Page 12 of The Session

“I think our program is pretty good. We put twenty pounds on our linebackers,” George said.

Mark tried to bite his tongue but couldn’t. He knew he’d regret it, but he tried to keep his tone light. “I work with fifteen-year-olds. You have nineteen-year-olds. And your guys are a little on the chonky side, if you don’t mind me saying.” Mark nodded toward the locker room. “They’re drinking those empty-carb shakes right now.”

“It’s called bulking up,” George said.

“For sure. But some might say it’s also extra calories they’ll have to work twice as hard to burn off, when they could be doing more practice drills.”

“And how many teams have you taken to division playoffs?” Adam asked.

“None. But you might have won last year’s division title if you’d taken the nutrition side a little more seriously,” Mark shot back.

“Point taken,” Cox said, cutting in. He wore a grin and seemed amused by the back-and-forth. “I’m sure you’re onto something. We’ll certainly keep you in mind.”

“We’ve got that Zoom meeting . . .” George reminded Cox.

Mark’s stomach clenched. He could feel his skin burning. This was not how he’d thought it would go.

“Right. Nice to meet you, Mark,” Cox said. “Give my best to Coach Stevenson.”

“If you get a chance, send him an email. I know he’d appreciate it,” Mark said.

“I don’t have his email address,” Cox said at the door.

“Oh? It should be in the message he sent you,” Mark told him.

Cox exchanged a look with Adam. The younger man shrugged.

“We never got a message from him,” Cox said.

Mark felt part of himself fall away. “You never got the email . . . Then why even meet with me?”

“You said you knew him. We were paying our respects. Anyhow, we’ll let you know if something comes up.”

The men left the room, leaving Mark alone.

He’d been through a lot of humiliating moments in his life, from rich kids making fun of his Goodwill clothes to getting dumped by his high school girlfriend because he couldn’t afford a nicer car. But this was different. This was professional embarrassment. The other humiliations came from his circumstances. This was about what he was—a pretender.

Arrivals

Mark stepped off the curb at the arrivals terminal, dropped his bag in the back, and climbed into the passenger seat of Holly’s Tesla Model 3, a graduation gift from her parents.

She had her dark hair pulled back in a ponytail and was wearing her glasses—which told Mark she’d had her head buried in her laptop when her reminder alarm went off.

It was a joke between them that Holly did everything by clockwork. She set alarms for everything—even when to use the restroom.

Her parents were physicians, and she grew up in a household with two sisters and high expectations. Mark’s friends pointed out to him all the time that he was dating way above his level. He laughed on the outside, but it gnawed at him. He had dated attractive women and smart women, but Holly was the full package, with an affluent family to boot.

Mark’s mom worked hard as the general manager of a Dollar General store, but such labor didn’t carry the same gravitas in Holly’s circles as it did in his. Holly never brought it up, but she tended to speak of Carol Greenley as being in “retail” and avoided the name of the store.

Mark didn’t think Holly was a snob—she was just aware that other people around her could be that way at times. Especially her parents.

“How are your folks doing?” Mark asked.

They had visited from Washington state and were doing some rural antiquing around Georgia.

“Good. We have dinner with them day after tomorrow. So tell me how it went.”

“The nonprofit was great. It was in a big, fancy building near the ocean.”