Mr. Match: The Boxed Set

by Delancey Stewart

  "Yeah, I know you're right."

  Another silence swelled between us, and I sensed that Erica didn’t want to hang up any more than I did. "Did you grow up here? In San Diego?" she asked.

  "Mostly. I was born in Colombia but I don't remember anything about it. I was a baby when we came here."

  "Have you been back there? To visit family or anything?"

  "Nah. My mom's memories from there aren't good—it's why they left. But one day, maybe."

  "You're probably like a rock star there now, pro soccer player and everything."

  I laughed at that. Colombia definitely idolized its soccer players, but I wasn't sure MLS was considered on par with their own players. “I think they have their own soccer stars to celebrate.”

  It was easy between us on the phone, and actually it had been easy talking to her in the car, too. Her voice was smooth and comforting, and it wrapped me in a kind of solace I hadn't felt in a long time, maybe forever. I didn't want the conversation to end, but when I glanced at the clock to find it was after one in the morning, I knew I should let her go.

  "Hey," I said, both of our voices low and sleepy now. "I should let you go."

  "Oh my God, it's so late," she said.

  "I'm sorry I kept you so long."

  "No," her words came fast. "No, it's actually been... I'm glad I picked up."

  "I'm glad too." I paused, wanting to say a million things, but keeping them inside. I wanted to ask her out, but didn’t want to taint whatever this had been. It was possible Erica was just being a friend, and I could use one of those. I settled on, "Thanks for talking to me."

  "Any time," she said. "Good night."

  "Good night."

  I put the phone down and stared out into the bay as the water danced in the quiet moonlight. For the first time in a long time, despite the fear crowding into the dark corners of my mind, my heart felt strangely full.

  Chapter 18

  Coronado Capers

  ERICA

  Waking up to work out on Saturday morning after being on the phone until the teeny tiny hours of the night felt a lot like being dragged behind a charging train, my head banging against the tracks. Not that I had any clue what that felt like, but the key here is that it was difficult.

  "What's going on with all...this?" My brother waved his hands around in circles in front of me, indicating that "this" was pretty much my entire existence, which evidently reflected my late night choices.

  "I stayed up late," I said.

  "You were home, right? Wait, did you go out?" He looked confused.

  "No, I was just..." I couldn't tell him I was talking to Fernando. For one thing, I didn't want to have to share anything about what Fernando was going through. If he hadn't confided in his teammates, there was a reason, and I wasn't going to break his trust. But also, I'm competitive. And I wanted to win the bet. I wanted my cheese. If I told Trace that Fernando and I had developed some kind of weird unexpected friendship, he might change the terms of the bet... and I was pretty sure now that if I wanted him to, Fernando would be asking me out soon—a thought that sent my stomach jumping around inside me. “I was watching a movie.”

  “Oh.” Trace rolled his eyes. Movies were the one thing we never agreed on, and I was guaranteed he wouldn’t be asking me anything else about it. I loved rom-coms and dramas, and he only watched movies with a minimum of three explosions. He wasn’t very deep, but I loved my brother anyway. "Well, are we spinning this morning or not?"

  Gah. Soul Cycle. Trace friggin loved this workout and honestly? My thighs and butt probably loved it, but my head made the whole thing a real struggle. I didn't like sitting on a fake bike surrounded by a bunch of sweaty people all joined together in some kind of unified pursuit of an adrenaline high. It was kind of cult-like in my mind, especially when Trace asked me afterwards if I wanted some kombucha. No thanks, man. I'd rather go for a good old-fashioned run, drink some water and then chug a Diet Coke.

  But this was how we bonded. It had started as kids going out to play, morphed into both of us playing soccer in school, and now that we were adults, it was the gym and Soul Cycle.

  "Yep. I'll be ready in five minutes." I went to my room and geared up, feeling every bit of the three hours of sleep I'd missed. I’d spent the first two of those hours actually watching a stupid movie—which I now regretted, and the last one on the phone with Fernando—I didn’t regret that.

  Class was exceptionally painful, and when Trace told me we were meeting some of "the guys" for brunch, I was surprised at the little flip my stomach did at the thought of seeing Fernando. I couldn’t even be sure he was going, though. He might be with his mom. I couldn't ask Trace, he'd know something was up.

  I showered and dressed quickly, paying a little more attention to my looks than I might have before things had taken a strange turn with the green-eyed guy who seemed to populate my every thought suddenly. When I popped out of my room wearing a sundress, with my hair pulled up in a twist, Trace made a face at me.

  "What is going on with you today?"

  "What do you mean?" I picked up my phone and tried to look very busy in order not to have to explain anything to him.

  "You're like... Is this like a woman-hormone thing?"

  I stared at him over my phone. Typical. Trace's deep understanding of the fairer sex told him that anytime there was something inexplicable in our behavior it had to do with menstruation. "Sure. Let's go with that."

  He nodded as if he'd just solved the most perplexing puzzle the universe had to offer. "Well let's go. I'm starving."

  Thirty minutes later we sat on the sprawling back patio of the Hotel Del Coronado, drinks on the table and the Pacific tossing calmly in the distance, it's soft murmuring providing a backdrop for the conversation around the table. Fernando sat just across from me. Now that I was near him in person, I found it difficult to figure out where to look or how to act, something I'd never really struggled with before.

  "I love your dress," Melinda Isley leaned across the space between us and touched my shoulder. She was honestly the nicest person I'd ever met, which meant we weren't really friends. It was very hard for me to get along with people who never used sarcasm and only said kind words. I wasn’t sure if it made me superficial or just socially immature that I needed a veneer of joking banter wrapped around any kind of real conversation.

  "Thanks," I said, smiling at her. "How's your tiny guy?" The mention of the baby made Melinda look automatically at Isley, and the dreamy smile on her face was almost too much. Too happy. Too perfect. Too...everything. It seemed she and Adam were doing well on the heels of the owner's ex-wife's latest attempts to bring down the team.

  Marissa’s allegations had gotten dirtier and meaner as she picked at one player and then the next, but the claim that Adam had been with her at all was unbelievable even to the slavering media, who’d use almost anything for a good story. He and his wife might as well have worn signs announcing their complete marital bliss.

  "The baby is amazing, thanks." Melinda sipped her water. She'd been around the team enough to know that discussing the inner workings of a three-month old might not be good breakfast fodder, but seemed to give into her maternal urges when she whispered, “Do you want to see a photo?”

  “Sure,” I said, leaning in.

  The pictures were adorable, and I spent a good five minutes swiping through her phone, my heart clenching in an unfamiliar way as I looked at the tiny chubby cheeks in the photos. “He’s so cute!”

  What surprised me was that Fernando stood and came around the table, peering down at the photos in the space between us. The skin on my shoulder and neck was hyper aware that he was just inches from me, his breath tickling my ear.

  "He's adorable," Fernando said to Melinda. "You guys are so lucky."

  I turned to look up at him. "Do you want kids, Fuerte?" I tried to slide my usually playful tone over the real curiosity in my voice, but I ended up breathing the words out, unable to hide how touched I w
as at the soft voice he used to exclaim over the baby pictures.

  He grinned at me, meeting my eye, and something wired and hot passed between us, sending me squirming in my seat. "Definitely," he said.

  I did too. At least in the fairytale version of my life. But in the real version, where I lived with my brother and only socialized with a soccer team full of meatheads, this was an unlikely outcome.

  I’d always thought I wanted kids, but I didn’t have a great example of what childhood was supposed to look like. I just always thought I wanted a chance to make life go right somehow, to create that family I had always seen on television and in the movies I loved. The mom, the dad, the happy home. I imagined it in the far, far distant future. But with Fernando standing there smiling and Mr. Match's suggestion that he was the guy for me spinning in my mind, the future suddenly felt weirdly possible. Did I really believe Fernando and I could be a fit?

  As he slid back into his seat across from me, giving me a smile that nearly sent me to the floor, I decided I did.

  Chapter 19

  Taming the Shrew

  Fernando

  Seeing Erica at breakfast confirmed everything I'd started to think in the tiny hours of the night before on the phone. Maybe Max wasn't out of his mind. Maybe there was something elemental between Erica and me, something worth exploring.

  Maybe the reason we’d always had such a heated acquaintanceship had to do with what was simmering beneath the surface—some kind of basic attraction neither of us had admitted to.

  I could feel her eyes on me as we sat in the sunlight on the patio, eating, drinking and laughing. The one thing about the Sharks that I really appreciated—especially because my family was so small—was that we really were an extended family ourselves. The team didn't replace my mom, but they did give me reassurance that she wasn't really all I had in the world. I’d shared with them that she was sick, and the way they slapped my back and murmured support in the understated way men did didn't make the thought of losing her any less painful, but it did make me realize I had support here if I wanted it. These guys might behave like we only dealt in surface issues, but in truth, we had a pretty comprehensive understanding of one another—it was what made us work on the field.

  And the way Erica's eyes lingered on me across the table made me feel like she and I had an understanding too, one I was beginning to hope would build significantly into something bigger. But I had to be careful with her brother. Having Trace Johnson on the wrong side of the Mr. Match equation would not equal winning on the field—and winning was important to us all.

  In a twisted way, my growing interest in Erica made me want to win all the more—I knew she was in the middle of the PR mess the owner's ex-wife was stirring up. Bad PR and a losing team wasn't a good combination, but winning could defeat almost any other news that got flung our way.

  After sitting across from her for more than an hour, I couldn't stand it anymore. I wanted to talk to her. Alone.

  I stood and stretched, threw a few bills on the table, and said I was going to take a walk on the beach. I said it to the table, but looked at Erica as I finished. I hoped she'd get the hint.

  "Enjoy your romantic stroll, Fuerte," Hoss said, chuckling.

  I shook my head and started out, crossing the patio between tables and slowing my pace as I hit the sand. I turned to look back, and saw that Erica was no longer at the table. But she wasn't crossing the patio behind me either. Shrugging and feeling my mood drop slightly, I turned back toward the water.

  A minute later, Erica arrived beside me, slightly out of breath. "Hey."

  I felt a grin spread over my face that probably rivaled a goofy teenager’s in enthusiasm. "Hey you."

  "Cool if I join you?"

  I lowered my sunglasses so she could see my eyes. "I hoped you would. Just didn't feel like I could invite you with your brother sitting there, looking all protective."

  "He's a pussycat."

  "He's got more personal fouls than anyone on the team."

  "That’s true."

  "Remember when he broke that guy's wrist?"

  "That was a total accident. No one could prove it was him. The guy took a pretty nasty tumble after he tripped into Trace’s leg." Her tone told me she wasn't convinced of her words, but that was the official line. Trace had been out two games for that one.

  "Right. Sometimes I think he has anger issues...not sure I want to get in the way of that."

  She laughed. "He's just protective. Of me, of the team…"

  “Of the soccer ball.”

  “That too.”

  We were walking side by side across the white sand, each of us holding our shoes in one hand and the fingers of the hands between us brushing accidentally now and then. I felt myself warming toward this girl after the sweet way she'd rescued me from my own worst thinking the day before. I'd been in a bad place when she'd found me in the car, and she'd pulled me back to a healthier state of mind.

  For a while we didn't talk, just let the ocean roll in and out next to us as kids danced through the sand, laughing and running. Dogs galloped past, and people generally behaved as if we were all in some kind of idyllic painting of the seaside, with the huge red and white hotel sitting behind us.

  Erica was quiet, which surprised me a little. We’d never actually spent time together one on one before the day prior, so I didn't have a lot to go on in terms of what was normal for Erica Johnson, but I wanted to find out.

  "Thanks for talking to me last night," I said.

  She laughed lightly, a sound like a wind chime twinkling in the sea air. "Of course," she said. "You'd do the same for me."

  "I might not have, before yesterday." I felt like honesty was probably the right tact here. Nothing real was ever built on lies, and the truth was that I’d avoided Erica whenever possible prior to this Mr. Match thing.

  She turned to look at me then, and I imagined her eyes narrowing behind the sunglasses she wore. "Seriously?"

  "Before yesterday I had a pretty solid impression that you hated me." It was strange to admit this to her, to acknowledge what had changed in so short a time.

  "I never really hated you."

  "Just kind of."

  "Maybe I tried to hate you," she said.

  "Why?"

  I could see her brow wrinkle above the aviator shades. "You're the kind of guy I think I hate. The kind I want to hate."

  "So you do hate me." My confidence flagged a bit. Maybe I’d been reading things wrong.

  She shook her head, and the tendrils of hair escaping the soft twist she wore brushed her bare shoulders softly. "No. You're not like I thought you were. Or maybe you are and I don't care as much."

  I stopped walking and turned to face her. "How do you think I am?"

  She opened her mouth, but then seemed to think better of it. She looked down at her feet, wiggling her toes to bury them in the sand. "I don't know," she started.

  "Of course you do. Just tell me."

  She looked up at me and sighed, seeming to put aside whatever misgivings she’d had. "You're a player. A different girl every time I see you. I figured you were full of yourself because of the way you look, the way you...are."

  I could be offended by this surface analysis, but she’d said one important thing in the process of condemning everything else about me. "You like the way I look?" I felt the cocky grin spread over my face.

  She blew out a breath and looked away. "This. See? This is how I thought you were."

  "Fun-loving and ridiculously handsome?"

  "Arrogant and irritating."

  "Tomato, to-mah-to."

  "Well?" She planted her hands on her hips and looked up at me, mock exasperation on her pretty face. “You’re not even denying it.”

  "Maybe it's an act," I said, enjoying the way her skin flushed as she got worked up. I didn’t think Erica really believed I was a player, but I could see how she got that impression.

  "Is it an act?" She wasn't budging.

 
"Yeah. Pretty much." I chuckled and we started walking again, the hotel becoming smaller in the distance behind us as I glanced at it over Erica’s shoulder when I looked at her. "I don't even try with girls really," I said. "It's just the soccer thing, I guess. They come to me. And so I take them out, but there's never anything there, you know? It's like a double-edged sword—I can always get a date, but I never meet anyone worth talking to."

  "Because you definitely choose those long-legged blondes I see you with for their conversational skills," she said.

  "Look," I said, stopping again and turning to face her, removing my glasses so she could see my face. "When I first joined the team, that was a lot of fun—it was part of the glamor, right? I'd just gone pro, and maybe I thought pretty highly of myself. But now? I'm looking for a little more. For someone I can actually talk to, someone with something going on besides an annual tanning membership at Beyond the Beach."

  She pressed her lips together in a doubtful line.

  "Hey," I said, taking a chance and running a finger along the side of her pretty jaw, lifting her chin toward me. "I don't know exactly what this is between you and me," I paused, taking a breath. Did I really want to just lay it out? I swallowed hard. I'd never gotten anywhere being afraid. "I do know that Mr. Match sees something here. And after talking to you yesterday, after seeing you this morning in that dress...so do I."

  She inhaled a sharp breath, but didn't move away from my touch, and I decided to take another chance. I stepped nearer and bent my head toward her, brushing my lips gently against hers. It wasn't a kiss, just a touch.

  We stood there like that a minute longer, both of us staring at the other, something passing between us that neither one was ready to acknowledge. And then it was over. I dropped my hand and she stepped back, and she reached up to adjust her hair—a nervous reaction?