Ryan Hunter (5 page)

“That won’t happen. She really likes me.”

Damn, he wouldn’t listen. How very frustrating. I straightened, and my voice became cold. “
You planning on sleeping with her any time soon?”

Tony pressed his lips together and shrugged one shoulder.

“Fine. We’ll talk again then. But be prepared that by the time you messed with someone else, Liza might not be there waiting for you to return to her.”

“Liz and I becoming a couple, that’s not going to happen. I don’t need her to wait for me. I just don’t want to lose my friend.”

“The way she feels about you, that might just happen, Mitchell.”

“I just need time to tell her. So I want you and the guys to shut up about me and Cloey, until I get the chance to come clean.”

I chuckled. “Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

And then it became clear to me that I might destroy what little chance just dangled in front of my face
if I said anything more. I didn’t intend to give that up when Tony was so set on the course he was currently taking with Cloey. However, there was one thing I needed to get straight. The bark of the tree rubbed against my back when I pressed a little harder against the trunk. “You want Cloey? Take her. I’ll keep my mouth shut. You want Matthews on the team? Consider her a member. But under one condition only.”

“And that would be what?”

“As part of my team, everyone sees her as that and no longer as your sacred little girlfriend.” I paused to let that first bit sink in before I went on. “She plays soccer, she comes to my parties. You don’t stop her. And whatever happens there—if guys hit on her—you keep it together, man.”

Seconds passed, and Tony remained silent.

“I just don’t want any rivalries on our team,” I added. “Are we clear?”

Mouth still shut, Tony stood and slowly walked toward the exit of the playground. He didn’t turn around when he told me, “Deal.”

I lay awake for half of the night, wondering if I should have tried harder to talk sense into my friend. He was going to fall flat on his face, and the jerk just didn’t want to see it. If it was only because of Cloey and him, I wouldn’t have thought about it twice but let Mitchell head into the adventure and come out of it a wiser man.

However, I knew what was going to happen, and I hated to think of Liza getting hurt in the game and my friend flushing the chance that I had always wanted, and which he had had his entire life, down the gutter.

But it was not my job to change the world. And after so many years of having a crush on Liza, it was time to think only about myself for once. Well, about myself and
her
. She’d be in my house tomorrow night as part of my team. After-match parties were customary, and heck, I’d make sure to throw one for the new team members after the tryouts. I punched a short message with the dates into my phone and sent the text off to a group of sixty people. They would spread the word. My mom was on the texting list, too, just in case I forgot to tell her about the party in the morning. I never had to worry about running late to stock the fridge. Drinks and snacks were always there, and some of the kids would bring beer and the wine cooler, anyway. But the best thing was, tomorrow the girl of my dreams would be there. Sometime after midnight I fell asleep with a smile on my face.

The next morning I went through my usual routine of showering, shaving, and getting dressed, all with music thundering from the speakers in my room. Currently, it was Pink and Nate
Ruess asking for a reason. I liked the song, mostly because it was the ring tone of Liza’s cell phone, and listening to it just reminded me of her.

I tugged the white soccer shorts up over my hips, sat down on the corner of my bed, and tied my shoes. The cleats went into my backpack to wear later on the field. I grabbed a fresh jersey and pulled it over my head.
Over the lamp on my desk hung my Indians cap. It was my favorite and the one I wore most of the time at school, but as I was about to put it on this morning, I looked at myself in the large mirror attached to the door. My hair was still wet from the shower and all over the place. I knew that this chaotic look usually made girls go stupid. It was worth a try with Liza. Back in the bathroom, I pressed a tiny bit of gel into my palm; just enough to fix the style without making it look sticky or coated.

The car keys jingled in my hand as I headed downstairs. From the dining room drifted noise, and I guessed my mother was in there.
“Mom!” I shouted over my shoulder, already late. “You got the text?”

“Yes, darling!” she answered over the distance of the hall and kitchen between her and me. “Your dad and I got an invitation to Mary Fisher’s birthday celebration. We won’t be home tonight!”

“Yesss,” I hissed and punched my fist in the air. Parties were so much better when I had the run of the house. “I’m off to training. See you later, Mom!”

In our double garage, my Audi
A3 was dwarfed by my dad’s Chrysler, but I couldn’t wait to get behind the wheel of my baby painted in shiny, nightfall silver. She had been a present from my parents for my eighteenth birthday, shortly before soccer camp. And with my own savings, I had turned the brand-new car into a real attention-catcher, with twenty-inch tires on specially designed aluminum rims, an epically mean looking front, and the body slammed to the ground. Two-hundred and forty hp let this lady race through the streets like a shark under water.

When I climbed into the bucket seat and stroked over the curve of the wheel, I inhaled the scent of new leather and smirked. “Miss me, love?”

The answer came when I pushed the start button and softly tipped on the gas pedal. The Audi gave a roar that would have made her big brothers go pale with envy. Damn, I loved the sound. The wide roll-up door opened at a push of a button on the small remote that was attached to my key ring. Sunlight streamed into the garage and blinded me. I grabbed my sunglasses that lay in the center console, shook them open with one hand, and put them on.

The music boomed from the speakers on a level meant for going deaf as I left the garage and our drive to head down the road. In no time, the ride was over, because the soccer field was right next to our school, only two miles away from my house. On this Saturday morning, the parking lot was quite busy, which meant that more students had come to the tryouts than expected.

From the floorboard on the passenger side, I grabbed my backpack and threw it over one shoulder. Locking the car, I headed for the grounds.

There I spotted Torres, Frederickson, Sebastian Randall, and Alex. I had asked them to come help me sort through the girls today, kick ball with them, and judge their skills. Frederickson was our goalie, so he’d do what he always did. The rest of the crowd on the lawn was female. Since Tony wasn’t here yet, I didn’t even bother to look for Liza, because she wouldn’t come without him. I headed straight to the bench where about a million handbags and backpacks were parked, and one girl. While all the others did some stretching or chatting elsewhere, this one actually read a book.

She wasn’t in any of my classes, nor had I been out with her, but I knew she had told me her name yesterday at Charlie’s. Damn, what was it again?

I dumped my stuff next to her and said, “Hi.”

She looked up from her book and took off her metal-rimmed glasses. “Hey.”

“Good story?”

“Fantastic.” Then she blushed an awful red and grimaced, probably because she just caught my subtle taunting. It was weird to go to soccer tryouts and then read a book. “I only have half a chapter left, and I just couldn’t stop.”

I laughed. She was sweet, this one. “Go finish your chapter. I still need a few minutes to get everything ready, anyway.”

She seemed totally happy at my words, put her glasses back on and her nose back into the book, which made me shake my head but smile as I fished for the list of names in my backpack. Running my forefinger from top to bottom, I looked for the name that I had jotted down below Elisabeth MacKenzie, because I was pretty sure that this girl had sat right next to her in the café. Yep, there it was.
Miller
. That was her.

Sitting down beside her, I traded my shoes for my cleats. An airy thud next to my ear said she had finished her book. “How are you going on about this?”

Making a knot with the loops of tied laces, I tilted my head and looked up at her. “What you mean?”

“Well, there
are way over fifty girls wanting on your team. How do you select between us?”

I moved to my other shoe and started lacing it. “Dunno. Let you kick some goals and stuff. Watch you play.”

“Tough job with so many girls,” she replied and put her book in one of the million backpacks. “Do you have a rating system?”

No, I hadn’t. Because I thought there would be fifteen to choose between, maybe twenty. I didn’t reckon on half the high school. I quirked my brows at her, chewing on my bottom lip.

“That means no, right?”

“No.
Right.”

She laughed at that. “Maybe you should give points for certain tasks and just take those with the highest score?”

That sounded like a brilliant idea. “You’re a smart one.” I stood and gave her one of those smiles that I usually saved for
asking-a-girl-out
moments. It was okay, because those moments had become rare, anyway. The only sheet I had with me, though, was full with names, and there was no room left for taking any sort of notes. “You wouldn’t by any chance have—”

“A note pad?” she finished for me, giving me the same mocking tone I had used on her before. By her grin, it was apparent she had one, indeed. She handed the pad to me together with a pen.

Yeah, that was perfect. I placed the book on a small table in front of the tribune and moved a second bench closer so that I could sit down for writing. The girl came over and gave me a hand with the bench. “Thanks,” I told her.

She nodded and smiled then walked out to the field. It was rare that any girl managed to get into my good-zone so fast, but she was a nice one, smart and helpful.
“Hey, Susan!” I shouted after her.

As she stopped and turned around, there was this quirky look of surprise on her face. “Yes…Ryan?”

Ah, it was the name then. I chuckled. I certainly wouldn’t forget it again. “Would you care to help me with the notes? I just think I should be more on the field instead of sitting here and writing things down.”

Susan came back to me and looked me sternly in the eyes with her arms folded angrily over her flat chest. “You want me to be your
secretary
?”

“Ugh-ph…” I hadn’t meant to offend her, and to be fair, I had no idea what to reply to that.

Luckily, her cute face scrunched with a smile then, and she swatted me on the shoulder. “Just kidding, Hunter. Of course, I’ll help you.”

I laughed and rolled my eyes. Yeah.
Definitely
liked her.

We discussed that she’d
rasterize the sheet and in the end just add up the scores at the bottom. Her note pad turned out to be a little grab bag, because she ripped two pages with little square stickers on them from the very back and gave them to me. “You write down a number on each and have the girls sticking them on their asses or wherever. It’s easier to work it out this way.”

She gave me another pencil and, like a real assistant, shooed me off to get started.

The girls lined up, and one by one they took a sticker with a number from me, while I shouted the matching names over to Susan. Cloey was one of the first, and her friend, Brinna, of course grabbed the number that followed. When I had already given out over thirty stickers, the queue had only halved. It was amazing just how many girls at our school wanted to play soccer, and suddenly I wondered if that had anything to do with us guys. Maybe it wasn’t the sport, after all, that attracted them.

“Forty-five, Higgins! Forty-six, Stevenson! Forty-seven…” I looked up who was next and found myself face to face with the girl who dominated ninety-nine percent of my thoughts. “Matthews.”

Chapter 4

IT WAS NICE to see that Liza mirrored my smile with one of her own. She hadn’t done that before, ever. Not that I had smiled at her a lot so far, or that we’d had any eye-contact other than a passing look in the school corridor. Not wearing a cap seemed to have been a good idea, because her gaze so obviously wandered up to my chaotic hairstyle then snapped back to my face as though she was caught ogling. I didn’t mind. If she liked what she saw, she could happily stare at me all day.