Lean on Me
Copyright© 2025 by Danny January
Chapter 14
Romance Sex Story: Chapter 14 - The continuing chronicles of Jack Pierce. Autumn of 1982. The chronicles, in order are: 1. Feasting with a Silver Spoon 2. Summertime and the Livin' is Easy 3. Something Fishy Going On 4. Centerfield 5. Tourist Season 6. Lean on Me They are progressive and not meant to be stand-alone stories.
Caution: This Romance Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including mt/ft Consensual Heterosexual Fiction
The weather forecast for the weekend looked perfect. It was starting to cool off, and opportunities like that weren’t going to last long. We had a plan that would keep us busy. I dropped Kim off at home so she could knock out some homework before dinner and the game. Mom and I had a quick back workout and I got ready as well. When I told her I was picking up Bobby to meet Coach Miller at six, she was as curious as I was.
Bobby and I pulled into the parking lot and looked around to see where Coach Miller was. We didn’t see him so I parked and we began to walk toward the gym. We turned toward the sound of a horn. Coach Miller was behind the wheel of a short, white Porter-Gaud bus, the door open. He waved for us to come. Mrs. Miller was in the front row.
“Hop in, Gentlemen, we’re going in style,” he said with a big grin.
“Do they know what you signed them up for?” she asked.
“We are on our way to the Carolina Youth Development Center to pick up a dozen middle school kids who have never seen a high school football game. I thought you might want to tag along.”
“No way!”
“Art McClusky is on board, not the bus, but the plan. Miss Del Monico and Mrs. Porter will be joining us. I would have told you sooner, but we just got the insurance sorted out. About half of our coaches have a Class B, and I just got mine two weeks ago, so we’re good to go.”
The bus was a lot nicer than your standard yellow school bus, and Bobby and I took seats in the front row. “What’s a Class B?” Bobby asked.
“Class B commercial driver’s license with a department of education endorsement. I figured that since a couple of our football players had been tutoring them, they might like to watch them play.”
Bobby and I exchanged looks. Coach Miller didn’t mess around. “How long have you been planning this, Coach?” I asked.
“Oh, since Wednesday.” Two days ago.
“Thanks for inviting us,” Bobby said, and we rode in silence up I26 to North Charleston.
We pulled into the parking lot. Miss Del Monico was waiting for us and stepped onto the bus. She seemed happy to see Bobby and me. “Mrs. Porter and Mrs. Belmont will be going with you. Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
“No, ma’am,” Coach Miller said with a big grin. “Just that it seems like the right thing to do.”
“Alright, you asked for it. Mrs. Porter knows what to do if any of them get out of line. If you’re sure, I’ll send them your way.” Coach smiled, she shook her head, and went back inside. A minute later, a dozen kids came streaming out of the building. They were noisy.
Coach Miller stopped them at the door to the bus. “Who’s in charge?” he asked, and they looked around and hollered, “You are.” He was satisfied. “In you go.”
When they got on the bus, they seemed happy to see Bobby and me, and a couple of them hugged Mrs. Miller. The bus would hold about twenty-five people, so there was a little wiggle room, but not a lot. Once they were seated, Coach Miller started driving.
“How many of you know about football?” Mrs. Miller asked. Then, she gave them a crash course in how the game was played, how you kept score, and all of that. She told them the jersey numbers of their tutors and told them that Kim and Mel would be cheerleaders. They were beyond excited. Here was something I took for granted as part of my normal routine, and for them, it was like a trip to Paris. They were so excited.
When we got inside the stadium, we found seats on the forty-yard line, near our cheerleaders. We were the away team, and we had fewer fans at the game. The kids didn’t know what to watch. The cheerleaders were warming up, and they recognized Mel and then Kim. The band was playing Star Wars music, and they recognized that, and some of them were looking for the players they knew.
Coach Miller went down to the sidelines, found Jay, and pointed to their newest fans. He waved to them, and they hollered back to him. They were so excited. Think about it. They all knew the quarterback from the Porter-Gaud Cyclones, and he was waving to them. It just didn’t get any better than that.
Mrs. Miller and Allen came trooping down the aisle before the game began and handed out popcorn and Cokes. They were in heaven. If that wasn’t enough, we absolutely clobbered Southeast Prep, and Jay managed to get the entire team to wave at our kids. The kids tried to get the wave organized, but it didn’t work. They had fun trying, but they couldn’t make it work.
After the game, Jay brought some of the players up to the bleachers to talk with the kids. Some of the players I’d taught a bit of kung-fu to were there, and I thought that after meeting the kids, they might come out to help tutor.
After the game, Kim and Mel joined us on the little bus. The girls wanted to know all about cheerleading and if they got to date football players. Bobby and I felt a deep disappointment in that. Coach Miller pulled into a crowded Ye Olde Fashioned Ice Cream Shoppe parking lot on Rivers Avenue. Mrs. Miller took requests, and Bobby and I followed her inside to get ice cream.
It was a very happy bus full of kids that pulled into the center long after their normal bedtimes. One of the girls gave Coach Miller a kiss on the cheek, so the rest of them followed suit. The guys decided it was more appropriate to shake his hand.
“Thank you all so much,” Mrs. Porter said. “They’ll be talking about this for weeks.” She got off and hurried to catch up. The kids were chanting the Porter-Gaud fight song, which I don’t even know the lyrics to.
“Baby, do you have any wipes or anything? I’m sticky,” Coach said.
When we got back to the school, we all told Coach and Mrs. Miller what a great idea it was. Four of us climbed into my car for the ride home. It was a little chilly, but not too bad, so I dropped the top. Mel and Kim tried to teach Bobby and me the fight song. Bobby sang it terribly, and I sang worse, so they gave up. Bobby can sing. He can really sing. But he didn’t want to sing the fight song.
“That was special,” Kim said when we got back to her house.
“I think we’re making a difference.”
“Feels good, doesn’t it?”
“It feels great. Nobody said a word about all the junk in their lives. It was all about football, cheerleading, and having fun.”
“And popcorn and ice cream.”
“Yes. And popcorn and ice cream. Baby, it doesn’t get any better than that,” I said.
“Come inside. Let’s call Michael and Fallon.”
What could have been a five-minute call turned into nearly an hour of laughing and joking, and telling stories. They told us that taking Mac to the center helped break the ice. Taking them to a football game helped them see into our world, and they liked what they saw. Fallon said they tried to show them their world all the time. “If they can see into your world, and they like what they see, and you can make it seem achievable for them, and not just some fantasy, you can help them turn a corner.” I thought that was the crux of it.
“Everything seems to hang on trust and hope,” I said.
“A little love helps,” Fallon answered. We talked for a few more minutes and hung up in high spirits.
Early Saturday morning, I helped Dane get the boat ready. We drove to The Wappoo Cut and put in. Dane drove the boat toward some nearby shallows, and I threw a cast net to catch bait for the day. It only took three casts to fill the livewell. He eased back toward the launch, staying out of the way of other boaters. When Mom, Kim, Dr. Legare, and Dr. Calhoun were all waiting, he pulled up to the dock for them to board.
On the ride out to the jetty, Dr. Calhoun told us about Angela’s experiences riding at Hope With Horses. Veronica had gone out with her to watch once or twice, but didn’t ride. Mom reminded her about riding on the beach in Puerto Rico and that she’d had fun once she got on.
“All the horses at Hope are gentle, and most have a lot more whoa than go. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, though,” Dr. Calhoun said.
We found a spot near the end of the jetty and set anchor. I tried to help Kim get her line ready, and she shooed me away. Frontier Woman don’t need no help. I put a menhaden on a light line and cast toward the jetty. Mom was at the other end of the boat from me, and I saw her get the first hit of the day. It was way too easy for her to pull in a nice tarpon. She had fun, Dr. Calhoun took her picture with the fish, and she released it. Tarpon aren’t good to eat.
I caught a nice Sheepshead and put him in the livewell. Dr. Legare had caught a whiting that he was using as a baitfish. He liked to try for bigger fish and cast it a bit away from the jetty. I watched him talk to the whiting before he cast it, obviously giving it instructions. Dane caught three Red Drum in quick succession, but they were all too large to keep. Anything over twenty-three inches is too big to keep.
Dr. Calhoun caught a Toadfish. Toadfish are the ugliest fish you can catch, and some of them have venomous spines, so you have to be careful. She used two pairs of pliers to remove the hook, telling him how ugly he was and that his momma still loved him anyway.
I put another menhaden on my line and cast toward the jetty. I stopped to simply enjoy the moment. From my vantage point, I could see dozens of boats fishing off the jetty, stretching out nearly three miles from the mouth of the harbor. It was a beautiful, clear day, starting to warm up, and we could see from Sullivan’s Island and Isle of Palms to the north, to Morris Island and the lighthouse to the south. A tour boat was approaching Fort Sumter National Monument, and a container ship was leaving, probably for Europe.
When Mom came to the back of the boat, I said, in a quiet voice, “We’ve known these people for less than three years, but I feel like I’ve known all of them for a long time.”
She looked at Dane, Kim, and our two doctor friends, nodded, and smiled. “Life’s funny like that, isn’t it? Kim says you had a good time last night. You’ll have to tell me about it tonight. I’ll bet Dane, Hank, Veronica, and Lula Mae would love to hear about it as well.”
I could have stayed out all day, but Dane thought the ladies were done, so we motored in shortly after eating lunch. The seas were pretty calm, and Lula Mae had the wheel. When we got close to the peninsula, she gave us a tour like we’d never had before. She knew who lived in which houses on South Battery Street, how long they’d lived there, and how they were renovating. There were a few prominent attorneys and a couple of celebrities, and a great deal of old money.
Hers wasn’t the only house on the battery originally purchased with Confederate dollars. Everyone knows about the Louis DeSaussure House, but she had details I’d never heard before. It seemed crazy that this gorgeous antebellum house, right on the tip of the peninsula, had been used to house Navy officers during World War II.
She told us about a couple of other homes and then about the Edmondston-Alston House. She said the Alston family had owned it since 1838, which meant it was purchased before there was Confederate money. When she described the Villa Margherita, it made a lot of sense. It was built in 1893 in an Italian Renaissance style. No wonder it looked a little out of place. Still, she said, when it was a hotel, everyone from Teddy Roosevelt to Alice B. Toklas stayed there, and Sinclair Lewis wrote Main Street while staying there.
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