Page 14 of Sweeper
“Cheers,” I blurt out and move quickly to walk out, brushing shoulders with him in my haste.
“We’re not even drinking,” he replies with a confused puppy dog face.
“Cheers meansthanks, Soccer Boy.” I can’t help but laugh at him from his bathroom doorway. I spread my arms out on the frame and add, “My God, you really need to read a British book or something. TryBridget Jones's Diary, I beg of you.”
He freezes as his eyes dip low, and every muscle visible above the towel flexes, popping the veins in his arms as I follow where his gaze has landed. To my horror, I realize when I grabbed the doorframe, my robe fell open, revealing my very thin satin cami where my very hard nipples are trying to cut through the fabric.
Quickly, I cover myself, my face flush with embarrassment. When I meet Zander’s eyes, his jaw is clenched, and his nostrils quiver with a stuttered breath. A rush of tension builds between my legs at the look in his eye that gives me no doubt what he’s thinking.
I open my mouth to say something but choke on the gasp that comes out when he looks like he too is about to speak. The air around us thickens as I struggle with a way to diffuse this tense moment.
I need to leave.
With firm determination, I nod briskly and turn on my heel to walk out of his flat as fast as my bare feet can take me. I’m quite certain that if I looked in the mirror, I’d see the same heated look in my eyes I just saw in his.
Zander
“Do you guys think Coach saw me puke yesterday?” Knight grumbles quietly from the locker room bench beside me. He’s kitted out in his green and white Bethnal Green F.C. uniform just like me, even though our cleats won’t break a blade of grass today from the bench.
“If he didn’t see it, he could smell it.” Link chuckles with a disgusted look on his face. “What the fuck did you eat yesterday, bro?”
“Airplane food. Fucking delayed flight screwed everything up. I was lucky I made it in time for our health check.” Knight combs his hand through his long brown hair as he ties it up into a messy bun on top of his head. He’s redone that fucking ponytail eight times in thirty minutes. His anxiety is giving me anxiety.
“You need to chill out, dude,” I state, leaning back into the cubby with my name engraved on it as I adjust my soccer socks and stare at the coach’s closed office door.
“You struggled yesterday too, Williams.” Link’s blue eyes zero in on me. “Did you give a British cheerio to the porcelain gods yourself?” He tucks his shaggy blonde hair behind his ears, his eyes narrowing like he’s a detective investigating a crime.
I wince as I attempt to forget how bad I looked yesterday at that endurance training. It wasn’t the normal type of struggle that I expected as a new player in the UK. It was like I had two left feet. My focus was all over the place. Coach Z had to repeat my name several times when it was literally just the four of us out there. But I’ll be damned if I clue these guys in on what was going through my mind the whole time.
Clearing my throat, I reply, “I just had more unpacking to do. I ended up going for another run late last night ’cause I couldn’t sleep.”
“What?” Knight and Link say in unison and blink horrified looks at me.
I feign that it was no big deal, but it was, in fact, a very big deal. Yesterday’s training was awful. Coach Zion is truly a sadist, which must make me a masochist because instead of going to bed early to let my body recover, I went for a run to try to shake the bizarre thoughts swirling through my head.
Meeting Vaughn Harris yesterday rattled me more than I thought it would. It triggered thoughts of what it’ll be like when I come face-to-face with his son, Booker Harris, the keeper. Or his other son, Tanner Harris, the assistant coach. Will I creepily inspect their fingers like I did Vaughn’s? What if the other two brothers, Gareth and Camden, happen to be here to cheer on their brothers? They have a sister named Vilma that they call Vi, too. How do I know that? Why do I give a fuck? I need to get my shit together and try to forget about this entire Harris family. Football over bullshit.
Last night, to get control of my traitorous thoughts, I decided to direct my focus on my cute neighbor: Ducky.
Good grief, I’m low-key obsessed with winning her over. I went to a fucking bookstore and picked upBridget Jones's Diary, for Christ’s sake. I’ve never done something like that for a woman in my life. And I didn’t do it for research on British lingo. In fact, I love nothing more than saying something wrong to make her angry. She gets this little dimple in her chin, and I like knowing that I get under her skin.
The truth is, I picked up that book to get her attention. It was a move. And I don’t usually require moves with women I want to sleep with. Usually, my move is just asking them to fuck.
Daphney will be another story altogether.
And if I want to hook up with her, I probably need to stop riling her up so much. If only she didn’t look so cute when she was mad.
Images of her on my doorstep in a tiny pair of silky shorts and a tank top with no fucking bra flash through my mind. She had a robe on but didn’t even notice or didn’t even care that it was wide open and showing off all her curves that were even more impressive than I had imagined. She’s hot, to be sure, but her fiery spirit makes it impossible for me to take my eyes off her.
Even my ice bath couldn’t damper the stiffness in my cock. I jerked off twice after our little argument just to try to find some relief and still, nothing. Something is ridiculously sexy about having a girl next door to you who you aren’t banging and who seems to basically hate your guts.
That is a very specific kink I should probably talk to a therapist about.
Thoughts of Daphney are what really inspired the late-night run. It must have helped because I came home and slept like a rock afterward. Though, I’m pretty sure my alarm went off several times, despite trying to yank myself up out of bed on the first chime. But if making her angry means she knocks on my door again, I won’t be upset about that.
Regardless, today is a big day, and I don’t need to be thinking about an argument I got into with my sexy neighbor. I shake off thoughts of Daphney and refocus back on the space around me.
It’s game day at Tower Park, and the locker room is full of focused, professional athletes who have been warming up and talking strategy for hours. Coach told us to come in later and lay low, and he’d introduce us before the game. However, I have a feeling most of these guys don’t give two shits about the three newbies in the corner. They are all likely assuming we’ll fail and be gone in a matter of months. Three Americans coming to play in the UK is a risk any way you look at it, but I’ve played against both Link and Knight Stateside throughout the years, and they are here for a reason.
