CHAPTER 3 #2
“Patience,” I say. “Everybody thinks defending is about the tackle. Usually it’s about the three choices you make before the tackle is necessary.”
Nathan nods. “And being willing to do work nobody claps for.”
That one lands well.
I do not look at him.
Handling pressure?
“Pressure is information,” I say. “It tells you where the other team thinks the door is.”
Nathan says, “And sometimes the door is closed. Politely. With force.”
That gets a bigger laugh.
I hate that he is good at this.
Not the jokes. I knew he would be good at those. Nathan has always been able to make a room loosen around him.
I hate that he is good at the serious answers too.
He talks about angles, restraint, the discipline of holding a line when the crowd wants someone to dive in. He speaks with the ease of someone who understands defence in his bones, not because it sounds nice in a media packet.
It reminds me of things I have no interest in remembering.
Rain on a field.
Mud up my calves.
Nathan sitting on a ball beside me while I complained about one missed clearance like it had personally betrayed my bloodline.
The moderator turns to the youth players. “We have time for a few questions.”
Hands shoot up.
A girl asks about playing against bigger forwards. Nathan gives a useful answer about balance and body position. I add that defenders should learn what space they can win before contact, because strength matters, but timing turns smaller players into nightmares.
A boy asks if defenders ever get credit.
“No,” Nathan says immediately.
The room laughs.
I add, “But we do get to sleep knowing the score stayed where it was because of us. That is better than applause.”
Nathan looks at me for half a second.
I feel it.
I keep my eyes on the room.
Then a boy in the front row raises his hand. He is maybe twelve, all knees and serious eyes.
“If you mess up as a defender,” he asks, “do you get a do-over?”
The room gives a soft laugh.
My fingers tighten around the microphone.
The question is innocent.
The timing is rude.
I can feel Nathan beside me, suddenly very still.
I answer first because I am not handing this one to him.
“Not usually in the way people think,” I say. “If a mistake leads to a goal, you don’t get to rewind the play and make a better tackle. The scoreboard doesn’t care that you understand what you should have done.”
The boy nods, solemn.
“But,” I continue, “defenders learn quickly because we have to. You make the next decision cleaner. You organize faster. You read the first touch earlier. You don’t stand there arguing with the mistake while the next attack is already coming.”
The moderator smiles. “So the do-over is the next play?”
“Sometimes,” I say. “But you have to earn it before it arrives.”
My voice sounds steady.
Good.
My pulse does not.
Nathan lifts his microphone.
For one wild second, I want to step on his foot.
Not hard. Just enough to suggest silence as a lifestyle.
He speaks anyway.
“I agree,” he says. “Sometimes the do-over isn’t fixing the same play. Sometimes it’s learning not to make the same mistake with the next person.”
The room goes quiet in the way rooms do when a simple answer accidentally becomes better than expected.
I don’t look at him.
I stare at the boy in the front row like he is the entire world and not one small human who has just thrown a ball directly through my rib cage.
Nathan’s voice is steady, but I hear the catch underneath it.
I hate that I hear it.
I hate more that it sounds real.
The moderator smiles like she has found a useful quote. “That’s beautifully said.”
Of course she thinks that.
To her, it is a thoughtful answer from a champion defender.
To me, it is Nathan Bellows taking a private wound, wrapping it in public language, and placing it between us under stage lights.
The panel moves on.
I answer the next question. Then the next. Ava asks one about communicating with a keeper who is very loud, which makes our keeper call from the back of the room, “Respectfully loud,” and breaks the tension enough that everyone laughs.
I laugh too.
On camera, I am sure it looks real.
The panel ends with applause and a group photo. Youth players cluster around for quick signatures and selfies. I answer questions, sign a training bib, and tell one tiny defender with pink laces that no, being shorter doesn't mean she has to play midfield no matter what her uncle says.
“Your uncle is wrong,” I tell her.
She beams.
Behind her, Nathan is kneeling to talk to the boy who asked about do-overs. He is listening seriously, not performing listening. The boy says something with his hands moving fast. Nathan nods, then demonstrates a body angle with two fingers on the edge of a folding chair.
My chest does an inconvenient thing.
I turn away.
Ava appears beside me. “You were good.”
“I am often adequate in rooms with microphones.”
“You were better than adequate.”
“Careful. Praise can become habit-forming.”
She grins, then glances past me toward Nathan. “He was good too.”
“I’m sure his fan club will be relieved.”
Ava opens her mouth.
I give her the captain look.
She closes it.
Smart kid.
A staffer calls Ava over for a photo with the youth group. I use the moment to slip behind the stage area, toward the service corridor that leads back to the green room.
I need two minutes.
Not because of the injury.
Not mostly.
The backstage corridor smells like dust, coffee, and electrical tape. The noise from the ballroom muffles behind the heavy curtains. A production case sits against one wall, labelled with three different stickers and no clear purpose.
I hear Nathan before I see him.
“Emily.”
I turn.
He stands at the edge of the corridor, hands at his sides, no coffee cup, no easy smile.
Good. Maybe he has finally located the seriousness section of his personality.
“Don’t do that,” I say.
His brow creases. “Say your name?”
“Use public answers to say private things.”
He looks down for half a second.
Not long. Long enough.
“You asked me not to finish things unless I meant them,” he says.
“That was yesterday.”
“I meant it today.”
I hate the softness that tries to move through me.
I reject it immediately.
“The room didn’t need to hear it.”
“The room heard a soccer answer.”
“I heard you.”
His face changes.
There. That got through.
Staff pass behind him carrying a coil of cables. Neither of us moves. The hallway is too narrow for this conversation, too public for honesty, too private for pretending.
Nathan lowers his voice. “I wasn’t trying to corner you.”
“No. You were trying to confess without risk.”
His mouth opens, then closes.
Good.
Silence is better than another polished apology.
I step closer because anger moves more easily than hurt. “You don’t get to stand on a stage and talk about making the next choice better like that fixes the one you made.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
The answer is too simple. Too quiet. I don't know what to do with it.
He is supposed to defend himself. He is supposed to say something noble and annoying about how young we were or how complicated it was or how he thought walking away was better for me.
He does not.
That almost softens me.
So I sharpen.
“You don’t get to miss me now.”
The words leave my mouth before I can dress them up.
Nathan’s face changes.
Not with guilt.
Pain.
Real pain, immediate and unguarded, like I have stepped exactly where the bruise still lives.
For one awful second, I understand.
He has been missing me.
Not casually. Not nostalgically. Not in the way people miss a place they once drove through and remembered fondly later.
He has been missing me for years.
The realization knocks the breath out of me because it doesn't make the wound smaller.
It makes it worse.
If he missed me, then silence was not the absence of feeling.
It was a choice.
Again.
My left side gives a faint pulse beneath the wrap, as if my body has decided to join the conversation.
I do not touch it.
Nathan takes one careful breath.
“I know I don’t get to,” he says.
There are three ways to answer that.
All of them dangerous.
Before I can choose the worst one, a coordinator pokes her head around the curtain.
“There you are. Emily, Nathan, quick photo with the youth defenders, then we’re done.”
“Of course,” I say instantly.
My voice is smooth.
My face is captain-ready.
Nathan steps back to give me space.
Not enough to be dramatic.
Enough that I notice.
I hate that too.
I walk past him toward the ballroom.
This time, he doesn’t follow too closely.
This time, somehow, that makes it harder to breathe.
***