Page 10 of Sweat

Everyone’s stretching still, chatting some, not paying me more than a glance as I cross the lawn. So, safe to say they aren’t about to jump me.

Still, my anxiety doesn’t waver. It only travels up to my chest when I see Rowan on the grass in a hamstring stretch. Both hands around a cleat, chin nearly touching his leg. He peeks up when I get close, just watching me until I drop my pack in front of him.

“Hope you got cleats in there,” he says, coming out of the stretch slowly. Spreading both legs in front of him, he looksme up and down. Part of me wonders if he’ll send me packing if he doesn’t like the clothes I’m in.

Then, he nods to the side. “You remember Levi? You’re on his team again.”

Levi is the blond guy with the full beard shooting the shit with a guy I think is named Raisel Cruz. Hearing his name draws Levi’s attention. “‘Sup, Tyson?” he says to me, but it feels rhetorical the way he doesn’t wait for an answer before jogging toward the far goal.

Tyson?Oh…the knockout.

“Everyone here is a starter,” I say.

“So?” Rowan answers. “You intimidated?”

“No.” But of course I am, and it’s probably written all over my face.

“Good.” He climbs to his feet to size me up eye to eye. He pulls his t-shirt up and over his head and flings it onto a gym bag I assume is his. “Get your shit on and stretch up. You’re late.”

So he is a stickler for punctuality. Got to remember that in case I live through this scrimmage.

I nod to the last guy still stretching on the sidelines and ask him what the foul rules are. He snorts and says, “Don’t worry. If you stay down, we’ll drag you off the field before you get trampled.”

“Great.”

Try as I might to switch my mind into competition mode, most of the first half I’m just a little fish in shark-infested waters, struggling not to be eaten alive. Even the dudes on my team give me a run for it, shoving me out of the way when I’m in it and stealing the ball from me if I’m taking too long. Half my team keeps calling me Tyson, which is throwing me off.

“Pick it up, Tyson!” Levi snarls after I completely fuck up a pass. The few times I manage to keep the ball, I can’t do a damn thing with it without Rowan or one of his midfielders running me down like they might actually want me dead.

The third time I’m knocked to hands and knees, I think about what that one guy, Connor, said. If I just stay down, they’ll drag me off the field, and I can spend the rest of this hellish practice counting stars.

“You crying, baby boy?” Rowan’s deep, panting voice above me is laced with enough sarcasm to bring me back to life.

“Fuck you.” I pick myself up and glare at his smirking face. The devious prick somehow figured out the only thing worse than being beaten up is being beat. No one likes to lose, but it’s another thing to be a loser. “Did you invite me here just to humiliate me?”

I’m pissed, but I didn’t expect Rowan to care. I didn’t expect that smirk to slip from his face and for his eyes to harden the way they do.

“I invited you here to play,” he says, “so are you gonna play, or are you gonna cry?”

Jesus, who raised this guy? I imagine a cross between a pride of lions and a sewer of rats. If he has siblings who treated him like this growing up, I should feel sorry for him.

A guy I think is named Zeke throws from the touchline, and the match is back on. Whether Rowan is trying to be an ass or just is an ass, he does get me focused. Focused on doing everything I can to keep the ball from him.

I fail spectacularly, and Rowan’s team wins 4-1.

As soon as I leave the field, my legs turn to jelly and I’m on the grass, crawling the rest of the way to my bag. I turn onto my ass and chug half my water in half a minute. I count it outin my head. Thirty chugs. When I’m through, I barely have the strength to unlace my cleats.

“Good work out there, Tyson.”

I look up and see Levi towering over me, reaching down his fist.

Dazed as hell, I mutter a thanks and dap him up.

“Yeah, man, good job,” Raisel says next, reaching down to pat my shoulder before they both walk off.

Maybe I wasn’t as big a train wreck as I thought. We lost, but that’s not all on me, right? Any team going against Rowan has the odds against them. That’s just smart money.

Even so, when Rowan crouches down beside me and tells me I did good, I dismiss it with a scoff.

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