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He was fast. Faster than most of the guys on my team. But he wasn’t faster than me. After chasing him down for thirty yards, I tackled him ten yards shy of the end zone and felt a rush of head-spinning euphoria that was completely foreign.
An addiction was born.
No matter how hard I had to work to keep playing the sport, that addiction never faded.
No one pushed me to play like my dad, reminded me where I came from, whom I came from.
There were no coaches asking me if I remembered the time my dad’s team got promoted to the Premier League, asking me if he had taught me the things I knew, asking me if I had gotten my work ethic from the man who shared my face and build and speed.
They didn’t ask me anything. I was just me.
It was freedom.
And across the pond, I found a family in locker rooms, along with the thing I was meant to do.
But never once had I imagined that the sport I loved, which brought me sanity and friends and a life, would have me staring down into the face of a little girl who was easily a thousand times more stubborn than I’d ever fucking thought possible.
“Come on,” I coaxed. “Doesn’t this look delicious?”
I swear on my ancestors’ graves, she narrowed her eyes before giving me an emphatic no.
“It’s macaroni and cheese, Mira. Every child in the known universe loves this orange bullshit.”
“You make it wrong,” she said.
My mouth fell open. “I did not.”
She rolled her lips between her teeth and stared me down.
I scratched the side of my face and glanced over at the box. I’d gotten thegoodkind. The shells with the creamy shit. And maybe that was my error.
Like I could help it that Zoe got the processed powder crap.
I held the spoon out, contemplating airplane sounds and whether I’d need to create a song and fucking dance to get her to eat. She clamped her mouth shut and sat back in the chair.
Then she shook her head.
I sighed, pulling the spoon back and settling it in the bowl.
I crossed my arms over my chest and returned the staredown. “You need to eat something.”
She shook her head. Emphatically. “No. Not hungry.”
“It’s been four hours since she dropped you off, and if you starve under my care, she will never, ever let me live it down.” I pointed to the orange-coated noodles. “You have to trysomething.”
With a weary hand, I scrubbed the bottom half of my face. I needed a shave. I needed some sleep. And I needed Mira to eat some bloody food.
Then she pointed at the counter. “I have a doughnut?”
“Of course you know what that box is,” I muttered. “No doughnuts until you eat something real, little bit.”
She pushed her lip out in a pout.
When I’d arrived that morning, Zoe was already at the house, bags of Mira’s things neatly lined up in her sky-blue bedroom and a movie running on the large flat-screen TV in the family room.
The little girl in question hardly paid me any mind when I showed up.
Zoe watched me set bags of groceries on the counter and sling my duffel bag onto the floor. “Binders are right there, if you want them,” she said.
