Chapter 10
“Gorgeous. Good job, Paul.” Erin nodded her approval of the diamond engagement ring as she released her friend’s hand.
“I know, I’m so impressed.” Molly smiled at the ring one more time before wrapping her hand around the stem of her wineglass.
“Have you set a date?”
Her former national-squad teammate shrugged. “We’re not in a hurry. Paul’s still negotiating his contract with Tucson. We don’t want to book anywhere with a big deposit before we know what the bank accounts will be like.”
“It doesn’t all have to depend on his career,” Erin reminded her. “You’re doing amazing things with the women’s team. You could get the manager’s job in a year or two.”
“Even if I did, we couldn’t live on my salary alone.”
“So demand a better salary.”
Molly smiled affectionately. “That’s what I love about you, Erin. You never let anyone tell you no.”
“That’s not entirely true,” she muttered. Over the last week, a certain person had told her no repeatedly, despite being the only one whose yes seemed to matter more each day.
She hadn’t spoken to Brendan, not in person anyway since he left her in the bar in Boston. They’d exchanged texts and emails, but her suggestion that they meet to start looking at the weekend matches was declined, as was her offer to stop by his house to show him the odds she’d been offered on a range of bookmakers’ websites.
His distance shouldn’t have been a black spot in an otherwise positive week. Randall was delighted with her lead on the Tucson United fantasy team—the “online syndicate,” he called it—and happy to authorize a last-minute trip to Arizona. He was even happier when she called him from the Tucson manager’s office to inform him the two players responsible had come forward immediately, were conciliatory and willing to undertake the compliance awareness training she recommended.
That dirty business dispensed, she’d spent hours with the staff and players from Tucson’s women’s team. Everyone loved the idea of the marketing campaign and jumped in with thoughts on how to implement it given the resources at their disposal, as well as to maximize its impact locally, like translating some of the materials into Spanish. She and Molly exchanged delighted looks throughout the afternoon, silently applauding themselves for helping the game to come so far from when they played professionally only a handful of years earlier.
Now a fun Saturday night in a trendy bar with one of her good friends stretched ahead of her, unpressured by work demands, yet she struggled to stay centered as her wildly impractical thoughts kept drifting to Brendan. Eccentric, peculiar Brendan, with his charts and his numbers and his codes. Weirdly comforting Brendan, with his soft voice and slow smile. Sexy, intriguing, irresistible Brendan, whose face and body and capable hands invaded her mind every night as she fell asleep.
Clever, calculating Brendan, who’d helped her win more money in three weeks than she had in three months.
She picked up her phone and unlocked the screen, opening the app she’d recently downloaded which posted live international soccer results. She’d had such a busy day she hadn’t even thought about checking the bets she’d placed shortly before midnight.
She scanned the league table and the score breakdowns. There were still a few matches to be played on Sunday, but of the six they’d wagered on he’d correctly called the result on four.
Two hundred and fifty dollars on those bets alone, with four more results due tomorrow.
“Erin?”
Molly’s voice snapped her back to the present as she stuffed her phone into her bag. “Sorry. What did you say?”
Molly nodded to the bartender, who repeated what Erin suspected he’d already asked multiple times. “Would you like another glass of wine?”
“Yes, please. Another for each of us.”
Molly shot her a probing look as the bartender refilled their glasses, but waited until he moved away to ask, “Are you okay? You seem distracted.”
“I am distracted. I need to have sex, Mols.”
“Gotcha.” She glanced around the room. “I see the problem. Zero eligibles. But we can move on after this. There’s a place—”
Erin shook her head. “I need to have sex with someone in particular.”
Molly’s attention sharpened. “He wasn’t interested?”
“Yes and no. I think he’d be willing but only if it was in the context of something serious.”
“Like long-term serious?”
“Medium-term, at least,” she replied, leaving out the crucial detail that in more than the medium term they’d be living a thousand miles apart.
“Here’s a radical suggestion. Go for it.”
“No way. You know me. I don’t do relationships.” Erin waved her forefinger in the negative.
Molly sighed. “Should I bother giving you my opinion, or are you going to dismiss me on the basis I’m probably high on wedding fumes?”
Ouch. That’s exactly what I was about to do. “I want your opinion.”
“It won’t be a surprise. I think you should give commitment a try. You might discover that you’re more ready for it than you realize.”
“I sure as hell don’t feel ready.” She circled her glass on the bar, watching the white wine swirl counterclockwise.
“I didn’t feel ready when I met Paul, either. I’d just started my assistant manager job with Tucson and I was so focused on getting it right, meeting everyone at the club, finding an apartment, the whole transition from player to coaching staff, apparently, he attempted to flirt with me for months before I noticed.”
Erin arched a brow. “I find that hard to believe. Paul is dangerously charming.”
“I’m telling you, I was that preoccupied, I had no idea. Anyway, when we finally got on the same page, he was ready to get serious a lot earlier than I was. Eventually, I decided to give him a chance, and here we are.” She wiggled her newly bejeweled finger.
“That’s the ‘what,’ not the ‘why.’ You went for a guy who was crazy about you, who you were reasonably crazy about in return, having never been as anti-commitment as I am. Different scenario. Why should I change the way I’ve been running my life for years given I’m still perfectly happy?”
She lifted a shoulder. “Why do anything?”
“That’s a non-answer.”
“Let’s turn it around. Maybe it’s not about you. Maybe it’s about this guy and the significance of the fact that he likes you enough to want something more than casual sex.”
Erin rolled her eyes. “He’s not the first one to say it. It doesn’t make him special.”
“But is he the first one to make it a condition?”
She had to think about that. With some astonishment, she replied, “Yes.”
“And is he also the first one you’ve liked enough to consider it?”
“I’m not considering it.”
“We’re discussing it now,” Molly countered. “That’s considering.”
She exhaled her defeat. “Okay, yes. He’s the first. But I’m not open to the relationship thing. I’m thinking more along the lines of a premium version of friends with benefits.”
Her friend’s gaze was skeptical as she took a sip of wine. “Do I even want to know?”
“So friends with benefits aren’t usually really friends, right? They’re amicable hookups. Friendly, not friends. In my premium version”—she drew her hands across the space like she was unveiling a marquee—“we are real, honest-to-God friends. We hang out, we spend time together, we go out for drinks, and then we have sex.”
“Erin, that’s a relationship.”
“No, because there’s no emotional attachment beyond the friend level. The friend part stays over here, and the sex part stays over here.” She held her two fists apart.
Molly’s expression wasn’t convinced. “Have you presented this to the man in question?”
“I wanted your input first. What do you think?”
Her friend took her time in answering, running her fingers up and down the stem of her glass. Erin tried to defuse the moment with a goofy smile but Molly was impenetrable, as thoughtful and incisive as she had been as a masterful central midfielder.
“What?” Erin asked finally, unable to stand another second of silence.
“It’s not like you to need advice or permission for anything. You don’t consult—you decide what you want and go for it. You always have. I think you might really care about this guy,” Molly concluded.
Automatically Erin opened her mouth to disagree—then closed it again. Molly had a point. She’d never struggled to brush off a guy as much as she was struggling to brush off Brendan. But did she care about him?
“Maybe I care about his feelings, a little bit,” she conceded.
Molly’s responding smile was irritatingly knowing.
“Don’t you dare,” Erin warned. “And we’re done talking about my love life. Soccer, weddings, and gossip only from now on.”
“Cheers to that.” They clinked their glasses together.
“That reminds me.” She signaled to the bartender. “Would you mind changing the TV channel? There should be a soccer game on one of the sports channels. Eugene Pines at Atlanta Skyline.”
* * * *
“Try me. Just try me.” Brendan narrowed his eyes at Eugene’s striker, Adam Francis, as he started toward Skyline’s half. He’d played against the Englishman years ago—they’d been on opposite sides in a hotly contested local rivalry.
They hadn’t liked each other then, and they didn’t like each other now. Adam was an egotistical, melodramatic player who loved nothing more than throwing himself down in the penalty area if one of his opponents so much as breathed on him. He and Brendan had faced off over tenuously awarded penalties more than once.
In their training sessions leading up to the match, Brendan warned his defenders that Adam would try to provoke them. They’d heeded his advice meticulously in the first half, stopping Adam with precise, clean tackles. Clearly frustrated with the nil-nil score at halftime, though, the striker started the second forty-five minutes with double the belligerence he’d shown earlier, arguing with the referee and calling for fouls every time anyone got near him.
His tactics were pathetic, but Brendan knew from experience they were effective. The linesmen already looked nervous, probably second-guessing some of their calls given Adam’s vehement responses. His defenders were getting worn down, too. Oz was on international duty and in his place was the second-choice left-back, an up-and-coming young American called Gabe Garcia. Gabe was quick and skillful, but he didn’t have Oz’s emotional self-control, and Brendan could see that Adam’s antics were beginning to wear him down. It was only a matter of time before things got ugly.
Near the center line, Kojo stole possession from Adam and passed to Laurent, who passed to Nico, who drove the ball back up toward Eugene’s goal. Brendan kept his attention sharp for a possible counterattack. He felt confident, in control of his mind, ready for anything.
He felt like the seasoned pro he was.
At the other end of the pitch, both teams clustered around Eugene’s goal. Skyline pressed them back, harder and harder, as their defenders thickened in the space between the two posts.
Rio found the ball on the wing and punted a high pass to Skyline’s striker, Deon Ellis, who headed it toward the goal.
One of Eugene’s center-backs and their goalkeeper jumped at the same time to clear it. The center-back realized his mistake too late, and he accidentally knocked the ball into the net.
Own goal.
The Skyline players cheered as the score ticked up to one-nil. It wasn’t the most elegant way to win, but a victory was a victory. Now they had to hold on to it for—he checked the clock—half an hour. Difficult, but doable.
Eugene took a while to recover from the error. Their shell-shocked defense and scattered forwards nearly gave Skyline a second goal as Laurent found a shot, but the keeper saved it comfortably.
Eugene seemed to pull themselves together and reconsolidated their efforts to equalize the score. Brendan’s focus sharpened as Adam recaptured possession and pushed into Skyline’s half.
“Stay cool,” he called to his defenders, who stuck their thumbs up to show they’d heard without turning to look at him.
Kojo caught Adam in his run down the right-hand channel, neatly tackling him to pass the ball to Nico. The maneuver was clinical but Adam hurled himself on the ground, holding his ankle and rolling back and forth.
A few of the Skyline players threw up their hands in exasperation, but Brendan watched Adam carefully. Goalkeepers had the broadest views of the pitch, and it was his responsibility to notice as much as he could and communicate to the other players. He was Skyline’s anchor, keeping the big ship safely moored no matter how hard the wind blew.
As Adam insisted on the medic, Brendan noted the heaving shoulders and sweat-soaked jerseys of the Pines players. They were tired, and evidently not as match-fit as Skyline. Adam was deliberately wasting time to give them a rest.
On the sideline, Roland noticed it too and began shouting his dissatisfaction at the referee. It wasn’t like the Swede, and Brendan shook his head ruefully. The ref was already under pressure from Eugene’s pushy striker and Skyline’s irritated players. He didn’t need a manager in his ear too.
“Be calm,” he encouraged the defenders. “Tight and clean. No mistakes.”
Kojo nodded. The Brazilians stuck up their thumbs. Gabe tossed a halfhearted smile over his shoulder, but his agitation was clear in his posture.
“Garcia.” Brendan summoned the left-back’s attention, then lowered his hands in a simmer-down gesture. The young player nodded, visibly calming himself, but Brendan knew his self-control could be the weak link in their chain.
Unsurprisingly Adam was fine to continue, and play resumed with the Pines palpably refreshed from the break. Brendan drummed his heels against the ground as they pressed Skyline backward into their half. They wanted to score, and they wouldn’t stop trying until they did.
He exhaled, loosening his shoulders and centering his thoughts. Let Eugene test him. Let Adam take him one-on-one. They wouldn’t beat him. He was unstoppable.
Sunset-red hair, mischievous blue eyes, skin as pale and soft as a pink rose petal…
He flinched at the intruding image of Erin. Where the hell did that come from? And why on earth—
“Shit.”
Adam passed to one of Eugene’s midfielders who took an ambitious shot on goal from his position far outside the area. Brendan instantly knew it would go wide but chased its direction anyway, mindful of the other players and their potential to knock it in. Thankfully none of the others were far enough forward and Skyline took a throw-in, but as they jogged back up the pitch his heart thudded hard in his chest.
“Focus,” he chanted under his breath. He hadn’t seen Erin in a week and he thought she was well out of his mind. Okay, maybe he’d given her—and more accurately what he would like to do with her—the odd thought now and again. Particularly late at night, in bed. And once or twice in the morning. And in the shower after training the other day, and—
“Enough,” he muttered. Eugene was wheeling in his direction with Adam leading the charge. Time to get his head in the game and keep it there.
Adam passed to a winger, who passed to a central midfielder. Brendan read Adam’s plan long before he could implement it, and when he ran across the goal to execute a quick turnaround shot Brendan was ready for him. He caught the ball in two hands, then motioned for the Skyline players to fall back in order to gain ground on the goal kick.
Adam growled in frustration, unwisely remaining near the goal while his teammates tracked back in preparation to defend Skyline’s possession. “You’re wasting time.”
“That’s funny, coming from you.”
Adam spat on the grass. “Your high and mighty act doesn’t work anymore, Young. You’re a disgrace. Did you put a bet on this match? You should have. A thousand dollars that I’ll score against you.”
Brendan let Adam’s words sink in, knowing that resisting would only waste energy and destabilize his concentration. Instead, he absorbed them, registered them, filed them for review later. He took a couple of steps backward to give himself a run-up, then looked Adam level in the face.
“Fuck off.”
Adam’s eyes flashed with anger as he jumped forward in a clumsy attempt to capture the ball, but he was too slow. Brendan walloped it in one long, powerful kick that sent it halfway up the field to Deon, who controlled it out of the air and passed to Laurent.
Brendan watched Adam scramble back up the pitch, forcing himself to breathe slowly in an effort to pour cold water over the striker’s stinging words.
Adam wanted to get him riled up. Brendan wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
The two teams grappled near the center line for a few minutes, then as the Pines made an attack on Skyline’s half Gabe caught one of their wingers in a late challenge. The winger’s dramatics on the pitch were unnecessary, but the foul awarded by the referee was unfortunately totally fair. Gabe punched a fist into his open palm, and Brendan wished he was near enough to remind the hotheaded young player to keep his cool.
Eugene took their free kick near the center line and hustled play into Skyline’s half. Brendan focused intently as both teams came nearer, blocking out everything except anticipating the future position of the ball at any second. Instinctively he scanned players’ faces, took in the angles of their feet, caught their exchanged glances, making and adjusting and readjusting what felt like millions of decisions per minute.
A Pines winger shot, Guedes blocked it. Adam picked up the loose ball. Gabe stuck to Adam’s side, trying to pluck the ball from between his feet. Brendan watched as they stepped over the line into the penalty area. Gabe extended his hand across the striker’s chest to keep his own balance. Adam flung himself over Gabe’s arm in a dramatic somersault, landing on his back and slamming his fists into the grass in exaggerated outrage.
Brendan ran his gloved hand over his face as the referee blew his whistle. He knew what the decision would be, but that didn’t make him any less angry when the ref announced it.
Penalty.
He kept his fury and frustration entirely inside as Gabe looked at him with a stricken expression.
“I didn’t touch him,” the left-back told him urgently, and Brendan waved him off.
“Don’t worry. I’ve got it.”
A few feet away Guedes had gotten into a confrontation with one of Eugene’s midfielders, and Kojo and Paulo inserted themselves between the two to prevent a full-blown fight. The referee spoke sternly to all of them, the two managers gestured angrily from the sideline, and the whole stadium seemed to seethe with acrimony.
Adam placed the ball in position for the penalty kick, calmly waiting for the commotion to die down so he could take his shot.
They watched each other carefully, two pillars of absolute stillness in a noisy group of het-up men. Brendan shut the door on everything he felt about Adam and concentrated on technical data. The stock ticker sped with intricately remembered stats about which direction Adam had picked in his last ten penalty kicks, only three of which had been during his tenure in the Championship League, however, they made up an overall pattern that included his international appearances.
To the numbers, Brendan added his personal experience, although it was many years ago now and Adam had undoubtedly evolved. He cataloged minute details about the way Adam prepared, the way he stepped up to the ball, the way he breathed as he drew back his leg to shoot.
Time. Adam needed time. If he had no time he’d be inaccurate. He’d screw up.
Brendan smiled at Adam as the referee motioned for the other players to back up. “Ready?”
The striker’s answering smirk was tight. Nervous. “To make a fool of you? Always.”
Brendan clapped his gloved hands together and raised his arms, filling as much of the goal with his body as he could. He had a plan, and it was risky. If it worked he’d be a hero. If he didn’t, well, he supposed he’d be no worse off than he’d been a month ago.
Brendan nodded to the referee, who blew the whistle to signal for Adam to take his shot. The striker gathered himself, rolled his neck—and Brendan feinted a lunge off the goal line. The rules forbade him from actually leaving the line but the movement was enough to trigger Adam’s instinct, which was to kick the ball before it could be taken from him.
The striker took his shot, opting to send it straight down the middle. Suspecting that he might, Brendan hadn’t lunged left or right and instead jumped to clear the ball.
He didn’t need to. It hit the bar on the upper edge of the goal and bounced uselessly over the top of the net.
Adam dropped his arms to his sides, staring in disbelief. The Skyline fans exploded into cheering, and what felt like their validation of his risky maneuver yanked off the lid of the cauldron where he’d been storing all his bitterness and resentment and raging distaste for Adam Francis. It bubbled over in a steaming flood of emotion and before he could stop himself he stepped up to the despondent striker and stood as close as possible without touching him, using his two extra inches of height to every fraction of intimidating advantage.
“Now who’s a disgrace?” he demanded, and in answer the striker bumped his chest, pushing in even closer.
“You’re only on the pitch because two better keepers are injured. You’re third-rate. You always will be,” Adam sneered.
Brendan shook off Adam’s comments. When he retired from the game and walked off the pitch for the last time, everyone would know how good he was. He’d hold his head high and leave the sport a champion. Erin would help him do it. She’d promised. He trusted her.
Brendan drew back his arms to shove the striker out of his face but someone caught one of them. Levelheaded Kojo shook his head as the referee jogged up to give them both a verbal warning, and they begrudgingly shook hands so the match could continue.
“This isn’t over,” Adam warned under his breath, but Brendan rolled his eyes. Skyline had already played the Pines away. The two of them would never meet on the pitch again. This was over.
The matched finished one-nil, with Eugene’s own goal the only one achieved in the ninety-minute slog. The opposing teams exchanged reluctant handshakes as they trudged off the pitch and into the tunnel.
Brendan lingered on the pitch to applaud the away fans, who burst into the chorus of the old Rod Stewart song, “Forever Young”—the song originally coined for him by the English crowds.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Roland waiting for him at the mouth of the tunnel, and he clapped the fans a little longer. At least they were thankful for his penalty save if his manager wasn’t.
Finally, he pulled himself away and walked down the tunnel to leave the pitch. Roland waited for him at the place where the tunnel branched off into dressing rooms, offices, and underground parking.
Brendan held up his hands in apology as he approached his manager. “I know, I lost my composure, and I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
“It better not,” Roland told him tersely. “Great save on the penalty. Risky tactic but it paid out. Nicely played.”
Brendan opened his mouth to argue, then realized his manager had given him a compliment. “Thanks,” he replied, blinking in astonishment.
“Good work.” Roland slapped him on the back and Brendan continued to the dressing room in a daze. Roland’s comment was the most gushing praise he’d ever offered his third-choice goalkeeper. Brendan committed every word to memory, just in case he needed to dig it out for an ego boost someday.
Buoyed by the manager’s feedback, Brendan walked into the dressing room and after exchanging a few high-fives and encouraging words with his teammates, he opened his locker and picked up his phone.
He shouldn’t text Erin. He was barely managing to stay on the right side of the line with her, keeping things friendly and nothing more, but he was on a high and he wanted to hear from her. He wanted her to agree with his manager that he’d had a good performance.
Although if she hadn’t watched it he’d be disappointed. Not that he expected her to watch his games, of course—why should she?
But if she didn’t, he didn’t want to know. He liked imagining her eyes on the scoreboard, her attention on his decisions. Even his parents had stopped watching him play every week—too many games to keep track of, apparently—so if he couldn’t imagine her caring, he was playing for no one except the anonymous fans.
Which was still a privilege, he reminded himself, deciding not to be so melodramatic.
If she watched, she watched. If she didn’t, she didn’t. It meant nothing either way.
He’d send her a quick text. Just a one-liner suggesting she check out the penalty online. She probably hadn’t watched, so he was simply flagging the moment for her interest. She’d know who Adam was so there was more to it than his save. As a woman who knew soccer, she might— His phone flashed with a new message notification. He tapped to open it, expecting a misspelled but enthusiastic message from his younger brother, the only remaining soccer fan in the family.
Instead, his mental stock ticker ground to a halt as a saw the sender, and a single word throbbed behind his eyes.
Erin.
Ballsy move on that penalty but not surprised it worked out. Starting to think you’re legit psychic.
Don’t respond, his occasionally sensible brain demanded, but his gut-listening thumb was already tapping the keys.
Just another day at the office.
His arm was halfway inside his locker to replace the phone when it chimed again. Against his better judgment, he glanced at it, even though most of his teammates were already in the shower and he lagged behind.
I’m in Tucson, flying back to ATL tomorrow. Let’s get together on Wednesday before you travel for Friday’s game.
No emojis. No x’s or o’s in her sign-off. No question mark, either. As usual, with Erin, it was a command, not an invitation.
He typed his response, then deleted it with a smile and stowed his phone. No need to respond too hastily. Let her wonder for a while.