CHAPTER 11
EMILY
Briarwood FC looks smaller than I remember.
Not small.
Smaller.
The clubhouse still leans a little to the left, as if years of youth soccer have worn it down but not convinced it to quit.
The parking lot is still cracked near the far curb.
The snack bar window still sticks halfway open.
Someone has painted the trim since I was last here, but the blue is already fading under the Carolina sun.
Professional pitches are cleaner.
This one has fingerprints.
I step out of the shuttle with my Team Canada jacket folded over one arm and my captain face already in place.
The air smells like hot pavement, cut grass, fryer oil, and old bleachers baking in the sun. Kids shout near midfield. A ball thuds against the side of the clubhouse. Someone’s younger sibling cries because a cone has been moved, apparently a serious offence.
Coach Miller stands near the banner with a clipboard, a whistle, and damp eyes.
Of course.
I haven’t even crossed the parking lot.
Beside me, Ava makes a soft sound. “This is cute.”
“Dangerous word,” I say.
“What? Cute?”
“Yes. Small-town places hear that and start producing emotional ambushes.”
Ava grins. “Is that a scientific fact?”
“It’s a field-tested warning.”
She looks toward the clubhouse, where old team photos have been strung along a temporary display board. “Should I be worried?”
“You should always be worried around laminated nostalgia.”
Ava laughs and walks ahead to join the other players, but my feet slow.
Photos.
Of course there are photos.
Old camp shots. Briarwood FC youth teams. Regional development squads. Muddy cleats. Too-big jerseys. Kids trying to look serious and failing because someone’s parent is yelling smile from behind the camera.
One photo near the centre catches me before I mean to look.
Not close enough to see details.
Close enough to know.
Rain-grey sky.
Mud.
Two defenders near a ball.
My throat tightens once.
I keep walking.
No one gets to know that.
“Emily.”
Nathan stands near the clubhouse steps with a folder in his hands.
Not a phone.
Not a clipboard.
A folder.
The kind Coach Miller probably pulled from a filing cabinet while saying something like memories need daylight, which should be illegal without supervision.
Nathan looks tired. Not sleep-deprived exactly. More like someone spent the night losing an argument with himself. Navy Kings polo. Damp hair. One hand tight around the folder edge.
He does not step toward me.
Good.
That means I have to step toward him.
Less good.
“Bellows,” I say.
His eyes move over my face, then stop there.
Progress.
Annoying progress.
“Coach Miller found old camp photos,” he says.
“I gathered.”
“I told him nothing goes up without your approval.”
The sentence lands with a quiet weight.
Not, I pulled them.
Not, I handled it.
Not, I protected you from the bad nostalgic man with the memory envelope.
Your approval.
I reach for the folder.
Nathan gives it to me immediately.
The cardboard is soft at the corners from years of being opened and closed by hands that probably smelled like coffee and peppermint gum. I hate that detail because I remember Coach Miller smelling exactly like that when he yelled at us to stop admiring our tackles and clear the second ball.
I open the folder.
There we are.
Young.
Mud-covered.
Ridiculous.
The first photo is a group shot. Twenty players in soaked training gear, all squinting into rain, several clearly freezing. Nathan stands two rows behind me, grinning like bad weather is a personal hobby. I am front row, arms crossed, looking like I plan to challenge the storm to extra time.
The next photo is worse.
Nathan and me by the far sideline, both reaching for the same ball. His hand is lifted like he is about to say something. I am half turned toward him, mouth open, probably arguing.
Too much unfinished movement.
I flip to the next.
Us again.
Opposite sides of a muddy ball. Both laughing. Not touching. Not posed. The moment between work and something else. The kind of photo that doesn't know it has become evidence.
Nathan says nothing.
I look up.
He is watching the folder, not me.
“You didn’t tell Coach to leave them all out?” I ask.
His jaw moves once. “I thought about it.”
“I’m sure.”
“I didn’t.”
“That is also clear.”
He looks at me then. “Your call.”
Two words.
No decoration.
No careful little speech about how he is learning to respect my choices now that he has been emotionally educated by half the Kings roster.
Just your call.
I look back at the photos.
The group shot can stay. It is harmless.
The sideline one cannot.
The laughing one...
My thumb rests on its edge.
Young Nathan looks at me in the photo like the rain has improved his day because I am in it. Young me is laughing with my whole face, which feels like a betrayal committed by a person who did not know better yet.
A camera crew adjusts equipment near the banner.
Coach Miller waves at someone, then wipes under one eye with the side of his hand.
Ava is showing a group of kids how to juggle, badly enough to make them love her immediately.
The field hums around me.
I slide the group photo out.
Then the laughing one.
I tuck the sideline photo behind the folder flap.
“This one,” I say, handing him the group shot first. “And this one.”
Nathan takes the laughing photo carefully.
His thumb touches only the white border.
Not our faces.
“Are you sure?” he asks.
“No.”
His gaze lifts.
I hold the folder against my side. “But it’s honest enough.”
He nods.
Not like he understands everything.
Like he has heard the boundary and will not argue with it.
That should be less effective.
Coach Miller appears beside us with the emotional subtlety of a marching band.
“Oh, that’s a good one,” he says, pointing at the laughing photo. “You two were always trouble near a ball.”
“Coach,” Nathan says.
“What?”
“Maybe fewer commemorative statements before cameras.”
Coach Miller looks between us, then presses his lips together like he is physically trapping seventeen sentences behind them.
“I can do that,” he says.
A beat.
“Mostly.”
“Ninety percent,” I say.
His face brightens. “That feels fair.”
The filming starts ten minutes later.
I stand beside Nathan under the Briarwood FC banner while Sienna’s producer checks sound and two youth defenders whisper furiously about whether Colton Myers is here. He is, unfortunately, and currently balancing a ball on his foot while Morgan looks ready to file a medical objection.
Sienna steps into position with her microphone. She smiles at me first, then Nathan, then the kids.
“Today we’re talking about defenders,” she says to the camera, “and the places that teach them to see danger before everyone else does.”
Nice line.
Not invasive.
I approve against my will.
The segment begins with kids asking questions.
One girl wants to know if defenders are allowed to be scared.
“Yes,” I say. “You’re allowed to be scared. You’re not allowed to let fear make the decision without you.”
Nathan glances at me.
I do not look at him.
A boy asks if defenders should always throw themselves in front of shots.
“No,” Nathan says immediately. “Please do not turn yourself into a dramatic traffic cone.”
The kids laugh.
He crouches and places two cones on the grass. “Sometimes bravery is blocking the shot. Sometimes bravery is staying on your feet so the attacker runs out of ideas.”
I add, “And sometimes bravery is trusting the defender beside you to handle her lane.”
Nathan’s hand pauses on the cone for half a second.
Then he looks at the kids. “Exactly.”
The filming moves to a drill.
Nathan demonstrates how to recover without overcommitting. I stop a young defender from lunging too early and make her redo the first step until she feels the difference.
Coach Miller watches from the sideline with the expression of a man seeing every year of his life justified by cone placement.
“Look at that,” he says to Sienna’s camera at one point. “Those two were reading the game like that when they were teenagers.”
I prepare for the hit.
It comes, but softer than expected.
Maybe because Nathan does not look at me for confirmation.
Maybe because the photo display behind us shows the version of history I chose.
Maybe because, for once, the past is not being used against me. It is simply standing there in the sun, muddy and imperfect, where I allowed it to stand.
I hate that this helps.
The snack bar bell rings. Someone cheers near the far goal. The sun warms the back of my neck. A little boy wipes blue popsicle across his shirt and asks Nathan if Global Cup champions have bedtime.
“Absolutely,” Nathan says. “Mine is currently nine-thirty and emotionally necessary.”
The boy looks horrified.
“Mine is earlier,” I say.
He looks even more horrified.
Nathan smiles at the kid. “Captain Smith is more disciplined than I am.”
“Everyone is more disciplined than you are,” I say.
He presses one hand to his chest. “Publicly wounded.”
“Walk it off.”
The kids laugh.
The camera catches it.
Of course it does.
By the time Sienna calls the final cut, my cheeks ache from media smiling and my left side has progressed from complaint to legal brief. Not severe. Not unmanageable. Present.
Always present.
Ava finds me near the water cooler while Nathan signs a ball for a tiny defender with mismatched socks.
She hands me a bottle.
“Hydration,” she says.
“Are you monitoring me now?”
“I learned from the scariest.”
“Flattery will get you conditioning runs.”
She grins, then looks toward the photo board.
Uh oh.
That look.
Young. Curious. Too observant. In need of a distraction.
I uncap the bottle. “Whatever you’re thinking, don’t.”
“I haven’t said anything.”
“You thought loudly.”
Ava leans beside the cooler, pretending casual and failing badly. “Was he the one who got away?”
I nearly choke on water.
Ava’s eyes go wide. “Sorry. That was too personal. I’m sorry. Ignore me. I have terrible judgment when emotionally hydrated.”
I cough once, then lower the bottle.