Team Mates Read Free Page A

balls as they came flying past. One off of Jasmine's hands hit the floor with a whip-like crack, streaking towards the far wall.
     
    “Offense is only half of the game. To be able to spike the ball for a kill, you have to have control. And you get that by fielding the ball when the other team tries to make a kill shot of their own. We're not very good at that. Our back line is terrible, really.”
     
    “Hmmmm.” Alan made a mental note to see what he could find out about defensive drills in the next few days. Maybe he could find something online which would help. “Can I ask you a question, Lindsey?”
     
    “Sure, Coach.”
     
    He looked across the gym at Tabitha. She was standing in the spike line beside Stacie, laughing at something the taller girl said. “That thing Tabitha mentioned earlier this afternoon...”
     
    “About her sexuality?”
     
    “God, yes.” He scrubbed his face with his hands, trying not to feel like a pervert, though he was damned if he could figure out what the hell he was supposed to feel embarrassed about. “Do any of the other girls...do they treat Tabitha differently? Harass her? Give her a rough time?”
     
    “One or two might, if they thought they could get away with it. Heather, for one. She's made some bitchy remarks. Maybe Claudia, too. Her parents are into that fundamentalist bullcrap. But they know if they tried they'd have Stacie to deal with.”
     
    “Oh, yes, the twin terrors of Roosevelt High,” Alan smiled. Even he, insulated as he was from teenage gossip by his teaching position, knew the weight the two girls threw around in the social hierarchy of the school. Beautiful, smart, and popular, they could make or break someone just by trying. Luckily enough, however, neither seemed to be terribly interested in the sort of petty power game many kids their age enjoyed. He eyed the lines of girls, which seemed to be moving slower. “I think we've got them wore out, Lindsey. Let's move to the next drill.”
     
    *****
     
    The next few days went well, as far as Alan could tell. When he wasn't teaching or grading papers, he spent all his time researching volleyball and implementing new drills. It might have been his imagination, but he thought he could see improvement from several players.
     
    His main problem, however, came from an unexpected direction. He had never imagined the effect of watching fifteen young women, all of them spectacularly fit, on his libido. After the first practice, he had started masturbating as soon as school ended, so he didn't end up sporting an erection while trying to coach the team.
     
    Added to that was the knowledge that at least one of the girls on his team was bisexual. Tabitha Harrington was one of the most attractive girls in school, and had already played a walk-on role in some of Alan's midnight fantasies. He had been without a partner for months, and he could not help but wonder if she had a female lover. During a few distracted moments his fertile imagination had paired Tabby with some of the other girls on the team, watching them as they stripped their clothes off and pleasured each other.
     
    Sick, Alan, he thought. You're just sick. Find someone your own age. You're not a teenager anymore, so cut out the schoolgirl fantasies.
     
    Blinking, he drew himself back into the present. It was Thursday afternoon, and they were having their last practice before their match against Ames West. Blowing on the whistle, he drew the girls into a huddle.
     
    “OK, we've got a new drill today,” he said, ignoring the groans around him. “Right now, our back line is awful,” he said. “We need to get better at fielding the ball when the other team spikes it. So I've brought these.” He gestured to one side of the gym, where a pile of wrestling mats was waiting.
     
    “We're going to use these so we don't hurt ourselves today.”
     
    “What are we going to do, wrestle?” Rachel Adams asked snidely.
     
    “Tabitha might like that,”