Suddenly she felt a little shy. “Anyway, so the shop was for sale, and it just seemed like serendipity. I decided to spend the money I’d saved for tuition and buy it. It’s cozy and it sustains us. You?”
“SEAL or principal?”
“Start with SEAL.”
“Because I wanted to join the military like my dad and always like to be the best at whatever I do. Back then, I was happiest when I was striving, or so I thought. Challenging myself all the time. And when I want something, I set out to get it. And I always did.”
Her eyebrows shot up.
“What?” He was amused. “Was that too alpha?”
“I don’t know if it wastooalpha, but it certainly wasveryalpha.”
“It’s true, though,” he said, a faint smile still playing around his lips. “And I was like that until—” He raced up the sidelines. “C’mon MARTINEZ, SNAG THAT BALL FROM HER! YOU CAN DO IT! YES! GO GO GO! YOU CAN—”
He sighed. The Acorn defender nutmegged the ball right through Chrissy Martinez’s legs.
She bent over in surprise to watch it roll away from her, only to be briskly captured by another Black Oak Acorns defender, who scurried off dribbling it.
“THAT’S OKAY, CHRISSY, GOOD HUSTLE. JUST REMEMBER THE DRILLS WE prac... oh for the love of... DON’T CRY. I KNOW YOU’LL GET THIS.”
Gabe exhaled in a great, long-suffering gust and propped his hands on top of his head.
“Sorry, Caldera,” Chrissy’s beleaguered dad, standing next to him who also loved to win, said. “We’ve been working on it at home, but she chokes with an audience.”
“Ah, no worries, she’s doing a lot better this year than last, Doug. We’ll keep working on it.”
Doug Martinez took a swig out of his thermos and winced with great satisfaction. Eden was pretty sure he’d spiked his coffee with whiskey, which was a perfectly reasonable way to get through a soccer game.
Gabe paced back to Eden.
“Boy, coaching fifth grade soccer must be killing you if you like to win,” she said.
“By a thousand cuts,” he confirmed with cheerful resignation.
“...until?” she prompted.
“Ah, yes. Until... I figured out winning was about proving something to myself. Still like to win. I just know the difference now between fighting to win just towin, because my ego craves it, and doing my best to win something because I know it’s... absolutely right.”
The collision of their gazes just then by rights ought to have struck sparks like an axle hitting a roadway. The kind of sparks that lit countrysides on fire.
And that telltale tingle along her spine, her nape, her arms.
She dropped her eyes and surreptitiously inspected her arm: Goose bumps.
She slowly lifted her eyes again.
His smile, tilted, almost rueful; his eyes, unreadable. He gave a one-shouldered shrug.
He saw the goose bumps, too.
And of course he remembered what she’d said: that she got them whenever she heard something particularly beautiful and true.
The way they both remembered, despite their busy lives, every single damn thing the other said.
“Oh, Eden! I’m so glad to have caught you!”
They both gave a start, as though they’d actually been caught in the middle of something other than goose bump perusal.