The Education of Giacomo Jones Ch. 05

"That looked line a NFL defense," Rance remarked to Matt Crews afterward as they walked out of the classroom together. "We've got our work cut out for us."

"Tell me about it," Crews said. "We're going to have to put in more time tomorrow and Tuesday breaking this down and I am going to tell the rest of the O-line I expect them to join us. Georgia's too damn good for us not to play as smart as we can."

"Good plan," Rance said.

"And we're going to need you at right tackle if we have any hope of making the read-option viable. Really glad you're back. You think you're up to it?" Crews said.

"Tomorrow will tell," Rance said. "Hey I don't have any classes til 10:30 tomorrow morning. What's your class schedule look like?"

"I got an 8 o'clock and a lab at 10:30. I could be here from, say, 9:15 to 10:15. You thinking we should do a little breakdown in advance of sitting down with the whole line?" Crews said.

"Read my mind," Rance said.

"See you then," Crews said.

Rance's phone buzzed in his pocked as he and Hurley walked to Hurley's car. It was Gia.

I got a couple of Jimmy John's subs being delivered. Come over for supper, she texted.

OTW, he replied.

"Gene can you drop me of?" Rance said to Hurley.

"Sure. Out at the Courtyard?" Hurley said.

"Nope. Honors College dorm," he said.

Hurley's eyes widened and he looked at Rance.

"Whoa, she's moved back into her room? I thought she'd never be able to set foot inside that place again," Hurley said.

"My girl isn't just smart, but maybe the most mentally resilient person I've ever known," Rance said.

"I reckon so," Hurley said. Three minutes later he dropped Rance off at the front awning of the residence hall and he bounded up the stairs to room 218. Gia answered his knock in her pajamas.

The single slice of pizza Rance had wolfed down during the Titans-Steelers game was the only thing he'd eaten since the late breakfast he and Gia had on their way out of Myrtle Beach. But that was one slice of Pizza Don's more than she'd had. She had already eaten half of her sub and was attacking the other half when he arrived. They finished off their sandwiches as she idly channel-surfed. She stopped on the tail end of the CBS football postgame wrap-up. Moments later, the familiar stopwatch ticking sound and the logo onscreen: "60 Minutes." It was the season premiere.

The first story was about the disastrous U.S. exit from Afghanistan a few months earlier and the brutal personal, military and geopolitical consequences. It was reported by Bill Whitaker. They watched in attentive silence. Whitaker was soft-spoken and respectful but persistent in pressing Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to answer his well-researched and well-reasoned questions.

They didn't take their eyes off the screen until the segment ended 20 minutes later and a commercial came on. Then they looked at each other.

"Tell Glazer I'll do it," Gia said.

●●●

"This isn't always the case but the nose tackle likes to go real low and real fast when they've got a pass rush on," Matt Crews said as he reran the video of the preseason second-team All-American Georgia defensive lineman he would face on Saturday. "Sometimes he will just shoot the gap and react, but by my count, he likes to get real high - almost standing straight up - 85 percent of the time when he's trying to read the block and play the run. Leaves his belly exposed and sets him up real well for double-teams."

Crews and Rance had been poring over Georgia defensive game film for almost an hour and had come up with some tendencies they could exploit, but nowhere near as many easy tells and vulnerabilities they had detected and exploited in most every game to that point.

Georgia mixed up its defensive fronts, sometimes playing four linemen with a hand in the turf and other times - generally obvious passing downs - going with a three-man front. In the four-man alignment, Rance had noticed that the defensive end was prone to pull his free arm - the one not on the ground - back farther when he was coming hard after the quarterback or to just disrupt the play in the backfield. His theory was that he was looking for some extra thump when he slammed that free arm into the chest the tackle or tight end in front of him, but the film showed he was just as prone to do a shoulder dip or a swim-over move on a speed rush to squirt past a blocker rather than tie himself brutalizing his opponent because a direct blow tended only to slow his progress.

He also noticed that every time the defensive end cocked his free arm back, the linebacker or the safety would shoot the inside gap on a blitz. That was a data point that he suspected might pay dividends in a few crucial instances.

The video replayed itself over and over in Rance's head as he left the athletics complex for his 10:30 class about a quarter of a mile away. He was consumed by it, barely noticing his surroundings on his walk to class. It had been an eventful morning already, but the images of the Georgia defense now took precedence.

Rance had texted Mitch Glazer and told him he needed to speak with him ASAP. They had met at 8 and in the Mother Ship and he informed the school's lead sports flack that Gia had agreed to do with "60 Minutes" interview. When and where were details she had yet to decide and he'd let her know as soon as she did. Rance imagined Glazer would be giddy with the news, but he nodded quietly, as if confirming that it was a wise decision, and said only that he'd call Whitaker later in the morning.

Rance met with his therapist in a room in the training and sports medicine section of the practice complex just before his film session with Crews and answered a battery of questions. At the end, the session, the therapist said he'd notify Coach Hemp that he was cleared for the active roster immediately. But Rance beat him to it. He knocked on his coach's door on the way to the film study room and delivered the news.

He had texted Gia informing her of Glazer's reaction, and then later informing her that he had been cleared to return. She had not texted back either time. That worried him.

You OK baby? he texted to her as he walked to his 10:30 class.

Fine. Trying to catch up on some study time I've missed. We were together so much past few weeks it's hard being without you, Gia replied.

She had a point. Rance had felt strangely off-balance, too, without his nearly constant presence with Gia. By the end of his second class of the day, "Western Culture, 1400 to 1607," the urge to see Gia was overpowering.

Lunch? I can p/u something at the Commons Grill and bring it over in about 10 minutes, he texted.

She texted back: Small grilled chicken Caesar. Tnx. Studying outside on the terrace.

They spread their lunches on the terrace picnic table and ate mostly in silence. Gia's mood was flat, almost glum.

"What's the matter," Rance asked.

"I'm fine."

Rance grabbed her hand and looked her in the eye. "Nah. What's the matter, baby?"

She looked at him and abandoned the flimsy pretense that nothing was bothering her.

"It's ma. She's hearing from friends that some of Geno's family in the old neighborhood are grumbling about what happened to him, that they shot him down like a dog, that they did it to make sure he couldn't have an open-casket funeral. Really idiotic stuff," Gia said. "I called her last night to let her know I had moved back into the HC studio and she mentioned it."

Rance put his arm around her as they sat at the table to reassure her.

"Is she being threatened?" he said.

"No threats. Not yet anyway. She doesn't know whether something like this will just die down or if it will fester and somebody will do something to her or our house or whatever. We didn't know Geno's family - kept to themselves. Wasn't really a family, just a lot of kids born out of wedlock to different women. Some of them were rumored to have very low-grade mob connections, but I don't think the mob had any need for them."

Rance kissed her forehead.

"How closely is your mom connected to that community? To Bergen County?"

"Ridgefield Park. Not far from Teterboro Airport and the stadium where the Giants and Jets play," Gia said. "Not very. Mom grew up across the river in Queens. That's where the Bertolli family settled, where her family connections are. She moved to New Jersey with dad a little before I was born for his job with the Marine Corps. She's got some friends through her Catholic Church parish, but that's pretty much it. Been so much turnaround on our block that she only knows a couple of neighbors' by name. Opiates are everywhere. She said three kids from families in her parish OD'd from Oxycontin or Fentanyl just this month."

"What keeps her there, baby? I get the feeling a change would do her a lot of good. Maybe back to Queens if she wants to be near her Bertolli family. Maybe down South to be nearer you," Rance said. "She own or rent her house?"

Gia said her mom wouldn't want to live in Queens again. Just too many people packed into too little space. She had talked about moving to California or Texas at one time, but that was right after dad died and she just wanted to get away from all the pain of the neighborhood. Gia said that it was largely because of her and the success she was having in a highly regarded Catholic school that she stayed, and by the time she came to Fulbright, the mortgage had been paid off, she owned the house free and clear, "and a sort of inertia just set in."

"Maybe this is the time for her to cash in on that house and go somewhere she's always wanted - not near any airport. People are getting insane amounts for their houses. I read where asking price is just a starting point and that nearly every house out there ends up in a bidding war with people paying five, even 10 percent over asking price. And the hottest markets are around New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Florida," Rance said, picking at his calzone. "She could unload a house in that market for a mint and come down South or into the Midwest and buy a mansion with it."

Gia nodded. Rance couldn't read her expression, whether she thought the idea had merit or was bullshit. He let it drop.

"What time's class?" he asked her.

"Forty-five minutes. I probably need to go get a little more presentable than your old high school jersey that you gave me that I use as a sleep shirt," she said. The garment swallowed her, drooping almost two-thirds of the way to her knees - and Gia is no diminutive girl.

"I'll help you carry your stuff to the room," Rance said.

They walked inside, leaving the cool breeze and the increasingly overcast afternoon behind. Rance placed her books on her desk and what little of her salad she had not eaten into her fridge, then reached around her waist as she slipped the jersey over her head, slightly startling her. She wore no bra and a pair of pale blue cotton panties.

Gia dropped the shirt on her bed and turned in his arms to face him and turned her face upward as his mouth found hers. His hands roamed from her butt up her spine and then back down along her flanks, her naked breasts pressing into him. His hands slipped beneath the waistband of her panties and kneaded both of the perfect hemispheres of her ass as their kiss continued. When he pushed further along her cleft reaching for her pussy, she pulled back slightly and interrupted him.

"Hold on, Romeo. Much as I'd love to get horizontal with you right now, two good reasons not to. One, I don't have time to do that and then get showered and make it to class on time. Two, I just started this morning, so...," she said with a mock frown. "So your little head needs to settle down," she said patting the bulge in his blue jeans, "and get your big one needs to think about Georgia."

"OK," Rance said. "Two very good reasons."

Gia nodded sympathetically.

"Mind if I chill here a few minutes while you shower?" he said. "Just want to send a few emails on my phone."

"La mia casa è la tua casa," she said in her mother's family's tongue. "And by the way, thank you for your interest in Ma. I think you had some really good ideas and I will pass them on to her when I call her this afternoon."

She peeled off her panties and disappeared into the bathroom and turned on the shower. Rance composed an email to his father:

Hi Dad,

Gia's a little worried about her mom living in the old NJ neighborhood. Some of Callie's friends are telling her that Geno Millions' relatives are grumbling about the way the psychopath got put out of his misery.

Can any of your contacts with the feds tell you whether they're picking up any credible chatter about any danger Callie might be in?

BTW, totally confidential, Gia agreed to do an interview with 60 Minutes and a reporter named Bill Whitaker. No decision yet on when or where. More as that develops.

Love u,

Rance

He hit send, then emailed his Aunt Semmie - his mother's older sister - and thanked her for the use of the condo in Myrtle Beach over the weekend. He told her it was very helpful in Gia's recovery. And, mindful that she was a real estate executive with contacts throughout the Carolinas, Virginia, Georgia and Florida, asked her if she had any estimates on what a house sold in the near New Jersey suburbs of New York City might be able to bring and what sort of house that would buy somewhere in the Southeastern United States.

Rance tapped on the bathroom door.

"Who is it?" Gia said in a singsong, girlish voice.

"Ed Sheeran," he replied, opening the door onto the small, steamy bathroom. "Hey, baby, I'm going on down to the IPF to get a head start on practice today. OK to drop by after practice? May be late because we're doing extra film study with the offensive line."

"Sure," she said, sliding the shower curtain to one side, her face beaming at him. "But can I get a kiss first?"

He stepped next to the shower curtain, careful not to slip on the moist tile floor, gave her a more than chaste peck, then said, "Love you" before he left.

"Love you too, 74. Have a great practice this afternoon," she said.

●●●

It was just before 7:30 when Rance tapped on the door of Gia's studio. She opened it and handed him the strawberry milkshake and cheeseburger the Uber Eats delivery woman had transported from Sonic about 15 minutes earlier.

"How was the first practice back?" Gia said, sinking back into her love seat and diving back into the molecular biology textbook she had been absorbing all day.

"It's kind of shocking to get back to midseason college-level contact so abruptly after such a long time off. And I am not in great football shape. Those workouts the past couple of weeks were exhausting, but there's in-shape and there's football shape. I got to get into football shape and fast," he said.

"The facilities and equipment folks were asking about you, wondering if or when you'd be back," he added.

"I plan to come back, but I have a lot to catch up on academically if I am going to graduate in two months with a top GPA as I had planned. I've fallen behind a little," she said. "I got to get into whatever the classroom and exam equivalent of football shape is."

Rance wolfed down the burger and shake and sat beside her. It occurred that they hadn't even kissed yet, so he leaned into her and they exchanged a chaste peck on the lips.

"What's on your mind, beautiful," Rance asked.

"Oh... you know. Same thing. Lots of reading, some tests to make up, a couple of research papers I have to crank out, when and how to get back to my work for athletics at the IPF," she said somewhat absently. "And mom."

"Oh, what happened?"

"I don't know that anything happened. Nothing new anyway. Just the drumbeat of the same rumors and she's getting more and more worried about it. And I get it. I had you to help me through. She's alone. Things fester," she said.

Rance checked his email on his iPhone. Sure enough, there was an unread message in his inbox from Ed Martin. "Hold on a sec...," he told Gia as he read his dad's reply to his request from earlier in the afternoon.

"The feds aren't aware of any active plan or conspiracy against Callie or anyone else by those who were close to the Millientellos. But they're not really a 'planning' type of people, because they're not really that smart or methodical. If anything happens, it'll probably because some of them get drunk and get a wild notion to go exact some revenge, they say. Which would not be out of character for knuckle-draggers like that," Ed's message said in part.

Rance read it to Gia. It rang true to her, too.

"Gia, she needs to get out of there. You've been gone for just over three years now, and I'd bet you don't have plans to move back to Ridgefield Park. You said yourself she hardly knows anyone in her neighborhood. What's she hanging around for," he said.

"Because she hasn't cleared the hurdle in her mind that it's time to leave, and she has no idea where she'd go if she did," Gia said.

"Hey, I took the liberty of asking mom's sister, Aunt Semmie, to look into what your mom might get selling her house near New York City at the top of the real estate market now and what that might buy her in the Carolinas, Georgia or Virginia. We may have some solid information soon to help Callie make the leap," Rance said.

"And how about this: our final regular season game is the day after Thanksgiving at Florida. We get the rest of that weekend off. What if she came down South and spent that weekend with our family at Semmie's place in Hilton Head? Just get her away from Ridgefield Park and into a more festive environment. That might just be the nudge she needs," Rance said.

Gia was nodding. And thinking.

"That's a lot to consider. Let me think about it and how to maybe pitch it to Ma. Your mom and dad on board with this?"

"They will be," Rance said with that little-boy grin that made Gia melt. She kissed him, reclining languidly into his chest.

"Normally, this is when I would climb up on this bed with you right here and we'd fuck each other silly, but... damn period!" She massaged the contours of his hardening cock beneath his khakis. "But there's no reason you have to go home stiff."

He peppered her face with soft kisses and took her hand in his.

"Most of the pleasure I get is from seeing your pleasure. I'm OK with a few days in dry dock. Let's bank it so we can both enjoy ourselves. Besides, I've got books in the car that I need to dive into tonight, too. Not an easy day tomorrow. How about I tuck you in, kiss you goodnight and head back to my place before bed check?"

"Mmmm hmmm," she purred drowsily.

So Rance did exactly as he said: he picked her up, already in her sleep shirt, and deposited her on the bed and covered her. He threaded her hair out of her eyes and kissed her. "Night, sweetness," he whispered before he flicked off her bedside lamp, tiptoed out of the studio and closed and locked her door behind him.

"Night, baby," she whispered just before the door latched.

●●●

The three-hour bus ride from Fallstrom, South Carolina, to Athens, Georgia was no fun. But at a distance of only 140 miles, it didn't make sense to bus more than an hour to Charlotte, fly 30 minutes to Atlanta, then bus more than an hour from the world's busiest airport, Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta, to Athens on Friday, then turn around and do it all in reverse after the game the next day. So the two buses (one for the offense and one for the defense) set out at 1 p.m. from the Fulbright football facility bound for Sanford Stadium, home of the defending national champion Georgia Bulldogs, for a light Friday afternoon walkthrough.