“I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were in a hurry to lose, sweetheart,” my father hollered back.
Sometimes, I could not believe they were my parents.
Jeremy put the ball in the middle of the field.
“I’m guessing you want me to go up front?” I asked them. I saw them nod, as if to say “obviously.” When I walked forward, so did Eli. “I can’t go easy on you.”
“I know, your mother told me.”
I nodded.
Jeremy decided this was the time to be funny and begin preaching. “Now let us remember, this is merely a game, and as such let it be played fair, and let it be…a little bloody.”
“Jeremy…”
“1. 2. 3.”
We both attacked the ball, but he pushed me back with ease, flipping the stick, lifting the ball off the ground and throwing it over to Malik perfectly. They charged both Roy and my father, who stepped out of the goal even more so. Running forward, I tried to reach for it when Malik threw, but Eli jumped over my back leg, spun around Roy so badly Roy went forward, and faced off one-on-one with my dad. When he looked like he was going for it, he passed the ball right back to Malik, catching my dad off guard, and the ball just glided into the net.
“What the hell?” Jeremy said at the sidelines, pulling at his dirty blond hair.
Eli and Malik high-fived, and then Eli looked to my father. “You're right, I played a lot of baseball growing up, but that was only during the spring and summer. My coach didn’t want me to get bored, so I played lacrosse in the fall and basketball in the winter. If you'd brought a football, I would have been screwed.”
“How am I looking now, sweetheart?” My mother, who hadn’t done anything, stood smiling brightly at us. When Eli got back to her, she just gave him a high five.
“Guinevere,” my father said to me.
“Oh, I know,” I said to him, gripping my stick. “Eli, the kid gloves are coming off now.”
“I never asked you to put them on in the first place,” he replied.
“How can you date someone that cocky?” Roy frowned.
“Well, I’m about to humble him.”
When we met in the middle again, he crouched down right across from me, smiling like he'd stolen something, a gleam in his blue-green eyes.
“You know what they called me in high school?” he asked.
“I don’t care.”
“1. 2. 3.”
Our lacrosse sticks smashed against each other's again. This time, I pushed back with everything I had, and he fell back, chasing after the ball as it rolled across the grass. I had just picked it up when he smacked my stick, flipping it and the ball out. He picked it up this time, running back toward the goal. I came up as fast as I could, but Eli was on another level when it came to speed. One moment he was in front of me, and the next he ran straight toward my father, who eyed Malik coming up on his left. This time Eli didn’t pass, he took the shot, and because he was slowly trying to elevate my father’s and my blood pressure, it went in.
“It was a dead shot, just in case you were wondering,” he said, running past me.
Biting my tongue and taking a deep breath, I tried to remember it was just a game.
“Guinevere, you coming?” he called behind me.
“You, Dr. Davenport, are going to get hurt.”
Eli
With one swift thrust forward, she checked me so hard I landed on my back, and she fell straight on top of me.
“Oh,” I moaned, trying to breathe again.