The Brightest Stars ✨

Chapter 30

I, um...suggest not reading this in public lmao. There's some plot there somewhere, if you like...squint.
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Gabe got a little teary eyed at dinner and if anyone asked him he would deny it and blame it on...allergies. He had been a football coach at this school going on 3 years now, and the senior class that was matriculating had been some of the first students that had signed up for the team.

They had been through a lot together, getting to know them, gaining each of their trust and convincing them he wasn't just another white saviour trying to feel warm and fuzzy by taking on kids from the projects, huge losses, where they had to take their licks and still conduct themselves with confidence and pride, difficulties off the field in their personal lives, building a community and not just a team; providing them with a solid role model and not just a coach that screamed in their face for missing passes.

Some of them were even going off to college, when it might not even have been on their horizon to begin with, because he had dared to instill expectations for them to do well and go further.

Pride was almost bursting out of him as he looked around the dinner table. He hadn't felt this connected to a group of people since leaving the Marine Corps. When he was asked, why did he keep coming back semester after semester? Why did he love this job? When with his experience he could easily be on 6 or 7 figures, and it was this feeling right here. A sense of purpose.

Despite Gabe's frankness about war and lobbying to ban recruiters from their high school, some of these boys were adamant they were going to join the military. But having a good high school diploma now meant they weren't just going to be infantry cannon fodder, they could get onto the more competitive designations with training programmes that could benefit them as civilians.

With the student athlete programme he and Natalia had set up, they could get even more kids into college with scholarships in the next coming years and it was more than he had ever dared to dream of happening in such a short period of time.

After dinner he needed a few drinks to decompress and brood over, and that's when he met up with Ty. Dan had been there but he had to leave as soon as Gabe had walked in, he had baby mama problems — his words, to their collective amusement; then it was just Ty and Gabe at their favourite watering hole.

"Thanks for the construction outfit you referred me to," Gabe said once they had shot the shit, and he was settled in with his second drink of the night. The great thing about Ty, he could start sentences in the middle and he'd know exactly what Gabe was referring to.

"Yeah, you check them out?"

"Sure did, I'm just waiting for escrow to close on the farm house and I can contract them."

"Damn, if I was your chick I'd get on my knees for you."

Gabe cracked up at that remark. "If you want to suck me off just say that."

"Fuck you," Ty swigged from whiskey tumbler.

Everyone and their grandma had known how much Natalia wanted and loved the farmhouse and now he'd completed the purchase in time for her birthday. He knew she hated celebrating it but he couldn't let the occasion pass without marking it somehow. Not after she'd given him his life back but a whole new set of dreams and goals.