August

Jesse Windmeier is pulling his kicks and basically doing the athletic equivalent of studying just hard enough to pass the exam by the skin of his teeth. But man, the guy can play. Even though he’s not going full throttle, drilling just hard enough to be showing off, I feel my jaw unhinge as I watch him dance around his teammates, the ball practically grafted to his feet.

No one can get the ball off him, or maybe they’re not really trying to, but there’s a part of me that can practically see the golden aura surrounding him now that I’ve fallen into fangirl-like with this footballer.

I’m sitting on the bench now, leg stretched out to accommodate the brace that’s helping the stability of my knee, aching to play, when a crazy, sheer dumb idea sparks in my brain, and because I am who I am, I know I’m going to follow through with it.

I’m thinking about asking him to help me train, to help me get back on my feet when the ball comes sailing towards me like a small torpedo, hard enough that if my face stayed at the current height, my nose would have been crushed and maybe even pushed up into my brain and my dreams of having my name in lights scoring goals for Southgate FC would be over before it even really started.

Instead, I hit the deck, tumbling back on my ass, half-forgetting I’m not supposed to make any sudden movements with my bad leg, and twinging something in the meat of my strained upper thigh for my trouble.

“Oi! Pass us the ball!”

I look up, back to the field, only to find the Wind (yeah, actually they call him that) beckoning for me to kick him back the ball from my current position on the ground, the damp turf soaking its way through my shorts and underwear, making my ass damp like I’m a toddler still in a diaper.

I guess he missed the fallen crutches that I flailed so beautifully as I went down like the Titanic, and he definitely missed the giant brace encasing my right leg.

I narrow my eyes at him as he walks towards me, practically glowing in the bright, bright lights, looking like a dream, but gesturing to the ball in annoyance, once again, not noticing that my ass is on the ground and I’m surrounded by my crutches.

So, Jesse Windmeier is an asshole. Duly noted. Most professional athletes are. Like they make themselves forget that there’s a serious countdown on their careers, no matter what sport they play. Injury is just the first strike.

Still, I’m a little aghast at having him speak to me, like the very words he bestows upon me will grace me with one-hundredth of his talent and I’ll magically be recuperated and kicking ass in time for the season opener next week.

Yeah, right. What dream world am I living in? The very kind that got me here in the first place, eh?

“Yeah, I’ll just pass it to you with my bum leg!” I call out, waving around my shiny crutch from the ground, hoping the light catches on it enough to make him feel like shit. Footballers, even though I’m making sweeping generalizations here, are assholes, and Jesse Windmeier might be the very best one. “What a dick,” I mutter to myself, trying to figure out the best way to get vertical without putting too much strain on my bad leg.

I end up having to roll onto my left side and push myself up enough that I can get my left leg underneath me and get me upright while hopping around on that foot and looking down at how very far away my discarded crutches are. Yeah, standing up was a bad idea.

I somehow participated in a chain of events that’s currently left me with a damp ass, a throbbing leg that I’m not supposed to even think about, and an asshole footballer yelling at me to kick the ball back to him. Right.

Well, it’s my fault for being stubborn, and there’s always a consequence to me being stubborn. My ass being damp, for one. For two, I think I screwed my recovery over by ducking and flailing down like a flopping, dying fish instead of just blocking the ball with my hands. I bet I also made the greatest first impression.

Right. Like I care? Maybe. That’s Jesse Windmeier, standing right over there, one of the greats, still in his early twenties, and that just sucks balls.

Maybe if I go and touch him I’ll get some of his footballer superpower?

I’ve got my hands on my hips, glaring down at my crutches like they’re going to magically appear in my hands and under my armpits if I glare long enough, but I don’t live in that kind of universe, so I struggle to bend over at the waist without bending my right leg at all, and nab them with as much awkwardness as possible.

Once I’m the right way up, I see someone’s kicked the ball back to Jesse, maybe one of the kit teams or whatever, but I’m still here, and I can’t believe Jesse didn’t come see if I was breathing and all right.

Maybe I should have taken the ball to the nose? Might have fixed my deviated septum once and for all.

I clear my throat and look around back to the training center proper, where my clean clothes are and a fresh pair of panties that aren’t cold and clammy. But it seems so far away.

I glance back at the field (they call it a ‘pitch’ here), every cell vibrating at the frequency to emit the longing I possess at the green, green field under the bright glare of those stadium lights, the field identical to what we practice on, but more beaten up, where the mighty Southgate FC have just finished winning the league championship.

Maybe I’ll just go over to the field, put my foot inside the white line, pretend like I’ve been training on that field along with the rest of them, pretend I’m that good, just like them.

Bigger dreams have been dreamed, but wanting to play pro football for one of the greatest teams in the league’s history?

Pretty crazy, if I do say so myself.