Page 45 of Uncoachable

I can still hear her saying thank you on the plane.

It wasn’t the words themselves that got to me; it was the way she said them. It sounded like it cost her something to admit I was doing a good job.

I want to make her say it again.

I want to earn every single syllable of her respect until she has no choice but to look at me and see something other than a “distraction.”

I’m in deep, and the puck hasn’t even dropped on the first game of the season yet.

12

Iveline Talvi

We take the first win of the season in D.C., and apparently that means the team bus has become a lawless zone. The second the doors hiss shut, I’m hit with a wall of noise so intense it feels like a concussion without the medical paperwork.

Twenty-five men are celebrating like they’ve never felt joy before.

Someone is drumming on the overhead bins. Someone else is yelling the wrong lyrics to a victory song. And the sharp clink of glass tells me Cash has smuggled champagne onto a vehicle that, by every safety regulation known to man, should not contain champagne.

The bus smells like sweat, wet gear, and expensive cologne fighting for its life. The lights are dimmed, replaced by the glow of phones and a neon strip someone taped to the ceiling like we’re in a discount nightclub on wheels.

I find a small pocket of space near the front, trying to keep my elbows tucked in.

I’m a month into this job.

Twenty-nine days of clinical professionalism, of keeping my gaze strictly on the whiteboard and never on the way the light catches the blue in Callahan Moore’s eyes.

I have become a master of the “three-second glance.” Anything longer and the air in the room starts to feel too thin to breathe.

He knows I’m avoiding him.

I can see it in the way he lingers near the bench when I’m checking the roster, or the way he lets his voice drop an octave whenever he asks for a clarification on a play.

It’s a game of chicken, and neither of us is willing to blink first.

I need a break from being a St. James, and I definitely need a break from being a variable in Callahan’s head.

The bus lurches into motion, tires humming against the asphalt.

“Coach!” Leo shouts from four rows back, his face flushed and a plastic cup held aloft. “You actually stayed! We thought for sure you’d take a town car and leave us to our sins.”

“I’m part of the team, Leo,” I say, projecting my voice over a speaker that is currently thumping a bass line I can feel in my soles.

“Yeah?” Cash pipes up, leaning over the seat back with a grin that suggests he’s already had a head start on the champagne. “Then take a sip of the emergency victory stash. It’s tradition.”

I hold up my water bottle with a practiced, tight smile. “I’ll stick to the tradition of making sure you all make it to the hotel in one piece. Someone has to be the adult in this metal box.”

The celebration swells again, filling every inch of the cramped aisle. I press my back against the seat, trying to carve out a pocket of space that doesn’t exist.

And then, the universe provides exactly what I was trying to avoid.

Callahan doesn’t announce himself. He doesn’t clear a path or make a show of moving closer to me. He just exists, sliding into the seat across the aisle like it’s a total coincidence.

Like he belongs in my personal space.

The bus hits a pothole, and for a split second, his knee brushes mine through the gap in the aisle. The contact is sharp—a jolt of static through my slacks that makes my breath hitch.

“You look like you’d rather be anywhere else,” he murmurs. His voice is a low vibration that sits underneath the music, intended only for me.