Bring Her On Page 4

  “Stop staring at her ass,” Dom said, leaning down and whispering in my ear.

  I glared up at him. “I wasn’t staring at her ass.” I had definitely been staring at her ass. It wasn’t my fault that it looked so good.

  Dom drove his own car to my house and the kitties lost their minds when he walked in. They adored him, even more than they loved me.

  “Oh yes, I love you, I do,” he said in a baby voice as he picked up Cupcake and Spaghetti. Poor Meatball put her feet on his legs and cried and cried. I scooped her up, but she didn’t want me.

  “Brat,” I said.

  Dom nuzzled the cats and then looked at me. “What are you in the mood for?”

  “Cheese. Lots of melted cheese.”

  I ordered a pepperoni and green pepper pizza, wings, and mozzarella sticks.

  “Health is going to be so mad,” Dom said as I put in the order.

  “It’s his fault for going out of town. There will be plenty of other times for melted cheese.”

  Dom followed me into the kitchen where I got us both drinks before we planted ourselves on the couch to wait for the food to get here.

  “This is going to be hell, Dom,” I said as Cupcake jumped in his lap and started kneading his thighs. He winced and picked her up before settling her back down. She curled up and closed her eyes with a kitty sigh.

  “Maybe it won’t be that bad. We can draw a line down the center and they’ll stay on their side and we will have our side. We should definitely take the side with the locker rooms.”

  That would be hilarious. They’d have the water fountain, but none of them would be able to pee.

  “That’s mean, Dom. We’re talking about kids here. Not just Echo.” I pressed my fingers to my forehead. I felt a migraine coming on.

  “Right, but you definitely want those kids to lose, right?”

  Meatball climbed on me and sat on my chest. I looked at Dom over her floof. “I mean, yes. It’s going to be weird. How is this going to work out?” I groaned and Meatball glared at me.

  My phone buzzed with a message from Camille. The Bulldogs were being bussed in tomorrow after school. We were going to have to share mats for a few days. I sent Dom the news and wondered how I was going to break it to the team. Immediately, I started typing up a set of rules in my phone.

  If I didn’t set boundaries for them, they would push and then there would be a disaster and we’d figure out that it would have been a good idea to start with some guidelines.

  I’d have to talk to Echo and work on how we’d divide the space and that was the conversation that I dreaded more than anything else, because that would set the tone for the next three weeks. My stress level was already high, and I didn’t think it could go much higher, but I had the sneaking suspicion that this was the calm before the storm. Not just a storm. A tornado in a hurricane with an earthquake on the side.

  In one month this will be over, in one month this will be over, I kept saying to myself. I could get through a few weeks with Echo. Actually, it would be the longest we’d ever spent together, since cheer camp had only been a week.

  I couldn’t lie: I was interested to see her coaching style. Now that I’d gotten over the shock and dismay of the whole thing, I was trying to find any silver lining or advantage. I also didn’t want to be a complete bitch and make them feel unwelcome, no matter how I felt about Echo. Her squad didn’t deserve to be painted with her brush. They were probably great kids. Probably. I’d have to wait and see.

  I couldn’t concentrate on work during the day on Monday. Normally all I needed in my home office was a latte and some good tunes to keep me motivated and focused. I’d worked non-freelance jobs before, but I really liked being in control of my own time. It also gave me the freedom to coach, which was the biggest perk. I barely made any money from coaching, it was purely because I loved cheer and wanted to share that with people since I couldn’t get on the mat anymore myself.

  I could probably still do a split, but tumbling was out of the question. That had never been my strong suit anyway. I was much more comfortable at the top of a stunt.

  The kitties slept at my feet as I chewed at my lip and tried not to compulsively check the clock every few minutes. After getting distracted from what I was trying to do in Photoshop for the third time, I groaned and closed the program. I wasn’t going to get anything done, and it was almost time to get ready to head over to the gym. I might as well get there early and see if I needed to do anything for Camille.

  I spent some extra time in front of the mirror, making sure my hair was looking right. The undercut on both sides was starting to grow out, so I’d need to clip it in a few days. I used a combo of gel and mousse to give the short dark waves on top of my head some volume and hold. I definitely wouldn’t be mistaken for a former cheerleader now, though that was changing a little. Back in the day I’d had long hair all the way down my back, the better to make a high ponytail with. My scalp still ached from the weight of those ponytails.

  I shuddered and turned my head from side to side. Looked good. Not one to wear much makeup, I brushed on some foundation, added a tiny bit of color to my cheeks, a dash of highlighter on my cheekbones, and a swipe of mascara and I was done. Belatedly, I thought that I should have done eyeliner to make my brown eyes pop a little more, but it was too late now.

  Usually I dressed pretty casual for practice, but I found myself pulling out a new button-up that I’d gotten and leaving the top two buttons undone. My bra wasn’t showing, but it gave the impression of cleavage.

  “What am I doing?” I said to my reflection in the mirror on the back of my bedroom door. I did up another one of the buttons, but the shirt didn’t look right, so I undid it again. Loading my fingers up with my most-cursed rings completed the look.

  “You need to calm down,” I said to my reflection one more time before I left the room, grabbed my bag, slipped on my leopard-print sneakers, and headed out the door.

  My hands trembled on the steering wheel as I drove to Corsica. It didn’t take as long as I wanted it to. I pulled into the parking lot and turned off my car. It was time.

  I headed into the gym and there were a few teens hanging around after school, loitering and laughing together. I still had about an hour before practice, so I headed for Camille’s office and knocked on her door.

  “Hey,” I said, sticking my head in. She was on the phone and held one finger up as she finished the call.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “Actually, I was wondering if there’s anything I can do for you? To get the gym ready and so forth?” I asked.

  She gave me a look as if I’d thrown her a life preserver as she was drowning in the ocean. “Oh my god, that would be wonderful. Can you divide up the mats and then we have the curtain thing, but we have to unpack it and put it together. And it’s not going to be soundproof, so just be aware of that.”

  Oh, I had thought about that, all right. I planned to conduct my practices in whispers and constantly eavesdrop on what the team on the other side of the curtain was doing. It was only fair, since they were using my space. A tiny portion of my brain considered setting up a secret recording device, but that might be taking this thing too far.

  “Sure, I can set up the curtain. Where is it?”

  Cam’s phone rang again and she rolled her eyes. “Corner of the gym. Big boxes. Can’t miss it. Come find me if you need help.” She took the call and I was dismissed.

  Sure, I wasn’t in Cam shape, but I thought I could handle this shit. I was a lesbian; assembling things was part of my nature, or at least it was supposed to be.

  I went back to the gym and found the boxes and started unpacking. Basically it was a set of poles that interlocked, and then you draped fabric over it to make the sections.

  When I had difficulty getting the poles even out of the boxes, I realized that I was not going to be able to complete this task by myself. As I struggled to pull one of the metal poles out of the box, a pair of hands hel
d the box so I could pull the pole out. I looked up and dropped the pole with an enormous clang, narrowly missing crushing one or both of my feet.

  It was Echo.

  “Sorry, you looked like you needed some help.” I picked up the pole and tried to yank it out of the box, which worked about as well as my ability to keep my cool around her. As in, not at all.

  “Fuck,” I said under my breath as I set the pole down again. I tried to keep my cursing to a minimum around the squad, especially when their parents were around, but I didn’t know how this was going to go with Echo around. She pushed my swear button. She pushed a lot of my buttons.

  “I’m fine,” I said, putting my hands up. “I’m fine.”

  I wasn’t fine.

  “Okay,” Echo said, looking at me a little warily.

  Whatever moment we were having was interrupted by her squad traipsing into the gym, all chatting and making as much noise as possible, as teenagers were wont to do.

  “Hey, set your stuff down and come help,” Echo said, her voice carrying across the space like a crack of thunder. They took their time, but they all set their things on the bleachers and shuffled over, some of them looking around warily. As if my team was going to jump out from behind the bleachers and scare them.

  As I stood there, not knowing what to say or do, Echo organized her team and had the curtain set up in half the time it took me to try and get one pole out.

  By the time they had divided the gym in half, my team had started to arrive, and Camille breezed in to see how it was going.

  “Hi, I’m Camille, the AD, we spoke on the phone,” she said to Echo.

  Echo shook her hand and introduced herself, and then a group of other adults walked over. I had seen them before and knew them to be her team of assistant coaches. She had four, no joke. One was a professional choreographer on top of everything else.

  Thinking about Echo’s resources too much made my blood boil. Her team had all the advantages, but now they didn’t have their fancy gym. No, they were stuck with the water fountain that only worked half the time, and the haunted locker room with the rest of us.

  Camille broke the news about the mats and we divided them in half, which was going to throw both our squads off. This was one situation I hadn’t had them practice for. There wasn’t enough room for them to do their tumbling, or to do all of the stunts, so we’d have to pick and choose what we worked on.

  “Thank you,” Echo said, and I thought she was talking to Camille. I’d been trying to avoid her as I waited for my squad to get their act together and come over as a group so we could have a little chat about the ground rules.

  “Thank you, Kiri,” she said, and the sound of my name in her mouth sent a shiver down my back.

  “It wasn’t my choice,” I said.

  “I know, but still. Thank you.”

  She ducked behind the curtain but then poked her head back around again. “Do you know when the new mats are coming? My squad isn’t used to using ones that are this low quality. I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

  There it was.

  “I’m not sure,” I said, my eyes narrowed and my voice icy. “You can ask Camille.”

  She grinned at me. “Thanks.”

  Echo went back around the curtain and clapped her hands to call her squad to attention.

  “You all are representing me, and the school, and I expect you to act with decorum. For those that don’t know what that means, I want you to act like classy and gracious people. If you can’t do that, fake it.”

  There was a ripple of laugher. I’d pitched my voice low, but the other group had their music on loud so I didn’t think they would hear me anyway.

  It hadn’t even been an hour and I was already losing my mind. I was so used to having the entire gym and no other distractions. This was going to be a test of character for my team as well as me.

  Kevin, my class clown, raised his hand.

  “Yes, Kevin,” I said, trying not to let out a heavy sigh at the snarky response or witty remark I knew was coming from his mouth.

  “What if we can’t fake it?”

  I narrowed my eyes and looked at the whole squad.

  “Then you get thrown in the snake pit, or I hack your social media accounts. Whichever is worse. And don’t think that I can’t.” I loved to claim that I could do things that I couldn’t, but I knew people who could. Dom’s husband used to work in IT and could do that shit with his eyes closed. One of the main reasons I never wanted to get on his bad side.

  That seemed to terrify them sufficiently until we discovered a new problem: the curtain.

  Instead of keeping us apart, I kept finding my team’s eyes wandering to the cracks in between the curtains, and when stunts went up, you could see the flyers popping up and down.

  “This is a nightmare,” I said to Dom as we tried to get the kids to focus.

  “It’s like wrangling toddlers that are hopped up on sugar. We need to give them something to focus on,” Dom said. He really was going to make a great dad.

  I gathered the team in a circle. “Okay, if you can’t do this and not be distracted, I’m going to cut this practice and just leave. You can’t be safe if you’re looking over at what they’re doing. I’m not letting a bunch of you get hurt. It would be irresponsible. So, can I have you all committed to safety?”

  That was one thing most of them could take seriously. They knew the injury and concussion rates of cheerleaders. Did they get reckless sometimes? Yes. But that’s why I was here to rein them in and give them parameters and make sure we had enough spotters who were paying attention. And if we didn’t, I would step in and spot myself. Not all of us had four assistant coaches.

  They all nodded and agreed that they were.

  “Okay, since we don't have a lot of space, we’re going to do opening stunts, one by one, with counts. If you’re not in the group, you have your eyes glued to the stunt and if a flyer hits the floor, you will be doing conditioning for the rest of practice, and I will not be happy. Understood?”

  I was surly and on edge and I couldn’t wait for this damn practice to be over. All of my energy was trained on maintaining my squad’s focus, and there were twenty-two of them.

  The first stunt went up without incident.

  “Come on, Mack, smile!” Sometimes the flyers concentrated so hard to keep their stunts in the air that they forgot about their facials.

  The bases tossed MacKynzie in the air and she twisted twice before they caught her and set her feet back on the mat.

  “Great! Next,” I said, and we moved from stunt to stunt. I had to snap my fingers a few times to focus wandering eyes, but overall, they did as good as could be expected.

  All the stunts did well, only a few wobbles and one fall, but she didn’t hit the mat, so they didn’t have to do push-ups, crunches, and running like they would have if she’d hit the floor. Flyers had broken their spines falling from stunts and I wasn’t going to let that happen on my watch if I could help it.

  Since they had done so well, I decided to take it easy on them and drill the dance for the second half of practice, working on performance of each person, having each member do it by themselves in front of the whole squad and compete to see who had the best showmanship. It was light and fun and they all got so into it. Team dynamics were important, and I wanted to give them these less-serious moments. Cheer was supposed to be fun, and I didn’t want them to walk away from their cheer careers and regret being here.

  While they had fun, I let my attention wander to the other side of the curtain. I’d seen a few stunts go up and down, and she seemed to be working on getting her flyers to be sharper on the ground, and having the bases count each stunt. Nothing exciting. One of her assistant coaches seemed to be videotaping, something I would start doing next week. The only way to make them see what they were doing was to show them what they were doing.

  I grabbed Dom and had him make a note that we needed to film next week.

  “This is why
I need another assistant coach,” I said to him. “I need a spy. You think Heath would quit his job and pretend to be another coach for us?”

  Dom laughed and shook his head. “They’re rattling you.”

  I gave him a sharp look.

  “What? It’s true. You’re totally rattled, look at you.”

  I was literally standing there twitching. I could feel it.

  “Shut up, Dom.” I said under my breath.

  “You need to get over it. You need to lay your problems at the door. Isn’t that what you’re always telling them?” He gestured to the squad with his chin and I hated to admit he was right. I had to put this shit with Echo aside and give everything to this team. That was my job.

  “Way to go, James!” I said as one of our more quiet guys gave a great performance. “That’s what I’m talking about. You gave me energy eleven.” I gave him a high five, which was silly because he was over six feet and I cleared five and a half on a good day.

  Practice ended on a high note, and I felt good about what they’d put in for the day. Echo’s squad pushed the curtain to the side of the gym, out of the way and then everyone started sizing each other up as they rolled up the mats and put those away as well.

  “Should we introduce them? It feels weird that we wouldn’t,” I said to Dom as Echo walked over, her entourage of coaches following in her wake like supplicants. I hated this so much.

  “I thought maybe we should have them get to know each other, since we’re here on your hospitality.” She said the word with a hint of sarcasm that I didn’t miss.

  “Sure,” I said, because what else was I going to do?

  We got the kids together and everyone went around the room and it was awkward and a little weird and I could tell they all wanted it to be over as soon as possible. Each person introduced themselves, said their pronouns, and said what their position was.

  When we got around the room to the coaches, Dom said “I’m Dom, he/him, and I’m the assistant coach of the Tigers, and I was a base and a tumbler when I cheered.” He turned to me and I said that I was head coach and had been a flyer.