I gag, my protein shake from earlier churning in my stomach. I need to find a new man to hug. Preferably one who keeps all his boogies inside.
With the expertness of a mother, Lyndi grabs a wipe from under the counter and cleans me off. It’s a nice gesture, but I may have to burn this shirt when I get home.
“Hey, could you watch Crew on the sixteenth?” Lyndi asks.
“Let me check.” I pull out my phone, though I hardly need to. I’m pretty much free until the end of time. I locate my calendar and, as suspected, “Yeah, I can, when?”
She rattles off the time, and I put it in my phone while she gushes about how excited she is to attend her first wedding expo as a vendor. I click the lock button as it buzzes with a notification. I tap on the screen to find a new email. At first glance, I assume it’s spam and am about to turn it off again, but… it’s not?
I frown at the screen. “That’s weird.”
“What?” Lyndi asks.
“I got an email for a job opening as a temporary volleyball coach for a high school downtown. The same job I found a flier for the other day.” Why would this job offer be sent to my email? I never listed volleyball on any job sites as a hobby or potential profession, and the email address is questionable.Workplacecorrections? What is that?
“Hmm. They must be desperate,” Lyndi says absently, then her eyes widen. “Wait, you should totally do it!”
“What?” My forehead scrunches. “How many lawyers do you know who moonlight as a high school volleyball coach?”
“Well, considering you’re the only lawyer I know, none. But Idoknow of one lawyer who loves volleyball and is currently seeking additional forms of employment.”
She’s got me there. “I don’t know. That’s not really where I see my life going.” At all. Coaching high school kids was not laid out in my ten-year plan. The plan was to kick butt in the courtroom and make partner by year seven.
Oh how the tides turn.
“It’s only temporary, right?” Lyndi says. “You could try it out until you get your job back.”
I guess it wouldn’t hurt. “I’ll think about it,” I say, scanning the rest of the job description. All they need right now is for someone to run a few off-season practices each week. What else am I doing with my life?
Nothing. The answer is a loud and depressing nothing.
Working with youth could counteract the anger issues that got me fired from my last job in the eyes of prospective employers.
How hard could it be to coach teenagers?
Chapter 8
Connor
I’m ready to collapse by the time I make it home from work the next day. But I have another session with Maddie tonight, so I drag my butt to my room to change.
I can hear Millie downstairs. She didn’t get home until two last night. And then I heard her trip over everything in her room for a solid minute before I imagined her falling face-first onto her bed and zonking out instantly.
I slip on my shoes and meet her in the kitchen. “Hey, how was work?”
“So great. I saved a woman from looking like a skunk,” she says sarcastically. Millie originally went to school to become a therapist, but quickly changed her mind—and her major six times before she ended up dropping out altogether. She spent the next two years bouncing between the oddest assortment of jobs, from a flight attendant to an actual gravedigger. That one only lasted a few days. She finally settled down with cosmetology school two years ago and has been a hairstylist ever since, but I know it’s not her passion.
“That sounds like an interesting story.”
She shakes her head. “It’s not. It’s really not. But if you have three hours, I can surely bore you with it.”
I check the watch I don’t own. “Shoot, I’ve got another training session soon.”
Her eyes light up. “Oh, right. I forgot. How is that going? Are you sure you don’t need your big sister to take over?”
She may be older, but she’s barely bigger than an average twelve-year-old. I got all the height in the family. But she is exactly sixteen months older than me, which she never fails to claim. Our parents decided having kids that close together was like having twins and never wanted to do it again.
“No.” I can afford the sessions for exactly three more weeks, which is hopefully how long it takes me to apologize and make it up to Maddie.
