by Melody Anne
“Coach just told me the Falcons are taking over our practice time. The owner wants them to get a better feel for the pitch, so we’re being moved to Cricket Field next month when the season starts,” Johnny said.
“What? Those chicks can’t take our practice space. Cricket Field’s a shit hole! It’s cursed!” Gabe exploded, drawing the crowd of reporters’ attention in his direction once again.
Oh hell. Now he’d done it.
Lainey sent him a fierce glare while mouthing the words “those chicks.” She looked ready to tear out his throat. This press conference was about to go from bad to worse, but Gabe wasn’t worried about that. Cricket Field was covered in Astroturf, not grass. Every time the Surge had practiced there, the team captain suffered a career-ending injury.
“Any more questions about the Falcons?” Lainey called out to the press hounds.
Mean Jim Green, Gabe’s least favorite reporter, stepped forward. “So, to clarify, Ms. Lukas, if you cannot promise the women’s league to be bloody or sexy, why the heck would sports fans in Seattle support the Falcons instead of watching real athletes play for the Surge?”
“I guarantee fans will see the highest level of skill and excitement on the field. The top footballers in the world will be playing here.”
“Top female players,” Green corrected with obvious derision.
“Top female players who are every bit as fast, strong, and skilled as any male player,” Lainey shouted back, losing her composure once again.
If she just had a ball . . . Gabe thought as he watched Lainey dig herself deeper and deeper. She could easily turn this press conference around. She just needed to learn how to work the cameras and generate a little excitement. It had been eight months since the World Cup, and the world was overdue for a reminder of just how stellar an athlete Lainey was. From the corner of his eye, he noticed the ball boy gathering up the last few balls from their practice.
“Hey, Johnny,” he whispered to his teammate. “Grab a ball for me, will ya?”
Like a little puppy eager to please his hero, Johnny ran after the ball boy and emerged with a beautiful, round size-5 Adidas bouncing skillfully on his forehead.
“Whatever you’re gonna do, don’t do it. Trust me, man,” Joe Sheridan, the Surge’s goalie and voice of reason, cautioned. Gabe trusted his best friend, but he also never got anywhere in life by being cautious.
He ran up to Johnny, gave him a little shove, and snatched the ball away.
“Aww, I almost broke my record!” Johnny whined. “What did you want it for, anyway?”
“This,” Gabe answered slyly, tossing the ball in his hands. “Hey, Lukas!”
Lainey turned as she was announcing the date of next week’s preseason game, mouth forming an exaggerated O as the ball he just kicked flew toward her sternum. Like the true athlete she was, she braced her body instantly and cradled the ball in her chest, causing an eardrum-shattering thunk against her portable microphone. She cushioned the ball on her thigh, then instinctively trapped it beneath her heel.
It took an agonizingly slow minute for Lainey to steady herself and for Gabe to realize he should probably have heeded Joe’s warning. The crowd of reporters was ominously still, mouths agape. Slowly a rumbling of faint laughter spread until it became an uproar.
With a deer-in-headlights expression, Lainey scanned her clothing, biting her lip when she caught sight of the grass stain on her chest. Then she looked down at her feet.
Her sharp stiletto heel had punctured the now flattened, sad-looking ball.
“Look,” Johnny yelled out in between fits of hysterical giggles, “it’s Lainey ‘the Ballbuster’ Lukas!”
3
April 3, 1993
Dear Diary,
My name is Lainey and I’m six years old and I like to win. One day I will play in the World Cup and I will win because I am a winner.
LAINEY SETTLED AN ASPHALT shingle with perfect precision against the snapped chalk line. The serene, mossy West Coast air filled her lungs and coated her skin. She fired the pneumatic nail gun twice, and then repeated the entire process with meticulous fluidity a dozen more times. The repetitive nature of roofing calmed her.
Her concentration only broke when someone below shouted her name. She wiped the dampness from her eyes with the back of her hand and leaned over the edge as far as her safety clip would allow, careful not to lose her balance in the slight drizzle that was making everything a wet, slippery mess. Her uncle Walt was standing on the front lawn, pointing at his watch.
“You’re twenty-seven minutes overdue for your break, Lainey.”
“Sorry, Uncle Walt. I’ll be down in a few. I just want to finish this row.” With the weather, Lainey was eager to get the roof finished by the end of the day. But Uncle Walt was as stubborn about treating his employees fairly as she was about seeing a job done to perfection. Lainey knew how lucky she was to have this as a second job. The AWSL paid less than most part-time jobs. Some of the lower-ranked players on her team earned less than five figures, not even enough to cover the rent of a one-bedroom apartment in Seattle. Lainey at least made enough with the top up from the National Soccer Federation to live comfortably, but she needed to be more responsible for her future, something that an AWSL salary—even for a top player—would never provide. Not that Lainey was complaining about being paid meagerly to live out her dream, but most of her teammates’ off-season jobs didn’t offer the flexibility or benefits that she enjoyed. Uncle Walt was letting her continue on during the season by picking up whatever hours worked for her.
She quickly finished and scuttled down the ladder to join Walt and their coworker Mike, who were hanging out on the front lawn of the modest two-story house.
“Big soccer star showing the rest of us up on the job, huh?” Mike ribbed as he handed her a cellophane-wrapped ham sandwich from the lunch cooler. Though he was as old as Walt, and blue-collar to the bone, Mike never made her feel inferior or unwelcome on-site. He respected her work ethic, and that was that. Lainey had picked up the trade during the years she spent living with her favorite uncle and Aunt Marnie as a teenager. She’d convinced her parents to let her train with a team in Seattle, where she could play at a much more competitive level than in Nebraska. In exchange for room and board and endless rides to and from practice, she pitched in with her uncle’s roofing business. It’d started with her running around like a gopher, passing the men whatever tools they needed. But it turned out she had a natural affinity for the trade.
“If I really were a big star, I wouldn’t need this job,” she answered wistfully in between bites. The Falcons were unquestionably world-class athletes, but until they could reel in a proper fan base and secure the future of their franchise, the word “star” just didn’t seem to fit. And after the disaster of a press conference she’d experienced the day before, the chances of the Falcons folding were higher than ever. Given the spectacular catastrophe of her World Cup final, she wondered if she wasn’t destined to become the laughingstock of the soccer world.
“You sure about that?” Walt asked, nodding toward the bungalow across the street. A young girl, about ten years old, was peering at them with wide eyes from the side of the house. Lainey waved. The girl ducked her face and ran out of sight.
“I don’t think I’m cut out for stardom,” she answered, trying to banish the press conference from her mind. “All I want is to play the beautiful game.”
“All you want is to win,” Walt corrected.
Lainey smiled. “Isn’t that the whole point of playing?”
Her uncle’s expression sobered. “Are you making friends at least?”
“I’ve got you and Mike.”
When the pair gave her matching pointed looks, she followed up with, “What? We gossip all day, and you give me excellent fashion advice. I saw an episode of Sex and the City once. I know that’s what girlfriends do.” She ran her fingers down her secondhand, oversize denim coveralls, which were de rigueur at Walt’s Roofing C
o. “Okay, okay. Look, I’ve already played with some of the ladies on Team USA.”
“Sure, but you didn’t have any friends on Team USA,” Walt added.
Lainey groaned. It was the same conversation they’d had when she first came to spend the summer with him at fourteen years old. And every subsequent year thereafter. “I’m trying, but we’re just not on the same page. None of them seems to get how close our team is to collapsing. And on top of that, the owner’s decided since I’m captain, I need to be the public face of the Falcons. Only God knows why—any other player on the team would do a better job with the media than me. I didn’t ask for the spotlight, but they resent me because of it anyway.” Lainey had never managed a good relationship with the media. The one time she opened up to a reporter before the World Cup, it ended with an exposé on the extreme routines of athletes, questioning whether there was a link between Lainey’s level of discipline and the mental health issues plaguing elite athletes. After the World Cup, when she refused to speak to any reporters, she was labeled a liar, a hermit, and a freak.
And now they’d coined her the Ballbuster. Great.
To say she hated the media would be an understatement. A giant, massive, supernova-size understatement.
But as much as that was true, Lainey wasn’t willing to give up captaincy. She’d fought hard to earn that spot, and she wasn’t a quitter. And though Frank drove her crazy with his sycophantic treatment of the media, she owed it to him and the rest of her team to play along. Coach Labreilla had taken a huge risk drafting her in the first round when her recovery was so nascent and tenuous.
“Always an excuse, Lainey. Everybody needs friends,” Mike inserted sagely. Walt nodded in agreement.
“Well, if our team folds, we’ll all be shipped off to different cities next season, so the whole ‘friends’ thing will be irrelevant.”
To Lainey’s great relief, the conversation shifted to the topic of new asphalt as they finished their lunches. It wasn’t like Lainey didn’t want friends, but ambition and friends didn’t mix well. She made a promise to herself last year that if she achieved her dream of winning the World Cup, she’d finally lighten up and work on having a life outside of soccer. She even made a list of things she would do and kept it tucked inside her pillow. Making friends was number three, after getting a library card and a snazzy new haircut without worrying about whether it tucked neatly into a ponytail. Bangs, even. She’d definitely get bangs. No one would ever comment on her scar if it was hidden.
There were so many things in life she wanted to experience after fulfilling her dreams. With one ill-timed swing, Mari String kicked those dreams out of her grasp. Lainey may have won the World Cup, but she didn’t win. Instead, she woke up in a foreign hospital days later, where she spent two weeks stuck to a gurney before being transferred to the United States while her teammates reveled in their glory. Sure there’d be another chance in four years, but there were no guarantees Team USA would even make it to the finals again, much less win.
Not to mention, a team of neurologists told her repeatedly she was incredibly lucky to be playing at all. Few people walked away from that big of a skull fracture and the massive brain bleed that accompanied it. She’d had to take her unparalleled work ethic and send it into overdrive just to have a shot at playing in the AWSL. Instead of running five miles every morning, she ran ten. Gone were the days spent perfecting her skills for an hour after each scheduled team practice. Now she spent at least three hours every day dribbling, juggling, and shooting regardless of how busy she was, even if it meant waking before dawn to fit everything in. There was no room for distractions in her life anymore. The AWSL was a second chance to feel the joy she’d been working so many years for, and nothing would get in her way. Lainey brushed aside the morbid thoughts of what her injury had cost her and packed up the remnants of her lunch.
“Your little admirer is back,” Mike said. The girl across the street was clutching a soccer ball in her hands.
“Go,” Walt instructed. “You know you want to.”
“But break is over, and we need to get that roof done before the rain picks up,” Lainey protested weakly.
“Go.”
Lainey really did have the best jobs in the world. She jogged across the street and spent the rest of the rainy afternoon tending goal against a wooden fence while the girl practiced her penalty shots.
4
“Just because the weather outside is gray doesn’t mean your skin needs to be. I’m Gabe Havelak, and when I want to look my golden best, I go to the Tan Man. And so should you. Because you can’t shine like a star if you’re as pasty as a ghost.”
DAMN RAIN. THE PAIN in Gabe’s knee was always worse on damp, gray days. A twinge spiked down through his Achilles and up into his thigh as his foot connected with the cracked cement step. It would only get worse once he was practicing on that ridiculous, Astroturf-covered Cricket Field. He already used enough ice after each practice to sink the Titanic.
Gabe took another step and cursed. Looking down, he realized he’d accidentally stepped on one of the cracks. He exhaled in frustration and reached into his pocket to rub the rabbit’s foot he carried everywhere with him. Silly, sure, but it worked. If only the good luck charm could do something about the weather. And his knee.
Most people thought it was bizarre when, seven years ago, Gabe voluntarily left the sun and the paycheck that came with his spot on Valencia CF. The prevailing assumption was that Gabe craved the fame and adoration that came with being Seattle’s golden boy. In Spain, he was a second-tier American footballer. But here in the United States? He was an unparalleled star of the soccer world.
No question Gabe liked the attention, but the real reason he accepted the significant pay cut to play out his days like a drowned rat was right in front of him: a seventy-year-old, crumbling, stucco bungalow.
He pushed the unlocked door open. Warmth spread through him as he stepped over the threshold, burning away the chill in his bones. He was greeted by the familiar sight of dated peach wallpaper and hundreds of decorative plates commemorating everything from the exotic locales Gabe had played in to various royal families throughout Europe, and even the occasional baby animal.
“I’m here, Ma,” he called out. He’d offered to buy his parents a newer and bigger house hundreds of times. Though he wanted to give them the world, just as they had done for him, he was secretly glad they continually refused. His best memories were rooted within these 1,300 square feet.
Mama Havelak, clad in a bright tracksuit and an apron with an image of Gabe and his sister silk-screened to the white fabric, emerged from the kitchen to greet him in the foyer. He held out his arms for a hug, but she brushed past him and glanced outside the front door.
“Just me, Ma.” Gabe hadn’t brought a date home for dinner since he was seventeen and naive as a fresh-dug turnip. The girl, whose name he could no longer remember, didn’t even last through the first course. Nowadays, none of the women he went out with was worthy of a second date, much less meeting his family. He hated disappointing Mama, but he hated the thought of bringing an airhead to his sacred family dinners even more. One of the pitfalls of being a minor celebrity is that most of the women who flocked to him did so because they wanted to latch on to his fame. Genuinely interesting people—ones with their own ambitions and passions—didn’t purposely seek out fame. For Gabe, fame was nothing more than a side effect of doing his job well. Something he could occasionally leverage to help him with his charity work. But it seemed that the more famous he got, the smaller his dating pool became.
“You’re late,” Mama huffed in her thick eastern European accent before smacking him in the head with a slotted spoon. “Now sit down and eat. I made cabbage rolls.”
“My favorite,” Gabe said with a smile, rubbing the side of his head as he followed her to the dining room. “But I don’t have a game tonight.”
Cabbage rolls were Mama’s special dish. A labor-intensive show of love and support
before each of his matches. His fame and fortune could get him into any five-star restaurant in the city on a moment’s notice, but Mama’s cabbage rolls were a priceless good luck charm. Call him superstitious, but the Surge never won a home game if he didn’t fill his belly with cabbage rolls beforehand.
“They’re not for you. They’re for your sister. It’s her special night. Now sit.” She pointed to the table, where his dad and sister were already digging in. She then cleared the extra plate she always set out “just in case” with a disappointed sigh, as per her usual routine.
That explained why his parents were clad in matching unfamiliar red-and-gold tracksuits instead of the usual white-and-blue Surge ones. Their entire wardrobe seemed to consist of tracksuits and soccer jerseys with the number sixteen. Getting his lucky number back was one of the less widely known reasons he’d jumped at the chance to move back to the United States. His mama’s cooking was, of course, number one on that list.
“Since when are you playing soccer, kiddo?” he asked, digging into the delicious meal set before him. Despite her natural ability, his younger sister never wanted to join any leagues.
Tessa rolled her big brown eyes. It seemed to be her preferred way to communicate lately. There were a lot of challenges to having a sibling twenty years younger. In addition to being old enough to realize that a baby sister meant his parents were actively doing the dirty in their mature years, it was difficult to bond with her given that he’d spent most of her life playing overseas. Still, the kid was pretty awesome even when she wanted nothing to do with him.