Laura had wondered how she was going to fill in all her spare hours during the summer months as soon as vacation started. She’d been looking down the barrel at three months of nothing more than Star Wars rewatches and following Scotty around like a pathetic puppy. Surely she had to have more going on for her than that.
Luckily, when their boss had asked for volunteers for summer camp, her hand had shot into the air right away.
“You don’t have to put your hand up, Laura. You’re a coach, not a student,” Principal Meyers had said, smirking from the other side of his desk. His gaze had eventually turned warm. “But I’ll put your name down anyway.”
Coach Vidala had been glad that summer camp wouldn’t pose a threat to her family vacation to the Caribbean and Coach April, while horrendously nice to work with, had wrinkled her nose and declared, “I really don’t want to do that.” Which left Laura and Coach Matea taking the reins for the summer, an arrangement which suited the brunette perfectly fine.
“You go eat,” Matea told Laura, pinning her blunt, dark bob back with a headband. “I’ll set up for the post-lunch session.”
“Are you sure?” Laura asked worriedly. “You need to eat too, dude.”
Matea fixed her with a pitying look, hands propped on her hips.
“Sometimes your obliviousness is really cute, but other times I worry. I’ve literally been snacking on like, three Babybels an hour since we got here this morning. My girlfriend just buys me them in bulk from Costco now.”
At Laura’s questioning look, Matea jiggled the rackety drawer of the equipment trolley open, revealing a veritable mountain of red wax peels from all her snacks.
“You’re like a stealth cheese eater,” Laura solemnly declared, before allowing Matea to send her off to the staff room.
As she entered, a spring in her step and her ponytail swinging, she almost faltered when she realised Coach Woodrow - Gordy, although Laura had never called him that to his face - was already in there. Of course, the football players also had a summer programme, which would never be a problem to Laura if it weren’t for the fact that she hadn’t had the foresight to realize this heightened the possibility of spending a prolonged amount of time with their coach. A man who seemed to take it ill out every time he saw Laura, his expression contorting into one of discomfort, as if she was causing him actual pain just by doing him the disservice of existing near him.
She barely suppressed a wince, and plastered a friendly smile on her face instead.
“Hi, Coach,” she greeted him, before crouching down by the fridge so she could open it and bring out her Tupperware boxes full of her lunch food. Turning to set them down on the low coffee table, she stood up again to reach for the coffee machine, only to see an abandoned cup full of dark, sludgy muck already sitting there.
“Oh, the filter again?” she asked, glancing over her shoulder at Gordy, figuring the cup was his.
Suddenly delighted at being able to do something that could potentially help her work her way into Gordy’s good favour, she bounced on the spot.
“I can fix that!” she said, only barely managing to stop herself from slipping into a Russian accent - Chekov style. Briskly, she shrugged her cheer jacket off and rolled up the sleeves of her sweatshirt so she could quickly get to work.
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