Chapter Five Jamie
(I Told Him Not to Miss Me)
"Yes, Harper! That's yours! Go, go, go!"
I'm silent as I drink from my water bottle and listen to Mateo cheer for my daughter.
She'd busted her ass to make varsity, and to say I'm overwhelmed watching her hard work pay off would be a massive understatement.
The first game of the season is almost over, and Harper's just beat two opposing players to the ball.
She's dribbling up the far side of the field and—
"If her coach thinks she's doing a good job, maybe he should've let her play more," Danielle mutters.
I side-eye my ex, then return my attention to the team’s offensive push when I answer.
"She's a freshman on a team full of talented players.
She wasn't sure she'd be playing at all today, so these six or seven minutes are great.
He'll probably give her varsity experience as a sub for a while, and she'll earn her way up from there. "
"If she'd stayed in club soccer, she wouldn't need a few extra minutes of experience now."
"She decided to quit. She did," I say. "I wasn't going to stop her."
Danielle scoffs. "No, of course not."
I'm being baited, but while I'm no stranger to several versions of this fight, it's easy to distract myself with a glance at Mateo.
It's been three months since he and I met—two and a half since he walked away from my hillside bench—and this is the closest I've been to him.
Harper's success in his class has left me off the hook for the parent-teacher conferences others suffer.
Picking her up from soccer practice hasn't required me to leave my car.
I'll be seeing him regularly now, from whatever distance will allow me to act as both attentive father and guarded egotist. Throughout my life, my selfishness has known few bounds. Now I'm afraid of being near the one man who could make me cross those last couple of lines. Harper deserves better, though. So does Mateo. He isn’t ready for us to be friends, and I’m not sure he’s wrong.
I stay where I am and fracture from the inside out.
"He's kinda cute," Danielle muses. "The soccer coach. Maybe I could go talk to him about Harper after the game."
"You're not his type."
She crosses her arms defiantly. "Since when am I not someone's type? For fuck's sake, I was your type even after you hated me."
The whistle blows. Harper's team celebrates.
I take a long look at Mateo while I know he won't be looking at me.
There's a handshake line and a chorus of good game, good game, good game.
Some parents and friends move closer for congratulatory hugs, and it creates a barrier I can approach without crossing into anything dangerous.
"You should try talking to your daughter about school once in a while," I tell Danielle.
And then I leave her there.
Harper's next game is mostly the same. My ex and I stand shoulder to shoulder while she complains that she knew everyone from club soccer, but doesn’t recognize anyone here.
I'm still not interested in a fight, especially not when it would draw attention to me so far from my backyard.
I mumble a suggestion that she introduce herself to other parents.
She goes nowhere, and when Harper subs in for the last ten minutes of the game, Danielle's comments about her lack of play time are unsurprising.
"I know he's gay," she adds after her little fit. That catches me off guard, no matter how much I'd led her there before. "You could've just said that."
I shrug, forced nonchalance something I’ve practiced. "Now you're all caught up."
"Lucky me."
The team loses that game. Whether it's that result or a lack of friends or the disappointment of not being able to seduce Coach Mateo Zavala, Danielle doesn't show up for the next one.
Harper and I get separate but equally blithe texts with an excuse that means little.
Danielle will make up for it by taking Harper shopping with my money.
While Harper isn't stupid, she is a 14-year-old who enjoys having her mom's attention and something new to wear to school.
I'm just the ex, and I wouldn't care much about her absence except for how it leaves me exposed.
It's early December now, so my hoodie—mine—gives me some cover, but more parents wave hello to me, and Mateo can’t help but look my way.
I wave back to strangers who will become familiar, if not friends.
Then, from several feet away, I mourn the distance between me and a man I should've woken up next to weeks ago.
His hair is pulled into a tiny bun, and it only makes his profile more striking as he moves up and down the sideline to yell a dozen different things to a dozen different players.
Even ignoring my more complicated interest in him, I can tell Mateo is an excellent coach.
It tugs at a different desire before I ignore it with the rest of them.
Harper’s team wins that one, and two of the next three.
Danielle stays away, and I make small talk with a few other parents.
With an eye roll I know well, Harper reminds me I’m allowed to say hello to Mr. Z.
I wave her off with the excuse that I don’t want anyone to think I’m a hotshot athlete overstepping my bounds if I spend too much time chatting with the coach. She rolls her eyes again.
In the next game, Mateo calls Harper's name with about fifteen minutes left, and I smile at her while she stretches.
Once she's subbed in, she makes a great defensive play, clears the ball, and her teammates score within seconds. When the whistle blows, they’ve won again.
And after the post-game celebration, when the team wanders off to greet family and friends, I hear my favorite voice in the world.
"Dad! Think fast!"
She's struck the soccer ball hard, and it's headed for a space about ten feet to my right.
Her shout obviously helped, but I think instinct moves me as much as anything.
My water bottle is still in my hand when I run to stop the ball with the same leg that once shattered under pressure.
It's cold out, and the contact hurts, but the pain isn't new, so I grin and dribble toward Harper.
She doesn't hesitate to come after me—I assume it was her plan all along—and we battle for control of the ball for a minute or two before the applause starts.
Harper traps the ball beneath her cleats and giggles. I carefully turn toward Mateo.
"Hey, don't let me stop you," he says. "You're only in danger of inspiring me to hold an official parent/player scrimmage this season."
"I'm gonna pretend you're joking. It's been years since my very public retirement, and I think I'm finally adjusting to being a spectator."
Mateo nods, subtle conflict blinked away. "Ah, yes, Harper told me you two have already been to several hockey games this season. Maybe we'll put the scrimmage idea on hold."
I'm not surprised he knows about my time with Harper. They talk five days a week—in class and at practice or games—and I’m to blame for making her tired on at least a few mornings.
I'm not sure whether he also knows about the nights I make more professional appearances, but as Mateo's noted, we've driven up to L.A.
more than usual. I'm not prepared for him to dissect the reasons why.
I don't think I'm ready for me to dissect the reasons why.
Looking for a way out of this conversation, I reach toward Harper. Then a couple of friends yell for her, and she runs off before I can figure out how to explain that I’m in a hurry to be anywhere but here. A second later, I hope Mateo might be in a hurry too, because I know how to watch him go.
He’s left me at the bench twice.
He stays now.
“Wasn’t sure you’d ever come close enough for a hello. Harper said you didn’t want to be all Jameson Sinclair about it.”
“It was easier than explaining how badly I want to kiss you.”
“Of course,” he says, glancing around to see whether anyone’s overheard me. They haven’t. I’m not a stranger to this kind of caution. Mateo changes the subject. "Did Harper ever play hockey?"
"Nope. She skated around with me when she was tiny, but grabbed a neighbor's soccer ball when she was about four, and that became her passion."
"I guess she was probably too young to choose it out of spite," he teases.
I smile because he does. "Probably."
The ball Harper and I had been playing with is still close to me, and Mateo moves for it now.
His practiced footwork means he's got full control when he slips behind my back, but I react before I can think it through, spinning to meet him there and strip the ball.
He laughs, a sudden and beautiful thing, and easily steals it back, dribbling further away to see if I'll follow.
I don't, only because I can't. Not for another four years. I distract myself with my water bottle and wait to see if he'll be the one to close the distance between us again.
He doesn't, maybe because he can't. Not for another four years.
"Looks like you can take the man out of the competition, but not the competition out of the man," Mateo says.
"Looks like," I agree.
A couple of parents shout their goodbyes, and he waves while still playing with the ball.
I stare, context making his soccer skills more mesmerizing than when he was a stranger with a pile of short-notice fun in his trunk.
Harper remains entrenched in gossip with her teammates, and when Mateo passes to me, I pass it back as easily as I had the night we met.
"So, you were one of the best centers to ever play in the NHL, but your daughter's one hell of a back," he says. "Is that because any early soccer skills she practiced with you meant she had to learn to defend against you?"