Offside (16 page)

“Ouch,” Sheriff Skye said with a whistle. “You know, since I already got the short version of this, I’m just going to excuse myself…”

“No!” Nicole and I both yelled at the same time.

“What the hell did he tell you?” Nicole said as she glared at me.

“I’m gonna let you two work this out…” He tried to escape again, but Nicole told him to stay. Then she glared at me again while I tried to figure out how to form words.

“There is nothing you could possibly say that I would want to hear.” Nicole turned and started to walk toward the door. “And I really don’t have anything to say to you.”

“Please, Nicole!” I said as I finally found my voice again. “Just let me explain!”

“Explain? Explain how I’ve been trashed all over school because I felt
sorry
for you? Explain how all any of you jocks care about is bragging to your friends about what you’ve done with which girl? I’m really not interested!”

“If you would just listen for a minute—”

“Go away!” she screeched.

“You really should at least give the boy a chance…” Sheriff Skye started to say, but the kitten claws dug into him, too.

“Are you serious?” she screeched. “This is why I left Minneapolis, Dad! Or had you forgotten that? I left because of this kind of bullshit, and now, because I tried to help this jerk, it’s all happening again!”

“Don’t swear, Nicole…”

Now I was lost. I looked back and forth between them and watched the sheriff cringe a little.

“What’s happening again?” I asked. I couldn’t have been more confused. Sheriff Skye shook his head a little.

“None of your goddamn business!” Nicole yelled at me.

She might have been yelling, but the façade was broken. I could see it in her face and focused on her eyes enough to see that they were red and swollen. She wasn’t just angry, and she wasn’t just hurt. Not by this. There was something else.

“Rumple?” I questioned. “What is it?”

“What the heck is a
Rumple
?” her father asked as he looked at me from the corner of his eye.

“Never mind, Dad,” Nicole said with a sigh. “I just want to go inside and make dinner.”

“Please listen to me,” I said again. “I never said anything to anyone—I swear. I spent most of yesterday in the hospital and hardly talked to anyone! It wasn’t me. Someone just saw my car parked here…”

She looked over to me with deep furrows across her brow.

“Oh my God,” she muttered, and she dropped down to the porch where I had been sitting and covered her face with her hands.

“
Good luck
,” Sheriff Skye mouthed to me as he slowly opened the door and slipped inside.

I walked up to her and slowly sat down on her right side. I was in completely unchartered territory here. Aside from never actually trying to comfort a girl before, I had never really apologized to one, either. I had no idea which one I should do first.

I decided to try comfort, but I didn’t really know how to accomplish that. I remembered what she had done for me and reached out to tuck her hair behind her ear.

She punched me.

“Oh fuck!” I gasped as breath left me and pain shot down my side. She didn’t actually hit my ribs, but just below was close enough.

“Are your ribs taped up?” she exclaimed.

“Umm…yeah,” I admitted as I tried to keep my eyes from watering.

“You really were in the hospital yesterday?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing,” I said with a shake of my head. “Don’t worry about it.”

“
What happened to your ribs
?” She accented each word, and when I looked at her eyes, I knew she wasn’t going to let it drop.

“I got hit during a scrimmage yesterday,” I told her. “Just cracked one—no biggie.”

“During a
scrimmage
?”

“Yeah—you know, just a quick, friendly game.”

“Doesn’t sound too friendly,” she remarked.

“Well…shit happens.” I looked away, unable to meet her eyes. I felt her hand on my arm, and I looked over at her scrunched up face.

“Sorry,” she said.

“It’s okay,” I told her. “I deserve it.”

“Deserve a broken rib?”

“Yeah…um…no, I mean…”

Shit.

“I mean, I deserved you hitting me.”

“Hrm.” Her eyes narrowed at me again. She took a big breath and huffed it out. “Who saw the Jeep?”

“A couple people saw it Saturday, I guess,” I told her. “And Clint saw me leaving in the morning. He just assumed…”

I turned to her and leaned closer.

“I swear, Rumple—I didn’t say anything to anybody. I didn’t even tell anyone I
saw
you. I never would have done that, not after…”

I looked away for a second and then looked back at her.

“Not after what you did for me.”

There were tears in the corner of her eyes.

“I hadn’t even gotten into the building yet,” she said, “before Clint came up and smacked me on the butt and told me he was ready when I was. By the time I got to the door, Mika grabbed my waist and asked what I was doing for dinner. I had four more offers before my first class was over.”

“Shit…”

“And then Crystal Lloyd called me a slut,” she said. “She told me only the really stupid girls spread their legs for you the first time, and I should have at least held out until the second date.”

I balled my hands into fists. I wouldn’t hit a girl, but I might go smack her brother around for having the same last name.

“Next thing I know, I find out the whole school is talking about how you fucked me in my Dad’s bed.”

The tears slipped out of her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. I felt my chest clench and wished I could do something about it, but I knew there was nothing I could do.

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “I had no idea…I mean, people were saying shit to me, but I didn’t even know what they were talking about…not until lunch—but you were already gone.”

She nodded.

“I looked all over for you,” I told her. “Where did you go?”

“To the trailer park on the other side of town,” she said with a shrug.

“Why the heck did you go out there?”

“Just to see a friend.”

She didn’t seem interested in elaborating, so I let it drop.

“What am I going to do?” she whispered as she finally looked over to meet my eyes. “No one is going to believe nothing happened, even if you tell them. Now I have a bunch of guys chasing me because they think I’m going to put out and a bunch of girls hating me for the same reason. I can’t believe this is happening again.”

“What’s happening again?”

“Forget it,” she grumbled, and she started to stand up.

I reached out and grabbed her arm.

“Tell me,” I insisted.

“It’s really none of your business,” she said again.

Taking the chance, I reached over and put my hand on top of hers.

“Tell me what happened,” I said.

Nicole looked over at me with narrowed eyes.

“How about I make you a deal?” she said as she pulled her hand away from mine. “We go out to the soccer field at school, and if I can’t get a penalty kick past you, I’ll tell you the whole story. If I do get one past you, you have to answer one question completely truthfully—anything I ask.”

I couldn’t help it—I laughed.

“You think you’re going to get a PK past me?”

“I don’t know,” she said with a shrug. “I’ve never tried. It doesn’t look that hard, though. Besides, you’re hurt.”

I shook my head.

“If that’s what you want,” I said.

“So we have a deal?”

“You got a deal, Rumple,” I snickered. “You’re an idiot, but you got a deal.”

“Now?”

“Sure.”

Shakespeare wrote, “Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.” Somehow, I still had to admire her tenacity.

Now to get this over with so I could figure out what had happened to her.

CHAPTER 9

GOLDEN GOAL

Nicole leaned over and double knotted her tennis shoes as I juggled the ball around, only half paying attention to what I was doing. Mostly I was watching her bent over, tying her shoes, wearing red short-shorts. She really did have gorgeous legs, and I didn’t think I had really appreciated them before. Firm…shaped…must be from all that running she does. I could see the flex in her calves and thighs—she had some muscle there. I was very tempted to run my hands over them.

I shook the thoughts from my head.

The girl had to be just a little bit crazy, I figured, or maybe she was just looking to lose the bet. Anyone would have to be damn good to get past me, and from the very beginning, she obviously didn’t know what she was doing. Maybe it was her way of saying she wanted to tell me whatever this dirty little secret was but without just coming right out and saying it.

I didn’t know; girls were weird.

I smirked as she walked toward the goal. I popped the ball up in her direction with my knee, and she squealed and batted it away from her face. I laughed as she glared at me, picked up the dirty ball with her fingertips, and placed it at the top of the box.

“You’re making it a lot harder on yourself!” I chuckled.

“What do you mean?”

I pointed to the white circle in between us.

“That’s the PK spot, baby.”

“Oh.” She mumbled something else that I couldn’t hear and then took a few steps forward to place the ball on the right spot. “Here?”

“That’s it, Rumple.” I winked at her as she glowered at me.

She stood right behind the ball, looking back and forth from one side of the goal to the other. I crouched down a little, bouncing on my knees a bit.

“How many tries do I get?” she asked.

“Normally, one,” I explained, “but you can have three because I’m such a nice guy.”

She snorted.

I might have let her kick all afternoon, but eventually I’d get tired. It was still a little hard to breathe, too.

“Okay.”

She brought her foot back with bended knee and kicked. The ball glanced off her toe and rolled at about the same pace as a toddler’s plastic truck. I jogged over and picked it up before it hit the side bar.

“Rumple, Rumple, Rumple,” I teased. “You gotta get some power behind it!”

I walked over to her with the ball, placed it down on the circle, and started explaining the physics of kicking to her.

“Use a running start to give yourself more power, but the main thing is to keep your leg as straight as possible. You gotta use those beautiful thighs.”

She whipped her head up from the ball to me as she narrowed her eyes.

“Just calling it as I see it,” I said with a shrug, but I walked back to position anyway.

Her next try was a little better. She did take the running start but still bent her knee too much. The shot was on-goal but had nowhere near enough leverage to get past me. I jumped left and easily trapped it in my hands. I settled into position and rolled the ball back to her.

“One more try, Rumple,” I said, “and then you’re gonna have to spill it!”

She smashed her lips together and scowled at me before taking a deep breath and placing the ball back on the white circle. I was still standing straight up—not even close to being ready to jump—when I watched her take a couple of steps back, and her thigh muscles tightened deliciously. I may have been a bit too focused on the shape of the muscles instead of what she was doing with them. The angle was more firm, her quadriceps more sure of what they were doing—something that only occurs when muscle repeats a movement often enough to create long-term muscle memory.

She took two steps forward, curled the toe of her foot back toward her, which would make for a higher angled kick, and straightened her leg like a fucking pro. Straight, long, lean, and enough leverage to fling the ball right at the top left corner of the goal.

It flew up fast. My balance was off—I hadn’t even been trying to bother jumping since I thought it was obvious she wasn’t going to get enough power to kick it fast enough. A goalie has to know which direction the ball is going to go before it’s kicked to have a chance at stopping a penalty. You already have to be moving before your opponent’s foot touches the ball. I wasn’t ready, and I would have had to jump in exactly the right direction long before I realized it was too late. I dived anyway, landing on the ground too low to be of any use. She nailed the top corner.

Score one for Rumple.

Holy shit.

I looked up from the dirt to her smirk.

“Varsity striker,” she said with a raise of her eyebrows and a thumb pointing back to her chest.