Slap Shot, page 24
Nathan’s face registered ten different emotions in a few seconds and settled into horror. “That’s it? Did you have him arrested?”
“No. I handled it.”
“You handled it? I’ll kill that son of a bitch.” Nathan was half out of his seat.
Audrey sighed and shook her head. She was so, so tired of macho cavemen who wanted to fight for the sake of it.
“Simmer down, Coach. Don’t pretend like I’m part of your inner circle and you need to go defend my honor.”
“Makes no difference. Wouldn’t matter if I didn’t even know you. He needs to pay.”
Audrey nodded. “I told you. I took care of it.”
“Is he in jail? Is he still playing in the NFL?”
“No and yes.”
“Did you castrate him?”
“Close. I beat the hell out of him and blackmailed him into counseling. Which is more than he would have gotten if I’d gone public.”
Shock washed over Nathan’s face, and he let out a little laugh. “You beat the hell out of him, did you? What do you weigh? One twenty? You beat the hell out of an NFL quarterback and elite athlete?”
“I weigh 110, and yes, I did. I’ve had street fighting lessons, and he didn’t see it coming.”
“Street fighting?”
“It’s a thing. It’s dirty, physical, and you use everything you’ve got.”
“And you got the better of him?”
She nodded. “Admittedly, he didn’t try to fight back. And he’s in counseling now. He knows he’s seen the last of me, and he knows I’ll go public if he quits.”
“Do you think abusers ever stop?”
She pushed her plate away. That was a hard question and one she had considered carefully. “There is a school of thought that they can. I think Kemp is a decent guy who was beaten on a daily basis as a child. I think he deserves a second chance. He’s just not getting it with me.” And that truth might as well have been branded on her soul. While Audrey knew that domestic violence occurred at all economic levels, it seemed that poor people experienced the bad in life more often and worse than others. She’d seen enough abuse growing up—sometimes in her own house when her mother brought home the wrong boyfriend—to know it was something she would not stand for.
“How do you know he’s going to counseling?” Nathan asked. “The therapist can’t tell you. That’s a protected, confidential relationship.”
“Big football players can’t slam women up against a wall either, but he did. She’ll tell me. I also blackmailed him into giving his consent for her to discuss the case with me. I check in after every appointment. And so far, he’s going.”
“Still seems like you’d want revenge. He cost you your career.”
She shrugged. “It wasn’t all I thought it would be anyway. It was fun for a while, but I was just another blonde on the sidelines giving injury reports and asking coaches who didn’t want to talk to me why they were losing or winning.”
Nathan looked at the table, but didn’t deny it. “I don’t agree with how you’ve handled it, but it’s none of my business.”
“True.”
“What will you do now? I mean for a job?”
“I’ve thought of folk singing,” she rasped. They both laughed a little. “Sports have been too much a part of my life to get very far from it. I am thinking of something in sports photography—maybe from an emotional perspective. I like to capture that moment before or after a play and catch what the player is feeling. I’ve always enjoyed taking pictures, and I’ve got good equipment. I’d need to approach it from more than a hobbyist’s perspective. Maybe take some classes. But I’ve got the time.”
Nathan looked at the ceiling, and she could see the wheels turning. “But you have no firm plans?”
“No. One of my former college softball teammates invited me to stay with her in Foley until I figure things out.” It wasn’t as if she had family to take her in. They were all dead or in parts unknown.
“What if you figured things out here? In Merritt?”
“Are you inviting me to live with you and Tolly?”
“No, but I need a booster club president, and I think it needs to be someone who isn’t emotionally involved with a player. I’ve been down that road, and I don’t like it. I have a team you can practice your picture taking on. Plus, they’re putting together some kind of an art committee down at the Brantley Building. They’re pressuring me to be on it because they want a sports person. I don’t want to, don’t have time for it. But if you were president of the booster club, I could send you instead.”
“Send me? Who do you think you are to send me anywhere?” If her hair had not been under a baseball cap, it would have surely been blown back—maybe completely off her head. “What makes you think I could be elected president of anything in a town where no one knows me? Let alone be accepted onto what sounds like an extremely elite committee?”
He folded his arms over his chest and smiled. “First off, the booster club does pretty much what I want them to. Second, this town likes to win. I took a football program that had only won five games in three years to the state championship last season. You saved me from getting fired. You can have anything you want in this town.”
The idea wasn’t completely unappealing. “I don’t know.” Merritt was the idyllic small town with the idyllic Main Street in travel magazines and Hallmark movies—too idyllic to be true, but a long way from the trailer park. Living in Merritt wouldn’t get her the things she’d never had—a cookie-baking mother, a white canopy bed, and icing roses on a birthday cake—but it emitted a feeling of home, even if it was an illusion. Besides, Nathan had presented her with a plan, when she’d had no more than a few lofty ideas. And Birmingham was close by and bound to have plenty of photography classes to choose from.
“There’s an empty apartment over Heavenly Confections, the candy store,” Nathan went on. “Lanie, the owner, is a platinum level Bobcat Booster Sponsor. I bet she’d let you live there in exchange for pictures and volunteer work for the team. Plus, Lou Anne’s already said you could eat for free here for the rest of your life. Have you had her chicken and dumplings?”
A free place to live and free chicken and dumplings? Why not? She didn’t have anywhere else to be.
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ISBN 978-1-5072-0586-0 (ebook)
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Alicia Hunter Pace, Slap Shot
