by Amy Daws
He shakes me off, and I’m snapped back to reality as his teeth chatter noisily. “I’m not sick. First training session today. Coach is trying to kill me. Which is actually fine by me because right now I want to die.” He groans, hunching over, while maintaining a white-knuckled grip on his towel.
Shamelessly, I can’t tear my eyes away from his shaking hands that look dangerously close to dropping the one scrap of pink material covering his manhood. A small tremor runs through his whole body, and I jerk my focus off his groin long enough to thank the heavens he hasn’t noticed I’ve been silently praying for that pink fabric’s demise.
“Step aside,” I exclaim louder than I intended, placing my hand on his firm, albeit frozen body. God is he firm. He feels like rocks. I march into his flat and glance back. “I’ll show you where the bath towels are.”
I nearly choke on my own words when I catch sight of his very uncovered backside. It looks like two perfectly glazed biscuits that you could bounce a coin off. Positively inhuman.
My eyes jerk forward as I march into his loo to pull open the cubby located behind the large antique mirror that I had hinges put on. “All sorts of toiletries are in here as well.” I grab a large fluffy white towel and turn around to find him standing in the doorway. I toss it at him.
“I didn’t know that opened.” He blinks back curiously.
I roll my eyes as he struggles to hold the tea towel over his willy and wrap the larger one around his waist. He’s standing there freezing to death while my own body heats to an uncomfortable degree. This is going to be a problem. I turn my back to give him some privacy, trying my best to ignore how sculpted his thighs are too. Good God, footy players and thighs…it’s better than cream and jelly, isn’t it? I glance at the soaker tub. “My word, you must have emptied the entire building’s ice machine.”
“Didn’t want the other recruits to see me doing an ice bath in the locker room.” He exhales a heavy breath. “I gotta look tougher than the other newbies.”
I let out a laugh and notice the sudoku puzzle book on the floor. “So this is an ego thing. Why am I not surprised?”
“It’s a survival thing,” he corrects, his voice firm. “Is using that much ice against the building rules?”
“It’s not against the building rules but only because I never realized I needed to make that rule.” I turn around to find him somewhat covered again, and my traitorous eyes zero in on his hip bones that protrude above the bath towel, giving me a visual that I will struggle to erase from my mind in the dark of night. “Do you want me to turn the heat up in your flat?” Hell, I might need an ice bath after this ordeal is over.
He shakes his head, looking a little sad as he tightens the towel around his waist. “I have to get back in.”
“What does it even do for you? Physically?” I blink back in shock.
“It helps my muscles recover quicker. I can’t be sore tomorrow when I meet the rest of the team for the first time. I can’t.” A look of desperation flits across his face, and I nearly feel sorry for the bloke.
“Well, you’re fine to use all of the ice, but I have to ask, do you have to leave your telly on while you do this? You can’t possibly hear it from in here, and that along with your inhumane screams as you torture yourself make it really difficult for anyone to sleep around here.”
The color begins returning to Zander’s cheeks as he glances at the clock beside his bed. “It’s three o’clock in the afternoon. Why would anyone be sleeping?”
“Because some of us work evenings. And not all of us start our day at six a.m. after pressing snooze a million times.” My cheeks heat in anger at the recent memory of not being able to sleep this morning.
“What?” he asks, a look of confusion sweeping across his boyish features.
“You snoozed your alarm at least ten times today.” I pin him with an unamused glower.
“It couldn’t have been ten times.” He rolls his eyes, the muscle in his jaw shifting as he shakes his head.
I ignore his stupid bare torso as he crosses his arms to tell me I’m out of line. “You’re right.” I cross my arms back and quirk a challenging brow. “I may have slept through the first few times, so it was likely more than that. Though it was slightly hard to hear over the blaring of your telly that you left on all night. I’ll do a poll with the other neighbors in the building and get back to you on the exact number.”
Zander’s brows furrow, his hazel eyes glittering with mirth in the warm bathroom lighting. “Am I being a bad neighbor, Ducky?”
“Your cheekiness isn’t going to work with me.” I hate how he seems to inspect every feature on my face every time I speak to him. It’s unnerving. “Honestly, Zander, who snoozes their alarm that many times?”
He huffs out a laugh, looking a lot less pathetic than he did moments ago and a lot more irritating. “Well, I didn’t know the walls here were so thin. Seems like a construction problem if you ask me.”
“Is it that hard to wake up on the first alarm?” I prop my hands on my hips. “Or can you perhaps edit your alarm to the time you actually have to get up?”
“I need time to come to.” His nostrils flare as he eyes me with blatant irritation. “Not all of us have the luxury of sleeping in.”
Oh, the cheek of him! I take a step closer to him so he can feel the full effects of my annoyance. “I didn’t get to sleep in today because I had to listen to my neighbor’s alarm go off over and over. Which is why I was hoping to get a nap in before my shift tonight when you so keenly had to screw that up as well. You’re two for two on mucking up my day, Soccer Boy. It’s quite impressive.”
It’s then that I realize he’s moved closer to me as well. I have to crane my neck up to look at him as he bows over me, his chest rising and falling as he breathes, making it really difficult for me not to inhale his damp scent. He smells of menthol sports cream and sweat. Not an attractive combination by any standards, but I still slightly wonder what it would be like to have a big man like him wrap himself around me and press me up against the glossy white tiled wall.
Bloody hell, if he could hear my thoughts, his ego would explode.
I force myself to maintain eye contact, but the problem is, his face isn’t all that awful to look at either. The natural curl in his shaggy dark chestnut hair only adds to his boyish features and that crooked smirk. And his eyes are rimmed by dark, impossibly long lashes. Mine are blonde and only visible with the mascara that I have to apply every single day. Men really do have all the luck.
“Just please try to be considerate of others in the building, okay?” I state through clenched teeth, trying to de-escalate this little row we’re currently having in the loo.
“You could work on keeping it down too,” he grates, his full lips resting in a simmering glower that I can’t help but notice is very kissable. “I heard some music drifting through the walls earlier, so you’re no quiet church mouse.”
I deflate slightly at that accusation. This flat Zander’s occupying has sat empty for a year, so I hadn’t even considered that if I can hear his telly in my flat, he can hear my music in his. I’ll have to rework my process a bit. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“So will I.” His eyes glance at my body, where a rush of goose bumps erupts over my skin.
“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 means thanks, 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. Try Bridget 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 up Bridget 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.
Personality-wise, they couldn’t be more different. Knight is the brooding, sensitive type who lets his emotions get the best of him. I remember playing against him when he got red-carded for chest-bumping the ref. It was a bullshit call, but fun to watch him blow up on the sports highlights.
Link, on the other hand, is the typical loud-mouthed offensive player who makes friends with everyone. A charmer with the refs and the opposing team. He totally would have been the asshole flicking towels in the locker room in high school and hyenic laughing the entire time he did it.
Nevertheless, I will say it’s nice to have fellow Americans to commiserate this unusual situation with. Hopefully, I can get my shit together so I can keep playing with them and not be booted back to America and prove my mother right.
Link elbows me and points at a player in the corner we all know as Roan DeWalt. He’s the South African striker who’s been crushing it for Bethnal Green for several years now. He’s a bit older than the three of us, and Link informed me that Roan’s married with a kid, but his age doesn’t show at all. He easily keeps up with the other striker, Billy Campbell, who’s only twenty-three years old.
At twenty-two, I was one of the youngest on the Seattle soccer club, but in the UK, they’re ready for pro at a much younger age. UK football is an institution. A beast in and of itself. Players who grow up here don’t need college to hone their skills. They start training when they’re still in fucking diapers. It’s why my dad pushed so hard for me to do that youth soccer camp over here when I was younger. He said I needed to see what soccer is like when a country treats it like America treats American football.
He wasn’t wrong.
I got my ass kicked at that UK camp, and I came back to Boston and trained harder and longer than ever before. I won’t let my ass get kicked at Bethnal Green. I refuse.
“Okay, gentlemen, listen up!” Coach Zion says as he steps out of the coach’s office. “Before I let our manager Vaughn Harris inspire the lot of you for ou
r first FA Cup game, I thought I’d let you know we have a few new faces in the changing room today. They aren’t on the roster yet but will start training with us next week. I’m hoping today you can all give them a glimpse of what they can expect when they play for a proper Premier League club.” The players make noises of agreement as Coach continues, “All three from America, we have Knight Timmons, a midfielder, Link Conlin, offense, and Zander Williams, center-back. And please, for the love of Christ, don’t fuck with these three like you fucked with Billy. We don’t need another media photograph of a footballer in women’s knickers.”
Billy’s face turns as red as his hair, and everyone laughs as Knight, Link, and I shoot nervous eyes to each other, trying to look tough but failing miserably.
All humor vanishes from the space, and I look around to see all eyes zeroed in on Vaughn Harris, who’s just entered the room. “Are they ready, Coach?”
“As they’ll ever be.” Coach props his fists on his hips as Vaughn claps his hands for our attention.
“Alright, this is our first FA Cup game, and we have a lot to prove after going out so early last year. I’m not going to sit here and give you a big speech to inspire. That was clearly bollocks last year. I’m just going to remind you that this is your job. To play football. To put it all out there. To be the best you can be. So, get your arses out on that pitch and show our fans that Bethnal Green is where the FA Cup belongs!”
The team jumps to their feet and rushes to the middle of the locker room, cheering loudly and chanting Bethnal Green over and over. Roan DeWalt sees the three of us lingering in the back, so he head nods us over to the pack as they put their hands in the middle. A player I can’t see yells out, “I am thine!”
And the team roars back with, “Thou art mine!”
As everyone breaks apart and begins filing out, Roan turns and offers out his hand. “Welcome, guys. I’m Roan DeWalt, team captain.”
“Yes, you fucking are.” Link steps forward and grips his hand first. He looks like he wants to kiss the striker as he shakes a bit too aggressively. “An honor, man. For real.”
