Page 16 of Yesterday I Cared
Mia lets out a small shriek of surprise when she rounds the corner to head outside. I somehow manage to stop the two of us from colliding and quickly drop my hands from her shoulders when she shoots me a glare. She mutters out her thanks before shoving past me.
“What the hell happened between you two now?” The whine in Bryce’s voice has me turning toward him, eyebrow arched. “You were fine. Sure, you didn’t get along, but I didn’t have to worry about you becoming an HR nightmare!”
I cock my head. “Do we even have HR?”
He sets the stack of papers he was holding on the desk and leans against it. “Listen here, asshole. I am HR. I don’t want to deal with a nightmare. Please don’t make me.”
The mental image of Bryce trying to recreate something that looks remotely like a human resources department is laughable to me. He’s never been the type of person who will use buzz words or tiptoe around a problem in the guise of keeping things professional. He’d much rather tell it like it is. Which is one of the things I’ve always admired about him.
Especially when he used that specific talent to have my back and pushed me to keep fighting after the accident. But that’s not something I should allow myself to dive into too much. Not when there are other things that need to be done.
“I promise you won’t have to fire either one of us for unprofessional conduct.” He doesn’t look convinced. “Don’t give me that look, man! I warned you this would happen.”
He moves around the desk, wagging a finger at me. “No, you told me that the two of you wouldn’t get along. Which is fine. We decided we could work around that. What youfailedto mention was something could happen between you two that makes it worse. What happened?”
As if he’s the only one who wants to know the answer to that question. “I don’t know, man. We just talked.”
His eyebrows shoot up his forehead. “You justtalked? What the hell? Is that a euphemism for old people or something?”
I glower at him. “I’m only three years older than you, asshole. And it’s not a euphemism for anything. We literally just talked.”
“Then you need to not do that again,” he decides with a nod. “Yeah, that’s probably for the best.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “And how is that going to work?”
“I don’t know!” He throws his hands up. “Carter and I can be your carrier pigeons or some shit.” He pokes me in the chest—actually pokes me. I fight to keep the laugh back when I see the seriousness in his gaze. “I have a delicate balance here, O’Brien, and I will not have the two of you messing it up! Got it?”
With one last poke to my chest, Bryce is turning to walk away from me, and I can’t help but push his buttons a little more. “All right, we won’t talk anymore. But are you going to give her the same lecture you gave me?”
He turns around. “No way in hell. She scares me.”
I can no longer hold in the laugh, which only seems to irritate him more since he storms off with a scowl. From the very first moment he saw her, Bryce has always been a little afraid of Mia. And it’s not him being dramatic. She’s fiercely protective of her best friend, and Bryce was someone who didn’t always treat Josie right. Of course, he was on her shit list.
But in the short few weeks I’ve been here, I’ve witnessed the shift in their dynamic. She knows Bryce loves Josie more than anything and will do whatever he can to keep her happy. She’s stepped back a little, loosened the protective shield she’s always had on the younger woman, and trusts Bryce to pick up the slack.
Hell, I’d even say a friendship between the two of them has been coming together.
He’s lucky; he has Josie to help soften Mia’s ire, whereas I am doomed to face it for the rest of our lives.
Over the next few days, I manage to listen to Bryce’s demands. It helps that Mia seems to be going out of her way to avoid me whenever we have to be at work at the same time. Usually, she’s shut in her and Josie’s office or, when she needs marketing material, she’ll turn around, and leave whenever she has the chance. Which is about to become harder, though, because Bryce has officially cleared me to take over the coaching of the high school team.
The team is made up of a number of kids from around the city who either don’t have access to a swim team through their school, the team they’re on isn’t serious enough to help them with their goals, or their parents are determined to have their kid coached by an Olympian. Those kids are the ones I tend to check in on the most, not wanting to see their parents follow the same path mine did.
Overall, it’s a solid team. Although they’re young, I could already see several of them making time cuts for Olympic Trials in 2028, which is exactly what Bryce and Carter want to see for their small club. And now they’re turning this team over to me while Carter focuses on some of the younger swimmers and Bryce takes a stepback to focus on the business. I’m fulfilling everything I was brought here to do.
And it’s no surprise I’m the one who breaks the silence between Mia and me.
I’m running the team through an efficiency workout—helping them nail the basics of knowing their stroke count and keeping it consistent—when Mia walks onto the deck. She hesitates when she sees me, before putting on a blank look of pure annoyance and walking down the deck to get better angles for photos.
My gaze drifts from swimmer to swimmer as I pace the length of the pool with them, trying to pick out the most consistent among them. As a group of them turn at the wall, heading back, while the rest of them are still making their way to the wall, I stop near Mia. She’s determined to not pay me any attention, continuing to snap pictures. I break.
“You’re going to have to get used to this,” I tell her. “The team is all mine. Bryce’s in his office and Carter is with the middle schoolers.”
She’s focused on scrolling through the pictures and, for a second, I don’t think she’ll respond to me. “I’m surprised they trust you to coach kids alone.”
My gaze snaps toward her. “Excuse me?”
Surely Bryce and Carter told her what I do. Besides, there are so many steps involved in being cleared to coach, especially at a level where the kids would have to travel. Something I know she knows from her time doing media in the sport.
