Page 65 of Hard Count
He looked up. The head coach was looking at him. The head coach looked away as Noah stood.
When he went back to the bench, he picked up the laminated call sheet he hadn’t needed all half and studied it harder than he usually did. He had been on fire this season and was falling apart, and the last thing he ever wanted to blame was the only thing that was bringing him joy, Piper Ashton.
The head coach called them back up.
“Everything else is fucking noise,” he said.
Noah adjusted his helmet strap. “I can fucking fix this coach.”
***
They adjusted in the third.
Short routes and faster reads as Noah led the opening drive.
He took four drops instead of five, dumped the ball inside the numbers before the rush could matter. A slant to Darius for nine. An in-route to the tight end for twelve. A play-action rollout off the left tackle that got him outside the pressure.
Eleven plays. Touchdown. Score: San Francisco 17, Seattle 7.
San Francisco was able to answer in the next series with a field goal. Score: San Francisco 20, Seattle 7.
The defensive tackle lined up across from his center again.
“You still here, pretty boy?”
Almost friendly this time.
Noah looked away from him. “I don’t think you want to start with me,” he finally replied.
He changed the play at the line, a new route. He didn’t call it out. He tapped his thigh twice, and Darius read it from the slot, adjusted his split by half a yard.
Snap.
The pocket collapsed almost immediately.
The tackle came through the gap untouched. Somebody had missed the slide. Noah felt the pressure before he saw it. He stepped up, one clean stride, slid right.
He saw Darius running into a deep third with a safety closing and the corner five yards underneath trying to catch up. The window was the size of a dog door.
Noah threw. He felt the hit before the ball left his hand, took it across his lower back, and went down with his eyes still on the ball.
The ball cut through the window. Darius caught it in the end zone.
Forty-one yards. Touchdown.
Score: San Francisco 20, Seattle 14.
Noah was getting up when the tackle, on his way back to the sideline, leaned close.
“Lucky throw, Mary.”
Noah looked at him this time.
He went quiet, and it took everything in his control not to kick the living shit out of this asshole.
The tackle grinned, his mouth opening, as his tongue set up on the roof of his mouth for the word he had been saving all game.
“Faggot.”
