“No!” I threw my arms out and looked around at the group of idiots who weren’t screaming at how dumb his idea was. “Are you shitting me?”
They weren’t.
Why almost all of them thought this would be an excellent punishment for the losing team was beyond me.
“Majority wins,” they said. Carter and I seemed to be the only people against it, and that was more than likely because we had the most hair out of everyone on tour by far. Everyone was so confident that the team they were on would win, they didn’t mind taking a risk.
All the boys were too scared to accidentally break a finger that it was decided there wouldn’t be goalkeepers on either team. Fine, all right.
We split up on opposite sides, team 1 deciding that they’d go shirtless so everyone would know who was on what team. I may have ogled the guys that were in great shape—Mason, Julian and Sacha—a little more than necessary, but I had no regrets. We started playing.
The first fifteen minutes were good. We were all being respectful of each other, happy kicking the ball back and forth as we jogged up and down the field. I exchanged smiles with a few of the guys on the other team as I tried to defend against them in case the soccer ball made its way over in their direction.
Good. Fine. It was going well.
Then Mason, who had played varsity soccer in high school, scored a goal for his team and it was like a small animal had been slaughtered off the coast of South Africa. The sharks came out to play and the aggressiveness on the field multiplied.
My resolution to win didn’t come out of nowhere. There was no way in hell my head was getting shaved, and I was going to do whatever I needed to do to make that happen. Apart from running track, I’d played two years of soccer in high school, plus on and off with these guys most of my life.
In the fifteen minutes after that initial friendly beginning, each player began hustling back and forth across the grass. When Sacha got ahold of the ball and it seemed like everyone else on my team had their fingers up their butts instead of trying to keep up, I started going after him to steal it away. His legs were longer than mine but apparently no one on my team knew what cardio was, and I got stuck chasing after him. Sacha started putting his hand in my face when I got too close, and I had to whack it out of the way each time he did it.
“Stop hogging the ball!” I yelled at him, trying to futilely steal it.
“If it bothers you so much, get it away from me, then,” he teased before passing it to Mateo.
Between the thirty to forty-five minute mark, every player started running as fast as they could. No one wanted to be on the team that lost. The ball travelled from player to player faster than it would have normally. I was getting desperate. Sweaty as hell, thanks to the humidity and the sun that didn’t seem to care I’d put on sunscreen not that long ago, I started digging my shoulder into Sacha’s side to throw him off balance every time the ball got too close to him. The idea of losing my hair—because I sure as hell didn’t have the bone structure to pull off a shaved head—made the beast come out.
The ball came straight at us and I tripped him. Then I tripped him again and again.
And again.
As I ran with the ball at the tip of my left foot, I heard Sacha in the background calling out, “What the hell? That was a yellow card!”
“Suck it up, Sassy!” I hollered back at him.
And then, it really got out of control.
Even though we were laughing our asses off, I started elbowing him—somewhat gently—in the ribs, and I kicked him in the thigh another time. Not-so-innocent-Sacha pulled the end of my ponytail and would use his shoulder to push me away.
The last time I managed to trip him, he grabbed the back of my shirt to pull me down too. Unfortunately, his weight made me fall down hip first, bumping the shit out of my side as I landed next to him, still laughing. Sacha was smart enough to hop up and take off running to get the stray ball.
My shirt was soaked in sweat, my arms and neck ached with sun exposure, and I had dirt all over me. So, it wouldn't have been a big deal when Sacha dipped into our half-limping, lazy-running time by hip-checking me so hard I lost my balance and fell on the ground once more.
At the last minute, before the one-hour timer went off on Gordo’s phone, Carter scored a goal that I didn’t completely understand.
What I did understand was what happened next. Tied, and with everyone on the verge of dying because only three of us ran on a slightly regular basis, no one wanted to add more time to the clock. So the game went to penalty kicks.
Penalty kicks.
It was Eli that said, “One of you merch losers and Bryce should be goalies. I vote you do it, Flabs.”
I was sitting on the grass when I tipped my head back and scowled at him. “Excuse me?”
“You three are the only people that can risk getting hurt,” he said like that made total sense.
I guess it sort of did. Did I really want to leave the fate of my scalp to Carter’s goalkeeping skills? Not really.
“Does that work?” Julian asked.
