Chapter 5

"What are you doing here?"

I smiled. "I live here. Unless Mom's rented out my room."

"Not yet," came Mom's voice from the kitchen. "But the ad's in the paper."

I stepped behind Tami, tilted her head up, leaned down, and kissed her. When our lips met, I knew I'd made the right decision.

"What about practice?" Traci asked. She and Tami were sitting at the dining room table getting a head start on their school reading.

I stood and buffed my fingernails on my shirt then blew on them. "I don't need practice."

Tami, her head still tilted back, reached up, grabbed the collar of my t-shirt, and pulled me down until our eyes were inches apart. "Why?"

"'Cause practice is for football players. I'm retired."

"WHAT?" from three different voices.

I grinned, kissed Tami, and stood again. "Ask me again when Dad gets home so I only have to do this once. In the meantime, I want to change. You might want to invite Tami to dinner since she's making sure you pass English."

"I already did," Traci said haughtily.

I grinned again, picked up the equipment bag I'd dropped by the front door, and headed for my room. My bag was mostly empty since I was still wearing most of my equipment. Except for the shoulder pads since they were mine, I needed to remember to pick them up tomorrow but dropping them on Parker's feet had been too good a point to pass up.

I peeled off my football pants and carefully pulled out the hip pads and stowed them in my bag. I didn't know if I'd ever play football again, but it didn't hurt to be prepared. Standing there in my underwear I realized that my regular clothes were in my locker, something else to pick up tomorrow.

I didn't really need it, since I hadn't practiced, but I decided that a nice long hot shower was the order of the day. Besides, it would help stall off the inevitable explanations. Tami was waiting for me when I'd drained the hot water tank, sitting at my desk.

"Tami, I'm not sure this is a good idea."

"Relax, already. Nothing's going to happen. And I doubt your mom would be surprised if I saw you naked. She let us go on the road trip, didn't she?"

I nodded, stepped inside, and closed the door.

"Did she ever ask about, uh, the road trip?"

"All the time," I said as I dropped my robe. Big Tony must have realized that this was a cameo appearance and not the main event, 'cause he didn't bother popping up. "Where we went, what we did. She wanted to hear all about Cinnamon and Mitch and the family."

"Anything else?"

"I mentioned we had two tents. And how much fun it was putting them up and taking them down, but she never asked about who slept where." I put on shorts and a t-shirt, then sat on the bed to pull on socks.

"Tami looked relieved. "Good."

"I doubt she'd admit it, even to herself, but I'm sure she thinks you spent the whole trip in the small tent."

Tami grinned. "If she only knew."

"I hear you have some news."

From the expectant look on Dad's face, he didn't know.

I looked at Mom. "It's your news," she said with a shrug.

"I sure wasn't going to tell him," Traci added.

Dad looked at the three of us in turn, then Tami for good measure. "Do I want to hear this?"

I shrugged. "I quit football today. So, Mom, when's dinner? It smells great."

Mom gave her head a small shake. "If you could really smell it, you wouldn't say that. It's tuna noodle casserole, not one of you favorites. And dinner's in twenty minutes, so you have plenty of time for your story."

So I gave them an abridged version of playing for Parker and deciding to quit.

"But you've played for coaches you didn't like before," Mom pointed out.

"But never one I didn't respect. Nobody likes all their coaches, but I had at least some respect for them. If not as a coach, then as a person, or at least as a dad who took the time to work with his kid's Little League or whatever. With Coach Branson, I didn't like him a lot at first, but I knew he was a damn fine..." A sharp look from Mom made me reconsider my word choice. "An excellent coach. With Parker, I don't like him, and I don't respect him. It was never going to work."

"But you love football," Dad said.

"I love other things more." I squeezed Tami's hand that I was holding as she sat next to me on the sofa. Mom gave me her you're-too-young-to-be-in-love look, and I smiled back.

"I'm just concerned that you haven't thought this through. That you'll regret it."

"I did think it through. That doesn't mean I won't regret it. I'll miss football. But when Parker said, 'You're going to have to adjust that attitude if you want to play for me, ' it just became clear to me, that football wasn't as important as other things. Like being true to myself, true to my team-mates, and true to football."