CHAPTER EIGHT
DARIUS
Briarwood FC still smells like cut grass, sun-baked dust, and every version of me I thought I’d outgrown.
I park beside the old equipment shed forty minutes before Sienna is supposed to arrive and tell myself it’s because someone needs to make sure the media van doesn’t block the parent drop-off lane.
That is practical.
Reasonable.
Captain-like.
Also a lie.
The field stretches in front of me, patchy in the middle, greener near the touchlines where the kids avoid running because the parents sit too close and offer advice nobody requested.
The far goalpost leans a little to the left.
The net is tied at one corner with what appears to be blue shoelace.
Someone has painted the lines fresh for tonight, but the grass has already swallowed parts of them.
The clubhouse still peels near the gutters.
The snack bar window is propped open with an old cleat.
And across the chain-link fence, the banner from Nathan’s photo hangs crooked in the late-afternoon sun.
GOOD LUCK KINGS.
The last S gives up and slides downhill.
Perfect.
My chest tightens.
Ridiculous.
It’s a banner made with paint, bedsheets, and questionable measuring skills. It shouldn’t feel heavier than the captain’s armband.
I get out of the car and stand with one hand on the door. Heat comes off the gravel in waves. Somewhere behind the clubhouse, a lawn mower coughs twice before giving up. Kids shout from the far side of the field, where an early group is already taking shots at a portable net.
The ball hits the metal frame with a clank.
I flinch before I can stop myself.
Not because of the sound.
Because I know that sound.
Every summer night of my childhood had that sound in it. Ball against metal. Kids yelling. Coach Miller’s whistle. My own cleats too muddy to bring into the house. Nathan laughing because Nathan has always laughed like the world owes him a punchline.
A door bangs open near the equipment shed.
“Darius Vale, if you came all the way to Briarwood and planned to stand in the parking lot looking tragic, I’m calling your mother.”
Coach Miller steps into the sun with a clipboard in one hand and reading glasses perched on top of his head, where he will spend the next hour searching for them.
He’s shorter than I remember.
Or I’m older.
Both are rude.
“Good to see you too, Coach.”
He crosses the gravel and pulls me into a hug before I can defend myself. He smells like sunscreen, coffee, and the peppermint gum he has chewed since 2009 because he once read it improved focus.
He thumps my back twice.
Hard.
“Look at you,” he says, stepping away. “Global Cup Finalist. Captain. National television. Still not eating enough.”
“I’m eating.”
“I said enough.”
“You have no data.”
“I have eyes. Also, you always get thinner under pressure.”
That lands too close, so I look toward the field. “Nice banner.”
“Tyler painted the S with his non-dominant hand because he said it gave the sign movement.”
“It does move.”
“Downhill, mostly.” Coach Miller squints at it. “Still beautiful.”
“It is.”
He looks at me then.
Not as Coach Miller with a clipboard.
As the man who used to wait with me after practice because my ride was late again. As the man who would pretend he had cones to sort until the parking lot emptied and there was no one left to notice I wasn’t in a hurry to go home.
His smile eases.
“You allowed yourself to enjoy any of this yet?”
I reach into the back seat for the small bag of signed programs Nathan insisted I bring for the kids. “We have one more match.”
“That was not my question.”
“It was my answer.”
He sighs like he has sighed at me for twenty years. “Still doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Taking everything in, folding it into responsibility, and calling it preparation.”
A group of kids near midfield spots me.
The sound changes.
One voice yells my name.
Then another.
Then the field explodes.
“Darius!”
“Captain Vale!”
“He’s here!”
A boy in shin guards and one untied cleat starts sprinting toward me, trips over nothing, rights himself, and keeps going like gravity was only offering feedback.
Coach Miller points his clipboard at me. “Saved by children. Again.”
“I don’t remember that happening.”
“You were rarely paying attention to your own rescue.”
Before I can answer, the first wave hits.
Not literally.
Mostly.
Tyler Gibson, banner artist and destroyer of straight lines, skids to a stop in front of me with paint still visible under one fingernail. Two smaller kids crash into his back. A girl with purple laces tucks a ball under one arm and stares at me like I might start glowing.
“Are you really going to New York?” Tyler asks.
“New York/New Jersey,” I say.
He frowns. “That seems like cheating.”
“It’s where the Final is.”
“Are you nervous?”
Six faces look up.
Coach Miller suddenly becomes fascinated by his clipboard.
Coward.
I crouch enough to bring myself closer to eye level, then remember my knee and keep the movement careful. “Yes.”
Tyler blinks. “Really?”
“Really.”
“But you’re captain.”
“Captains get nervous.”
The girl with the purple laces narrows her eyes. “Do they tell people?”
I glance toward Coach Miller.
He looks like he is trying not to smile.
“Sometimes,” I say. “If the people are smart enough to handle it.”
The girl nods as if she has been given classified information.
Then she thrusts the ball at me. “Can you sign this?”
By the time I finish signing the ball, three programs, one cleat, and what might be a lunch bag, the parking lot has started filling.
Parents unload folding chairs from trunks.
Someone carries a cooler toward the snack table.
A blue-and-gold balloon escapes from a six-year-old and drifts over the clubhouse roof, which causes immediate tragedy.
A minivan door slides open, and Nathan jumps out before it fully stops.
He lands on the gravel with a box of cones under one arm and a paper bag clenched between his teeth. He kicks the door shut with his heel.
“You look overwhelmed,” he says around the bag.
“You look under-supervised.”
He drops the bag into my hands. “Coach Miller said you needed food.”
“I don’t.”
Coach Miller calls from ten feet away, “He does.”
Nathan grins. “See? Community consensus.”
I look into the bag.
Two sandwiches. Apple slices. A cookie wrapped in plastic.
The cookie is shaped like a soccer ball and has my jersey number written across it in icing.
“No,” I say.
“Yes,” Nathan says.
“I am not eating a cookie with my number on it.”
“Then eat around the number.”
“This town has lost perspective.”
“This town never had perspective. That’s part of the charm.”
Another vehicle pulls into the lot.
Not a minivan.
A white Northline Sports van.
My shoulders settle back before I give them permission.
Nathan sees it.
He follows my gaze, then looks back at me. “Be normal.”
“I am normal.”
“You’re holding a sandwich bag like it owes you money.”
I loosen my grip.
The van parks near the gravel edge, exactly where I told media relations it could park. The driver gets out first. Then the camera operator.
Scott, I think.
Sienna corrected it yesterday when Nathan called him Steve and Morgan threatened to label him “camera man” on the access sheet.
Then Sienna steps out.
She’s not dressed like the woman from the tunnel.
No blazer today. No glossy sideline armour. She wears dark trousers, a pale blue sleeveless blouse, and flat shoes that will collect Briarwood dust within five minutes. Her hair is pulled back, but not perfectly. A few pieces slip free near her temples as she looks across the field.
She doesn’t reach for the microphone.
She doesn’t tell Scott to roll.
She just stands there.
Looking.
Kids running passing drills near the far net. Parents taping streamers to the fence. Coach Miller arguing with a folding table. The banner sloping downhill. The snack bar window held up by a cleat.
Then her gaze lands on the shoelace holding the goal net.
Her mouth softens.
For a second, maybe less.
Something in my chest eases and tightens at the same time.
“Still think she’s here for a tragic violin?” Nathan asks quietly.
“I think she’s here for a story.”
“Those can be different.”
“They can also be the same thing.”
Nathan makes a sound low in his throat. “You ever get tired of arguing with hope?”
I look at him.
He smiles like he didn’t just say something annoying and accurate.
Sienna walks toward us with Scott a few steps behind, camera lowered. She stops far enough away to keep from turning the moment into an ambush.
“Captain Vale,” she says.
“Miss Voss.”
Nathan groans. “You two make greetings sound like legal paperwork.”
Sienna’s mouth curves. “Good afternoon, Nathan.”
“Better. Warm. Human. Workshop that with him.”
I give him a look.
He immediately turns toward the kids. “I’m needed elsewhere.”
“No one called you,” I say.
“The children called me spiritually.”
He leaves with the cones.
Sienna watches him go, then looks back at me. “Small crew, as promised.”
I glance at Scott.
He lifts one hand. “Small and quiet.”
“Quiet is relative,” Sienna says.
“I am deeply wounded.”
“You carried a metal tripod into a van and knocked over two water bottles this morning.”
“They startled me.”
I almost smile.
Almost.
Sienna notices.
Because apparently that is what she does.
Coach Miller appears beside us with the energy of a man who’s been waiting to meet television people and intends to pretend he has not.
“Coach Miller,” I say, “this is Sienna Voss from Northline Sports. Sienna, Coach Miller.”
Coach Miller sticks out his hand. “Pleasure. I’ve watched your work.”
I close my eyes.
“Have you?” Sienna asks.
“Oh, yes. You ask questions like someone who checks the lock before opening a door.”
Her eyebrows lift.
Mine do too.
Coach Miller beams. “That was a compliment.”
“I’m taking it as one,” Sienna says.
“He says things like that,” I mutter.
“And you were much shorter when I met you,” Coach Miller says. “We all endure.”
Sienna’s eyes flick to me.
I look at the field.
Too late.
Her smile has already arrived.
Scott lifts the camera slightly, then stops.
Sienna turns to him. “Not yet.”
He lowers it.