Page 22 of Off Side
SAM
Two weeks have passed since Drew apologized with waffles and a promise. Things are looking up. We share an existence in the house, and he continues with his house husband ways, as he calls them. A girl can get used to having a sexy man in the kitchen all the time. If he continues making all this good food, I’m going to start gaining weight. I wish I could say our bedroom activities were allowing me to burn off the extra calories, but we are both staying away from having sex right now. It’s making things too complicated bringing all those feelings in. We need to accomplish so much more together before we can stoke that fire any higher.
Not that I don’t want to because damn, I want to. I want the whole package, but I have to get my head wrapped around what I’m about to take on and I have to fulfill my part of the deal and get him back into hockey. I feel like I have the harder job to do since I’m already feeling better and have spilled my guts to him. I’m facing my problems and not running. My biggest anxiety now is taking over this coach’s position. I’ve spent the last two weeks going over stats and player profiles. Watching last years tapes and I even snuck in to watch a few practices. The season is about to start and I have to introduce myself to the team and make a decision on how I want to handle this going forward. Do I keep the head coach separate like grandpa did, or do I go to the bench and be the actual coach? He never actually said how to coach, only that I was to coach the team. I’m so conflicted with this I haven’t been sleeping well. I need to rest or I’m going to cause myself all kinds of new problems.
Drew mentioned, as a joke, I should try weed to see if it helped me sleep. He had a friend that swore by it. I’ve never done any kind of drug, only alcohol, so I was a bit nervous about how that would affect me. I decided not to go with that option just yet. I have to do something though because tomorrow I have to inform the team of my decision.
I decide to make myself some tea, maybe watch some Netflix, and perhaps make a pros and cons flow chart for shits and giggles. I find some tea bags in the small cupboard next to the tea for two pot and get it steeping. It smells delicious, like something fruity. I make myself a little tray with a mug, sugar, and a spoon and carry it out to the living room. Firing up Netflix to find something to watch, I decide on Schitt’s Creek because the wisdom of David would be very enlightening for me now. I settle in to start watching and enjoy my tea, and hopefully come to a conclusion on how I should coach the team.
I don’t remember this show being so gut bursting funny. Hell, I’m laughing at my own jokes out loud, and I’m laughing when my slipper falls off my foot and lands funny so it looks like a rabbit is doing a kickstand. I’m laughing so hard I’m crying. I feel like I have a tonne of energy to burn and my first thought is I need to take a horse ride. I do what every person does when they feel an abundance of energy and get a thought in their head at one A.M., I act on it.
I quickly pull-on barn clothes, hopefully quietly, and run out to the barn laughing. I’m a bit disappointed when I get there as the horses seem unusually large to me at the moment. Maybe it’s not a good idea to ride a horse. I hear a familiar wheeze and snort behind me and Jack is peeking over his stall looking at me weird. Screw the horse ride. Me and my best buddy, Jack, were gonna go for a ride! Who cares that he’s not broken for riding; it will be fine. He’s my dude, it won’t be an issue.
I pluck a carrot out of my coat and open his stall to lead him out to pasture. He trots along with me happily. He has me and a pocket full of carrots all to himself, of course he would come with me. Still high on my idea and energy, wait a minute…can you be high on energy? Was I high? Who cares if I am, I’m gonna ride my donkey, have fun, hopefully tire myself out, and finally sleep and make a fucking decision.
I hug Jack hard and scratch at his ears while telling him my plans. I pull him over to the fence so I can use it for help to mount him since I don’t have a saddle or anything else to use. I’m positively giddy with excitement to ride my ass. Ha! I bark a peel of laughter over my own joke once again and throw one leg over Jack’s back while holding onto his mane and pushing off the fence. I’m on Jack’s back while he finishes his carrot, and he just stands there, not moving. I give a little clucking sound with my tongue and tap him with my heels to get us moving.
Nothing.
Well, this is a bit of a disappointment. I’m just about to try to get down off him, something I hadn’t quite considered before I got on, when he releases a loud honk and takes off. The damn fool is braying so loudly, he’s going to wake up Drew and perhaps people in the next town over.
He runs down the fence line and stops hard, spins around and runs back to the barn. At this point, I’m clinging around his neck, trying to hang on for dear life and coax him to stand still so I can jump off. At least he hasn’t bucked me off…yet.
Now, the universe is sometimes a bitch because as soon as that thought crosses my mind, it is like I telegraph it directly to his donkey brain. He bucks, and I fly off, landing with a hard thud.
As I lie here, trying to catch my breath after having it knocked out of me, Jack looks down and roots around my pockets, finding the last carrot I have stashed. He takes it and gives a final indignant honk at me before sauntering back to the barn. I can’t stop laughing once I can breathe again and struggle to get up. I’m just hoping Drew hasn’t woken up and seen any of this when, of course, like I summoned him, I hear him calling out to me as his footsteps get closer. What is it with the male animals around here?
I’m sitting in the pasture, covered in muck, grinning like an idiot. I watch as Drew vaults the fence in his haste to get to me and what a sight that is. He isn’t even wearing a coat, just a thin T-shirt and pants he must have been sleeping in. Oh shit, all the noise out here must have woken him up.
“I’m sorry Jack’s braying woke you up. I had no idea a donkey could be so vocal when he was opposed to something.”
“Sam, are you okay? I was trying to get out here before you got on when I saw what you were trying to do, but I wasn’t fast enough. It wasn’t the donkey that woke me; it was all the racket before that. I’m sorry I didn’t make it in time to stop you from getting on Jack. I will never forgive myself if you’re hurt. Did you hit your head?”
“Why are you sorry? You had nothing to do with this. What racket?”
He’s running his hands over my head, I assume searching for an injury, but I bat his hands away.
“I heard you laughing like a hyena in the living room for at least twenty minutes. I was going to go check on you, but I figured you might be trying to get yourself to sleep, and I didn’t want to interrupt. Then I heard you in the mudroom again laughing and slamming the door. If you were going for stealth with all that, I would advise never be a ninja.”
“I’m sorry, I thought I was being quiet. I was just so full of energy, and all I could think of was how awesome it would be to go on a horseback ride, but they were bigger than I thought when I got here and didn’t look impressed with me being there either. So, I turned to Jack. He was up for an adventure if it involved carrots, so I let him come out to the pasture, and well, I guess it didn’t go as planned.”
Drew is biting his bottom lip and giving me a funny look. “Where did you find the tea you were drinking?”
“You know I had tea?”
“I saw the tea tray in the living room on my way down. Where did you find the bags you used for it?”
“In the cupboard next to the little tea pot for two, why?”
Now, it’s his turn to laugh. He throws his head back and is laughing so hard, I have to wonder if maybe he was the one who hit his head.
“Why are you laughing? What did I miss?”
“Well…” he drawls out. “When your grandpa was told he only had a few months left, he confided to me he never in all his years tried marijuana, and he wanted me to get him some. He didn’t want to smoke it though because he hated the smell. I went and bought some tea for him to try. He really liked it and said it made him feel happy. I stashed a few more bags away for him and totally forgot about it. You drank the weed tea, Sam, and probably more than you should have at one time by the looks of it. You’re stoned.”
My eyes go wide at this revelation. It would explain why I found every single thing so funny in the last hour and…oh my god! The reality hits me like the ground did when I fell off Jack. I just got stoned off my ass.
DREW
