You'll Never Walk Alone [Completed]

Chapter 20- Those Evertonians Are Crying Still

Although a few days had passed, neither I nor David had gotten over our argument.  While we still talked and he gave me good morning kisses, there was still definitely some tension between us. It was nice to know we were both still making an effort in letting it go, however, this effort seemed to be taking a toll on David, especially seen during practice, especially today, the day of my dinner with Mark. I had called him later that night postponing it one more night so it could give David a little time to cool off, and Mark of course agreed. Both David and I decided that it would be fine to tell him seeing as how he was trustworthy and I had known him quite a while now. Still, the fact that we were really just friends still bothered David, I couldn’t see why but it did, and as his shot hit the crossbar during practice, I cringed inwardly.

“De Madrid! What the hell is wrong with you?” the manager shouted across the field.  David let out a swear as he kicked one of the goal post, a hard sound resonating when his foot made contact with the metal.

“Oi, Spaniard, get your arse over here!” Uncle Rob also shouted at David. He made his way over to us, steps and breathing heavy. He was clearly frustrated and a little pissed off, it was clearly visible in his manner. I could see why, these past few days it seemed the ball would do opposite what he mean it to do.

“Look here, don’t you ever even think about doing that again, have you gone mad?” Uncle Rob said in a very strict voice “You will hurt your foot banging it against the damn post like that, and then you’ll be scoring less. Do you understand?”

David looked up from the ground and straight into my eyes. I managed a small, encouraging smile but he didn’t return it. He nodded still looking at me.

“Go on then.” Uncle Rob dismissed him and he trotted away.  “They’re really annoying when they do that… I had an athlete back in Uni that would refuse to wear shin pad—“

“They had shin pads back then?” I asked with a bewildered look on my face.

“You little…” Uncle Rob narrowed his eyes at me and I let the grin I had been holding back slip onto my face.  The sound of a ball hitting the crossbar made both of us look up just in time to see David lower his arms in frustration. “I wonder what’s wrong with the lad; he’s usually on point… I hope he gets in tune by Saturday, we don’t want a tragedy.”

Saturday was the Merseyside Derby and it was certainly getting a buzz around Liverpool. We, still being at the top of the table and still unbeaten were the favorites to win, and we certainly did not want to slip and lose, especially not to Everton. We really could not afford to slip up, as good as our run had been during the season, so had Arsenal’s. Three points separated them from us; any sort of glitch could cause us to lose our top spot, and the league along with it.

“Ha! Why am I even worried? Our under-17’s could score on their sorry team.” Uncle Rob laughed at the memory from the last derby.

Uncle Rob had exaggerated a bit, but not by much. Our team had been in such good position last time that we were able to make some changes to the starting line-up, in order to rest the players for the Champions League game. Dylan, the young player from the academy got his first start and goal against Everton, which showed their poor form this season.

Once again David shot’s went far wide of the goalposts as the manager blew his whistle to signal the end of training. A few of the guys walked over to us. David instead of waiting walked next to me and took my own bottle out of my hand, drank a bit, then splashed the rest of his head.

“You’re going to catch a cold if you keep on doing that.” I scolded him. He raised an eyebrow at me and with a look of defiance splashed the rest of the bottle on his head. It was nearing the end of January and the weather had gotten extremely cold, with his body temperature really warm from training, the cold water would definitely wreak some sort of havoc on his body.