Page 83 of It Must Be Fate

I turn towards Hayes, offering words of encouragement. “There’s still a half to go.”

“Another embarrassing half if we keep playing the way we have been.”

The girls play in a very informal seven-and-under mixed age league that holds games every Sunday in our neighborhood park. It’s meant to be a non-serious, fun way to get kids off theirscreens and outside more, so I both coach one of the teamsandofficiate most of the games.

No parents have complained about the obvious conflict of interest in my double role yet, and I think that’s probably because they come to the park to drink seltzers and hang out with their other parent friends as much as they do to watch the actual games.

To be fair, there’s very little “game” involved — most of my time is spent gesticulating on the sidelines as I try to convince the preschool-aged girls to run. If by some miracle I manage to do that, then the next step is to eventually get them to run in the right direction for the entirety of the match.

This is about as far from the Champions League as you can imagine, but it’s my favorite way to spend my Sundays, especially because it’s time I have with my girls.

But none of that matters to my Hayes. She’s the best — or some, like Rogue, would argue the worst — of her mother and I combined. Competitive to a fault with a touch of sore loser sprinkled on top.

It’s not out of a love for football specifically. Everything she undertakes, whether it’s a throwaway game in a kid’s league, her math homework, or trying to read books beyond her level, she does with a stubborn determination and a hatred of failure.

She’s studious and focused and I think when she grows older, instead of grounding her for catching her sneaking out at night, her mum and I will have to beg her to close her books and go to a party instead.

“We can come back from being down two-nil, Cloud.”

Her features soften at the nickname. Hayes has beautiful, broody gray eyes, like a troubled sky after an afternoon of heavy rain, hence the moniker.

“Not if we score on ourselves again.”

I sigh internally.

Yes, that really did happen.

Unfortunately, but quite hysterically, we’re averaging about one goal scored on our own goalie per every three games we play, no matter how much I scream and wave my arms at them from the sidelines to turn around and go the other way. That can be frustrating for the older girls, but Hayes is always careful not to call out specific players.

Whichever little girl is the goal scorer is always thrilled at having put one in the net and comes running towards me for a high five, one I’m only too happy to give out because their little faces are so excited.

The own goals happen often enough that theDaily Maileven ran a piece about it with a front-page cover. Slow news day or not, coaching this little league may be severely hampering my chances of ever getting a legitimate professional coaching job once I retire as a player.

“Comeback victories taste the sweetest, little cloud. Believe me. We have something to play for and they don’t,” I tell her, coaching her like I would if this was a World Cup Final. “Now where’s your sister?”

I turn and scan the pitch only to find my youngest crouching in the low grass, still in the middle of the pitch and seemingly unaware that halftime has started, her tiny hands plucking flowers out of the ground.

As much as Hayes’s dismay is unsurprising, so is Ivy’s disinterest. She’s far more interested in examining the flora on the pitch than she is in touching the ball, for example. The number of times I’ve seen it fly past her while she picked a dandelion or a daisy has done numbers on my blood pressure.

“Bow!” Ivy turns and gives me a brilliant, semi-toothless smile. “Come eat something.”

“Okay, Daddy!” she calls, and then she’s running towards me with all the uncoordinated excellence of a five-year-old.

I scoop her and the flowers she still holds clutched firmly in her fist into my arms and kiss her cheek. “Find anything good?”

“Look at this one,” she says, showing me a purple flower as I settle her into a second foldable chair next to her sister.

“Very pretty,” I say. “Not as pretty as you though.”

She giggles, staring wide eyed at the petals. “Can I have hair this color?”

“Of course you can. Whatever color you want, Bow.”

Since she’s been old enough to start showing signs of her own personality, Ivy’s had a fixation with bright colors. She shuns anything gray or black when it comes to clothing, she picked fuchsia as the wall color for her bedroom, and the drawings that come home with her from school use every single marker in the box and then some, earning her the nickname ‘Rainbow’.

Over the years, ‘Rainbow’ became the diminutive ‘Bow’, and ‘Raincloud’ became ‘Cloud’.

“Isn’t she a little young to be dyeing her hair?” someone inquires.

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