Offside (5 page)

“Are you going to give that back to me?”

“Are you coming?”

“Fine!”

“Fine,” I repeated and handed her the pen.

“Such an ass,” she mumbled.

I honestly didn’t think she would actually show up but was pleasantly surprised to see her sitting with Heather, Lisa, and a handful of other girls at the sidelines while we warmed up with some drills. After a while, Coach Wagner put me in goal to do some PKs.

Fucking A.

My specialty.

Klosav came up first. He was too easy—always leaning in such an obvious way, contrary to the direction he would kick—it was easy to know which direction to jump. I caught it without much effort. Clint was next and not a lot harder. Jeremy was a little more difficult and would try to fake me out. The thing was, he always faked out in the same way, so I knew the direction he would kick based on the tension in his leading thigh.

Out of twenty-seven PKs, I missed three.

“All right—hit the showers and get out of here!” Wagner yelled. I ran over to the sides and grabbed a water bottle. I looked up at the bleachers and saw Rumple still sitting there. She had her arms crossed and was eyeing me though I wasn’t too sure about her expression. I walked up to her as Heather and Lisa stood up and started gushing over my saves.

“What did you think, Rumple?” I asked her, ignoring the other two.

“About what?” she asked.

Oh yeah, she was definitely going to make me work for it. No problem, baby. I knew this game as well as I knew soccer.

“About the ending of the movie
Castaway
,” I said with a smirk.

“It was awful,” she responded. “I can’t believe he was screeching over that stupid ball.”

I laughed.

“I’m going to get a shower,” I told her. I barely restrained myself from asking her to join me. “Want to head over to the diner later?”

“Not unless you have another one of my pens,” she said as she stood up. She brushed past me and headed toward the school parking lot and that horrible piece of shit Hyundai. She didn’t even look back. I still smiled and continued to ignore the other girls as I walked to the locker room.

I was heading back to her house tonight. Definitely. I wasn’t completely sure why. Maybe it was the challenge, and maybe it was because she was the new girl and a little mysterious. I liked that I didn’t know her name though it frustrated me at the same time. I considered all of this as I finished up in the locker room and headed back through the school.

“Thomas?”

I stopped and turned, surprised to see Ms. Mesut in the hallway. She walked up to me, her expression concerned.

“Yeah?”

“You weren’t in class today,” she stated as if I didn’t already know that. “I thought maybe you were ill.”

Why do teachers always say “ill” instead of “sick”?

“I was practicing,” I said with a shrug.

“Isn’t soccer practice after school?”

“Yeah,” I answered. This conversation was obviously going nowhere. She wasn’t going to get it; I could tell from the tone of her voice. When people dropped the timbre down a half step, then raised it back up on the last syllable, it was always because they were trying to help you
understand
something.

I looked down at the floor near my feet and waited for her to get on with it.

“Can I at least assume you’ll be in class tomorrow?”

“No, not really,” I sighed and looked up at her. “I thought it was going to be something different. It’s stupid and a waste of my time. I’ll get around to dropping it later.”

I turned and started to walk away.

“Thomas!”

I took a deep breath, stopped, and turned around to meet her gaze again.

“Earlier this week, you mentioned the art show,” she said. “I thought you might have something for it.”

“You must have misunderstood,” I responded. “I don’t do that shit.”

I didn’t turn back when she called after me again.

I rode home past Rumplestiltskye’s house, saw that her car was there, and kept going. As I drove past this time, I looked up and saw a second floor window and a flash of long brown hair. I felt the corner of my mouth turn up as I wondered if she closed the curtains when she got undressed at night so no one could see in.

Maybe I should check…you know…just to warn her in case she didn’t think of such things.

I decided to come back later if I could get out of the house. I checked my odometer and figured once I got home that the round trip would be a twelve-mile run, a bit much for my normal jog, which was only five miles. Dad always thought I should run in the mornings and wouldn’t buy into me jogging at night. Once I got home, I realized I had the perfect excuse when I looked in the freezer and noticed we were out of just about everything. I decided to make a box of mac and cheese and ate a can of pears while I waited for the water to boil. By the time Dad got home, I had my grocery list and my excuse to get out. He just grunted his acceptance of my plan and added that he would go out to eat while I was at the store.

“Don’t forget the banquet on Saturday,” he reminded me.

“I remember,” I told him. “I checked and my tux still fits.”

“I thought you were bulking up,” Dad said with a scowl. “You haven’t worn that for three months. Haven’t you put on any muscle? You know that trainer said you were going to have to bulk up so you could take a bigger hit.”

“I have, Dad—”

“Bullshit. Go to the fucking store, and get a bunch of raw eggs and meat or something. You’d better put on muscle before the holidays come around.”

“All right,” I said as I escaped out the door. I had bulked up, just mostly in my legs. I could take a bigger hit than I would have been able to three months ago. I shook my head as I started the car, almost laughing to myself that I had actually thought he’d be pleased he wouldn’t have to buy me a new tux. My mind flashed to the last time he seemed pleased with me—when the first scout came up to me after a game in Seattle last fall and started talking about the Sounders. Dad had smiled and tossed his arm lightly around my shoulder as he spoke to the guy.

Gotta keep up appearances.

I turned into the parking lot of the Thriftway and parked up front. Both the scent and bright colors of the mums in the front of the store triggered another memory and not a welcome one. My eyes squeezed shut, and I felt the warmth of long fingers reaching around my hand and pulling me from the back seat of the car.

The mums had been on display in the same spot though there were fourteen more pots than there were at present. I had pointed at the brightest red ones, and Mom had placed them in the child seat part of the cart next to where I sat.

Dad joined us and looked at me as I held the flowerpot in my hand.

“
What the hell is that?”

“
Mums, sweetheart. We can plant them near the front porch.”

“
He’s not a girl, Fran,” Dad had said. “You’re always making him do girly stuff.”

“
He’s a wonderfully well-rounded little boy,” Mom responded. She reached up and touched the side of his face, and his expression calmed. “He would still rather be in front of the goal with you than on the piano bench or reading with me.”

I picked up one of the potted plants and put it in the cart.

It wasn’t Dad’s fault—I knew that. He had a lot to worry about between the hospital and coping with single fatherhood, not to mention dealing with the whole fucking town. That was a lot for a guy to deal with, as he reminded me fairly regularly.

I was going to have to figure out how to get this thing planted without him noticing. As I finished shopping and jumped back into the car, I considered various places in the yard he might not detect.

I didn’t head home.

I kept driving past
her
house.

I did the same thing the next day—figured out a plausible reason to leave home and drove around her neighborhood.

One certainly could have argued that I was displaying some obsessive-compulsive behavior, which I was known to do, but I would have argued right back that her house just happened to be on my way to a lot of different places…or at least, not too far out of the way. Regardless, I only did it two times during the day and maybe once at night just to make sure she remembered to close her curtains.

She always closed them, but I was hoping at some point she might forget…just so I could let her know about it. You know—like a Good Samaritan kind of thing. Once I saw her and her father sitting at the kitchen table, eating enchiladas or something that looked like them. I wondered if she could really cook. Sheriff Skye seemed to be enjoying them.

The mums I had left on her front porch had been planted by the mailbox.

I drove by before school and after school just to check to see if she had either left already or was home yet. I never stopped or anything—just drove past. When the sheriff’s car was there, I drove past a little faster, not over the speed limit, though I wouldn’t have had to pay for it, but I still didn’t want him pulling me over while I was right by his house, checking out his daughter.

Rumplestiltskye.

After four days, I still had no idea what her first name was. She wouldn’t tell me, and I refused to ask anyone else. I just kept calling her Rumple because it seemed to annoy the shit out of her, which made her glare and take out her verbal claws. She reminded me of the kitten I hid in my room for a week before Dad found it and took it to the shelter: little tiny claws and lots of yowling for such a tiny thing. Rumple was like that, too.

She was bringing extra pens to biology class now, so I needed some way to get to her.

Friday, I walked into the cafeteria and saw her sitting at the end of one of the long rectangular tables. I smirked to myself and strode right over, dropping down across from her and plopping my sack lunch to one side. I crossed my arms on top of the table and put my chin in the middle of them.

“Hi there, Rumple,” I said with a smile and a raise of my eyebrows.

She closed her eyes and took a slow breath through her nose. She picked up a bag of chips off her tray and tore into it as she stared off into space and refused to look at me. I reached over, grabbed her sandwich, and bit off the corner.

“You are unbelievable,” she finally said.

I knew she wouldn’t be able to ignore me forever.

“You’re adorable when you’re angry,” I told her. I meant it—she was.

She growled something under her breath and looked away from me again. I reached over to her tray and grabbed the plastic spork out of the bowl she had for her fruit cup. I started spinning it around my fingers like a drummer with a drumstick, but I wasn’t very good at that. I kept dropping it and starting all over again.

“You should come to practice again tonight,” I told her.

“Why would I?” she asked, still not meeting my gaze.

“To watch me,” I said with a shrug, as if it was obvious. It
was
obvious. Most of the girls there were coming to watch me or one of the other guys. “Why else?”

“Is that supposed to be the point of the game?” she asked, finally looking at me. “Watching the guys play? I thought there was some sort of objective about getting the ball in the net or something.”

“Well, yeah!” I laughed. “That’s during a game, though. If you come to watch practice, you’re just there hoping I end up on the team playing skins in the rain.”

Her eyes widened and then narrowed, but I picked up on her quick breath. She tried to let it out slowly, tried to calm herself, but I was pretty damn sure she was thinking about what I had said.

“You want to see me without my shirt?” I winked at her. “I’m only too happy to oblige.”

“I most certainly do not!” she snapped and glared at me. She started to grab her tray, but I put a hand on it and held it against the table.

“Am I annoying you?” I asked with a half-smile.

“Undoubtedly!” She pulled at the tray, but I slid it to the side and grabbed both her hands in mine. She started to pull away, but I held on. She leaned back a little but didn’t keep trying to get away from me.

“Let me just make a quick observation,” I said as I looked into her blue eyes. “You do want to see me practice, and you do want to see me with my shirt off. You’d probably like to see more, too.”

“Oh, yes, because you are such a charmer.” Her voice was dripping with sarcasm, and she rolled her eyes, but her pupils were slightly more dilated than they had been, and her lips were darkening in color.

“Yes, you do,” I insisted.

I lifted my head off my arms, pulled my legs up and got on my knees on the bench seat. Then I leaned over the table, getting right up next to her. I moved forward until I was only a few inches from her face.

“There are several ways I can tell,” I informed her, keeping my voice low and soft. I let my tongue dart out and lick my lips, noting her distraction as her eyes flickered to my mouth and back again. “Like right now, I know what you’re thinking about.”