Page 3 of The Girlfriend Goal
Matt elbowed me. "Seriously, dude, what is going on with you?"
I thought about Rachel, standing there in her righteous fury, calling out every entitled behavior she'd witnessed from hockey players. The way she'd tucked that strand of hair behind her ear.
"Nothing," I lied. "Just tired."
But as Coach droned on about defensive responsibilities, I couldn't shake the feeling that mynothinghad stunning eyes, a mean right hook of a vocabulary, and absolutely zero interest in my hockey-playing ass.
Which, naturally, made me want to see her again.
Chapter 2: Rachel
My alarm screamed at 4:30 AM, and I silenced it with the practiced efficiency of someone who'd been waking up before dawn since middle school. The dorm room was pitch black, but I navigated to my dresser without turning on the lights.
I pulled on my practice gear in the darkness, muscle memory guiding me through the routine I'd perfected over the years.
The walk to the field was my favorite part of the day. Campus was ghostly quiet, just me and the maintenance crews who nodded in recognition as I passed. They knew me by now, the crazy woman who was always the first one at the soccer complex. What they didn't know was why.
I'd been eight when my brother Ryan got his first recruitment letter. Twelve when he committed to Greenfield University on a full hockey scholarship. Fifteen when I watched him pack up his entire life, ready to chase his NHL dreams. Sixteen when I got the phone call that changed everything.
"They pulled my scholarship, Rachel." His voice had been hollow, broken in a way I'd never heard before. "Said they found a better recruit. Four years of promises, and they just pulled it."
The memory still made my chest tight. Ryan had spiraled hard after that—dropped out of community college, bounced between dead-end jobs, struggled with depression that our parents didn't understand and couldn't afford to treat properly. All because some hockey coach had decided my brother was expendable.
The soccer complex came into view, its modest lights a stark contrast to the LED spectacular that lit up the hockey arena like a Vegas casino. I pushed through the gate, breathing in the familiar smell of dew on grass, and made my way to the equipment shed.
"Morning, Fox." Coach Chen was already there, setting up cones for drills. She was the only person who arrived earlier than me, a fact that had earned my immediate respect freshman year.
"Morning, Coach."
"Good weekend?"
I thought about the mountain of homework I'd plowed through, the extra film study I'd squeezed in, the scholarship applications I'd submitted for grad school. "Productive."
She smiled knowingly. "When's the last time you did something just for fun?"
"I watched Netflix while foam rolling. That counts."
"That absolutely doesn’t count." She handed me a bag of practice balls. "You know burnout is real, right? Even captains need to decompress sometimes."
"I'll decompress after nationals," I said, the same response I'd been giving for three years.
By the time the rest of the team started trickling in at 5 AM, I'd already run through my personal warm-up routine and helped Coach finish the field setup. The women greeted me with varying levels of consciousness—some bright-eyed and ready, others looking like extras fromThe Walking Dead.
"Ladies!" I called out once everyone had assembled. "I know it's early, I know it's cold, and I know you'd rather be in bed. But you know who's not in bed right now? Stanford. UCLA.North Carolina. They're out there getting better while we're standing here feeling sorry for ourselves."
"Jesus, Fox, let us at least stretch before the motivational speeches," groaned Kelsey, our goalkeeper.
Practice was brutal, the way Monday practices always were. Coach had us running tactical drills until our legs felt like jelly, then switched to possession games that required the kind of mental sharpness that was nearly impossible at 5:30 AM. But this was how we competed with programs that had twice our budget and three times our resources. We outworked them. We out-wanted them.
By 7 AM, I was drenched in sweat despite the morning chill, my muscles screaming but my mind sharp. This was when I felt most like myself—pushing past physical limits, leading by example, proving that we deserved to be taken seriously.
"Shower and get to class, ladies," Coach called out. "Remember, student comes before athlete in student-athlete."
The locker room was chaos, twenty-three women trying to shower and change in a space designed for maybe fifteen. I claimed my usual corner locker, stripping out of my practice gear with the efficiency born of years of quick changes between classes.
That's when it happened. I was reaching for my towel when the door burst open and he walked in. Tall, broad-shouldered, with that particular brand of confidence that seemed to be issued along with hockey skates at orientation. Lance was staring at his phone, completely oblivious to the fact that he'd just invaded my space.
It wasn't until I was halfway across campus that the adrenaline started to fade. My hands were shaking slightly as I fumbled with my apartment key.
