Chapter 42 The Story He Started

Chapter 42 The Story He Started

Cole

I heard it before I saw it.

Two players in the corner of the locker room after practice, voices low, the kind of low that meant they were not having a general conversation. I caught Wren's name and the word arrangement, I walked over before I had finished deciding to.

They both went quiet when they saw me.

"Keep going," I said.

Neither of them did.

"Reeves," I said to the taller one. "What were you saying."

Reeves looked at the floor. "Nothing, man. We were just talking."

"About what."

He shifted his weight. "Tyler said some stuff. About the girl at your house and why she's really there."

"Tyler said what exactly."

He looked at the other player and back at me. "That she's playing you. That she got the job on purpose because of who you are."

I looked at him for a long moment. "Wren Davis has been at my house for two months because my mom needed help with my siblings. That is the entire situation." I kept my voice level. "The next time Tyler tells you something about my house, you come to me before you pass it on."

Reeves nodded and picked up his bag and left. The other player followed without making eye contact.

I sat down on the bench.

Tyler was doing it deliberately. Not loudly, not in one place, but in pieces, to individual people, so that by the time it reached me it would already be everywhere. I had watched him run this exact play on other people and I had never said anything about it.

I said something now.

Tyler was at the far end of the bench scrolling his phone. I walked over and sat across from him and waited until he looked up.

"The locker room," I said.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said.

"Reeves told me word for word," I said.

Tyler put his phone down. "I was explaining the situation to people who asked."

"Nobody asked Reeves anything," I said. "You went to him. I can tell by the way he repeated it. He was saying something he had heard, not something he thought."

Tyler leaned back against the locker behind him. "Cole, the whole team has questions. People see things. They talk. I can't control what they say."

"You can control what you start," I said.

"I didn't start anything. I clarified a situation that was already being discussed."

"You went to Reeves and you told him she took the job because of my name," I said. "That is not a clarification. That is a story you made up and handed to someone."

"It is a reasonable conclusion based on what everyone can see," Tyler said.

"It is wrong," I said. "Stop."

He looked at me. "And if I don't."

I looked at him back. "Then whatever is left between us after the last few weeks is gone. That is what I am telling you. I am not asking twice."

Tyler said nothing.

I picked up my bag and walked out.

Coach was standing in the corridor near the exit. He looked at me as I passed and I could tell by his expression he had caught enough through the locker room door.

"Hensley," he said.

"Coach," I said.

"Everything squared away in there?"

"Yes sir," I said.

He looked at me the way he looked at a play he was not fully convinced by. "Tyler's been talking to people. I've been hearing things for a week."

"I know," I said.

"Three weeks out from scouts. I need your head clear."

"My head is clear," I said.

He nodded. "Good. Keep it that way."

I walked to my car.

The drive home was quiet. I kept the radio off and thought about how fast things were moving and what I could do about it. The scouts were coming in three weeks. Coach had already pulled me aside twice this month. Tyler knew exactly what he was doing and he was running it in a place where I could not respond without making everything louder.

I pulled into the driveway and sat in the car for a minute.

Inside, Mia and Jake were at the kitchen table with Wren between them. Three dinner plates had been pushed to the side. Jake was reading aloud from a worksheet and Wren was following along with her finger on the page. Mia was drawing on the back of her homework sheet and turned it over fast when she noticed me in the doorway.

"You're home late," Mia said.

"Practice ran," I said.

"There's a plate in the fridge," Wren said, without looking up from Jake's page.

"Thanks," I said.

"It's the pasta from last night," Mia said. "Wren added cheese."

"Everything is better with cheese," Jake said, still without looking up.

"I'll heat it up in a minute," I said.

Mia looked at me. "Are you okay."

"Fine," I said. "Good practice."

"You have the face," she said.

"What face."

"The one where something happened and you don't want to talk about it." She looked back at Jake's worksheet. "That face."

"Go back to spelling," I said.

I went upstairs.

I stood in the hallway outside my room for a while. Wren's door was closed at the other end. The light was on under it.

I walked to her door.

I stood there for a full minute with my hand not quite raised. I had things I wanted to say. I had been collecting them for weeks, things that had piled up because I kept deciding they could wait.

They could not wait. I knew that and I still did not knock.

I went back to my room and sat on the edge of my bed.

The doorbell rang.

I went downstairs and opened the front door and Jade was standing on the step with her arms crossed and a folder tucked under one arm.

"We need to talk," she said.