Falling for the Goalie and Other Dangerous Sports

Chapter 10 - Maddy

"Or just admit the fact you like Derek. That would do it." Hadley said. I didn't respond immediatly. I saw Hadley glance over at Hannah, then back at me, eyebrows raised.

"No."

"Fine then. You'll see." Hadley said. See what? We were barely friends, for the most part. In fact, we weren't friends at all.

"And we're here, so go kick some ass on that field." Hannah said, unlocking the doors.

"Grass! She said grass!" Hadley exclaimed. If there's one more unmistakable difference between the two, it's Hannah's sometimes vulgar word choice and Hadley's goody-two-shoes vocabulary.

"Okay, thanks. Pick me up at 7:30, okay?" Practice was actually over at 7:45, but they were always late.

"But isn't -"

"Bye!" I said, shutting the door. They better not be late; I had a low tolerance for tardiness.

"Maddy! You're here!" I heard Heather say. I unzipped my bag and got my soccer ball out. It was black with highlighter yellow and orange, and easily one of the coolest looking on the team. Everyone wanted to use it for ball handling.

"Yep. Umm..." I noticed the group of people near the goal. "What's going on?" I asked her.

"Oh, Max Weaver is here again. He's taking shots!" She exclaimed. I took a closer look at the man in the net. It was definitely Max, tall & thin, shorter and lighter brown hair but his eyes were grey instead of green.

"Oh, cool. Anyone score?"

"Haha, only when more then one person shoots."

"Well, I think it's time to change that, huh?" I said, dribbling past Heather and lining up the ball on the 18. I waited for the others to shoot and go get their deflected balls. He made eye contact with me and had a surprised smile on his face. I winded up an delivered a kick to my specialty spot, the upper left corner. It sailed through the air, just brushing his finger tips. It was going to hit the bar, but someone slyly stuck their head out to score a goal. Max looked at me and smiled.

"Good shot, Maddy."

I gave a polite smile back. He moved to reveal Derek, who was being high fived by Sam, Wyatt, Kendall, Jarod, and Oliver for finally scoring a goal on the brick wall. I saw his face peek out from the mini crowd and give me a half smile before returning to his friends. My stomach swooped.

We then went into routine drills, and, thankfully, no corner kicks. We did do penalty kicks, and I managed to get every kick of mine in. I almost bust out laughing seeing Derek so flustered.

"Alright tigers, hustle up!"

We congregated around Coach Dublin. "Put the soccer balls away for now." A few moans escaped from the team. What do you get when you take the ball out of soccer? "We're doing some running today."

This time, I was one of the moaners. Running was easily my worst aspect of being a soccer player, which is kind of ironic in a sense. But when Coach says "some", it's not the 50 meters I'd be hoping for.

"You're going for a 25 minute run. Your path is just somewhat circular around the property, and I'll tell you how much more time you'll have left when you pass me. Are we ready?"

"No," I wanted to say, but I tried to keep my thoughts to myself. Before I could regroup for the torture to come, Coach had already yelled go.

Slowly, I jogged. A speedwalker could probably pass me right now, and the rest of the team was already pulling ahead, but I was determined not to give up. Enjoying my snail-like pace, someone appeared on my left.