Not Another Bad Date Read Online Free Page B

football. Across the Longhorn State, high-school ball ruled the stands, whipping the faithful into a gridiron frenzy and charging the air with the electric buzz of twenty-five thousand cheering fans.
    Can I get a Glory Hallelujah?
    As the sun set over the flat plains of Cedar Creek, stacks of fifteen-hundred-watt lights flooded the green turf of Warren P. Bradshaw Stadium. Armed with felt pendants, bright pom-poms, and stadium blankets, half the population of Cedar Creek turned out to watch the Cedar Creek Cougars battle its crosstown rival, the Lincoln Panthers. With a shot at State on the line, the buildup to the game was intense.
    From the moment of the kickoff, a bruising back-and-forth brought the fans to their feet and the Panthers’ coach yelling at the refs and throwing his clipboard on the ground. By contrast, the Cougars’ coach stood on the sidelines as cool as a tall glass of sweet tea. Only his intense gaze gave Coach Zach Zemaitis’s turmoil away as he read the opposition’s defensive line, signaled his boys, and adjusted plays. He loved ball. Had played it from as far back as he could remember, but there was no cause to get all uptight and bust something vital. Yeah, he’d been born and raised near Austin, and he knew that high-school football was as serious as a heart attack. He knew that some of these boys’ futures depended on the outcome of the game, but he also knew it was supposed to be fun. Perhaps their last chance at ball in its purest form, before college scouts turned their heads around by attention, money, and the lure of NCAA scholarships.
    The two teams continued to hammer at each other until the last few moments of the game, when the Cougars scored a touchdown that brought them within one point of a tie. With three seconds left on the clock, they lined up on the Panthers’ two-yard line. The center snapped the ball and the quarterback handed off to his running back, who dove across the line for the two-point conversion. One side of the stadium went wild as the necessary two points flashed on the board. But unfortunately the same play that had saved the game for the Cougars sent their star running back to the West Central Baptist Hospital. There, fluorescent light washed the emergency rooms in sterile white, and teal-and-maroon curtains separated the beds of patients suffering from assorted illnesses, accidents, and overdoses.
    Zach Zemaitis stood with his weight on one foot and his hands on his hips as he gazed at the young man on the gurney before him. Pain etched Don Tate’s thin black face.
    Zach turned to the doctor beside him. “How long?” he asked even though he’d played long enough that he pretty much knew the answer.
    “After surgery, at least two months,” the doctor answered.
    That’s what he’d thought. “Shit.” Still in his junior year, Don was the best damn running back in the history of Cedar Creek High School, maybe in the history of the whole damn state of Texas. So far, he’d rushed for more than fifteen hundred yards for an average of ten. Scouts from Nebraska, Ohio State, and Texas A & M had reviewed Don’s tapes and were impressed with the seventeen-year-old boy. Football was Don’s ticket out of West Texas, and now this. A knee injury that could sideline his career before it even began. Shit.
    Don licked his dry lips, and fear pinched his brow. A real fear that Zach understood all too well. “Coach, I can’t be sidelined for two months.”
    “You’re going to be just fine,” Zach promised even though he wasn’t at all certain. Don had torn two ligaments in his left knee, and some guys never recovered one hundred percent.
    Zach dropped his hands to his side and made another promise he wasn’t sure about, but one he’d try like hell to keep. “No one’s going to take your place on the team.”
    “I gotta make All-State.”
    “You will. Next year. Shoot, Gerry Palteer tore up his knee in a game against the Gophers in ’89 and went on to make