Two Months Later
Two months later
“DO I HAVE TO TEACH you all the rules and regulations of the game you want to play?” I teased, quoting him from the first time I’d gone to his house to learn to kick.
Theo barked out a laugh and picked me up by the middle, marching toward the ocean.
“Don’t you dare!” I scream-laughed, struggling to get out of his hold.
We were on the beach with our friends and a bunch of girls from the soccer team. They’d started a game, and Theo had nodded in their direction. “Should we play?”
“Soccer?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Sure.”
“Do they play by the book here? Call out of bounds? Keep score?” he asked.
He didn’t dump me in the ocean now, just set me down, twirled me toward him, and kissed me.
“Keep it PG!” Max called from where he sat under a beach umbrella layering on more sunblock.
“Do you really need more of that?” I asked as Theo and I joinedhim.
“I’m a ginger. Yes, I do.”
“He does,” Lee informed me from where he sat on a blanket, a book in his hand.
“Do you two want to play soccer?” Theo asked.
“Unless we need to become stellar goalies to avenge some wrongdoing, we are staying right here with our books and snacks,” Maxwell said.
Lying next to our beach blanket was the foam surfboard we’d found in Cheryl’s shed. We were going to take it out later, try our hand at surfing. Grandma had told us to take her board when we left today as well, but we’d donated that one to the Andrew Lancaster exhibit. That way it could be preserved and appreciated by more people. Grandma had been part of the decision, but she forgot things like that.
“I need to think of a wrongdoing for you to avenge,” Theo said to Max. “Because I would like to see you become stellar goalies.”
“I would like to see that too,” Max said. “But I don’t want to do any of the work.”
“You guys playing?” Deja called from twenty feet away.
“Yes!” I called back.
We joined the game. Watching Theo kick a soccer ball made me happy. He’d started kicking for fun. Had taken some of the pressure off his shoulders. And doing that opened him up to trying out for a kicker position at the community college next week. He still didn’t feel like he was back to his pre-injury self, but he wasn’t giving up. Not yet. And I was glad because he was a beautiful kicker. I was probably biased, but the way he moved was like dancing on air.
“Stop staring at me,” he said now, passing the ball to Deja and pulling me into a hug.
“But I don’t want to,” I said. “And you were staring too.”
He placed a slow kiss on my lips. “You’re right. Never stop.”