blow it down, Hopperville did, winning 63-9, the highest-scoring game in school history. Cornell had no idea where the time went. Every minute of the four quarters, his mind was hyper focused on his players, the reads, the plays, far different from the past month when he hadn’t been feeling anything—not grit, not determination—only anger. And there was so much to feel when he didn’t let rage hold him captive.
Like Ali’s arms around his neck when she ran from the stands and hurled herself at him, or her warm, sweet breath when she whispered into his ear, “I’m so proud of you.”
“Evan sprang that on me,” he said, lowering her to the ground. “What an asshole. I almost had a damn stroke.”
Ali smiled widely. “I always say you’ve done harder things.”
Even in the middle of the rush of the crowd, he was captivated by it, her glow, the lightness about her, everything he had missed over the past month when all his energy was devoted to seeing and thinking about her in the dark.
Cornell swung an arm around Ali, pulling her to his side so she wouldn’t get trampled in the mosh of players and fans celebrating the fact that tonight’s win was the first of its kind—a promising look at a successful future.
“Maybe we have.”
* * *
“I’m wired,” Cornell announced when they walked through the door after a round of celebratory drinks at Henley’s. “I feel like I need to lift or something.”
Ali laughed, tossing her jacket on the couch. “It’s the adrenaline. Is my boyfriend going to be the youngest head football coach in all of junior college football?”
Cornell held his hands up, dropping to the couch. “I have no idea what Evan’s plans are. He might just be testing me.”
I’m kind of hoping he isn’t, he said to himself, watching Ali stand in their living room, in the house that had become a home—their home. Maybe starting here is right for us. You and me. Where it all began. Because every good coach needs a team of other coaches behind him. He smiled at Ali. I’ve learned the most from you.
“That’s a pretty important pop quiz to drop on someone.”
