Everything for you, p.3
Everything for You, page 3
Per usual for these Linnie visits, I left Freya talking shop with our physical trainers on staff, Dan and Maria who’s a friend of hers from college days. If the past is any indication, Dan and Maria will be in their swivel chairs, sipping the coffees I brought them, Freya with her feet up on a massage table, hands propped on her stomach, which is currently home to Bergman-MacCormack baby number two.
Crouching, I give Linnie my back, and she hops on, soccer ball clutched in one arm. “Bye, Coach! Bye, guys!” she calls. “See ya next time when I beat your butts!”
They laugh, saying their goodbyes as we exit the locker room.
“Hurry, Uncle Ollie!” Linnie yells. “I’m gonna pee my pants!”
After handing off Linnea to Freya, I’m halfway to Coach’s office when I stop and backtrack, remembering what I need. At my cubby in the locker room, I open the cooler and grab the container holding one of Viggo’s homemade semlor. With a quick jog back down the hall, I’m at Coach’s office. The door is cracked, so I step in, then shut it behind me.
“Oh, thank God,” Coach says, rubbing her hands. “You’re the best.”
Smiling, I set down the dessert that makes her eyes light up—semla, a cardamom-infused bun bursting with marzipan whipped cream, a sliver of the bun resting on top, dusted with powdered sugar.
Gavin watches this transaction with his usual unreadable, albeit chilly, expression, but I can imagine what he’s thinking: Kiss-ass. Brown-noser. Suck-up.
When, really, I just like making people happy. I like that Viggo gets sales for his baking side-hustle, and Coach gets the sweets she’s craving. It makes me feel good to give people what they need and put a smile on their faces.
But I’m long past expecting Gavin to understand where I’m coming from. He’s made it clear since day one that he can’t stand me.
It stung when he first joined. I’d hoped we could at least be friendly teammates—that is, after I got over being starstruck. And maybe it’s because I looked up to him so much that his disdain cut so badly. He’s not only the world’s greatest player in modern history—he’s one of the first and few openly gay professional soccer players.
His coming out, given in that low, authoritative growl at a press conference with so much succinct confidence and poise, inspired me to be out everywhere in my life. It emboldened me to talk openly about being queer with my college and then professional soccer teams, about my hopes for the game to become safer and more accepting—whether players were questioning, out just to themselves, to their families, to their friends, or to the public.
I hoped as two openly queer guys on the same team, we could have each other’s backs in a sport that has failed me many times over the years. Toxic masculinity. Blatant and subtle homophobia and biphobia. In locker rooms, on the field, at tryouts, in the media.
But no. Ever since he joined us two years ago, all Gavin has done is act like he sees this career move as a thoroughly unpalatable demotion. All he’s done after scoring each one of those beautiful goals is scowl at the camera, shower off after the game, growl his way through interviews, and walk out.
“So,” Coach says around a bite, gesturing for me to sit down. “Bergman. I have some good news.”
Good news sounds promising. I should be excited, but I have no idea what it’s about, so anxiety and my mind’s pervasive tendency to worst-case-scenario everything I don’t have clarity about clouds over the moment. Somehow, my brain twists “good news” to “good news but.”
I swallow nervously as Coach sets down the semla and dusts off her hands.
“In your three seasons,” she says, “you have demonstrated true leadership and incredible work ethic.”
Nerves clenching my stomach. “But…?”
She frowns, swiping her finger through the cream filling and popping it in her mouth. “But nothing. I’m giving you a compliment.”
“Uh. Okay.” I shift uneasily on the chair. “Well, thank you, Coach.”
“You’re welcome. And it’s because of that dedication and leadership you’ve demonstrated that you’re our new co-captain.”
My eyes widen. My gaze snaps toward Gavin, who’s boring holes into Coach’s head with his stare. “What?” I whisper.
Coach leans in, flashing a wide, bright smile. “You’re. Our. New. Co-captain. Congratulations.”
“B-but, no. Wait. I—” Clearing my throat, I shift to the edge of my seat and lean in. “I’m not. That is, Hayes is—”
“An incredible presence on the field,” Coach finishes, smiling at Gavin, whose only tell that he’s two seconds away from flipping the desk she’s leaning on is a vein pulsing furiously in his temple. “Brilliantly skilled. But so are you. You two have…complementary technical strengths, leadership styles, and field presence.”
Now his jaw is ticking.
Her gaze meets Gavin’s calmly, then slides my way. “Given that, management and I agree our team will be better for both of you leading it, our team’s rising star and our illustrious veteran player. The pressure’s on. We won our first MLS Cup in years this past December. Now we’ve got to keep that momentum, pick up in this preseason right where we left off at the end of last year, and do it all over again. I’m counting on you two to get us there.”
I’m stunned. And honored. It’s the kind of opportunity I’ve wanted for as long as I can remember. And yet my stomach’s a knot of worry. What if I mess up? What if I get it wrong? What if I fail the team? What if—
“You don’t look as happy as I thought you’d be.” Concern tightens Coach’s features as her eyes search mine.
“You kidding?” I sit back in my chair, lacing my hands behind my head and smiling my breeziest smile, hoping I hide my terror well. “Happier than a polar bear after the UN committed to taking concrete action to prevent global warming from exceeding two point seven degrees.”
“They haven’t done that,” Gavin grumbles, staring resolutely ahead. His voice is gravel, his speech crisp and neat, betraying that while he’s American, up until two years ago he’d been living in England since age seventeen.
“True,” I tell him. “But what do we have if we don’t have hope!”
Coach’s mouth quirks. “It’s okay to be nervous, Oliver.”
“Who, me?” I wave a hand. “Psh. Cooler than a mini cucumber shoved all the way back in the vegetable crisper. You know what I’m talking about? Those little ones that get so cold they’re practically tiny veggie popsicles. That’s how chill I am. Cucumber popsicle coo-ool.”
She smiles, eyes narrowed. “Mhmm.”
For a second, I could swear I feel Gavin’s eyes on me, but as soon as I glance his way, they’re trained over Coach’s shoulder. Bored, annoyed, already beyond this moment, this threshold we’re about to cross.
Becoming co-captains.
Taking a slow, deep breath, I force a smile. Then I say, “Coach, I’m honored.”
She smiles back. “I know you are. One of the many reasons you deserve this. You don’t see yourself as entitled to captaincy. You’ll treasure the opportunity for what it is—an honor. It is an honor to be a leader.”
Is that somehow meant for Gavin? She throws him a sharp glance and tears off a corner of the bun, then another, topped with marzipan whipped cream, and offers one to each of us. “It’s also a responsibility.”
Gavin shakes his head. I take the piece of semla and tell her, “I understand.”
“You don’t know what you’re missing, Hayes,” Coach says as she tosses back the bite he declined.
As I pop the bun in my mouth, I feel Gavin’s eyes on me again. I glance his way, licking the whipped cream off my thumb, and Gavin stands so abruptly, he sends his chair scraping across the floor.
“Excuse me,” he says.
“Excuse you where?” Coach says, arching an eyebrow.
Gavin clutches his lower back. “Ow,” he deadpans. “Back needs treatment. Common ailment, for an old veteran player,” he snaps, before throwing open the door, then slamming it shut behind him.
Groaning, Coach shoves another bite of semla in her mouth. “That went well.”
“Due respect, did you expect it to?”
She smirks, offering me another bite of semla. “No. But at least there’s the world’s best cream-filled buns.”
“True. Semlor can fix almost anything.”
“Except poorly timed due dates,” she mutters.
“Aw, Coach. It’ll be all right. We get you for the preseason at least. We’ll manage a few regular season games, then you’ll be back here, whipping us into shape again before you know it.”
“I know. It’s still annoying that I can’t just snap my fingers, pop out a baby, and get back to it. However, I suppose you’re right—it’s just a few games. Not the worst. And I’ve been told this kid’s cuteness will make the professional inconvenience completely worth it.”
A smile warms my face, thinking of how Linnea upended not only Freya and Aiden’s ordered world, but our whole family’s, beyond our wildest dreams. How superhero capes and playdough and miniature soccer nets, tiny sticky handprints and finger-paint pictures and endless photographs of a perfect dark-haired, ice-blue-eyed baby, then toddler, then preschooler, fill our homes, cover our refrigerators and walls. “I don’t believe you’re being misled.”
Sighing, Coach sits back and sets the semla in its container on her belly. “You and Hayes will work it out,” she says. “I’m confident. And with you two leading the team together, along with Rico and Jas, you’ll be fine without me.”
Our assistant coaches are solid, good people and excellent at their jobs. I have no doubt we’ll be in good hands until she comes back. The part about Gavin and I leading together, that’s what I’m not so sure about.
“He barely talks to me, Coach. It’s all grunts and fucks.”
She laughs. “He does swear like a sailor.”
“I’m ready to work with him…” I rake a hand through my hair. “But he does not seem to share my willingness.”
“Now come on,” she says, taking another bite of bun. “Don’t act like you’re entirely innocent.”
I gape. “Moi?”
“Uh-huh. Toi. I’m onto you. You put it real sweet, but everything you say to him is like it’s specially designed to get under his skin.”
I blush. Scrub the back of my neck. “I’m the second youngest of seven kids. It’s in my DNA.”
“Mhmm, well, you may just have to alter that genetically predisposed approach.” After a beat, and another bite of semla, she says, “Hayes has a…tough shell. And, yes, he’s intimidating. Stubborn—”
I laugh quietly. “No kidding.”
“He’s old and set in his ways,” she concedes. “I mean, old for soccer. Who knows, this may even be his last season.”
I hadn’t considered that. Gavin’s thirty-four, and he’s been playing world-class soccer since he was seventeen. A lot of players retire by this age, especially after playing as physically and sustaining as many injuries as he has. That said, I can’t imagine Gavin retiring, or that he can imagine retiring either, for that matter. At the end of last season when a reporter asked him about the possibility, he glared at them so long and viciously, they ran out of the room crying.
Coach pops the last bite of semla in her mouth and snaps the container closed. “There’s more to Hayes than meets the eye. You just have to…” She grimaces, stares up at the ceiling. “Hell, I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. I’ve barely seen that ‘more’ myself, and I’ve known him for over a decade.”
Coach and Hayes played around the same time, and both made appearances for the US National and Olympic teams, though she was further along in her career than he was and a bit older. I knew this, but it’s funny to think about them as peers. Gavin’s never acted like he’s her equal, never referred to their history. He listens to her, respects her, even if his eye twitches sometimes when she’s barking orders that include him.
“I know this is hard,” she says. “But you two won’t be co-captains forever. While you are, why not try to…give him another chance, make the best of it, right?”
I contemplate what this is going to look like. The monumental task ahead of me to find a way to share leadership with the man who loathes me to my core.
Meeting her eyes, I force my widest smile yet. “Right.”
3
GAVIN
Playlist: “Lo/Hi,” The Black Keys
“Damn, you’re playing dirty tonight.” Mitch, my accuser, throws his cards onto the table as I rake in my chips.
“I’m playing poker, Mitchell. It’s a dirty game.”
He grumbles under his breath along with the four other men around the table as they toss in their cards. My poker companions are all in their seventies and couldn’t care less that I’m a world-famous professional soccer player. As soon as they figured out that I didn’t play baseball, basketball, or American football, I was chopped liver. More than fine by me after living over a decade in a place where soccer players are royalty, hounded by the paparazzi, constantly under the microscope. Compared to that, the poker guys are a breath of fresh air.
I met them through Mitch, who’s my neighbor—not my immediate neighbor, but he lives in the neighborhood. And I met Mitch when I was seeing a specialist about my forever fucked-up back and he was there for his knee replacement follow-up, both of us sitting in the waiting room. I drove him home after his appointment since he mentioned he’d used public transportation, and when we realized how close we lived, there was no damn sense in him taking a bus when I could drive him. By the time I’d dropped him off, somehow I’d gotten myself roped into not only weekly poker nights with his buddies, but hosting them, too.
The table’s littered with snacks, sweets, and seltzer cans. You think teenagers eat a lot, watch out for five septuagenarians. They’ll clean out your pantry in one night.
“I need a drink,” Lou grumbles, his silver afro swaying as he shakes his head and scowls at Jim.
Stacking my chips in order, I tell him, “I’d be glad to oblige if the alcohol police here didn’t ban all the fun.”
“It’s contraindicated for my meds!” Jim snaps. “If I can’t have fun, none of you assholes get to either.”
Collective grumbles fill the room as Jorge deals.
Itsuki pokes my bicep. “What’s on your mind? You’re particularly bad-tempered tonight.”
I glare down at him. He smiles back. He’s not remotely frightened of me. None of them are. It’s strange. Everyone else is scared of me. I’m six-four, big-boned, my voice sounds like gravel-laced ice, and my sentences are eighty-five percent profanity. These guys don’t care. They simply roll with how I am and tease me along the way.
I know if anyone would hear what turned my day to shit and not judge me for it, it’s them. I’m just too used to holding my cards close, in every sense of the word.
“Nothing,” I mutter, sweeping up my cards from the table.
“Nothing,” they all mock-grumble.
“Oi.” I glare at them.
“C’mon,” Jorge croons, rearranging his cards. “Just get it out. You’ll feel better. Less constipated.”
“I’m not constipated, you pink-haired troll.”
Jorge pats his rose-gold-dyed hair, which, while annoyingly bright, I will concede, complements his warm, golden-brown skin rather nicely. “Emotionally, you are.”
“Am not.”
Itsuki, Jorge’s partner, gives me a long, serious look. “Oh dear.”
“What?” Jorge hugs his cards to his chest and leans in. “What is it?”
Itsuki sets a hand over mine. “I think our boy’s been bitten by the love bug.”
The room erupts.
Who is he? Tell us about him! What’s he like? Have you kissed?
“Oi!” I yell.
They fall silent.
“I have not been bitten by the fucking love bug. I…” My voice dies off. Mitch gives me an encouraging nod. I clear my throat roughly, glaring down at my cards. “I…may have experienced a…professional…setback…today.”
Jim wrinkles his nose, feigning thought. “What the hell do you even do again?”
Mitch tuts disapprovingly. “Go easy on him.”
“Man, I’m still mad about that,” Lou says. “Mitch reels us in with some shit about you being a big-deal professional athlete. I’m picturing seats behind home plate at Dodgers Stadium, a nice, toasty box at the arena. I’m seeing courtside with the Lakers, the fifty-yard line at SoFi Stadium, and what do you do? Kick a bathroom-tile-looking ball around and run so long you make me tired.”
Itsuki snorts a laugh, then schools his expression. “That wasn’t nice, Louis. Besides, I like soccer. It’s very calming.”
“You’re watching the wrong kind of soccer, then,” I tell him.
“Back to the matter at hand,” Mitch says. “What’s going on?” He leans his elbows on the table, offers a nod of encouragement. His white hair’s a soft cloud white, his matching mustache neat and trimmed. He reminds me so much of Fred, the one person who ever saw something in me, whose kindness changed my life.
Maybe that’s what makes me momentarily shed my typical armor as I gruff, “I have to team up with someone at work who I don’t want to team up with at all.”
A chorus of hmms and oohs echoes around us.
Itsuki asks, “Why not?”
“You don’t get along?” Lou offers.
“I hate sharing air with him,” I snap.
It sounds vicious, but God help me, it’s true. I hate sharing a team, a field, a practice space, a locker room, meetings, you name it, with Oliver Bergman. Sharing captaining is the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Jorge frowns at me in curiosity. “Why?”
I bite my cheek, remembering vividly how it felt the first time I saw him two years ago. Like I’d taken a direct kick to the gut. Tall, fast. All long, lithe limbs and easy smiles. He’s everything I once was and more. Young. Happy. Healthy. The world at his feet. Untold possibility on the pitch.
