Chapter 3 #4
Dane’s glacial mood melts into his more typical roguishness as soon as we’re among his tribe.
It’s like stepping into an alternate reality of something very familiar.
None of these dudes resemble my boys back home, but they’ve got that hearty exuberance and cocky confidence I once surrounded myself with like a bit of that spirit might rub off on me.
Not sure it ever did, but I’m not the stick in the mud Dane treats me as.
“Yo, yo!” He greets each guy by slapping their palms. “This is my chaperone, Connor. He’s here to spy on me for my dad.”
“That’s not—”
A wiry red-head Dane calls Randy hooks his arm around my neck so quickly it knocks the words out of my lungs. “Finally brought the big shot to slum it with us poor fucks, huh?” Randy crows to Dane before pointing his nose at me and asking, “You here to play?”
“If that’s cool.”
He nods down at my Nikes. “You’ll have to take those off.”
Glancing around, I notice everyone’s barefoot. Dane came in flip-flops that he kicks past the invisible sideline.
To be honest, I’m nervous about the whole naked-toes thing, but I keep my trepidation under wraps. After all, I’m the “big shot.”
Between slipping off my shoes and lathering up with sunblock, the guys assemble the pop-up goals with a measuring tape. Dane whips off his shirt and jacks my Sun Bum to glaze himself with the stuff.
“Get my back?” he simpers, the first sign since the house that he’s not mad at me anymore.
“Best way not to burn is to keep your shirt on.”
“If I put my shirt on, you’ll have to take yours off. Unless you wanna be teammates.”
The way he says teammates is about as innocent as if he’d said lovers. I recoil, take my sunblock back, and shove it into my pack.
“Burn then,” I tell him, and he howls and slaps my back so hard my knees buckle.
We divvy up. Randy is Dane’s team captain, and mine is someone named Bryce. By the time the match kicks off, I still don’t know the first names of my other teammates, so when I’m open I just shoot my arm up and shout, “Open!”
The ball smacks the inside of my foot, and I advance toward the goal, seeing an opening. We’re not playing with goalies, and Team Randy’s midfielders block like newbs. As soon as I’m close enough for comfort, I make the shot and—
“Gah!” My toes skitter through sand before slapping the ball crookedly. It shoots toward the tide. I keel over and grip my right foot where it’s throbbing.
“Nice shot!” Dane claps his hand over my shoulder. “Keep playing like that, and I’ll be a winner in no time.”
“I’m used to grass! And shoes!”
“Sounds like excuses.”
As soon as I’m acclimated to the grainy, uneven terrain, I’m solid, grappling with Randy’s subpar defenders and tripping up his wishy-washy offense.
As confident as Dane is, his dribble is awkward as hell.
When he’s not fumbling over the ball, I’m successfully fishing it from his possession and cutting around for an assist. By halftime, I know my teammates’ names, they know mine, and we’re up by two.
Dane mopes on the sideline, chugging Evian water and raking his nails all over his bristly legs.
From the other guys, I’m told the honest-to-God reason Dane shaved his legs three weeks ago.
Someone dared Dane he couldn’t clear the pop-up goal on a frog jump, and as the tale goes, he ate sand and nearly broke the net.
“Are all of you on the state team?” I ask Bryce, not recognizing some of their names from the streams of Dane’s matches.
“Yeah,” he huffs, red-faced and sweating rivulets from his hairline, “but Randy’s the only starter. Most of us are reserves.”
I pat the kid’s arm, then high-step across the sand to plop down next to Dane. I swat his hand away from his leg before he can break the skin. “When’d you hit your growth spurt?”
“What?” He snakes a hand up the leg of his shorts and scratches somewhere too close to his balls for me to even think about swatting him there.
“Was it last month? ‘Cause that’s how you run. Your legs wobble under you like you're a newborn calf.”
“No, they don’t!”
“You’re like a baby deer learning how to walk.”
“You prick.” He shoves my shoulder, and I fall sideways, laughing as I hit the packed sand.
Righting myself, I say, “I’m serious. You desperately need to work on your body control.”
“You gonna show me how to control my body, Connor?”
The sneaky curl of Dane’s lips is all too familiar, and it’s oddly relieving to be back to our typical dynamic. I even like the way he speaks my name without that demeaning inflection, like it’s a synonym for dipshit. Now, it rolls off his tongue as deep and smooth as the rest of his words.
“Yes, actually. If you’re amenable.” I offer him a cheeky smile of my own, though I’m not sure how effective it is, what with my face all scrunched up under the SoCal sunshine.
“If I’m amenable…” He turns his sights to the horizon.
I pull my feet up close to my ass and rest my forearms on my knees. “What’s your gym routine like?”
“I don’t like the gym.”
“Ha! You’re an athlete, Dane. You’re not allowed to not like the gym.”
“As my kindergarten teacher used to say, I march to the beat of my own drum.”
“Not when you’re on a team. Not unless you want that beat to sound like shit and lose you matches.”
Dane’s lips fold, a pink tongue wetting them before upper teeth comb the moisture away.
He watches the horizon in a rare moment of thoughtfulness that convinces me that, if nothing else, Dane cares about his game.
Maybe he even cares about his team. I can also tell he’s still on the fence about me, and that he doesn’t trust me as far as he could frog-jump over me.
“Thanks for letting me tag along,” I say, watching Dane’s profile as sweat stings my eyes. “It’s been nice getting to play again, especially when I’m up against a bunch of jabronis.”
Teeth flashing, Dane shoves me sideways again. “You’re the fucking jabroni. Can’t even play on sand.”
“Still kicking your ass.”
That grin fades as Dane’s head swivels, and his squinted eyes scrutinize my own. They drift down to my mouth while his own mutters, “What the hell do you see in my sister?”
The question spurs anxiety in my chest, ricocheting like a pinball down to my gut. Only half certain I processed the question correctly, I ask dumbly, “Huh?”
“Off your asses, losers!” Randy claps his hands like a babysitter rounding up his charges.
Dane leaps onto his rangy legs and offers me a hand.
I take it and consider it an olive branch when Dane yanks me to my feet with ease, proving his strength.
As if that was ever in question. Dane is in shape, no doubt.
He has just the right amount of muscle in his svelte body, and maybe that’s why he thinks he doesn’t need a gym regimen.
I’ve never designed a training program for another player before, but I think I know how to acquire one on the fly.
First things first, though: finish off Randy’s team and make mincemeat out of Dane.
After the match, some of the guys cool off by sprinting into the tide.
I laugh when Dane Spider-Man-leaps into the water and belly flops.
Something about the unbridled boyishness of it all has me feeling sentimental.
There’s a small camera and a couple of lenses in my backpack.
I whip it out, adjust the settings, and snap some action shots of the boys being boys.
Whether it’s his height, personality, or just the familiarity of him, I’m intrinsically drawn to Dane, and he becomes the focal point of nearly every shot.
Dane horsing around, splashing at Randy and trying to body slam him into the deep.
Dane dunking his head back to wet his hair, then shaking it dry like a dog would.
Dane jumping on Randy’s back and clinging to him like a vest.
I lower my camera. Is Randy the guy Dane sees whenever he misses dinner and stays out until the small hours? They sure seem to fit like two peas in a pod. They’d make sense together, with their similar physiques and limitless energy. They’d look cute together even.
My skin crawls a little, same as it did the first time I realized my two gay teammates weren’t only gay but gay together.
That pesky, prickling ick that lingers like a cyst despite all of my conscious efforts to be enthusiastically tolerant.
I don’t know why it’s cropping up now when it hasn’t any of the times Dane has shamelessly flirted with me.
I guess it’s just one of those things I’m supposed to push past, no questions asked.
“Told you he’s a spy!” Dane hollers as I snap a few more photos. Thankfully, he’s grinning, and his pals don’t seem to mind my voyeurism. Still, I put my camera away to try living in the moment for a change.
I never learned how to swim, and I can count on one hand how many times my feet have met the ocean. But I’m baking in this heat, and the guys make the water look beyond refreshing. I peel off my shirt, uncuff my watch and wade cautiously down the grainy slope.
Frothy water licks at my calves, and the rush of the tide coaxes me further out. The water feels good on my sweaty junk as it reaches the tops of my thighs. Another step into uncharted territory, and my foot touches…not ground.
My lungs have just enough time to expel all of my air in a frantic yelp before I tumble into the brackish deep. I open my eyes, and the salt stings like fire. I flail and feel nothing but water. Cold, prickly water. Green and brown and stinging.
Something cinches around my arm, pulling me deeper.
No, tugging me upward.
My kicking feet scrape sediment, and my head crests the water. I gasp air in and hack water out.
“Are you okay?!” Dane’s voice fills my ears as soon as the water drains from them, and I chance my eyes open to see his frenzied ones staring back at me.
“I lost…the ground.”
“You scared the shit outta me!”
With both his hands around both of my arms, he tows me closer to shore until I’m back on somewhat solid ground.
“I don’t really know how to swim,” I confess as I swipe seawater from my eyes.
He laughs incredulously. “What the hell is wrong with you? You’re a madman.”
“You saved my life.”
His brightness fades to a soft glow, and he mashes his lips together. When we’re close enough to shore that the water is only knee-high, Dane lets me go. “Do me a favor and stay where I can see you. It’s gonna look real bad on me if you die on my watch.”
I do him one better and cut my losses.
While the guys frolic, I trudge up the wet sand and sit my ass on the dry part where I belong.
Even this is nostalgic. The part where life prevents me from being one with the guys.
Between my allergies, not being able to swim, and my general passiveness, I’m frequently left sitting on the sidelines.
Even with my best friends back home, I’m not sure I was ever their best friend.
Just as that homesick melancholy threatens to take over my mood, Dane plods up the beach, leaving giant sand-footprints in his wake.
“What sort of dumbass goes into the ocean when he can’t swim?”
I hug my knees and squint up at him, but my eyes burn when they try to lift higher than his sternum and that little mole near his armpit. “What? You thought I was smart just ‘cause I can run circles around you?”
“Bitch,” he laughs. “Get up. We’ll race right now.”
“Tell you what. I’ll race you on an actual soccer field. Or maybe a gym track.”
“You seriously wanna train me?”
“Seriously.” A cloud moves, and the sky brightens even more. My gaze slips lower, to the path of brown hair below Dane’s navel and that other little mole beside his hip. “Aside from almost dying, I had a lot of fun today. I’ve missed soccer. Missed feeling like I have friends.”
“What about your girlfriend?”
“That’s different.”
“Alright, Coach Connor. Critique me. How did I do today?”
Exhaling a chuckle through my growing grin, I answer, “Honestly, I was too busy trying to beat you to study your game.”
“Wow,” he snickers. “You’re a terrible coach. You’re hired.”