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

football players, because no normal human would have been so large, and also, only the Woodsmen players were supposed to be allowed in the stadium’s gym.

Which was what he told me next.  “The cheerleaders don’t work out in here,” he announced.

“Oh, you mean me?”  I was extremely flattered, because I had seen the Woodsmen cheerleaders.  They were generally gorgeous and very toned.  “You thought I was a professional cheerleader?  No, I’m—”

“You look like one,” he stated.

I got flustered.  “Thanks, I—”

“They wear those bra shirts, too,” he said.

I tugged at mine.  It was a tank top, not a bra, but it was tight and it was short enough to show off the hole I’d spotted earlier in my pants.  “Well, I’m not a cheerleader.  I’m—”

“Also, no wives can work out here.  Or girlfriends,” he told me.

I shook my head.  “I’m not with one of the players.  My dad works for the Woodsmen.  He’s—”

“Daughters aren’t allowed, either.”

My dad was the new Woodsmen head coach, I had been about to say.  “I know.  I’m Meredith Rob—”

“Football players only,” he concluded.

I stared at him.  If he interrupted me one more time, we were going to have a problem.  “Fine,” I retorted angrily.  “I was going to leave, anyway.”

“You were going to leave?  Then why did you hang yourself from that bar?”

With all the hair on his face, and with his hat pulled so low, I couldn’t tell his expression.  I also couldn’t tell from his voice if he was joking, or teasing me.  “I wasn’t hanging from there on purpose.  I wanted an ab workout and…and I couldn’t get back up.”  I hadn’t been able to reach the boots to get my feet out of them, and I hadn’t been able to grab the bar to unhook them and jump down, despite many, many long minutes of trying.

He nodded and tilted his chin up and down, like he was giving me a once-over.  “There’s a big hole in your pants,” he noted, and pointed at the juncture of my legs.

I crossed them.  “Thanks for noticing.”  The jerk.

“Anytime.”

“And thanks for lifting me down.  Goodbye.”  I made it halfway to the door when the giant spoke again.

“Where are you going?”

“Home, to make breakfast,” I said.  Why did he care?

“Do you make a lot?” the guy asked, angling his head thoughtfully.  “I need big quantities.”

“What?” I asked back, totally confused.  “Well, yes.  I make plenty.”

“Sounds good.”

What did?  I stared at him, but he didn’t speak again, and it was just so odd.

I really shouldn’t have come here, to Woodsmen Stadium.  My dad had been trying to get me to visit his new workplace since I had finally given in and moved with my brother to northern Michigan about a week before, but I had told him no, I didn’t want to go to the stadium, I didn’t want to go anywhere.  “I’m not interested,” I had mumbled over and over as I stared at my phone and checked on what my friends were doing back in California.  I had said the same thing when he wanted me to go to the beach, to the sand dunes, on hikes, waterskiing, golfing, winetasting, and the million other activities that he had explained there were to do here.  He sounded like he worked for their tourism board.

“Meredith, you and Brendan can’t stay in the house forever,” he kept telling me, but I had just shrugged.

However, it was true: you could only stay inside for so long, no matter how angry you were about having to uproot your life and come to Michigan.  It definitely wasn’t healthy for my brother.  Yesterday, I had pestered until Brendan tore himself away from his guitar long enough to go with our dad to the Woodsmen training facility to see the football team work out (although my brother told me later that he had waited in the car for most of that time).

I was getting out of the house too, but more covertly, because I wasn’t giving in to my dad just yet.  I had taken to running at night, after his nine o’clock bedtime.  It stayed light really late here, all the way up near the North Pole.  And today, I had also gotten up early enough to sneak out while my father was still in his room doing his morning routine of sit-ups, push-ups, stretching, and meditation.  I took the bike that he kept telling me to ride, and also his ID card that got me into Woodsmen Stadium through a door in the back that unlocked with a swiping thing.

The bike was how I was going to get home, right now.  I hurried out of the weight room and away from the giant man, who was planted in the center of the floor with his arms crossed, watching me.  I walked faster, looking over my shoulder, then did a skippy kind of jog, and then launched into a full run back out to the parking lot where I had stuffed the bike behind some garbage cans.  I jumped on and sped up the stadium driveway and out to the road.  First I went the wrong way, because the map on my phone pointed me in that direction but then swung around 180 degrees.  I had to double back and retrace where I had ridden, passing the stadium again.  My phone seemed to get confused up here, in the middle of nowhere, like it didn’t get what it was doing in Michigan.  I understood its feelings.

I puffed as I turned into the driveway of the house my dad had rented.  Despite those late-night runs, I had already fallen out of shape.  I wasn’t doing all the exercise classes I had gone to back in Los Angeles and it showed, definitely in my heart rate, and probably also in my butt.  I also puffed because even though it was still early, it was already getting hot.  It was much warmer in this place than it was right by the Pacific coast where we had