She managed to hold them off for a little while by admiring dresses and updos—this first team of girls would stay in her memory for a very long time—but finally Grace asked the question everyone on the team wanted answered. “Coach, are you going out with him?”
“No, I’m not,” she said, knowing it was a lie even as she spoke. Teenagers could sniff out lies without even looking up from their cell phones. “It’s just … we’ve known each other a long time. We were … we are friends. That’s all.”
“It doesn’t look like that to me,” Grace said. The rest of the team nodded along. “He’s very, very fine in that uniform.”
And out of it, Charlie thought with a mild hysteria, then seized on the teaching opportunity here with Grace, all but joined at the hip to Bryce, who was now considering a career in the military. “He’s an active-duty Navy SEAL. He’s gone for weeks, even months at a stretch, with no contact with friends and family. Long-distance relationships are very, very hard. I’ve tried them before, and they don’t work. It’s better to just cut your ties so you can both get on with your lives.”
Grace’s and Lyssa’s disbelieving gazes flicked from Charlie’s face to a spot just over her shoulder. She turned to find Jamie standing there, his face a mask. “Ms. Webber said I should check in with you, Grace,” he said.
Charlie could have kicked herself into the kitchen and out the back door. Of course Jamie was going to check in with Grace; she’d organized the schedule. “Um, yes,” Grace said when Charlie didn’t speak. Her voice was thin, hesitant, unfamiliar with the formal phrases she’d probably picked up from Eve or the Met’s caterer. “Thank you, Lieutenant Hawthorn. We should … get our seats. Dinner will be served in five minutes.”
Without meeting her eye, Jamie stepped back and held out his hand for the ladies to precede him into the building. Her girls skittered off in a group, leaving Charlie alone with Jamie.
“You had to know that,” she said, her heart pounding in her chest. “Jamie. You had to know that.”
He didn’t move. “They’re waiting for us,” he said quietly.
*
According to Grace, the Met served the city’s best banquet food, but Charlie had to force down her mouthfuls of seared salmon with asparagus, and she couldn’t even taste the tiramisu. Seated on the other side of the lectern, Jamie never made eye contact with her, focusing his conversation on his former coach to his left and the superintendent of schools to his right. Charlie kept up with the chatter between her former coach and Principal Belmeister, but deep inside, she felt sick.
Based on the look on Jamie’s face, he’d felt differently about their relationship. She’d blindsided him, but he’d blindsided her. Did he really think they could have something long distance, something real and true, something that would not only survive the test of time apart but would last forever?
When the guests were finishing their dessert and coffee, Principal Belmeister rose to his feet and thanked everyone for coming, then introduced Jamie. Charlie turned in her chair and looked up at him, at the body she knew as well as her own, at his handsome profile. He singled out the district administrators, Coach Gould, and his teammates, then paused, his hands gripping the lectern. Charlie’s heart was pounding in her chest, as she watched him.
“I learned mental toughness and strength on the basketball court when I was in high school,” he said. She froze, somehow knowing he meant more than practices and games, state tournaments. He meant them, on the court by the tracks. “I only started when someone had the flu. I was usually the sixth or seventh guy in, riding the bench until someone needed a breather, or was in foul trouble”—he paused to cough “Jonesy” under his breath and the room broke into laughter—“or we needed a different strategy. When you start on the bench, you have a lot of time to watch your teammates, the opposing players. That’s where I learned what I needed to learn to be successful in life: on the bench, and in the stands, watching the girls’ team fight their way to a title. I watched players leave everything they had on the court for their teammates, for their school, for their own honor. When I joined the Navy, that’s the image I carried with me through basic, then into Hell Week in BUD/S when I thought I couldn’t stand in the surf and carry my share of a telephone pole. I held in my mind an image of a basketball player, bruised and scraped and taped and limping but competing so fiercely that everyone else around them upped their game, practiced a little harder, stayed the extra time to shoot more free throws, put in the time in the weight room.”