Final Score: Part Two (Game On 6)

I shook my head. “She won’t let go. She just makes me follow her around the room. I think she’s enjoying leading me all over the place.”

He smiled. “She’ll get there.”

“You wanna take over while I go check on dinner?”

“Sure.” He stepped forwards and Jessica toddled towards him, not letting go of my fingers until she reached Bryce’s legs and wrapped her arms around them. Laughing, he lifted her up. “Hey, Jessica. Why are you giving your mommy such a hard time over this walking thing, huh?” She giggled when he tickled her tummy. She looked so cute in her blue and white stripy dress, her curly hair a little wild and untamed since we hadn’t left the house all day.

I left them to it, and went to the kitchen to make sure I wasn’t burning anything. In my slightly foggy state of mind, I wouldn’t have been surprised if I’d accidentally drizzled the chicken with vinegar, or something equally as ridiculous, but everything looked and smelled as it should. Just ten more minutes before I had to go back and start cooking the pasta.

As I left the kitchen, Bryce was walking towards me with Jessica holding his fingers, the way she had held mine. I stopped at the end of the hallway and knelt down. “Come on, sweetheart,” I said. “Come to Mummy.”

Bryce twisted his fingers a little, trying to get her to let go, but she wouldn’t. He had to walk with her all the way to me before she let go and fell against me. Bryce straightened up and I looked up at him. “I don’t think today’s the day.”

“Too bad. It’s been a while since I witnessed a kid taking their first steps.”

“Well, the day’s not over yet. Maybe after a rest, she’ll try again.”

As it happened, Jessica was done with walking, and after we’d all been fed and she’d had a little more play time, she was ready to be bathed and put to bed. Bryce waited for me down in Radleigh’s man cave, where he made several more unsuccessful attempts to beat Jesse’s Pacman score.

“Jesse’s rigged this,” he said, glaring at the Pacman machine. “He must have. That score is impossible to beat.”

Laughing, I curled myself up on one of the bean bag chairs, placing the baby monitor beside me. “Or, you just have to face the fact that you can’t keep up with the kids anymore.”

Bryce dropped into the bean bag chair beside me and said, “Now you mention it, I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. I haven’t told anyone except Richard yet, but I’m planning to retire at the end of the season.”

My eyes widened. “Wow.”

He smiled. “In the soccer world, I’m ancient. If I don’t leave on my own terms, I’ll get kicked out soon anyway. Thirty-three is like eighty in soccer years.”

It sounded ridiculous, but it was the truth. Younger players were coming up all the time, and people love to see new talent. Thirty was pushing it when it came to making the main team, and Radleigh had just passed that milestone. It wouldn’t be too long before he’d have to make a decision about what to do next in his career.

The way things are going, though, that might not be a concern of mine.

“So, what will you do?” I asked.

“Well…” He shrugged with fake modesty. “I’m pretty rich. I could actually retire.”

“Sure. But you’d be bored in the first twenty minutes.”

Bryce grinned. “I sure would. There’s talk that Ethan might be leaving at the end of this season, and Richard would like me to stay on as a coach.”

I smiled. “So, he’s basically just trying to keep hold of as many staff as possible?” With me potentially going back too, it seemed as though Richard wanted his A team to stay the way they were when I’d arrived.

“Something like that. I’d like to do it. I’m kinda over the travelling, but I can probably suck it up for a few more years if it means still being involved with the Warriors. I don’t know what else I would do if I didn’t have soccer in my life. There wasn’t very much else I wanted to do aside from playing.”

“It’d be cool if you stayed on for a while. It’d give you time to figure out what you want to do next.”

“Yeah. Also, it’ll be good to have a hand in training the next generation of kids blindly wandering into the insanity of life in the public eye.”

I nodded. So often people didn’t consider the celebrity aspect of being a soccer player for a high profile team. In some ways, that wasn’t such a bad thing, especially if they had the same mindset as Jesse had had. He was so focused on the game, he really didn’t consider or care for the fame part of the deal. Those who wandered into it knowing and wanting the fame were the ones who really needed the extra training. They were already too self-assured, and needed someone to remind them of what mattered. Team work. The game.

“You wanna watch a movie?” Bryce asked, looking over at me.

“Sure. What do you feel like watching?”

“Your call.”

“What if I want to watch something girly and romantic?”