“You don’t remember saying it because you didn’t care that you said it. I will forever remember that you said it because it was rude, unnecessary, and frankly, pretty fucking demoralizing. I was twenty-one years old and coming to terms with the fact that the life I’d planned for myself on the soccer field was over.”
I shake my head again but she holds eye contact and keeps talking. “You, on the other hand, were a professional athlete at the top of his game with two championships to your name. You weren’t some rando ignorant rich guy who’d bought his way into that suite. You were someone who could have—whoshould haveunderstood how devastating a career-ending injury is. So thank you for offering to take me on a date that would benefit you far more than it would benefit me. I’m always grateful when my nemeses straight-up tell me they haven’t changed.”
This time, when she walks away, I don’t follow. I stand there, my shoes getting soaked with the morning dew, my dog glaring at me as if I’m not the man she thought I was.
“I wouldn’t have said that about you,” I call after Goldie as soon as I’m able to find my voice again.
She doesn’t answer.
She doesn’t have to.
The fact that she’s calmly shutting the hatch on her silver Audi SUV without so much as looking in my direction says it all.
Goldie Collins has said all she intends to ever say to me for the rest of her life, and I am a complete and total wanker.
3
Goldie
I shouldn’t still be fumingover Fletcher Huxley when I arrive at Give Two Sips Sunday night, but Icannotscrub the man out of my head.
It was so bad this afternoon that I blanked out on a client and had to ask her to repeat her last three sentences during a coaching call. It was so bad that I realized I forgot to drink my coffee when I found it sitting on my counter six hours after I brewed it. It was so bad that I didn’t hear a word of the audiobook I listened to on my walk from my apartment to dinner.
I cannot get the man out of my mind.
“Moving or men?” Odette says to me as I scoot onto the red velvet curved booth seat beside Sheila. About once a week, the ladies invite me to join them here as an honorary member of their club. It’s always at Give Two Sips, their favorite wine bar, which is a couple blocks down from the apartment building where we all live.
We’re having dinner far more often the closer my move gets.
I think about lying—movingisstressful—but they’d see right through me. “Fletcher Huxley asked me to go on a date with him basically as a PR stunt to get attention on the Pounders. I’m fine. I’m leaving the country. But he’s stuck in my brain.Why? I don’t have to see him again ever, at all, for any reason, and he’s still there.”
Not because I’d consider indulging him in that date.
Because he hurt me. He was an athlete I’d watched and admired, and he said a shitty thing about my decision to leave sports that hadn’t truly been my decision at all, but a decision life forced on me.
Odette passes me a wine glass full to the brim.
Rosé spritzer.
These women love me.
And now I’m getting teary-eyed.
I leave Copper Valley for London in three weeks and six days with no idea when or if I’ll be back. But a life-coach-on-staff residency with the Worldwide Coaching Association in London will be amazing, and I’m as excited to go as I am sad to leave the people I love.
I’m also eager to prove all the doubters wrong.
She’s too young. She’s too inexperienced. She must have a good consultant telling her what to say.
You’re never too young to support other people.
And since my soccer career ended, I’ve found so much joy, validation, and purpose in coaching. I’m incredibly honored on top of all of my excitement, and I’ve been studying and expanding my coaching offerings for the past two years to get ready for this.
“Did he shave the mustache?” Odette asks.
“No. It’s as massive as ever. I think he might’ve had extensions added.”
Evelyntsks. “Honey, that’ll do it. If a mustache like that askedme out, I’d have to take to my bed for days no matter how hot the rest of him was. And I say that as a woman who’s had a massive crush on Burt Reynolds for as long as I can remember.”
