For the Win (7 page)

Reporter
: Your brother seems wary of being the center of attention.

Allie
: Ha. Wait, you’re serious?

Reporter
: Yes.

Allie
: I think you have him confused with someone else.

Reporter
*
shuffles through notes*:
He seemed determined to get me off the field the other day.

Allie
: Hmm, well, Julian sort of thrives on being the center of attention. I think he has to be like that to play keeper. All eyes are on him when he’s in that box. If the ball gets through, he’ll get the blame, so with that level of accountability there has to be an extra layer of ego to protect himself from failure. Does that make sense?  

Reporter
: Yes.

Allie
: It’s hard to manage an ego like that. Confidence is key in this sport—just like any other elite activity. If your confidence shatters so does your game. You’ll lose. So will the rest of the team, but on the flip side that confidence can come across as arrogant and unfeeling. If he pushed back about you being out there yesterday it’s not because he doesn’t want the attention, it’s because he knows there will be fallout from the other ten guys on the field. It’s like they say, there’s no “I” in team.

Reporter
: Except…

Allie
: Right. Except there is. And that’s what makes it so difficult to balance.

Chapter 17

I swat a ball out of the air, chasing it down to the edge of the goal box. Landing hard, I feel Mendez’s toe stab into my rib.

“Fuck,” I mutter, gritting my teeth. Lifting myself up quickly, I back into the goal.

The next shot is higher and I push it over the top bar. Another comes in low, and I kick it to the side. Shot after shot fires in my direction and I lunge, kick, jump and pounce on them all. After twenty straight minutes Brent calls me off the field and I head to the water cooler, gulping down a massive amount.

“Damn,” I say, peeling off my gloves. “I’m dying out there.”

“Not nearly as much as you should be,” he says. I grimace and he reaches for my shirt, lifting up the fabric to reveal a nice-sized bruise forming.

“Mendez?” he asks.

“Yeah. It was an accident.” Maybe. Whatever.

That night, when Rory leaves to watch movies with the other residents, I pass out in bed with an ice pack against my ribs.

The next day is more of the same, with an added dose of weight training. Dominic and I team up for the circuits Brent designed with us in mind.  I lift a fifty pound weight over my head, fighting back a scream from the burn. My muscles stretch and strain while sweat pours down my face.

“You’ve got this,” Dom says in encouragement.  

I heft the weight off my chest and over my head for a second rep.

The next couple of days are rough, with half the team seemingly determined to prove I’m an out of shape has-been. I try to keep a low profile, checking my sugar discretely, but it’s hard with Veronica and James following me around. Mendez and Bryant keep the muttering just out of range, but their cleats have come too close to my face, too many times, for it to be accidental.

But I don’t fight back. I take it.

“You sure you don’t want to come?” Rory tries again one night. Everyone is tired but bored, and they’ve settled into hanging out after dinner. Two years ago I would have been in the middle of it all.

I’m sitting on my bed, picking pieces of dirt from my knee when I hear her voice. Melina walks by a minute later, smiling up at Gonzalez, our center midfielder. She glances in the open door and her smile drops, eyes skimming over me.

“Hey,” I say partly out of habit—partly because I want to hear her voice.

“Hi.”

She keeps walking, Gonzales giving me a quick nod.

During my time away, it was easier to subdue my competitive nature. Working with the kids helped. That wasn’t about me, and everything I did needed to be exemplary. But on the field I’ve never been one to half-ass my skills. Keeping goal is what I do. It’s as natural to me as eating, sleeping, and jerking off. Really, they’re all the same thing—something I have to do, like breathing.

The first few days the guys on the team put up a wall. They don’t trust me. I understand that, so I keep my head down and work hard. The problem with keeping my head down is that it’s impossible to do my best.  Goalies work better under pressure, with all of the attention focused on them. We love being the stars of the game. Taking a backseat to Dominic feels wrong.

I do it anyway.

Reporter
: When did you realize you may be more than just an average player?

Julian
: In the 10th grade. My coach helped me get a scholarship to a soccer camp at the University of Georgia. It’s about an hour outside of Atlanta. I’d never been away from home before or really anywhere without my sister and it was equal parts terrifying and liberating.  We lived and breathed soccer twenty-four-seven and God, it was so freaking hot. Like the temperature--high nineties every day. I loved it anyway and being in that environment brought out my inner competitor. Something just clicked—probably puberty—and everything changed. I went from an okay goalie to something more. I could tell by the reactions of the coaches and older players that my skills had improved. It really built my confidence. Proved I could handle an arena bigger than the crappy field behind my middle school.

Reporter
: So at sixteen you knew what you wanted to do with your life?

Julian
: There was never a huge plan. Well, Allie and Melina may have had plans. I just knew what I wanted to do right then.

Reporter
: Melina Diaz?

Julian:
Melina was always so focused. Get of the Lexington Acres, go to school, play high level soccer. I think they always knew the Olympics were an attainable goal. She was a perfect match for Allie. I was never that determined—not then, at least.
Reporter
: Why not?

Julian
: *scratches head and pauses* I think…I think because for a long time I thought my disease was bigger than me. That it controlled me instead of the other way around. They had plans for the future. I wasn’t sure I had a future. That year, at camp, I flipped it around. I started to take control of my health and things fell into place.

Reporter
: You seem different now. Not so fly by the seat-of-your-pants.

Julian
: Playing at the next level isn’t easy. It takes a lot of time, money and dedication. I had two out of three. I had to figure out the other one, and that meant proving myself to the Powers That Be in the form of qualifying for scholarships. To get to college and the NCAA I had to step up everything.

Reporter
: You had to ensure that you were a good candidate.

Julian
: Recruiting players is always a gamble. Add in my health concerns and it was a massive risk.

Reporter
: How did you convince them—besides skill?

Julian
: Confidence. It all comes down to confidence.

Reporter
: And you have this?

Julian
: I did. In spades.

Chapter 19

(2010)

Our first kiss went down behind the supply shed before the last practice of the year. Summer was all we had left; my acceptance letter from Clemson was carefully folded in the backpack I’d tossed next to the chain-link fence, and Melina had already signed with Berry. The clock was ticking and I would have been a fool not to make a move.

FYI: I was a fool. She kissed me first.

It happened fast. One second we were talking lunch and the next her fingers were tugging at the fabric of my jersey as she pressed her lips to mine. She tasted like the oranges she’d been snacking on. Unsure of what to do with my hands, I clenched them at my side and tried to keep up. But then her hair blew against my cheek, the sensation somehow kickstarting my shocked heart. Taking a step forward, I pushed her up against the wall and kissed her back.

*

We had our second kiss just outside the locker room at the stadium, before the championship. I’d just stepped outside when I felt Melina’s smaller hand slip into mine. The girls’ season was already over, but she always wore my team hoodie—I loved seeing #15 imprinted over her chest.

Her mouth was warm as she whispered, “Good luck,” against my ear.

It took me ten minutes to shake it off and calm my blood, to refocus on the game.

Melina Diaz was luck, all right. Complete shut out. We took State.

That night, while everyone else was out celebrating with pizza and beer, we took to the backseat of my mother’s aging Toyota.  I took initiative this time, grabbing Melina as she climbed in my lap and kissing her until her lips were puffy and swollen. My dick pressed aggressively against her thigh but she didn’t seem to mind. If anything, I was more self-conscious about her fingers brushing the cannula attached to my abdomen. I shouldn’t have been, though. Not with her.

“Does it hurt?” she asked.

“No.”

“Do you hate me asking about it?” The tips of her fingers touched the fine hair near my belly button and I didn’t hate anything at the moment.

“You can ask me anything.” But she didn’t and changed the subject.

“State champs, eh?” She laughed, wiggling in my lap.

I grabbed her hips, caught between needing her to do that again and to stay still. Through a tight jaw I replied, “Crazy, huh?”

“I never thought any different. You’re going to be epic in college. I have no doubt.”

“Me? You and Allie at Berry together? Watch out NCAA.”

Her smile faded. “I’ll miss you.”

I nodded, swallowing around the lump in my throat. “We have two months.”

Her eyes shone, and she looked away. Outside, in a huge house at the top of the hill, the party raged on. One of my teammates, whose dad was on the school board, was throwing it. They were a soccer family through and through—his sister had gotten a full scholarship last year to play in Florida. Not exactly needing the money, she’d gotten the scholarship for skill. It was all about the bragging rights.

I pulled Melina closer and kissed her neck, bringing her attention back to me. She inhaled sharply, kissing me, her breath co-mingling with mine. We kissed until my head spun, and I felt feverish in the confines of the car—God, I wanted her so much. I pulled back, eyes closed.

“I know...I know we said,” I interrupted myself, kissing her again, “we’d keep it casual, but…”

She stared down at me, and I swear to God I’d have done anything for her.

“I don’t want you to be with anyone else,” I whispered, tightening my grip on her.

She arched an eyebrow, but I could tell she was trying not to smile.

“And I don’t really want anyone else. I think we should just...be together,” I said.

She looked down, smiling. “Okay.”

My heart pounded. I kissed her once more, slowly, until she pulled back.

The flash in her eyes told me she wanted to continue, but she swallowed and pressed her hand against my chest. “We should go up,” she said. “Celebrate with the team.”

That was not what I wanted, but she was right. I brushed her curls over her shoulder and agreed, following her out of the car. The reality of it all hit me like a ton of bricks. After years of hanging out almost non-stop, we only had two months.

*

That summer was filled with work, training and Melina. She had a job at her dad’s construction company, working in his office. I’d returned to mowing lawns with the landscape crew. Money was tight, even with the scholarship, especially with Allie and I going at the same time.

For once, though, none of that mattered. There was so much to look forward to come fall, new places and people. Soccer. Melina and I met each morning at 6 AM to jog around the track and through the woods behind the school. Sometimes we ran. Other times…

“How many miles are you supposed to get in a day?” she asked, dark eyes blinking up at me. We’d both been given training schedules by our coaches.

“At least three.” Plus a series of push-ups, sit-ups, lunges, and weights.

“How many have we run?”

I checked the tracker on my wrist. “One and a half.”

Strands of her hair stuck to the bark on the tree...the one I had her pushed against. She pressed playfully on my chest. “It’s amazing how our path takes us right to this area every day.”

I lifted an eyebrow, shrugging. “It’s a good rest stop. To stretch and stuff.”

She side-eyed me, smirking. “To stretch.”

“Right.” Linking our fingers, I went through the motions of stretching our arms to the side and then over our heads. As with everything I did, it was a lame excuse to get as close to her as possible.

She tugged her hands away from mine, cupping my chin. “I’m scared, Jules.”

“Of what?” My frown matched hers.

“College. Playing at such a high level. Leaving you…”

I didn’t want to admit it, but I was a little nervous myself. I’d seen our fall schedules, mine and hers, and I’d talked to other guys on the team. We would spend nearly every weekend, and half the week, on the road. From August through November we’d sleep, eat and complete classwork on the bus. It was unlikely we’d see one another before the holidays. Even those were likely to be cut short.

We’d said we wanted to try this long-distance, but I was starting to see we couldn’t guarantee each other anything. She knew it, and I knew it in return.

Wrapping her in a hug, I said the only thing I knew to be true. “We’ll figure it out. I love you.”