CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Whitney
I f I thought the lone news van this morning was going to be our only media today, I was absolutely wrong.
This place is a madhouse. Camera crews and spectators. Soccer players who are part of the academy and others showing up with a ball in hand and parents asking if they can sign up their kids for the remainder of the camp.
Some can pay. Others cannot. I accept all of them. Me and my horrible business model. But the thought makes me smile and my heart feels so very full.
It might also feel a tad fluttery when I don’t do fluttery because of Hardy’s praise this morning.
Dreams change, Whitney. Dreams shift. It’s okay to find new dreams to hold on to.
Maybe. Then again, maybe this is the dream I was meant to live.
Right here at the academy. The place that is now humming with energy, a buzz of possibility, and an air of excitement that hasn’t been here since we won the championship way back when I used to play.
I walk out of the office and glance toward the sky. I hope you’re watching this all, Patrick . But it’s the man on the field who everyone is watching. Who holds everyone’s attention and who is fulfilling every imaginable part of his obligation.
What changed?
Why did it change?
And then I see him walk over to where Joey is standing apart from everyone else, squat down, and talk to him until he giggles. Then Hardy stands up, puts his hand on Joey’s back, and encourages him to participate.
Little Joey with a rough home life and an even rougher time making friends because he’s so shy.
It’s not like he’s any different from most of the kids here at the club, but something about Joey—his small stature, his freckles, the uncertainty that he might set you off when he asks a simple question—tugs at every part of your heart and soul.
That and ... I don’t break my promises.
Yes, Hardy gets it now.
I jump when my cell rings. The usual exasperation that hits when I see the 1-800 number on my phone isn’t as heightened today. I know a bill collector’s phone number when I see it, and this is most definitely one.
The past week has provided a whirlwind of funds—between Hardy’s donation and the donations coming in—but I’m under no misguided illusion that my money troubles are fixed.
I know the bills due, the delinquent loan payments, and my credit cards that are maxed out.
But man, has all of this loosened the collar that has been tightening on my neck over the past year. The collar that I feared might make me close the doors permanently despite my best efforts to keep Patrick’s, and now my, dream alive. That keeps these kids safe and gives them a sense of purpose through sport.
So I take the call with a bit more confidence and promise that a payment will be made by tomorrow morning. It’s the first time I’ve been able to say that in a long time, and it puts a smile on my face.
I guess all that time writing letters paid off. That and— oh. Wow . Hardy looks over at me and his smile steals my thoughts.
In the moment, I can see him as a little boy, playing a game that makes royalty out of grown men and loving every second of it. The hard work, the gamesmanship, the competition, the comradery.
And something about that gets me through the chaos of the day. All of the noise, the cheering, the photos, and the interviews.
It’s still cool in the most unexpected of ways.
The sky is that odd gray between sunset and nightfall when I step out of my office after paying several bills. Without question, it’s been a good day. Probably one of the best we’ve had here in a long time. The kids were excited and helping each other. Martin was in rare form with his dad jokes that had the kids laughing in the downtimes. The media kept their distance but still reported. The public who came to sneak a peak of Hardy in the flesh were respectful.
And then there was Hardy himself. To say I am impressed with him and how present and ... entertaining he was, is an understatement.
But right now is the perfect time for me to slip out and make a long-overdue visit to someone. I say goodbye to Martin, who’s on his way out.
“You going home?” he asks.
“Nah, just have to run something over to Mr. Macias.”
“Okay.” He lifts his eyebrows and nods, drawing the word out. “Is there a reason you’re going to knock on Mr. Grumpy’s door? Do you need backup? The man hasn’t said a nice thing to anyone for as long as I’ve worked here.”
I nod. “No. I’ve got it.”
He purses his lips and nods. “You’ll have to make notes of all these quirky things you do that I don’t understand so that one day when you’re off at some elite academy, and I’m left here, I know what to do.”
I roll my eyes at our running joke. “Of course I will.”
“Much appreciated,” he says with a mock tip of his hat before I shove my hands in the pockets of my sweatshirt and jog across the parking lot to the street beyond.
Mr. Macias has lived next to the facility for as long as I can remember. Long enough that he recalls the time I broke his fence and lied about doing it. And how I used to steal the flowers off his wife’s pride and joy rose bushes. When Patrick passed away and I was about to go under and lose this place—inexperience, overwhelming debt, and lack of a plan on how to move forward will do that to you—Mr. Macias left a check under the door for me to find one morning to help keep the lights on for another month.
But when he lost his beloved wife, he lost the buffer to his grumpiness, and I have nothing but respect for him when everyone else is scared of him.
My heart pounds erratically in my chest when I knock on the door. I can hear the television playing behind it, see the lights on, but make sure I’m in the middle of the porch with the light squarely on me so that he doesn’t open the door with his gun leading the way.
“Who is it?” he grunts out despite knowing damn well he’s staring at me from behind the peephole.
“It’s Whitney Barnes, Mr. Macias. From next door. The soccer academy.”
“I know who you are,” he says as several locks unclick before the door shunts open. He leaves the barred security door in place as he eyes me.
It’s been quite some time since I’ve talked to him face to face. He’s aged—something I noticed that’s happening faster since his wife passed away. His hair is grayer and his body a little fuller, but the same intense, imposing eyes glare at me from behind the door.
“Big star over there, huh? Mucking up parking on the street and having people throw trash.”
“Yes. I apologize for that. It’s been... rather unexpected.”
“Too many disrespectful kids and asshole adults.”
“I understand why you’d think that.”
“So is he a superstar? The guy with the fancy car who’s lucky he still has rims and tires?”
I chuckle. “Very.”
“Why’s he there?”
“He lost a bet,” I say, “but then you know that already. You know everything that happens around here.”
For the first time, I see a crack in his smile. “I do indeed. Word on the street is that all this”—he waves his hand flippantly—“noise has you raking in all the dough over there.”
I snort and roll my eyes. “Any dough I take in is already accounted for. Those bright red past-due stamps are aggressive to say the least.”
He laughs. “Miss Whitney, you’re all right. But you need to make sure to keep that money out of sight. You know as well as me there are some ... unsavory characters around here that might do bad things to get to it.”
“I do know. Yes.” I look over my shoulder and then back to him with a soft smile. “About all that dough coming in.” I reach into my pocket and pull out a check addressed to Mr. Macias in the amount of two thousand six hundred and twenty-two dollars. His eyes widen when I hand it to him. “I believe this is owed to you as well.”
His Adam’s apple bobs and he blinks rapidly as he stares at it as if he’s fighting back tears. “What’s this?” His voice cracks.
“You and Mrs. Macias helped me—saved me—from going under. After what a ... brat I’ve been to you over the years, you could have written me off and let me drown. You didn’t. It was one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me.” Now it’s my voice that’s thick with tears. “That’s the money back plus interest. A dollar for every day of it.”
“Whitney,” he murmurs and wipes at his cheek with his eyes fixated on the rectangle of paper in his hand. When he looks up at me, tears are welling in his dark brown eyes. “She was right.”
“Who?”
“Millie. My wife.” His smile beams. “She told me you were a good kid and worth all the trouble you’d caused over the years. That you were doing good things for this community. She told me if we helped you out, you’d pay us back someday.”
Jesus. I came here to repay the grumpy old man who scared me as a teen, and now my chest aches with a love I never knew I could feel for someone in this situation. “She was a special woman,” I say.
“She was.”
“She’d sneak me chocolate chip cookies. Leave a bag of them by my bike so that I didn’t know it was her. But I saw her one time and I knew. I never got to thank her for that.”
“She had a soft spot for you.”
“Lucky me.”
“Thank you for this, for proving her right, but I can’t take it.” He reaches it back out to me through the bars of the metal screen door.
“No. Please. Keep it.”
“When you get to my age, you have a knack for seeing people for who they are. This is unexpected. Thank you for showing me who you are. Your true colors.” And then his gravelly voice changes to the one that used to scare the shit out of me. “Now you take this check back and get off my lawn so we can pretend like this never happened.”
“But—”
It’s his wink that stops me. His need to withdraw and staunch the overflow of emotions we both feel. I bark out a laugh and nod as I step back. “Nothing did happen, but you’ll have to tear up the check if you don’t want it. Or save it for a rainy day. I like to know my debts are repaid.”
“They have been repaid and then some. Thank you. You ... made me smile.”
I leave Mr. Macias’s house with a lighter step. Does he have any idea how much that meant for me to be able to do? To honor him and his wife and the grace they extended to me in my time of need?
The footsteps behind me and the unmistakable sound of someone breathing jolt me from my thoughts. I’ve walked these streets a million times so I’m not sure why this time around the sound of someone behind me freaks me out, but it does.
You know as well as me there are some ... unsavory characters around here that might do bad things to get to it.
I pick up the pace and am not sure if the sound I hear is my own footsteps echoing off the concrete wall beside me or really someone else. But I don’t dare look. I don’t invite the trouble that could come with it.
Almost there.
Almost.
And just as I jog around the corner onto my facility, I run smack dab into somebody.
Actually, a very firm, very bare chest of somebody.
The startled yelp we both emit as hands grab my shoulders cuts through the night and the pounding of my heartbeat in my ears.
“Whoa. Whitney. It’s me.” A pair of gray eyes lower so they are in my line of sight. “You okay?
“Yes.” I shake my head as if I’m trying to get rid of a bad dream. “I’m fine. I thought there was someone ...” I hook a thumb over my shoulder and dare to look at the empty sidewalk behind me. “But there isn’t. Clearly. I was just being ... dumb.”
“Hey. It’s okay. You sure you’re okay? I can feel your heartbeat against your skin.”
“Yes.” I plaster a smile on my face as if that will help. “Just fine.”
His eyes say he doesn’t believe me. “What were you doing? Where were you?”
“I was delivering something—it’s fine. I’m fine.”
“No. You’re shaken up. You probably shouldn’t go out in the neighborhood alone. It seems like it’s pretty rough.”
I laugh. “I—” I live in that neighborhood . “It’s not as bad as it seems.”
“Right,” he says sarcastically. “Why’d you go out there again?”
“It’s ...” He stands to full height and gives me an eyeful of his chiseled chest perfection and a perfect distraction in this conversation. “Do you ever put a shirt on?”
“After all that, that’s what you’re going to say?”
“It is,” I say with a definitive nod and shrug from his grip. I sound stupid and shallow, but it’s my way to control the narrative and direct it away from how I had to repay a neighbor who kept me afloat.
“Seems very important.” He’s trying to figure out what I’m hiding, but I refuse to give it to him.
Humor disguises pain. It always has for me.
“It is. Very. And you never answered the question. Why are you always shirtless?”
He shrugs and offers me a coy smile. “I’ve got to find some way to keep you looking at me.”
I roll my eyes and laugh. How can I not? “I’m not supposed to like you, you know.” I begin moving toward the office but veer toward the game room, as the last thing I want him to see is the endless bills sitting on my desk I’ve yet to file away.
“Says who?” He crosses his arms over his chest, and both his pecs and his biceps jump with the motion.
Says my ego, says my head, says everything, but that ache simmering within me. I move to the foosball table and spin a handle out of habit. “Says me.”
“That’s very scientific.”
“It is. Extremely.” I spin another handle so that the sound ricochets throughout the small space.
“What’s up with your fixation with that thing?” He lifts his chin toward the table and game I’m currently messing with.
“What do you mean?”
“You have a habit of standing there and staring off into space.”
“It’s where I think,” I admit.
“I guess you think a lot then.” He glances at his watch. “I have to head out. Practice.”
“Now?”
“Yeah, a second one for the team so I can be a part of it.”
I think I should say sorry, but I don’t. I can’t keep feeling that way over and over for something he started with a comment and an ego.
But I do feel sorry. Especially after watching him today and knowing he’s not just phoning in his presence here. He’s trying and that counts for a lot with me.
But if there’s one thing I learned from Patrick, it’s that we do in fact control some of what happens to us in life. We can turn the lemons we were given into lemonade. Is that what I’m trying to do here?
As per usual, long after Hardy’s gone, I’m still standing at the foosball table, hands braced on its side. Contemplating. Where does this place go from here?
“She told me you were a good kid and worth all the trouble you’d caused over the years. That you were doing good things for this community. She told me if we helped you out, you’d pay us back someday.”
How I wish I could thank Mrs. Macias for believing in me. Was she right though? Am I really doing good for this community?
Is this whole Hardy thing enough to catapult it out of the red so that I can bring it back to its glory days? To a club that wins championships and gives athletes opportunities like the ones I had?
Or am I just holding on to an old dream because it’s all I’ve ever known?
Because it’s the only thing I’ve ever been able to call my own?