AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Hayden:Catch up with me later? Need to ask you something.
Luke saunters back, seemingly in no hurry to return to his study. “I’ve been hoping for some good news too.”
He inclines his head at the pitch again, his eyebrows rising. He’s asked me once already if I’ll coach football for him. I guess this is him asking if I’ve reconsidered. He also offers a get out.
“Mitch has volunteered to help with the after-school footy club. He is a very busy man though.” Luke quickly adds, “I know you are too.” Here is additional proof that he’s a real local. “For a few more weeks, at least, until the harvest is in.” He inclines his head one more time, this time towards a goalmouth I never expected to stand in again. “Only you looked so at home there, and I know the boys were impressed with your stopping skills. With your advice too. When it comes to coaching, that’s what really matters, isn’t it?”
“What does?”
“Having the trust and respect of your players.” Luke meets my eyes. “Mitch talks a good game, but he’s honest about only knowing so much because someone he supports lives and breathes the sport.”
He means Justin.
That’s who I picture now. I also can’t help remembering what barely registered with me years ago, but Justin did come to plenty of my matches before I got scouted. He sat behind Dad, so I bet he soaked up a ton of knowledge.
Luke continues. “That’s what we do for people we care about, isn’t it? Get involved with their passion, especially if they’re an important person in our lives. Of course you’d want to speak the same language as them, especially if communication otherwise is an issue.”
I guess that he is still talking about Justin. I have only ever heard him mutter a few words—even if they were devastating—but it’s Dad I picture, who struggled with speech at the end, but who worked so hard to keep communicating if soccer was the subject.
All those stories about how he nearly made it?
How he took up coaching after he didn’t, and learned to love it?
I wish I’d listened harder to them.
To him.
Luke crosses the grass to retrieve a football. He touches it with the tip of a shiny black shoe and says, “The difference between you and Mitch is that you can’t only talk about the game. You’ve lived it for real in a way that makes you an exceptional example.”
That’s the second time he’s used that word to describe me.
Exceptional.
Fuck knows why this shoots out from me. “My reason for not playing wasn’t exceptional though, was it?”
There isn’t anyone left out here on the pitch other than him and me. No one else can have heard me admit that. Only Luke and I are out here playing hooky. We’re also playing footy, passing the ball to each other, and the little ones must all be lined up at the fence of Rowan’s classroom watching—they cheer when Luke chips the ball at me and I catch it in a foot stall.
That catch is pure muscle memory, not deliberate showboating, but I flick it up in the air to another cheer, and the next series of flick-ups I launch into is as easy as breathing.
Easier.
I don’t have to think. The ball goes where I send it. I catch it on my knee where it balances as if glued there, then I let it fall only to catch it in another foot stall, all to a chorus of littleohsandahsfrom the watching children.Then I boot it up, sending it soaring to a host of cheers and to another sound that carries across the grass to me.
Fucking drumming.
A quick glance over my shoulder shows Rowan tapping away on the classroom fence with sticks as I flick the ball up again fora last time, barely able to hear Luke over that percussion and the children’s excitement.
He says, “Don’t mix up having to leave that academy with you having to stop playing. No one can take the game from you, Hayden. No one.”
Apart from me.
For the second time today, I end up in goal, this time with a line of little children taking shots at me. They all get to put a ball in the back of the net to an accompaniment of Rowan drumming along with their run-ups.
I only really reach to stop one shot.
Luke isn’t a sore loser. He laughs. He also says, “Those sixth-form students knew the difference between you and Mitch the moment you got a foot on a ball. It’s why they listened.” He offers me the ball.
I want to take it.
