Offside

  Nicole wiped off her face with her hands and dropped them back in her lap.

  “During the summer, I didn't make the club team I'd been playing on for years. The rumors had gotten that far. I pretty much stopped playing altogether, and I definitely didn't have any kind of social life anymore. My friends had always been guys for the most part, and none of them wanted to have anything to do with me if I wasn't going to put out for them, too.”

  “So, I left and came here,” she said after a moment, “vowing to never date again, at least not until high school is over. I thought I could start out again here…fresh. I guess that was stupid.”

  When Nicole finished her story, I didn't know what to do. I wanted to comfort her like she had done for me, but I really didn't know how. All I could think about was how she was in the same situation now, which was why she left Minneapolis.

  I didn't want her to leave.

  What I really wanted to do was to fix it. I wanted to fix it all. I wanted to find both of these guys and rip their fucking heads off for starters. Then I wanted to beat the shit out of anyone who passed those pictures around. I wanted to destroy every copy in existence and tell her everything was okay now—that I would take care of it for her. I wanted to take care of her.

  I had a lot of influence in our home state because of my dad, but that didn't really extend past our area. If it had happened here, I could have fixed it, but there was nothing I could do for her now.

  “Going to school tomorrow is going to suck,” she said quietly. “I thought I left all this shit behind me.”

  Wait a minute. Maybe there was something I could do…

  “What if…” I sat up a little straighter, trying to form the right words in my mind before I said them. “What if I could take care of that?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, what if I could keep it from happening again?” I asked. “What if I could make sure no one said shit to you, and no one bothered you at all?”

  “How would you do that?” she asked warily.

  “What if…” I took a deep breath. “What if you were…my girlfriend?”

  “I told you, Thomas—I'm not dating anyone. Maybe ever again. I might become a nun.”

  I knew she was joking…at least I hoped she was.

  “I understand that,” I said, trying to reassure her, “but no one else needs to know that, do they? If they all think you're mine, the guys will leave you alone. No one will think you're a…a…”

  “A slut?”

  “Um…yeah,” I stammered. “No one will think of you that way if you're just with me, right?”

  “They already think I slept with you,” she said.

  “I know…but it wouldn't matter so much if we were together, right?” The more I thought about it, the more the idea appealed to me. “No one would dare bother you. No one is going to touch you if you're mine.”

  “Yours?” she snorted.

  “Well…um…as far as anyone else knows…”

  “So what, we pretend to be dating?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But we wouldn't be.”

  “Right.”

  “That's fucked up, Malone,” she said with a humorless laugh.

  I felt my stomach drop.

  “But it beats the alternative,” she said.

  “Beats the alternative,” I repeated, trying to make sure I got her meaning correct. “That’s a yes, isn’t it?”

  Her hands went back to her face and she rubbed at her eyes.

  “We can give it a try,” she said. She turned toward me with an expression on her face I had not seen before. She looked wary, distant, and frightened.

  “I didn’t try anything when we were in bed together,” I reminded her as I tried to understand the meaning in her look. “I still won’t.”

  She nodded and wrapped her arms around herself.

  “Do you want to go home?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I do,” she said.

  I put the car in gear and headed out to the street.

  “So how is this going to work?” she asked.

  “Well,” I said, “I guess I’ll pick you up for school tomorrow?”

  “My car is fine now,” she said.

  “Yeah, but then we’d arrive at school together, you know?”

  “I guess.” She seemed to think about it for a minute.

  “You don’t have to,” I said quietly, sounding defeated.

  “It’s all right,” she replied. “I just need to get my head wrapped around this. And Dad is going to flip.”

  “What are you going to tell him?”

  “I’m going to tell him the truth,” she said succinctly. “I don’t lie to him. I don’t lie, period. I may refrain from saying something. I may even twist my words around, but I don’t lie. That’s one of the reasons this isn’t going to be too easy for me.”

  “What about that shit in front of the goal?”

  “That was totally different,” she said. “Besides, I never lied.”

  “You acted like you didn’t know where to put the ball for a PK!”

  “But I never said I didn’t know, did I? I placed it at the top of the box, and you corrected me like I knew you would.”

  I smashed my lips together to keep from smiling. My mind quickly whirled through everything she had said, and I couldn’t argue with her point—she hadn’t ever lied about it. Even when she said she had never tried, she could have meant she had never tried getting a PK past me. Twisting her words. This was going to be interesting.

  “So, I have to be able to give you things you can say that will be true, right?”

  “I guess that would help,” she agreed. “What did you have in mind?”

  “Well, if I took you out for dinner, you could say we were dating, couldn’t you?”

  She eyed me again.

  “I need to get dinner for Dad,” she said.

  “Fries and Cokes at Mickey D’s, then?”

  She sighed.

  “Fine.”

  I turned the car around and headed back toward the center of town. I hoped Dad’s work schedule was back on track now, and I was right that he wouldn’t be home for another couple of hours. I was pretty sure about it, but he hadn’t said a lot to me in the past couple of days, so I wasn’t positive.

  I pulled into the fast-food place, glad to see it wasn’t very busy. Nicole seemed glad of that as well. We entered, grabbed fries and drinks, and then took a booth over in the back corner so we could talk privately.

  “So, you’re going to drive me to school?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “if that’s okay?”

  “It’s okay,” Nicole said with a sigh. “What else?”

  “Well…um…” I racked my brain for any romantic comedy movies I had ever seen, but there weren’t that many, so I wasn’t really sure what to do. “I’ll open the car door for you?”

  Nicole laughed.

  “Thomas Malone? Turning into a gentleman? No one will believe it!”

  “Well, I could give it a try,” I said. I rubbed my chin with my hand and tried to think of what else I could do to make it look like I was her boyfriend.

  I sipped at my Coke and pondered.

  “I’ll walk you to your classes,” I told her.

  “You really are going all out, huh? How many girlfriends have you had?”

  “Um…none,” I admitted.

  “I kind of thought so,” she replied with a nod and a harsh look.

  “I’m playing this by ear,” I told her. “How about a little help?”

  “I should probably plan on doing my homework while you’re practicing.”

  “You’d come watch me practice, then?” I couldn’t help my grin.

  I grabbed a handful of fries and chowed down.

  “You really like that, don’t you?” she accused.

  “The fries?”

  “The idea of me watching you practice.”

  I shrugged.

  “Yeah.”

  “W
hy?”

  “Because you’d be watching me,” I said.

  “You want me to watch you?”

  “I want everyone to watch me,” I replied. “It kind of goes with the territory.”

  “So you are an attention whore?”

  “Pretty much.” I shoveled more fries into my mouth—they were damn good—and wiped my lips with a napkin. Nicole ate hers in little bites, tearing each one in half before dunking it in ketchup.

  “At least you admit it,” Nicole said as she sat back and gulped down the rest of her drink. “Okay, if this actually counts—we’ve been on a date now. I guess that means we’re dating.”

  “Yes, we are,” I said with a smile, “and tomorrow everyone will know you’re mine.”

  Nicole rolled her eyes.

  “I belong to me, you jerk.” She shook her head, but she was smiling, too.

  Perhaps Shakespeare would have considered us “woo'd in haste,” but at least we had something of a plan together. Somehow, I thought it would be easy to convince the student body of our high school to see us as a couple.

  Now, how was I going to keep my dad from hearing about it?

  CHAPTER 10

  CAUTION

  After I dropped Nicole off, my mind began racing to come up with some sort of explanation that would work on Dad. Obviously, I couldn’t be like Nicole and tell my dad the truth—that would just be stupid. I needed a plausible reason to have him see her around me and not flip out. As far as I could discern, there was really only one way.

  Dad’s car wasn’t in the drive when I got home, which was good. I did my homework, lifted some weights in the basement—which didn’t last long since my ribs started hurting—and toasted a bagel. When I heard Dad’s car come up the driveway, I took a deep breath and tried to remember my lines.

  “You missed practice,” he said as soon as he walked in the door. He looked tired, which was also a good thing.

  “Um…yeah,” I stammered. I wasn’t expecting that from the get-go, but it actually made for a good cue. “I know, and it won’t happen again. I’ve got it all worked out now.”

  He dropped his briefcase near the door and stalked into the kitchen. He glared at me as he pulled the stack of delivery menus out of the drawer by the refrigerator.

  “You have what worked out?” he demanded.

  “Well, you know that little cherry-girl, right?” I asked. “Sheriff Skye’s daughter?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, let’s just say she’ll be taking care of my homework assignments this semester,” I laughed and shook my head a little.

  “Oh yeah? Were you fucking her instead of practicing?”

  “No,” I said. I swallowed hard. “Not yet. But I’ve got her worked up enough that she’ll do anything I ask. I know I missed practice, but I think it will save me a lot of pointless work in the long run, you know? And I did some lifting when I got home, and I did go out with another…um…another player and did some practice PKs afterwards.”

  “Any get by you?”

  “Just one.”

  “Good boy.”

  Cue major sigh of relief.

  “I think if I can kind of play nice with her for a while…you know…string her along...be all boyfriend like…”

  “Fuck her when you’re done with this semester,” he concluded. “Then dump her and move on, though—okay?”

  “Yeah!” I agreed. “Exactly!”

  “Sounds pretty good,” Dad said with a nod. He picked up the phone and started dialing. “But don’t miss another practice.”

  “I won’t,” I promised. “She’s already going to do our whole biology project.”

  “Good, good.” He nodded and started ordering his dinner.

  Holy shit, that went about as well as it possibly could have. The timing was good because he was usually a little easier on me after…well, just after. When he was at games, I’d be able to hang out with Nicole, and he wouldn’t question it, and if word got back to him, he wouldn’t be blindsided by the news.

  Perfect.

  Actually, Dad was a little on the buddy-buddy side after he ate some dinner. He asked about my running times, practices, and which team we were playing in the next game. He even called me into the living room and had me sit with him while he flipped through channels with the remote.

  “How’s your side?” he asked.

  “Not too bad,” I replied. “It hurt a bit when I was lifting.”

  “You didn’t take any more of the Percocet, did you?”

  “No,” I replied, “I took four Motrin.”

  “Good,” he said. “I don’t like you taking that strong stuff. It’s not good for you, and you’re a tough kid. Tell me if you think you need one, though, okay?”

  He wouldn’t have let me have one. I knew that. I was kind of surprised he gave me one the first night. Suffering through pain was more aligned with his values.

  “Sure, Dad.”

  He reached over and patted me on the shoulder. I tried to hold still as he left his hand there for a minute while he kept channel surfing. He finally stopped on the World Cup game.

  “Is the US going to win this one?”

  “They better at least tie,” I said. “If they don’t, they might not make the round of sixteen.”

  “One of these days, I’ll be watching you in that goal,” he said with a flick of his wrist. Tim Howard filled the screen, the ball grasped between his gloved hands. He ran to the top of the box and punted it nearly to the other side of the field. “Play club overseas, but I want you taking his place on the national team when he retires.”

  “He’s awesome,” I said with a nod. It had been a while since we had just sat and talked soccer—not since the last World Cup. “I wish Hejduk was still on defense, though. With him there, Howard’s job would be easier.”

  “He was always fast,” Dad agreed. “Who is he playing with now?”

  “Retired,” I replied. “He’s some kind of fan-relations guy with the Columbus Crew now.”

  We chatted about soccer for most of an hour, even cheering together when the game ended with just enough points to move the US forward. It was weird, but in a good way. Rare times like these made me think the other shit was sometimes all worth it.

  It was late by the time we went through all the World Cup teams’ stats and determined each one’s potential for getting to the final. I finally started getting ready for bed. After a shower, I took a couple more Motrin, and Dad retaped my side. Once I was in bed, the day began again, flowing quickly through my head. I smiled at Rumple and how she had gotten a PK past me and then cringed as I heard her story again. I remembered the way Frankie talked about her in the lunchroom, and I recalled stories about him using similar tricks on girls at parties. It never made sense to me; he could have gotten pussy anyway. I didn’t understand why he did that shit.

  The thought that he could try that on Rumple just fucking pissed me off. I pushed the thought away. If I thought about it too much, I’d never get to sleep, and I had to pick Rumple up in the morning.

  I closed my eyes as the game replayed in my mind in full color HD, and I watched Tim Howard make another fantastic save. I wanted to capture it on paper…but I didn’t. I didn’t want to take the chance right now because I had other, more important things to keep hidden.

  I didn’t know why I felt nervous when I left my house to pick up Nicole. I mean, I had already taken her to school once though that hadn’t been planned, so I guess I hadn’t had a chance to get nervous. We had also been late, so there hadn’t been anyone to see us. This time was different. We were going early with the sole purpose of making sure everyone who was hanging out around the parking lot saw us come to school together.

  It was a bright and sunny day, and I pulled a pair of Ray-Bans out of the glove compartment before I got out of the car and knocked on Nicole’s door. I fidgeted from one foot to the other and glanced down to the side of the porch. The second pot of mums I had left her was planted in the flowe
rbeds there. I smiled and wondered if I should say anything about them as Sheriff Skye answered the door.

  Not what I was expecting.

  “Oh…um...hi,” I blathered. “I’m here to pick up Nicole.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard,” he grumbled. He opened the door wide and signaled me in with a grand gesture of his arm. I walked into the little foyer and heard Nicole’s footsteps on the stairs. “For the record, I think your little ‘plan’ is a little ‘insane’.”

  He used finger quotes. Huh. Who would have thought?

  “Oh…she….she told you about it?”

  “Yep.”

  “Oh.” I was in complete loquaciousness fail.

  “Come on,” Nicole said as she hoisted her backpack over her shoulder. “Let’s get this over with.”

  “It’s not that bad, is it?” I asked. I thought it was a pretty good plan, really.

  “No,” Nicole said.

  “Yes,” Sheriff Skye said.

  “Shit,” I grumbled.

  Nicole rolled her eyes and walked past me and out the door. I followed, remembered what I was supposed to do, and ran around her quickly. With a bright smile, I opened the passenger side door and gestured her inside.

  “You’re really serious about this, aren’t you?” she said.

  “I don’t want anyone bothering you,” I told her. “They won’t as long as they think we’re together.”

  “We’ll see.”

  We drove in silence. As we approached school, there were kids all over the fucking place. I pulled around to one of the front spots and put the car in neutral before turning it off.

  “Ready?”

  “No,” Nicole replied, “but let’s do it anyway.”

  “Stay there,” I reminded her. I pushed my door open, got out, casually stretched my neck and nodded to a couple of people as I walked around to the other side of the car. I could feel their eyes on me as I opened up Nicole’s door, reached in, and took her hand to help her out.

  I could even hear the gasps. I could practically hear what they were thinking.

  “Come on, baby,” I said quietly—but not too quietly.