Teammates

By Jack Erickson

Short Story

Former high school football teammates meet at a wedding ten years after a violent tackle on the football field crippled one. 

The crippled teammate, whose promising tennis career was ruined, is a bartender at the wedding reception. His teammate is the arrogant, drunken groom.

Revenge becomes a deadly wedding present.

• Language: English
• Publisher: RedBrick Press
• Release date: Oct 9, 2016
• ISBN: 9781452389196

Jack Erickson

Jack Erickson writes in multiple genres: international thrillers, mysteries, true crime, short mysteries, and romantic suspense.He is currently writing the Milan Thriller Series featuring the anti-terrorism police, DIGOS, at Milan's Questura (police headquarters). Book I in the series is Thirteen Days in Milan. Book 2, No One Sleeps, was published in December 2016. Book 3, Vesuvius Nights, was published in 2019. Book 4, The Lonely Assassin, was published in 2020.The models for Erickson's Milan thrillers are three popular Italian mystery series: Donna Leon's Commissario Brunetti in Venice, Andrea Camilleri's Inspector Salvo Montalbano in Sicily, and Michael Dibdin's Commissario Aurelio Zen in Rome. All three have been produced as TV series at either BBC, PBS, RAI, or Deutsche WelleErickson travels throughout Italy for research and sampling Italian contemporary life and culture. In earlier careers, he was a U.S. Senate speechwriter, Washington-based editor, and RedBrick Press publisher. He wrote and published several books on emerging craft brewing industry including the award winning Star Spangled Beer: A Guide to America's New Microbreweries and Brewpubs.Before he began writing fiction, he was a wealth manager for a national brokerage in Silicon Valley.

Book preview

TEAMMATES

Jack Erickson

Copyright © 2012 by Jack Erickson

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ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without written permission, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

This is a work of fiction based upon the imagination of the author. No real people are represented. 

You can find Erickson’s books and subscribe to his email newsletter on his personal and publisher’s websites:

www.jackerickson.com

RedBrickPress.net

Milan Thriller Series

Thirteen Days in Milan

No One Sleeps

Vesuvius Nights

The Lonely Assassin

Novels

Bloody Mary Confession

Rex Royale

A Streak Across the Sky

Mornings Without Zoe

Short Mysteries

Perfect Crime

Missing Persons

Teammates

The Stalker

Weekend Guest

True Crime

Blood and Money in the Hunt Country

Noir Series

Bad News is Back in Town

Audio Books

A Streak Across the Sky

Perfect Crime

The Stalker

Teammates

Nonfiction

Star Spangled Beer:

A Guide to America’s New Microbreweries and Brewpubs

Great Cooking with Beer

Brewery Adventures in the Wild West

California Brewin’

Brewery Adventures in the Big East

TEAMMATES

Eddie Sauer limped off the bus, favoring the sore knee that had flared up since he had helped his mother move out of her apartment that morning. He headed across the parking lot to the drugstore, carrying a cloth bag with work shoes for his part-time job that night at a wedding reception. He needed a refill of pain relievers to make it though the six-hour shift of tending bar and bussing tables.

Dr. Summer called in a prescription for me, he told the pharmacist, who flipped through a bin of envelopes and picked one.

Identification, please? said the pharmacist, looking over the rims of his glasses.

Eddie handed over his driver’s license. The pharmacist checked the name on the envelope and returned it. That will be twenty-eight dollars.

Eddie handed him his credit card. The pharmacist swiped it on the electronic device and tore off the slip. Have you taken Vicodin before?

It’s a refill.

Take no more than four a day. Limit alcohol consumption. Don’t drive for two hours after taking.

Eddie signed the receipt, picked up the sack, and headed out the door.

He walked back to the bus stop and sat down on the bench, rubbing his sore knee. After helping his mother pack her boxes and suitcases, he had returned home and elevated his leg on a pillow while paying bills, grading final exams for his summer school students, and clipping coupons for Sunday shopping.

Eddie’s sore knee was a constant companion, never forgotten. When he awoke each morning, the pain in his knee was inert, silent, like a lump of soap. He would take his first painkiller of the day and head to morning classes. By noon, he would take a second pill when the pain was like a chunk of burning coal. He took his third pill of the day when he returned from school in the afternoon; the pain by that time was like molten lava spewing down his leg. He spent most evenings on the sofa, holding an ice pack on his knee and gritting his teeth while sweat poured down his neck.

Ten years after a high school football injury, Eddie’s life revolved around his damaged knee. Painkillers, surgeries, physical therapy, and leg exercises had brought minimal relief. His orthopedic surgeon had delivered the grim news last