His to Win (The Alpha Soccer Saga #1) (21 page)

Patrick was bombarded by football questions, making him more than a little uncomfortable, given the occasion, but Tacko’s father put him at ease.

“These people, they’ve mourned. They’ve cried their tears—first for my son, now for my wife. This life here, for many of them, is hard. My pain is small compared to many of them. Poverty like you, even like I, can’t imagine. This,” Jawara Seck said, sweeping a long arm across the room, “is opulence for many of them. The fact that you’ve come, that your mother is here, is such a blessing. If it helps them to feel happiness, even for a moment, to talk to you, to touch you, let them have it. Nothing is more important than family. It’s beautiful. At the mosque today, I prayed for my wife, for my son. But also I prayed for you, for your father, you mother. For your wife, and I know you’re unmarried, your unborn children. I know in your country Muslims are thought of as warlike people, filled with hate. And I can’t argue that some of my brothers and sisters in Islam don’t feel that way. But at the heart of our faith is love. Love for everyone. But most of all for family. You and your mother are my family. Thank you for coming. It means more than you know.”

Patrick struggled to hold back tears. The words Jawara spoke to him were plain, simple, accented in a way that forced active listening rather than the passive method most people use in conversation. But at the same time, they carried with them power, conviction, and truth.

Family was what mattered. Family and love. Family and love in the form of his mother. In the shape of friends who’ve proven with words and deeds that they’re more than friends, they’re family, too. People like Shelton. And love, a different kind of love, the love of people who make the heart not only warm and comfortable but also burn with fiery intensity. People like Ellie.

Sarah Sievert found her son sitting on a chair in the yard beneath an impossibly wide tree, a tree that rivalled, in girth, the mighty live oaks of their home state of South Carolina.

“I think this is a baobab tree, Patrick. Senegal is famous for them. Some of them get so big around that when the inside rots and becomes hollowed out people actually live inside them.” Patrick’s mother put an arm around her son’s broad shoulders as she spoke. “I saw you talking to Jawara and you seemed sad, is he OK? Are
you
OK?”

Smiling through his tears, Patrick looked up at his mother. “Thank you for talking me into this, Momma. Thank you so much. Talking to Mr. Seck really opened my eyes. And since when did you become an expert on African trees?”

Patrick’s mother sat down on his lap and hugged her son tightly. “I had a long flight here to get acquainted with Senegal. I think I’m going to try to get my hands on some baobab seeds and see how they like the climate in Berkeley County. How’d your team do today, have you checked?”

“Momma, I haven’t even thought about it, actually. This has been an overwhelming day. The weekend after next, we have our international break. I might come home for a few days, if that’s OK?”

“You know you can always come home, Patrick, I always leave sheets on your bed.”

“Maybe this time make sure to put sheets on the bed in the guest room, too? I’m planning to fly through Atlanta. Hopefully I’ll be bringing a guest for the last leg of my trip.”

In Patrick’s, and by extension Ellie’s absence, Celtic beat Aberdeen, 2–1.

Post-Patrick life returned to normal for Ellie. The monotony of work broken up by walking Maisie, working out with Meg (less and less frequently), working on her version of the Great American Novel, and reading.

She read her rare edition of
Pride and Prejudice
, ignoring Meg’s suggestions to sell it or trash it. It felt good in her hand, the craftsmanship, and reading it in such a vintage edition seemed to give the story new life in her mind.

Ellie caught herself sniffing the pages from time to time. The paper had an aroma different from any book she’d ever owned, and she could swear she smelled Wales on them. England. And somewhere in that bouquet, Patrick.

She missed him terribly. He made her feel so alive, so special. Would it really be wrong to try again once the season ended? Or would life always be that way, could he handle only a part-time relationship? Would soccer and his passion for it always come before his passion for her? She’d painfully talked it through with Meg and decided it couldn’t work that way, that no matter how incredible he might be, that she deserved full-time attention. Ellie deserved better than coming second to anything.

She had this book and memories of things that never happen to most people. And sexual adventures against which any and all others she was likely to have would be found achingly wanting. The memory of Patrick would have to be filed away with other fleeting moments of glory in her life, alongside the bus ride home on her daddy’s lap after his team won the state championship when she was five years old; of being maid of honor in her brother Alex’s wedding; of being the one into whose arms her nephew Albert, Alex’s firstborn son, fell after taking his first steps; high school and college graduations. All the most amazing moments of a life lined up on a shelf like trophies in her memory and Patrick with his own case filled with shiny medals that, though tarnished by the way things ended, would not, and could not ever lose their shine completely.

Meg had warned against watching any Celtic matches but Ellie couldn’t help herself from looking up the scores online. She noticed that Patrick’s name didn’t appear in the lineup for a win at Aberdeen and she assumed he’d been sidelined by injury. The team followed that victory with a 4–0 thrashing of Motherwell at its home ground in Parkhead with Patrick coming on as a second half substitute.

Celtic’s success since Patrick dumped her was incontrovertible evidence that he’d been right, Ellie frowned.

As the tears began again, Maisie burrowed her way into Ellie’s lap, smothering her mommy’s face with kisses.

Following the win over Motherwell and with players all over Europe making a mass exodus from club football to join their national teams for the international break, Celtic management released the unaffected players to take holidays if they so desired. Patrick, having retired from the national team to cut down on the added wear and tear of training, matches, and travel, turned his attention stateside. He wasn’t sure how he’d gain an audience but he had to see Ellie, had to talk to her, and had to rekindle whatever flame remained in her heart. He missed her so badly and telling her over the phone would be insufficient. He boarded the British Airways flight in London, bound for Atlanta, John Updike and Pat Conroy novels in his pack, ready to read his way across the Atlantic.

In Senegal, after speaking with Tacko’s father, something had shifted in his heart. Or perhaps it wasn’t that something shifted, but for the first time in what was the whole of his adult life, his heart overtook his mind. His heart told him, loudly, that his mind had made the wrong decision. The possibly irrevocably, wrong decision. The fact that he’d given up on Ellie simply because he was having a less than stellar season with Celtic was beyond shitty. Whether it was true or not, why did it matter all that much? He had put in his years; he’d given soccer everything he had. What had it really given him back if it didn’t allow him to have Ellie? What was life at all without her? It wasn’t a life he could lead. Soccer would end and he would have decades to look back on it. But how could he ever look at it fondly knowing it cost him the one thing he loved more than he had ever loved anything or anyone else?

As the flight attendants went over their banal instructions, one of them caught his eye. Not because she was attractive, although she
was
in the generic way many of them were, but because she triggered a memory in him. When she walked past he craned his neck for a look at her name badge—“Kelly.”

The light bulb went off in his head forty-two pages into
The Prince of Tides
.

If Kelly was available, and game, he had a plan in mind. It was time to fix the damage he had done. With the grandest gesture he could come up with. Ellie was worth it. He just hoped she still felt he was worth it, too.

Meg and Ellie strolled into Pope’s BBQ, a Conyers institution where they could be found most every Wednesday evening after work.

Live music, half-price “hump day” appetizers and pitchers, and mouth-watering brisket drew a crowd from all over Atlanta. Taking up residence in their customary booth just to the right of the stage, the friends settled in to commiserate about annoying coworkers, Bravo’s
Real Housewives
, and Meg’s ongoing love-hate relationship with Daniel from Edinburgh.

The band milled around on and near the stage, having finished tuning their instruments but not yet scheduled to being their set, the music in the room still coming from Pope’s famous jukebox.

Their waitress, “thank God Brianna and not that bitch Angela,” remarked Meg, took their drink orders and disappeared from view. A blonde approached the table from behind Ellie and leaned in close, her British accent as out of place in a Georgia barbecue joint as a plate of sushi.

“It seems we’ve overbooked this section, or made a mistake with the seating assignments, and we have a group who find themselves seated in separate booths. We were hoping, since it’s just the two of you, that you might consider moving to the table in the corner over there,” she pointed across the crowded room, “and joining the gentleman in the green shirt?”

Meg and Ellie made annoyed eye contact with each other. “Listen, we come here every—”

Meg’s protest was cut off by Ellie. “Shut up. Shut up, Meg. Holy shit. Are you kidding me?”

Ellie looked at Meg in astonishment, then at Kelly, whose smiling, flight-attendant veneer had vanished beneath a smile of genuine joy.

“If it’s all right, I’m going to sit here with you—Meg, is it? And you can give me a primer on Southern food, American beer, and Georgia boys. These two”—Kelly pointed across the room at a ruggedly handsome man sitting alone at a table and then back to Ellie—“have some catching up to do.”

Patrick had the eyes of the room upon him. He wasn’t recognized by anyone as Patrick Sievert, soccer star, but everyone witnessing his easy gait, piercing blue eyes, and sculpted physique glide across the room were impressed, even star struck by him. He stopped at the jukebox briefly before approaching Ellie and Meg’s booth.

As he walked, the verses of “Living and Living Well” filled the room, a song describing a perfect life incomplete without someone special there to share it.

“George Strait helped bring us together. I’m hoping he can do it again. Hello, Ellie. I’ve missed you. Think we might go somewhere and speak in private?” Patrick extended a hand toward the love of his life.

Ellie stood and the two embraced, Patrick whispering into Ellie’s ear, “I’m so sorry. I made the biggest mistake of my life and I’m here to fix it, if you’ll let me. I don’t deserve it but I’d do anything for you to take me back anyway. I’ve been a damn mess since I let you go. Nothing has been OK and nothing will be again until I can be back in your heart.”

Kelly slid into the open side of the booth, explaining to Meg that, “Patrick has set up a tab for us, whatever we want to eat or drink.”

Meg began to rise, but Ellie held up a single finger to stop her short.

“Meg, this is Patrick. Patrick, Meg.” Ellie introduced her man and her best friend. “Oh, and this is—”

“Kelly, I’m Kelly.”

“Right, Kelly. She was . . . Patrick, I don’t know how you did this . . . but she was on my flight to Scotland, she was the one who relocated me, who moved me next to Patrick.”

It was Meg’s turn to hold up a finger to silence Ellie. The pitcher had arrived while introductions were being made, and Meg needed a drink, immediately. She filled and downed glass of craft beer while the rest of the group watched in amusement.

“OK. Let me get this straight. This is Patrick. This is my new friend Kelly. And the two of you are what, going back home to ‘get reacquainted?’ Just like that? While Kelly and I eat and drink as much brisket and as many pitchers as Brianna can bring us?”

Ellie locked eyes with Patrick, broke into a grin, and nodded enthusiastically.

Meg looked Patrick up, down, and back up again, looked at Kelly, mulled it over a moment, and spoke.

“Els, I hate you even more than I thought I did. Patrick, thank you. Kelly, welcome to Pope’s.”

Ellie laughed and bent down to hug her best friend. “I love you, too, Meg.”

Maisie took an immediate liking to Patrick, giving him slobbering kisses and treating him as human furniture—the same way she treated all her loved ones (She whined and scratched at the bedroom door while the two lovers renewed their physical relationship, but she was too adorable not to forgive). Patrick told Ellie about his trip to Senegal, the epiphany sparked by his conversation with Mr. Seck, and about his mother defending Ellie when Patrick asked her opinion regarding continuing or postponing their relationship. He explained to Ellie that he’d gotten his priorities in order; that she deserved to be his main focus, that he’d never again consider her a “distraction.” All his cards on the table, Patrick professed his love for Ellie and invited her to join him that weekend on a trip to Berkeley County to meet his “momma” and visit his hometown.

He made a point of describing a walk down a dirt road he hoped they could take together.

“A dirt road you say?” Ellie asked, a smirk on her sweet face.

“Yep,” he smiled. “A place I might have dreamed of a time or two. Would you join me, my Ellie?”

Ellie didn’t have to think twice about it. She had always known, after all, that she would have joined him anywhere. For the first time in her life, she was able to shut out the thoughts that she didn’t deserve this. And with that, she took Patrick’s arm, knowing she would never let go of it again.

Thank you to my husband. You make it so easy for me to do what I love to do. I appreciate you daily. You’re the best human being I know. I’m your Ellie and you will always be my Patrick.