Chapter 21
“Well,” Haddie said to the bag of small sandwiches and pastries that were now close to a pile of unidentifiable anything. “That was…subtle.”
Levi coughed. “Wait…you knew she was full of shit?”
Haddie scoffed. “Emma Woods? Uh…yeah. That woman doesn’t have a subtle bone in her body, and the lying gene totally skipped out on her DNA.”
Levi crossed his arms and stared at her. “Then why didn’t you call her on it if you knew she was throwing us back together to deal with whatever happened at the bridal shop?”
Haddie raised her brows and then started walking in the direction of the Summertown school campus. “Because we’re not,” she told him with a shrug. “You have a game on Tuesday that you’re going to win, but the only way that’s going to happen is if we focus. On the game.”
She walked fast, so much so that he was pretty sure she’d break into a sprint if he wasn’t careful.
Was she serious? How the hell was he going to be able to focus on a game when he still couldn’t figure out why she preferred friends with benefits to him actually admitting he might feel something more.
Haddie was more spooked by all of this than even he was. Why?
“Haddie…” He put a hand on her forearm, grateful for his height and long strides so that just in case she did decide to run, he could probably keep up for a bit before his knee began to protest.
“We’re almost there,” she told him, her voice too bright, too cheery. “We really don’t need to do this, Levi. We have a game to prepare for. You need to focus.” She brandished her fist like she was trying to pep up one of her own players. “You got this!”
Levi spun so he was walking backward, faster than he’d have liked when not watching where he was going, but he guessed he’d just have to trust that Haddie wouldn’t let him hurt himself.
“Haddie…” he said again, forcing her to look at him.
“Levi…” she replied, mimicking his tone but not giving him an inch.
He stepped in front of her and caught her by the shoulders right before she plowed into him. He had to plant his feet, though, to keep from letting her momentum knock them both to the concrete.
“Is that a…” he asked, narrowing his eyes at the topiary at the foot of the driveway next to them.
“Dragon’s ass?” she said, filling in his blank. “Yes. Part of the rebuild from last summer’s tornado.”
Levi barked out a laugh, but when he met Haddie’s gaze again, she was glaring at him.
“Come on, Birthday Girl. Shrubbery cut into the tail end of a dragon, and the tail end only is funny as hell.”
The corner of her mouth twitched, but she fought the smile.
So Levi tentatively let her go so he could back toward the trimmed green haunches and the bulbous behind that extended into a tail that snaked up the perimeter of the driveway. Then, as any grown man would, he hugged the dragon’s ass and asked Haddie to take a picture.
With a full-on snort, she broke.
“What is the matter with you?” she asked, grabbing him by the wrist, but Levi shook his head.
“You need to snap a photo first. And then, whenever you think you want to freeze me out, you look at that photo and remember that I embraced a dragon’s ass for you with no regard for my own well-being.”
She groaned, but she must have known he wasn’t going to budge until she complied, so she pulled her phone from her back pocket and, with a groan, snapped a photo.
“There,” she told him, flashing her phone’s screen at him to show that she had completed the requested task.
Levi straightened and smiled triumphantly. “And now that I have your attention, we’re going to talk about the damned fitting room,” he told her.
Haddie sighed, and he finally felt like he was making progress. “Fine,” she told him. “But not without balls.”
He choked. “I’m sorry…what?”
***
After setting the bag of food from Emma on the bench, Haddie dragged the mesh bag of soccer balls from the equipment shed behind the bleachers while Levi carried a stack of orange cones.
Balls.
“You have to shoot a goal without being offside. I don’t even care if the ball makes it in the net. Once you get it, we’ll talk,” she told him as she dropped the mesh bag.
“Why do I feel like you’re betting on me to fail?”
She waved him off. “Give me those,” she told him, pointing to the cones, so Levi handed them over.
He watched as she put one just inside the goalie box and one several feet in front of the white square painted on the turf in front of the goal.
“These are the opposing team’s players,” she explained. “The goalie and the defender.”
Levi laughed. “Um, I think I can get a goal past a couple of coneheads.”
Haddie narrowed her eyes and then jogged back to balls, removed one from the bag, and dribbled it over to the center field line.
“You have to score off of my assist!” she called to him.
Levi still didn’t understand why she was making a whole thing out of this. Soccer might not be his sport, but he could trap a ball under his foot and aim it for the goal. It wasn’t that much beyond his grasp.
So he held up his hands, palms facing him, and made a motion that told her to Bring it!
Haddie kicked the ball. Hard. But he could read the trajectory, could tell where it would land, so he raced the ball, lining himself up perfectly to trap it just behind the outermost orange cone.
As soon as he stopped it with his shoe, a whistle blew. His head shot up to see Haddie holding her phone over her head, apparently using a whistle app.
“Offside!” she called.
Shit. Wait… What?
“You passed me the ball!” he called back. “I’m in bounds but offside?” Why didn’t he freaking get it?
“Try again!” she replied.
She wasn’t going to tell him? What the hell?
She jogged toward him and not only stole the ball out from under his sneaker but also grabbed the outermost cone and took it back with her toward center field. This time she put the cone just behind the line, still on the opposing team’s side.
“Come here!” Haddie motioned for him to meet her at center field.
He jogged toward her, albeit slightly annoyed.
“I didn’t even get a chance to kick,” he grumbled.
Haddie shrugged. “It wouldn’t have been your ball to kick anyway.
You were offside, so it would have turned over to a free kick for the other team.
” She backed up and gestured for him to follow her past the center line and onto what would be their side of the field, the human-as-opposed-to-orange-cone side.
“Try again,” she told him.
Levi glanced from where he stood to the goal. He was a decent shot, but…
“What are we doing?” he asked. “You want me to shoot from here?”
Haddie shrugged. “Shoot from wherever you want once you gain possession of the ball. Just stay onside.”
She backed up farther, and Levi rocked on his heels, anticipating another power shot, which was why he was surprised when she started to dribble toward him.
Despite his confusion and frustration, he couldn’t help but notice how light she was on her feet, how she faked out nonexistent other players feinting left and then right, trapping the ball with her toe and rolling it to the other side of her body.
Then he saw it, the windup. She was going for it, but if he stood still, the ball would still be airborne by the time it came to him, and he would fumble the shot.
So he backed up two steps, then another few. The second he backed up past the orange cone, Haddie’s phone was in the air again, a shrill whistle screaming in the otherwise soundless air.
“Offside!” she exclaimed.
Shocker, Levi told himself. Then he halted where he stood. He looked from Haddie to the “goalie” and then to the defense player she’d moved right up next to the center line. Levi stood between the two cones, and Haddie still had the ball.
An alarm bell went off in his head.
“Haddie…? Where is the rest of the opposing team?”
A smile played at her lips, but she kept it at bay. “They are all teaming up on McMannus, who better be playing on Tuesday,” she told him. “They left their poor goalie and his one defender all alone on their side of the field.”
Levi’s eyes widened. “So I’m standing in between the second to last and last players on the defender’s side.”
Haddie nodded, and he could tell that she was hanging on by a thread now, that beautiful beaming smile about to break through her last shred of resistance.
“And if I’m where I am without the ball?”
“Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!” She tapped her nose with one index finger and pointed at Levi triumphantly with the other.
“Fuuuuuck!” he cried, laughing as he jogged toward her.
His team members always apologized after they were at the receiving end of an offside call, and Levi would always tell them to shake it off and not let it happen next time, but the problem was, he didn’t know what he was looking for to try to head off the penalty before it happened, and his damned ego wouldn’t let him ask his students what it was and lose the already fragile trust he’d earned coming to them from the world of football and instead being tossed into soccer.
Without realizing what he was doing until he was already doing it, he scooped Haddie into his arms and spun her.
She yelped and then burst out laughing, and they were both caught up in a moment that Levi realized happened not because Haddie cared more about the game than what happened between them earlier that day, but because she cared.
About him and his team, and the thought emboldened him enough to lower her back to the ground but keep his arms wrapped around her torso.
“You did it,” she told him softly, but she wasn’t pulling away.
“You did it,” he replied, staring down at eyes the color of the grass beneath their feet. “If I would have had more teachers like you when I was in school, maybe I wouldn’t have thought football was my only option.”
Haddie furrowed her brows at him. “It’s not your only option. You’re teaching health and P.E. And coaching a whole new sport.”
“Terribly,” he remarked.