Dre clapped my back. “Yep, she did.” He stretched his arms in the air. “Guess we're crashing a party, boys!”
Well, fuck.
Two
Sporty Vibes
Coach Mendoza barked at us the minute we stepped onto the practice field. “Hurry up, mga batugan!” He stood with his hands on his hips, rotund belly protruding over his belt, glaring at us with those dark eyes, chewing whatever it was that he chewed in his mouth. None of us knew. It wasn't gum, we knew that for sure. The leading guesses were months-old beef jerky or bone marrow of fallen players.
We all grumbled about him all the time, seeing as he called us mga batugan on the regular in Tagalog, like we didn't know how to use Google Translate to find out he was calling us some version of lazy, worthless fuckheads. Still, he knew the game better than anyone I met and got results out of his players.
He twirled his fingers in the air, which signaled us to start running. Our warm-up was five laps around several practice fields on the south side of campus, which was about two miles. I ran every morning, too, because I was a dumbass who liked to run. If I let stamina slide, there would be hell to pay come game time. I usually played the entire ninety minutes, which was no joke when that involved constant running and bursts of speed.
At the end of the warm-up, we stretched some more, and then settled in for drills. I was working on a one-touch passing drill with Zac, Shane, and three other teammates when someone walking past the field caught my eye. I looked up mid-sprint, locked eyes with Bianca, and promptly bit it.
Bit. It.
As in, tripped over my own feet, face planted on the ground, grass in my teeth, dirt in my mouth, pain all over. Hands grabbed the back of my shirt and hauled me up when all I wanted to do was lay there and feel sorry for myself. Shane gripped my face. “You okay, man? Damn, you went down hard.”
I jerked out of his hands and bent over to spit out grass. “Yeah, let's pretend that didn't happen.”
Zac stood next to him, his hands on his hips. “Uh… you got a…” he pointed to his general chin area and then grimaced.
I looked between them. “I got a what? What do I have?”
Shane sighed. “You skinned your chin. I think you hit a dirt patch or something.”
Now that they mentioned it, there was pain there. When I reached up to touch it, I hissed, and my hands came away tinted red. “Motherfucker. I'm bleeding?”
Zac held up his fingers with a wince. “Just a tad.”
But I wasn't paying attention to them anymore. I was watching Bianca as she stood next to Coach. They were standing…close. Like they knew each other, not like she randomly happened on the field and decided to chat up our coach.
By now, the entire team was no longer even pretending to do a drill, because she was there. And there just wasn't anywhere else worth looking when she was in sight.
Coach whispered something to her, his face hard, then turned his head slowly to see us not doing much of anything.
“Mga batugan!” He hollered, this time with a shaking fist, but that didn't even strike the fear of God in us like it normally did, not with an angel standing at his side. And especially because she was also rolling her eyes dramatically and making the talk sign with her hand, mocking him.
Someone laughed, and I'm sure a couple of us were smiling, because Coach whipped his head to Bianca. She immediately dropped her hand and adopted an innocent look. Coach didn't look convinced.
I swallowed, forgetting about my chin, which probably made me look a moron. Soccer players never got cool injuries, like a hockey-player sexy eyebrow gash or cheekbone cut. We got stupid ones like chin abrasions and thigh burns and knee bruises. Or broken bones, and there was nothing sexy about a neon green cast.
Bianca met my gaze, raised one eyebrow at me, then turned in a swirl of hair and walked away. I didn’t understand this attention. What the hell did she see in me?
We all watched her go, and when she was out of sight, Coach barked at us to gather around him. When he spoke, his voice shook a little, and I wasn't sure I'd ever heard him talk like that, with any emotion other than loathing for us. “That was my niece, Bianca. She's a transfer student, so you might see her around. I'll make it very, very clear, though. She is not for you. She is for none of you, pencil dicks. Do you understand?”
This felt really nineteenth century. Bianca was an adult, a college student, and her uncle was threatening us.
But then Coach hollered, “Do you understand? Because I have the power to sit your ass on the bench or run you until you puke. Don’t think I won’t do either.”
We all nodded frantically, and I thought my knees were going to give out. There was no way I could go to that party with her. Coach would castrate me.
“Do you understand?” He yelled again
“Yes Coach!” We answered in unison. There had to be more to this story, right? Why was this such a big deal? Was she royalty or something? Promised to an Arabian sheik?
But I didn’t have time to think more on it because Coach clapped. “Back to the drill.”
I turned to go when Coach called my name. I froze before I faced him. Did he know that I'd met Bianca already? When I trudged back to him, his gaze was scanning the field as my teammates continued the passing drill.
“Saint.” He still wasn't looking at me.
“Yeah, Coach.”
“Since Carson's out for the season. I want to try something different with you in practice today. We’ll see how you do, and then we'll try it in the game.”
He had my attention now. “Okay.”
Finally, he focused on me. “I want to try you in a false nine with Castle.”
It took a moment for my brain to catch up. False nine was a position—a forward striker in a four-four-two formation who typically dropped back to midfield, which disrupted the opponent's man-to-man marking. One of my favorite players, Argentinian Lionel Messi, was a master at the false nine.
But I'd never played any sort of offensive position. Even as a midfielder, I'd always been positioned to play more defense. I scratched my chin, which had started to itch. “But I'm a midfielder. A defensive one.”
Coach's eyes were like two black glass beads pinning me on the spot while he chewed…whatever it was he chewed. I resisted fidgeting.
“I think whoever told you that you were better at defense was wrong. I wanna see what you can do up front, but we still need your skills in midfield. False nine it is.” That was the end of the discussion. He didn't have to say it, because I knew Coach well enough having played for him for two years already. “Castle!” Coach shouted, beckoning Shane to us.
He jogged over. “What's up?”
Coach clapped me on the back so hard I nearly fell over. “Meet your new striker. Ready to practice a false nine?”
Shane looked at me and swallowed, his anxiety contagious. Yeah, I wasn't so sure about this either. Could I pull off a position I’d never played before?
By the time practice was over, my throat hurt from shouting, my legs were jelly and green with grass stains. I wanted a shower and food and sleep. Too bad I had a fucking paper to write.
I leaned my head on the backseat of Dre's car as he drove me, Shane, and Zac home to the house we shared in town. Travers University was in a small Pennsylvania town called Parksburg. There wasn't much going for the town other than the university. There were a couple gas stations, fast food joints, a coffee shop or two, and one twenty-four hour diner-type place that sold the best wings.
Rent was cheap in town, so we were able to afford a two-story house for the four of us. It wasn't anything fancy. The kitchen floor was cracking, and the basement was basically a pile of dirt. I was worried if we ran on the stairs leading to the second floor too hard, our feet would plunge right through the wood, but we all had our own rooms.
That was especially great when I wanted to FaceTime home because Shane thought my dads were hot and tried to sneak in on my calls. He thought my Pop was a hot bear. Perv.<
br />
When we got home, Dre headed right to the kitchen to eat eggs. The dude thought he was Apollo Creed—looked like him, to be fair—and overloaded on the protein, but he was also buff as fuck, so he was doing something right.
Shane made peanut butter sandwiches for the rest of us, which I ate in about three bites. I was licking the peanut butter off my fingers as Shane leaned against the counter. “So what do you think about practice today?”
I shrugged. “I don't know, man. I've never played striker before. I'm not…good at attacking like you. Everything you do is like…” I held my hands out like claws, “Roar. Fear me.”
Shane laughed. “I'm not like that.”
“You are though. My sign is a crab, remember—”
“Oh Jesus, here we go again,” Dre muttered.
“Oh, just eat your eggs and shut up.” I glared at him. “Anyway, as I was saying, I'm a crab. I scuttle and shift around and reach my solution but it's never direct.”
Shane looked thoughtful, his brows pulled low over his eyes. “I think there's going to be a learning curve, but Coach wouldn't have you do it unless he thought you had potential. He could have asked Le or Rodriquez to move to striker next to me, you know?”
I nodded. “Yeah, you're right.”
“Don't convince yourself you can't do it before you try though.”
Dre pointed his fork at me. “I thought you did well, for what it's worth.”
Zac came sauntering into the kitchen and began digging into the cabinets. “Where are my Oreos?”
Shane rolled his eyes. “You ate them all yesterday.”
“Did not.”
“You did too, bro.”
“Fuck.” He slammed the cabinet shut, scowling.
Zac loved anything sweet. He was like a truffle pig for chocolate. I pulled open a drawer and handed him a Hershey kiss I found inside.
He grinned and unwrapped it immediately.
There were a lot of girls on campus who wanted to get with the surfer-like Zac Mikelson. They didn't know that all they had to do was give him chocolate. Like a horse to water.
“Gotta shower and call home,” I said.
“Tell your dads I said hi!” Shane called after me. I flipped him off over my shoulder.
When I was done, I wrapped a towel around my waist, and shut myself in my room. I sank down onto my bed and pressed the button to FaceTime my parents. I ran my hand through my wet hair as the phone rang, the camera showing my face back to me. And shit, that bruise on my chin was really noticeable. No way was Dad going to ignore it…
“Lavin!” I heard Dad's voice first, then the deep murmurs of Pop before the camera engaged. They'd had me via surrogacy and while they never confirmed whose little swimmers were used, it was noticeable to just about everyone that I looked like Pop. I had his stronger facial features, his large hazel eyes, and thick brown hair. Oh, and there was the fact that I was white—like Pop—and not black like Dad. Skin and blood didn't matter though. They both raised me. They were my family.
I sighed as the camera focused on them, because my family did odd things, like answer phone calls during an intimate massage.
Pop was laying on his back wearing only a pair of sweat pants, and Dad was straddling his thighs, rubbing oily hands all over Pop's hairy back. I squeezed the bridge of my nose as Pop opened his eyes and waved. “Hey there, Lav.”
“There's our little Pelé!” Dad ran his knuckles down either side of Pop's spine.
Even though I was no Pelé—arguably the great soccer player of all time—my dads called me that when I was younger and the nickname had stuck. “Hey, Dad and Pop.”
“How's practice going?” Pop asked. “Coach still a hard-ass?”
Dad had stopped massaging and was leaning closer to the iPad I knew was propped on their side table. His brown eyes narrowed. “Lavin Michael, what is that on your chin?”
I self-consciously covered the mark with my hand. “Uh…”
“Get that hand down and let me see.” I dropped my hand with a sigh. “Oh dear, have you cleaned that?”
“Of course, I just showered and—”
“I hope you cleaned it with witch hazel.” Dad was sitting on the edge of the bed now, completely forgetting that he'd been in the middle of massaging his husband. “Did you get that package of essential oils I sent you?”
I glanced at my closet. I'd opened the box, took a peek inside, then shoved it beside a pair of old cleats. “Uh. Yeah.”
“Great, you can make a salve with the raw honey in there, or you apply three to four drops of lavender oil on a gauze pad and place it on the injury two to three times a day.” He raised his eyebrows at me.
After the day I had, I wasn't in the mood for his hippy crap. “Dad, I washed it. It'll scab over and be fine, okay?”
He jerked back at my tone and placed a hand on his chest. He was silent for a moment, and Pop sat up beside him. “Oh, here we go,” he muttered.
“Lavin,” Dad said evenly. “I sense some hostility, so let's work on our calming breaths, okay? Inhale, hold, two, three. And exhale. Good, let's do that again.”
I breathed with my Dad for fifteen seconds before he thought I was ready to continue the conversation. It was then I noticed all the additional shelving in their bedroom. And…was that a hot plate with a skillet on top? “Uh, what's going on in your bedroom?”
Pop glanced around. “We're thinking of downsizing to a micro home. After you move out of course. So we decided to live in the bedroom for a week to see how we'd do!”
I stared at them. “You can't be serious.”
“They are cozy and eco-friendly. It’s the future of domestic living, Lavin,” Dad said. With a straight face. This time I did the calming breaths unprompted.
Pop, the perceptive one, knew a subject change was needed. “So tell me about practice?”
“Uh, it's going okay. Now that Carson is hurt, Coach wants to move me to striker and have me play a false nine.”
Pop braced his elbows on his knees and leaned forward closer to the iPad. “Yeah? How do you feel about that?”
I thought about what Shane said. “I guess, I've always thought I was better at defense, but Coach thinks he sees something in me that means I can do this so…”
“You've always been able to do what you put your mind to.” Pop's voice was deeper when he meant to get a point across. “You work hard on the field and off, and I know you can do it if you put the practice time in and listen to your Coach.”
“We're proud of you, son,” Dad chimed in.
Fuck, I loved them. They drove me batty, but they were the best fucking parents. “Thanks. That means a lot.”
“We love you, sweetie,” Dad said. “I'll be sending you extra good luck and sporty vibes this week.”
I laughed and shook my head. I showed an early interest in soccer after they put me in a class at Pop's urging, since he loved soccer. Dad wasn't really a sports kinda guy, but when I took to it, he was one hundred percent behind me. Every Halloween, he'd dress up as a famous soccer player, right down to the tattoos and facial hair. He went all out, and I was so proud to show him off to my friends. My family was non-traditional, but it had all the love. “I love you both,” I said. “I'll keep you updated, okay?”
Dad kissed his fingers and then waved them at the camera and Pop gave me his macho head nod. I waved to them and ended the FaceTime call.
I fell back onto the bed and rubbed my eyes. My chin was still sore, which made me think of Bianca. I probably should have told my dads about her and the party. The football players seemed to have extra ’roid rage around party time. Not like I couldn’t hold my own. I knew how to fight. Growing up with two dads led to some teasing, which led to me learning how to punch first. And how to win.
There was no way I could go to that party. No way. Absolutely no way.
Three
Thicc Thighs Save Lives
The text came at ten on Friday night while I was sitting in the living room wi
th my roommates. Dre was dressed in his standard uniform of jeans, Tims, and a gray T-shirt. Shane was wearing the same thing except everything was a size too small, and Zac wore his blonde hair tied back into a man bun at the crown of his head, a Henley, and a pair of holey jeans. Not artful holes, either, but legit holes like he'd just been laying brick.
I was…not dressed. I wore a pair of boxers because I hadn't decided if I was going to the party yet.
The guys told me I was being a pussy. I thought I was being smart because I liked my face non-wrecked. Also I objected to the use of pussy as a derogative term.
The text read: Are you ready?
“Who is it?” Zac mumbled, looking like he was going to fall asleep. It was amazing how much sugar he could eat and how it didn't affect him.
I shook my head. “Not sure.” I didn't recognize the number, but I had a feeling who it was from. I texted back, Who's this?
You forgot me already? How many girls ask you out to parties? :(
“Shit, it's Bianca.” I said.
Dre's head shot up. “For real? How'd she get your number?”
“I don't know!” With angry fingers, I typed, Bianca, how'd you get my number?
Her reply was quick. I know my uncle's computer password and checked his files.
“She stole it from Coach.”
Dre laughed and pounded a hand on the armrest of the couch. “No shit? Girl's got balls. Why the hell is she using them to get your number?”
“Thanks a lot for the inferiority complex, asshole,” I muttered as another text chimed. So are you ready?
“Girls have pursued you, dickhead. More than you know, you just have your head up your ass,” Dre said. “Although none of them looked like Bianca.”
“No one looks like Bianca.” I stared at my phone, unsure what to type back. “She probably needs a friend.”
“You do get friend-zoned a lot,” Shane pointed out helpfully.
I rolled my eyes. He wasn’t lying. I had a giant crush on this girl freshman year, and she’d ending up trying to set me up with her friend. Fucking harsh. Then that girl had also friend-zoned me, and the guys would never let me live it down. It would be on my tombstone: Lavin Saint, beloved son, friend to all (especially hot girls).
FALSE 9: Red Card Series Page 2