Page 10 of Worth the Trip

“All right. I’ll go.”

“I know.”

I pointed the brochure at her. “Don’t make me regret agreeing.”

“You won’t.”

“That confidence is irritating.”

“You love me.”

“Unfortunately.”

“Liar.”

She opened the office door and stepped back into the kitchen.

I remained at my desk for another minute, studying the picture of Willow Run on the brochure. Water curved along the edge of town, blue beneath the afternoon sun, storefronts clustered along a street I hadn’t walked in years.

I expected the following weekend to give me Nana, good food, a porch, and enough distance from Crème & Chill to get Nyla off my back.

For once, that seemed like enough reason to go.

Coach Ramirez liked to say football built character. I always figured it revealed it.

By the time I crossed the fifty-yard line Sunday morning, Langston’s practice field was already operating like the sun had given us permission to be productive before everybody else woke up. A groundskeeper eased a mower along the far sideline, two graduate assistants stood beside the equipment shed, arguing over Saturday’s film like one of them had personally invented defensive coverage, and Ramirez was fighting with a blocking sled that had clearly decided cooperation wasn’t part of its preseason goals. July heat hadn’t reached full disrespect yet, but Texas didn’t believe in easing into anything. The back of my polo was already warm before I made it halfway across the field.

Ramirez looked up from the sled. “Took you long enough.”

I checked my watch. “I’m seven minutes early.”

“Exactly.”

I grabbed the other end and helped him drag it into position. “You ever consider maybe your clock the problem?”

“My clock ain’t never lost a football game.”

“Nah. Your offensive coordinator almost did.”

He stopped walking long enough to look at me. “You woke up choosing disrespect.”

“I woke up committed to accuracy.”

“Run some laps.”

“You can’t fire me, and you can’t beat me.”

“I can make your life difficult.”

“You been conducting that experiment for three years.”

His laugh got away from him first, and mine followed. That was usually how mornings with Ramirez went. He talked like every inconvenience required discipline, I reminded him I was grown, and somewhere in the middle, we managed to run a football program.

A mesh bag full of footballs hit the grass behind us.

“Damn. Y’all flirting already?”

I looked over my shoulder and found Malcolm Reed standing there in a black Langston polo and athletic shorts, wearing the pleased expression of a man who had intentionally said something irritating before seven in the morning and considered the day successful because of it. Malcolm had been my best friend since high school, my brother from another mother, which unfortunately meant he’d had entirely too many years to study my nerves and learn exactly where to tap dance on them. He coached our defensive backs, was good enough at it that nobody could reasonably tell him to shut up permanently, and treated minding his business like a character flaw he’d successfully avoided developing.