The Hardest Cut by Jamie Bennett (book club recommendations .TXT) 📕

was hard to understand the story without looking at the pictures and I was happy to show them as I read.  By the time I’d reached the end, she was standing next to me, free of her father’s leg.  “Did you like that one?” I asked, smiling, and she nodded a little.  “I bet we can find a few more, if it’s ok with your dad.”  We looked up at him, and he nodded, too.

Marley was better at the register than I was so she rang up his six books, which was my biggest sale ever.  But I hadn’t been trying to get them to buy; it had just been fun to read to Tessa, who had eventually sat down on another cushion near me to listen.  The coach had stood silently and watched us, which had rattled me a little.  He had stared pretty hard at me as I read and talked to her.

After he took his change, he picked up Tessa, who still hadn’t said a word, and looked back and forth from me to Marley.  “Is this your daughter?” he asked me abruptly.

Maybe we looked a little alike, both of us with brown hair, but if he thought I was old enough to have a sixteen-year-old child…I stared at him in shock.  “How old do you think I am?” I blurted out, and Marley started laughing.

“She’s my babysitter,” she told him, when she’d calmed slightly.  I was still silent and horror-struck.  Ben nodded, and took his stack of books.

His little daughter raised up her head from where she’d been snuggled into his shoulder.  “Bye,” she told me, in a very tiny voice, and that made me smile and forget how bad I must have looked.

“Bye, Tessa!  I hope you come back in to read with me more.  You don’t have to buy books,” I told her dad.  “She could just come and hang out.”

He nodded slightly again.  “Thanks.”  And they left, the bell on the door dinging them out.  I immediately took my mirror from my purse to check my face.  Was my forehead getting wrinkled?  Was that what he saw?  I took out my brush, too, and smoothed down my hair.  Was it looking dull?  I turned from side to side to examine it, and then thought that maybe I needed some highlights.  I had natural, honey-colored streaks around my face and I hadn’t ever colored it, but probably I should start.  My eyes did look worried instead of sparkly, and in this light, you couldn’t really tell that they were hazel instead of brown.  Maybe with new eyeliner…

“You don’t look old.  You look fine,” Marley told me, and I quickly put the mirror and brush away.  I didn’t want to be a bad role model for her so that she would grow up and think that looks were the most important thing.  Even if they did seem to be extremely important in many areas of life, that wasn’t what I wanted her to focus on for herself.

“Thank you.  Is your math done on the tablet?” I asked, because schoolwork and academics should have been her number one priority, not staring at herself sadly into the mirror and looking for signs of deterioration.  I just hoped that she wouldn’t want help with her homework like Hallie usually gave her.

She ignored my question.  “That guy is pretty hot,” she noted.  “How old do you think he is?”

“Too old for you,” I pointed out, and she just eye-rolled.

“Let’s look him up.  What’s his name, again?”

“Benjamin Matthews,” I said, and added casually, “I think.  I don’t really care.”  But as she flicked through her phone, I watched over her shoulder.  “Wait!  Stop there.  What does it say about him getting injured?”

“Matthews will have the surgery today and sources close to the team have indicated that he will be out for at least the rest of this season,” Marley read from her screen.  “Panther fans, let’s rally around our QB and hope to see him on the field for us next year!”  She looked up at me.  “He used to play football?”

“In college,” I said, and kept reading the article.  He had gotten hurt his junior year, but his stats from before it happened were amazing.  “I don’t really follow college ball that closely, but I remember this a little.  Maybe the surgery wasn’t successful, because he never came back.  I guess he got into coaching instead.”  I reached for her phone and moved down the screen.  “When the Woodsmen hired him, the press release only said he was a former standout player, not that he’d had to quit because he got hurt.”

“Of course you read the Woodsmen press release.  You’re obsessed.”

“I just like the team, ok?  And you do too,” I said, and nudged her.  Her foster dad, Gunnar, had just retired from the Woodsmen himself, and she was his biggest fan behind Hallie, his wife.

“Whatever.  Oh, shit!  Look at this!”

She had opened to an image on a gossip site. Ben Matthews stood with a bunch of players on the side of the field, holding up a football in one hand and his helmet in the other.  He was shirtless and in his tight football pants.  The caption read, “Holy hottie!!!”

And that was accurate.  He looked so different in the picture.  He was smiling and relaxed, his dark hair longer than it was now and mussed up from wearing his helmet.  And his body…it looked like maybe someone had drawn in the muscles, that was how cut he was, and I made myself close my mouth.  And I wiped my chin.

“Marley, your language.  This is an old picture,” I said, my voice a little hoarse.  “It’s from when he used to play in college and he probably doesn’t look like this anymore.”  He certainly hadn’t looked so happy when I’d been around him, but I reminded myself that one of those times had been when I’d hit his truck with my brother’s car. “Not that looks are so important,”