Chapter One
There’s no official protocol for handling the kids of the rich and famous at Rittenhouse Friends. The school’s policy is that all their students deserve the same education, whether they’re on scholarship or their grandfather is in the U.S. Senate.
Zeke gets that, in spirit. Totally gets that. Supports it. Believes in it. Lives the mission. In the three years he’s been at Rittenhouse Friends, he’s taught the kids of two former Pro Bowlers, the son of the Philadelphia baseball team’s $330 million man, and the late-in-life daughter the CEO of American’s largest telecommunications company had with his third wife.
He just wishes someone had given him a heads-up this time, that’s all.
“Who came to back-to-school night?” Jake, Zeke’s roommate and a pain in his ass since pre-K soccer, crows. There’s a look of delight on his broad, pale-skinned face. “Say it again, Ezekiel. I didn’t hear you.”
Zeke can feel himself blushing. He’s still tan enough from the summer that Jake probably can’t see it, but he hides his face in his beer anyway. They’re in their favorite hole-in-the-wall dive bar, eating Tuesday night $2 tacos to celebrate Zeke’s first day of school. “Don’t make me say it.”
“Was it,” Jake can’t even contain himself; Zeke doesn’t know why they’re friends, “your favorite winger on the Liberty? The guy whose sweater you wear to every game? Who I get to hear about your thirst for every fucking day?”
“I don’t talk about him that much!”
“You absolutely do.”
“I respect him as a player, okay,” Zeke hisses. “I respect what he’s overcome to get back to the top of the lineup.”
“You respect his abs.”
“He’s the parent of my student! I can’t have an opinion about his abs. And he was there with his mom and his secret kid.”
Jake is laughing so hard he’s crying. “Buddy. You’re so thirsty for that poor bastard.”
“I am a professional!” Zeke is. He’s a professional, which is why he had only dripped like, half his mouthful of coffee down the front of his Rittenhouse Friends polo when he looked up and saw Spencer fucking McLeod walk into the gym where he was holding his back-to-school meet-and-greets.
First he thought he’d been hallucinating; next he thought someone was pranking him.
But no, really, for real, there was Spencer McLeod—known winger for the Philadelphia Liberty, frequent fantasy fodder—holding the hand of a tiny little girl. He was so big, and she was so small, that Zeke’s brain short-circuited.
He was rescued by—holy shit—Spencer McLeod’s mother sweeping in to introduce herself.
“This is Spencer,” she said. “And this is Adeline.”
Muscle memory kicked in. “Hi, Adeline,” Zeke said, kneeling to greet her. She looked at him with big gray eyes, then immediately hid her face in Spencer McLeod’s leg.
Because Spencer McLeod had a kindergartener? Zeke needed a minute. Several minutes. All the minutes, because Spencer McLeod was saying, “She can be shy at first,” in the deep, gravelly voice Zeke knew from all his postgame interviews.
“That’s okay,” the teacher known to his students as Coach Boehm said, in the voice of a professional educator who had no feelings about anything in this situation, other than a sincere interest in helping the next generation of students at the Rittenhouse Friends School develop a lifelong appreciation for athletics, while honoring the integrity and intrinsic value of each individual child. This educator stood up, resettled his Penn State baseball cap on his too-long hair that he’d meant to get cut before school started, and shook hands with the McLeods. He talked about age-appropriate play-based learning, and did not make one single nervous joke about ha ha, probably don’t have much to teach this kid, right? because he had most certainly not memorized certain long-form ESPN profiles of certain parents and how they’d overcome an entire season spent on long-term injured reserve because of a migraine disorder.
Ms. McLeod did most of the talking, fortunately, and Zeke focused very carefully on the space between her two perfectly groomed dark eyebrows. He was supposed to be centering the child in the introduction to the Friends community but unfortunately, he could not
look at her, because looking at Adeline and her little pink dress with her little Nike sneakers meant looking at Spencer McLeod, and how he was bending his head toward her and a few strands of dark brown hair were falling across his creamy-pale cheek and—
Ms. McLeod coughed. Smiled.
And Zeke got with the program, because having Spencer McLeod ask to switch his secret daughter into Samar Carter’s section of P.E. was unimaginable.
Back at the bar, Jake is still laughing at him. Zeke steals one of his tacos in revenge. They’re only $2; Jake’s job title includes the word consultant and he wears a tie on the days he goes into his office in Center City. That bastard can afford to treat Zeke right if he’s going to mock him to his face.
“Do people know about this, though?” he asks over top of Jake’s cackles. “The secret kindergartener, and stuff.”
“If anyone was going to know, it would be you. Since you’re the Philadelphia metro’s foremost Spencer McLeod expert.”
“Shut up, I am not.”
“Are too.”
“Am not.” This is going basically the same way their conversations have been going since they were six years old, carpooling to youth soccer outside Williamsport, Pennsylvania; but this is a whole new situation. “Seriously though. Secret kid.”
Jake pulls out his phone and starts googling every combination of “Spencer McLeod + kid” and “Spencer McLeod + secret baby” that they can think of. Mostly it shoots back images that Zeke is uh, already familiar with—Libs holiday hospital visits, community events, Spencer—holy shit does Zeke have to start thinking about him as Mr. McLeod—looking all big and awkward with that goddamn smile it seems like he’s always trying to suppress—but there’s one post in the third page of results on a puck bunny Tumblr where someone asks for the deets on Spencer McLeod and ThunderBayBunny02 answers: sorry love, don’t recommend trying to get on that! he hung out w my friend from high school and it did NOT go well, got her pregnant and fucked off back to Philly like he didn’t have a care in the world!!
Eight people pile on immediately, saying there’s no way it’s true, but ThunderBayBunny02 goes all not saying any more than that, she never wanted it online and she’s been going through a hard time anyway! And then fifteen people tell her she’s a bitch for putting out this fake story that her fake friend obviously wouldn’t want on the internet even if there’s only a 1% chance it was real, and ThunderBayBunny02 does a full flounce into the Tumblr sunset.
Zeke and Jake stare at the phone screen for a while.
“A professional hockey player with a secret baby, huh,” Jake says, finally. “I think Quynh read that romance novel a few weeks ago.”
Zeke doesn’t want to live in a world where his kindergarten roster has anything in common with Jake’s girlfriend’s reading material, which is 50% true crime and 50% frothy romance. Maybe it’s better that it’s the romance novel side than the gory serial killer side?
But
still.
Spencer McLeod.
Secret baby.
On his roster. In his gym.
But the thing is: it’s fine once Zeke has taken a second to get over the surprise. It’s not like he’s ever going to have to see Spencer McLeod, really. Zeke’s the fucking gym teacher; it’s not like he’s Adeline’s lead teacher or anything.
He takes a deep breath. A swig of beer and a bite of taco. He’s going to be chill about it.
And he is chill about it, through the first week of classes, through the Libs’ training camp. Adeline’s great in gym: still shy, but she likes dancing and acting out animals, and Zeke majorly vibes with her aardvark impression. Her gross motor coordination is well ahead of the developmental curve. Put a ball in front of her, and her jaw stiffens up, and she gets a steely glint in her gray eyes that Zeke has previously observed barreling around the Broad Street Arena a time or two or twenty-five.
So fine, they do have one conversation where Zeke pulls her to the side and talks to her about not knocking our friends down. Yes, even if they aren’t as good at soccer as we are. Yes, even if we have a chance to score a goal. Because we want our friends to have fun, too, don’t we? And teamwork is important, right?
Adeline narrows her eyes. “That’s what Dad says.”
“It’s probably true, then.” Zeke can’t handle the thought of Spencer McLeod talking to his tiny daughter about the importance of teamwork in his deep, mumbly monotone.
“But Aunt Olivia says that if boys are getting in your way, you’re supposed to push them into a snowbank.”
“Your aunt Olivia is a very smart lady, but we don’t have any snowbanks in Philadelphia right now, so it hurts when you fall down.”
She narrows her eyes again. “I’ll think about it.”
“You do that,” Zeke tells her, then offers her a hand as they go back to the game.
So that’s okay. Just Zeke, doing his job. Being normal. Having no feelings about anything at all.
“I don’t want to go,” Zeke says a few days later. Jake has corporate tickets to a meet-and-greet event with the Liberty. Last season Zeke would have been all over that, but last season he didn’t have Spencer McLeod’s tiny secret daughter in his class.
“You understand that you are coming to this event with me,” Jake tells him. “I’m not going by myself and Quynh already has plans.”
“I already have plans.” Jake raises his bushy black eyebrows. Zeke is currently sitting under a blanket on the couch scrolling through Netflix. Admittedly, from the outside he does not look like a person who has plans that would keep him from taking a free ticket to an event
for his favorite professional sports team. He changes tactics. “You can’t make me.”
“I’ll tell my mom who spray-painted the dog blue at my cousin’s wedding.”
“You would not,” Zeke gasps, scandalized.
“I wouldn’t want to have to tell her the real story,” Jake says, looking down at his contacts list with a decent approximation of real sorrow. “I would certainly hate to have to tell her that her son’s dearest friend has been lying to her, for years, about an incident that resulted in his cousin’s—her beloved niece’s—wedding dress getting covered in blue paint. It would bring me real pain,” he says, finger hovering over the contact button for Mom.
“You don’t care this much,” Zeke tells him. “Take a friend from work. Take anyone else.”
“No,” says Jake. “I want to watch you suffer.”
Ah, the truth comes out. “You’re the worst best friend I’ve ever had.”
“Back atcha, bud.”
Zeke refuses—abso-fucking-lutely refuses—to wear a Spencer McLeod jersey. Which cuts into his Libs sweater game, since it turns out that he only owns Spencer McLeod jerseys. Jake laughs so hard he has to take himself out of Zeke’s room and into the kitchen for a glass of water; Zeke retaliates by sneaking into Jake’s bedroom and stealing his vintage Leroux Liberty jersey out of its glass case on his wall. It’s massive and comes almost down to his knees, the C closer to his stomach than to his chest where it’s supposed to be, but Zeke refuses to care about anything other than how annoyed Jake gets.
Zeke tells him it serves him right.
“We don’t even know if your man is going to show up,” Jake reminds him. “Maybe he’s not on the list for this one. He’s not exactly a social butterfly.”
“Yeah,” Zeke says, concentrating on not killing anyone as he edges his car southbound onto the highway. “He probably won’t even be there, right?”
But there he is, sitting at a table between his teammates Franky D’Amico and Quentin Gaudet. D’Amico is telling some loud story in his Italian-guy-from-New-York accent, making the mother-daughter combo at the front of the autograph line crack up; Spencer—Mr. McLeod—fuck—looks like he’s trying to smother a smile. Gaudet’s not bothering, leaning back in his chair and cackling up at the ceiling.
So basically, Zeke’s not going anywhere near that. He drags Jake over to the Liberty’s mascot to get a picture for one of his kids, and then talks to one of the season ticket sales reps for way too long, especially since she’s trying to narrow in on Jake, with his corporate pass and shiny black hair.
It’s going well. It’s going fine. Spencer McLeod is over there. Zeke is over here, having a normal one.
He just—okay. Nobody has ever accused him of being shy. He’s met plenty of Libs players before, at regular fan events or all-access swanky shit with Jake. He has no problem shooting the shit about the last game or the next game or literally whatever the fuck comes up. He had a pretty long conversation with D’Amico at one of these things last
season, actually: somehow they got into an argument about the best brunch spot in Philly, and at the end of it D’Amico had thumped him on the shoulder, thanked him for the support, and called him a solid dude.
He’s even met Spencer McLeod. Mumbled thanks at him while McLeod signed his jersey, then moved on to the next fan in line.
But there’s somehow a huge difference between fan events and his real life. He doesn’t want McLeod to feel like his tiny daughter—his tiny secret daughter!—is in the hands of someone wanting to bask in the, like, reflected glory; someone who wants to ask him for a picture so he can brag to all his buddies later. The thought of going up to that table, wondering if McLeod is going to recognize him—if Spencer McLeod is going to recognize him—if he’s going to have to awkwardly explain, oh, uh, from—Rittenhouse Friends? Gym teacher? Had to talk to your child about rules and expectations? while knots squirm around in his stomach, while McLeod blinks those sleepy gray eyes, all stiffly polite like he always is at fan events (which Zeke knows, because Zeke goes to them and watches him, which is beyond creepy now that he’s thinking about it) and then asks for Addie to be moved to Samar Carter’s gym class.
The season ticket rep still has Jake pinned down, so Zeke seizes his opportunity to bail.
He slips through the crowd and ducks into the nearest bathroom. It’s empty, blessedly, and he’s meeting his brown eyes in the mirror and preparing to give himself a good, stern talking-to when someone walks in and—it’s Spencer fucking McLeod.
McLeod blinks at him in halfway recognition. This is absolutely as bad as Zeke thought it would be.
“Um, hi,” Zeke says before he can think about it too much. His automatic reaction in any situation where he’s uncomfortable is to start talking, a habit that his mother never managed to break him of. “I’m uh. Coach B. Er, Boehm. From Rittenhouse.”
“Oh,” McLeod says. “Yeah,” and then he makes a face, this halfway wince that Zeke recognizes from postgame interviews when he’s not loving the line of questioning from the beat reporters.
“It’s fine,” Zeke says. “I was just, um, going.” Back out to the lobby, where he is going to contemplate hurling himself off the top of the escalator.
“No, wait,” Spencer McLeod tells him, then smiles. All the way. It looks so good on him. Zeke is having an out-of-body experience in a bathroom in the Broad Street Arena. “Addie loves your class.”
“She does?” he asks cautiously. “She’s a great kid,” and then he’s babbling about gross motor skills and developmental curves and Jesus Christ, Ezekiel, shut up, but Spencer McLeod is blushing, and looking at the toes of his sneakers, and when Zeke finally engages the
emergency brake on his runaway mouth, McLeod looks up and smiles wider.
He says, “Yeah, it’s kind of new, and it’s been a big transition, but she really is great.” Zeke is done, he is just fully done. That’s before McLeod asks him, “So do you want to come meet the guys?” as if he specifically wants Zeke to experience a nice thing.
“You didn’t go to the bathroom though,” is what Zeke says, because his brain is terrible.
McLeod makes a dismissive face. “I just needed a break for a minute, actually.”
“Don’t let me get in your way,” Zeke tells him, because he is now getting in his own way. But McLeod shrugs it off and walks him over to where D’Amico and Gaudet are grabbing bottles of water, then introduces him as Addie’s favorite teacher. Zeke gets whacked by Franky D’Amico for the second time in his life, and asked if he’s admitted that Day By Day is the best brunch in Philly yet.
“Oh, you know each other?” McLeod asks, eyes flicking from Zeke to D’Amico and back again.
“We met one time.” A pointless effort from Zeke, because D’Amico is bellowing out the play-by-play of their ten-minute interaction from last February.
“I didn’t know you were such a fan,” McLeod says once D’Amico has wound down.
“I guess, yeah,” Zeke answers, like he’s cool, like he’s a person who does not own four different Liberty sweaters that all have McLeod lettered across the shoulders, and who has not attended enough games since he moved to Philly that he might as well just buy the partial season tickets from that super-thirsty rep.
“Let me know if you ever want me to leave you tickets or anything,” McLeod tells him.
Zeke mumbles something grateful but equivocal as his brain short-circuits again. He manages to say something about needing to go find his buddy, tells Quentin Gaudet and Franky D’Amico and Spencer McLeod good luck in their season opener against Boston, and then he gets the fuck out of there and attaches himself to Jake’s side like an aggressive little limpet (Jake’s words, not Zeke’s).
A few minutes later, Zeke catches Franky D’Amico—to be clear, Franky fucking D’Amico, the Libs’ top-line center and clutch faceoff guy, who is expected to get an A on his sweater any day now—looking at him from across the room with a considering expression on his face.
That’s it. That’s officially as much as he can take.
“Get the fuck in the car or your ass is on SEPTA,” he tells Jake, and means it.
Chapter Two
One week later, he has an email.
From Spencer McLeod.
In his inbox.
Samar hears him yelp and looks up from her computer. They share an office, a glorified closet off the basketball gym that’s always overflowing with bouncy balls and cones and yoga mats from Zeke’s Young Yogis Club.
“God, what?” she asks, pushing her braids over her shoulder.
“I,” he says. “I can’t talk.”
She coughs out something that sounds like yeah fucking right.
“I can’t breathe,” he says. “I can’t deal with this. Carter, I need to give you a student.”
“I thought you liked your kids this year, as you fucking should,” she says suspiciously. Samar managed to get both of the known agents of chaos in third grade (twins who clearly have undiagnosed learning differences, and Zeke is not a doctor and his opinion is not based on a medical diagnosis, but he would put actual money from his actual salary on ADHD for both of them) (which is fine, obviously, but they need a treatment plan that isn’t their parents telling the school to try harder) (Zeke had them last year and he does not have time for parents who don’t believe in supporting their children, if their children don’t turn out exactly the way they’d wanted) and the fifth grader with a deeply, deeply overinvolved mom who is, in fact, the daughter of a U.S. senator.
“The student is fine,” he wheezes.
“Oh, parent trouble?” Samar’s probably fresh off answering eighteen emails about Pennsylvania’s junior senator’s grandchild.
“Ye-e-es.” He pauses and covers his face with his hands. Peeks through his fingers at his screen. ...
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