The familiar awkwardness and hurt hit me square in the stomach. “Thanks.”

She stood and pulled the plates off the bar, re-stacking them on the pegs on the side of the rack. “He really missed you,” she said. “He understood, but he missed you. And he looked for Elizabeth, too.”

Something jabbed in my gut. Lauren had said the same thing.

She placed smaller plates on the bar. She adjusted the back of the bench upward, so instead of flat, it was on an incline. “Every morning. Checked websites, message boards, things like that. I think he really wanted to be the one to call you and say he’d found her.”

My mouth went dry. I couldn’t think of anything to say.

“Anyway, he was working construction, but he was bored,” Gina said, sliding onto the inclined bench. “He wanted to do something else, but he wasn’t sure what. I had just talked with Kelly and knew she needed a coach. I thought he’d be perfect.”

“And he liked it?” I asked, happy to steer the conversation away from me.

“No,” she said, grabbing the bar and lifting it out of the rack. “He loved it.”

TWENTY

Gina spent twenty more minutes working her way around the gym, her intensity constant as she moved from machine to machine. I watched her, sitting there quietly, still thinking about Chuck, wondering what had caused him to call Gina out of the blue and what had caused him to fall in love with coaching. The questions were forming in my head by the second, but I couldn’t clear my mind enough to ask the right ones.

When Gina was finished, she grabbed a towel from a table beneath one of the windows and buried her face in it.

“I haven’t spoken to Meredith,” she said, shooting me a look.

“Doesn’t she live at the house?”

“She does,” she said. “But Jordan’s been keeping her away from everyone and that includes me. And it’s a big house.”

“Jordan know about your relationship with Chuck?”

She shook her head. “No. He stays out of my personal life.”

“If you asked Jordan to get Chuck the coaching spot, why hasn’t Jordan fired you?” I asked.

She sat down on the floor, her legs out in front of her and reached for her feet. “I think it’s crossed his mind. But, Jon is…brutally rational most of the time.”

“What does that mean?”

She pressed herself downward, nearly touching her nose to her knees. She arched her back and came up slowly. “It means he knows that he’s better off with me than without me.”

“You’re that good?”

She smiled but it looked more like a cringe. “I’m better than good. I’m not saying I’m safe, though. Things don’t turn out the way he wants, I could very well find myself out on my ass. As rational as he is, he will lash out.”

“How long have you worked for him?” I asked.

“Long enough to know that talking with you is a risk,” she said, glancing at me. “He might be willing to overlook the fact that I brought Chuck to the high school, but he wouldn’t be pleased if he thought I was working for the other side.”

“What do you think happened with Meredith?” I asked

She didn’t respond for a few minutes as she went through a series of stretches, twisting and contorting her body in ways that looked uncomfortable to me. She started to speak several times, but bit off her words. Finally, she took a deep breath and leaned back on her hands.

“Ies N?m not sure,” Gina said. “But I’ve known Meredith a long time. She’s a good kid. And she’s never once lied to me.”

“So you think he did it?” I said, irritated. “You think he hurt Meredith?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Might as well have.”

“They were spending a lot of time together, Tyler,” she said, glancing at me. “A lot. You’ve probably already heard that. More than any normal coach spends with one of his players.”

I held up a hand and turned away from her gaze.

“I don’t wanna think he did it,” Gina said. “I don’t. But I think something weird was going on between them.”

“Like?”

“Like I don’t know. But something.”

“So you and Chuck were dating or whatever the hell you’re doing, after he looked you up. You give me this big story about how he meant so much to you as a kid,” I said, letting it all build up. “But then you’re hanging him out to dry here? Just so I’m clear?”

Her cheeks flushed and she didn’t say anything.

I stood and walked toward the door, my anger and confusion simmering in my gut. No one was on Chuck’s side. I remembered that feeling. Everyone looked at you with a raised eyebrow, a question in their expression.

Until I knew different, I would stay on Chuck’s side.

Gina followed me outside. “I’m not sure if Chuck hurt Meredith or not. My head tells me that it’s possible, but my heart tells me it’s not. But knowing it and being able to prove it are two different things. And if you’re going to go up against Jon Jordan, you better be able to prove it.”

That kind of logic baffled me. If you were loyal to a friend, you were loyal. End of story.

“I can’t prove it,” I said, backing away from her. “But fuck Jon Jordan. Chuck is lying in a hospital bed because Meredith is full of shit. And just because some asshole walks around swinging a big hammer doesn’t mean it's okay to duck.”

Gina didn’t say anything. She kept her eyes away from mine, the confidence I’d seen in her posture before now gone.

I shook my head. “If Chuck wakes up, I’ll let him know what a fantastic girlfriend he’s found for himself.”

TWENTY-ONE

My foot was heavy on the accelerator as I drove away from Jordan’s home. There was something about refusing to stand up for a friend that angered me more than maybe anything else in the world. In Chuck, I had a friend who had never backed away from me, even when it would’ve been easy to do. I had no doubt that if any of these other people had been accused of the crime, Chuck would’ve been shouting from the rooftop in their defense, regardless of how the circumstances appeared. The fact that they wouldn’t return the same show of faith was garbage.

That anger was percolating inside me when my cell rang. I barked hello into it.

“Joe?” Lauren said. “Are you alright?”

My ex-wife’s voice caught me off guard and sapped the anger for the moment. “Hey. Yeah. Sorry. I’m okay.”

“How’s Chuck?”

“The same. I saw him this morning. No change.”

She didn’t say anything and the line buzzed with white noise.

“Lauren? You still there?”

“Yeah,” she finally said. “So I was thinking…you wanna have dinner tonight?”

I guided the car over to the side of the highway. Between my anger and Lauren’s surprise phone call, I was the last person in the world who needed to be driving. Having dinner with her would no doubt bring up things I wanted to avoid, things I’d spent the past few years avoiding. It was hard enough being back in San Diego physically, but I’d managed to keep the mental things in check. Sitting down with Lauren would be a good way to uncheck them.

But I knew that it must’ve taken a lot for her to ask and being afraid just didn’t feel like a good enough reason to turn her down.

I took a deep breath. “Um, sure. I guess.”

“I don’t suppose you’d wanna come to the house?”

My fingers folded tighter around the phone. I cleared my throat. “I’d rather not.”

“I figured,” she said. I couldn’t decipher what else I heard in her voice.

“I’m staying across the bay,” I said, and told her the hotel. “You wanna come over and we’ll eat somewhere there?”

“Sure,” she said. “Around seven?”

I said that was fine and we hung up.

The car idled quietly beneath me as I sat there for a few minutes, staring out the window, watching the traffic and memories fly by.

TWENTY-TWO

“I can’t say that I’ve missed you,” Lauren said, laying her napkin on the table.

We were in an Asian restaurant on the main level of the hotel. We’d spent an hour eating and saying things that were safe and meaningless. Lauren finished her meal and apparently decided it was time to change that.