The Job Description

Chapter 6: The Job Description

Aima's POV

Coach Daniel Isaiah had waited until the press room doors swung shut before he finally said a word.

He was a big man, I must say. He was broad in the shoulders like his son. But tonight he looked more tired than usual.

There were grey shadows under his eyes.

He looked at Dom first. Then he looked at me, at the jacket hanging off my shoulders, and at my hand, which Dom was still holding.

"Meet me in my office," he said to Dom.

"Don't waste my time! I need you to explain the nonsense you exhibited out there."

He then turned to me slowly, and in a quiet tone, he said, "And you are?"

"Aima," I said. My voice came out smaller than I wanted.

"She's my girlfriend," Dom said, like he was reading it off a card. "And she's our new team assistant. Towels, water, stats. We're short-handed."

Coach Daniel's eyebrows went up. "Are we?"

"I think so."

I braced for the questions.

Instead, the Coach studied me for a long moment, as though he was planning to send me away on the spot.

"Do you know anything about basketball, Aima?"

"I thought about eighteen months of train journeys. Cold seats in sports halls all over the country, watching James play. Me, in the third row, holding his water bottle, learning every play he ran until I could call them before he did."

"I know every play James Dakas runs," I said. "And I know exactly where he's weak."

Something moved across the Coach's face. It wasn't a smile; I couldn't explain it.

"Probation," he said. "Four weeks. You work hard, you keep your head down, and you do not make my son's life harder than it already is."

"Yes, Coach."

"Fair play, Aima. That's the only rule in this building that matters."

He walked away.

Dom let go of my hand so fast it felt like a door closing.

My fingers were still warm where his had been. I curled them into my palm so he wouldn't see.

"Come on," he said.

The staff quarters turned out to be a room above the physio suite, at the end of a corridor that smelled of Deep Heat and floor polish.

Dom unlocked the door and pushed it open. He stood back without stepping inside.

It was small. A narrow bed. A desk with a wobbly leg. A radiator that clanked when he turned the dial. One window looking out over the car park, and a single lamp that threw a yellow circle onto the wall.

It was the first room in a week that was mine.

My throat went tight. I swallowed hard, because I would not cry in front of Dominic Isaiah.

"Practice is at six," he said. "Not five past. Six. Your job is towels, bottles, stat sheets, and staying out of the way. You don't talk to the players unless they talk to you. You don't go near the office. And you don't ask me for favours."

"Yes, sir," I said.

His jaw tightened. "Don't do that."

"Do what?"

"Be clever about it."

"I wasn't being clever. I was being obedient."

He looked at me a second too long. I thought he might say something else.

Instead, he crossed to the window and tested the lock with his thumb. Then he bent down to check the radiator was working.

"Keep that jacket on in public," he said. "People need to see it."

Then he left.

I stood in the middle of the room and listened to his footsteps fade down the corridor.

He had been rude from the first word to the last. But he had checked the window lock.

I noticed that, and I didn't know where to put it.

I sat on the bed. The mattress was thin, but it was dry. The sheets smelled of washing powder instead of damp.

For the first time since Bristol, nobody was shouting at me. Nobody was watching me.

The silence was so big it almost hurt.

My canvas bag sat on my knees, still wet at the bottom. I unzipped it and pushed my clothes aside.

There they were. The things I had refused to leave behind, even when Aunt Bridget was throwing the rest of my life out into the rain.

James's old notebooks. Five of them, the cheap spiral kind with bent covers. He had filled them when he was fourteen and fifteen and sixteen, with drills and dreams in thick black pen.

"Play for England. Buy Mum a proper headstone."

Under them was a plastic folder stuffed with receipts. The physio. The boots. The camp fees. The train tickets, each stamped with a date I could clearly remember.

Behind those were the messages I had printed at the library, because I hadn't trusted my phone to keep them.

"I couldn't have done this without you, Aima. You're my whole world."

"Don't ever let me forget what you gave up."

I ran my thumb over that last line.

He had typed it at 1:00 in the morning, the night before his first big trial. I had read it on my mum's old sofa and cried, because I thought it meant he loved me.

It had only meant he knew all I did for him.

I didn't have a plan yet. I only knew I couldn't throw any of it away.

Every page was proof of everything I had been, and everything he had decided to forget. I wanted to hold it. I wanted him to feel the weight of it.

My phone buzzed. It was Tolu, asking if I was alive.

I sent back a thumbs-up and a photo of the room. She replied with six crying faces and "Jesus Christ! Who is this guy, Aima?"

I smiled for about two seconds.

Then the phone buzzed again in my hand, the cracked screen flickering, and the smile disappeared.

It wasn't Tolu.

The name at the top of the screen was one I had saved four years ago, back when I still thought it was safe to love someone.

It was James.

"We need to talk, please," the message read.

I stared at the words until they blurred.

Ohh wow! Did he type the word please?

He had never said that when I was on his doorstep, soaked through, begging. Now he had seen me in another boy's jacket, and suddenly he could say it.

The radiator clanked. Outside, a car door slammed.

I didn't reply. I put the phone face down on the desk and sat very still, listening to my own heartbeat.