Page 5 of Man On

"We've been coming here since we were in the fifth grade, dude. And this year we get to be freaking counselors!"

"Says the guy that doesn't have to bunk with that asshole." One of the biggest perks of graduating to teen counselors is not having to bunk with six other smelly assholes, having a bathroom in your cabin, and almost never having a curfew enforced. This summer was supposed to be epic.

"You're not wrong, but we can't let him ruin the best summer ever, man."

I give him a look and scoff. As if I have any choice in the matter.

"You could always sneak into Maci's room and sleep there. You know she'd welcome you with open legs—I mean arms," he quickly corrects with a smirk.

His idea isn't terrible. Maci can be a bit clingy, but if it gets me away from my jerk of a stepbrother, it would be worth it. Not to mention the possibility of getting some action. We both talk a good game, but neither of us is exactly experienced. I got half a hand job at an end-of-school party a couple weeks ago, and I'd really like to revisit having someone other than myself touch my dick.

"Who is she rooming with?"

"Fucking Tara Whitman," he groans, giving me a knowing look.

"Ohh, so you want me to get in good with Maci so you can come along and try to feel up her bunkmate?"

"I mean, can you blame me? Puberty has been very kind to her. Have you seen her?—"

I whack Miah across his head when a group of campers walks past us.

"What the hell, Noah!"

He looks like he's about to cuss me out for smacking him, but he gets distracted. I look over my shoulder to see what he's frowning at and find Maci Hammond's high ponytail swishing back and forth as she giggles and lays a manicured hand on Lane's chest.

My jaw ticks, and I cut my eyes to Miah. He gives me a curt nod, knowing what I'm thinking without me needing to say the words.

Whatever my feelings about Maci, I'm about to piss all over her leg like a dog marking its territory.

I'll be damned if he takes anything else from me.

The whistle blows. Loudly. Less than twelve inches from my ear.

With a deep, calming breath, I steady a glare at Lane. He ignores me, calling the kids to the sidelines. Most of them are huffing and panting from the intense workout Lane just forced them all through. We're supposed to be working on footwork today, but Lane is on a damn power trip and likes to make the kids do ridiculous workouts as "warmup". He says discipline and stamina are two of the most important parts of the game, but cutting into actual practice time to run an extra mile or making them do an offensive number of burpees to “loosen them up” isn’t helping them learn anything. It's not even that I disagree with him about discipline and stamina, but I think he might be some kind of masochist or something. Yesterday, I heard him tell a twelve-year-old that if he's not hurting, he's not working hard enough, then he proceeded to give all the kids in his canoe some rather aggressive encouragement in order to push them through to the finish line. To his credit, they won the race. Not without making at least one kid cry though, which pissed me off. Intent on living up to my, and I quote, "coolest counselor" title, I snuck every kid that was in that canoe an extra scoop of ice cream directly after one of his tough love nutrition sermons.

I have purposefully made it my mission to be the fun guy, if only to get under Lane's skin. I've been teaching the players how to juggle the ball and showing them fancy moves. We spend more time playing than doing planks, but they're running and exercising all damn day no matter what, so it's not like any of them are being lazy.

Unfortunately, the groups get paired up with other groups every other week, and lucky us, we get stuck with my grouchy asshole of a stepbrother this week. Even better, scrimmages start on Thursday, so his competitive nature is starting to make him even less tolerable.

"Alright, alright, Lane has had his fun. What do you guys say we practice some footwork?" I call out, taking over before Lane can say anything. All the kids cheer and look so excited, he can't say anything without looking like more of a douchebag than he is.

Even just instructing everyone to grab a ball gets the kids all fired up. I return Lane's grouchy glare with one of my own that says you should be ashamed of yourself.

"I'm going to show you the coolest control move called the Elastico. Watch how I do it," I say, moving my feet around the ball in slow, practiced moves. "The idea is to make the defender think you're going in one direction, but with one quick flick, you cross the ball over to go the opposite direction. Like this." After showing them several times, I have them spend a few minutes getting comfortable with the basic movements. Then we're jogging up and down the field while I correct them here and there so they can try to execute the movements while moving forward.

"The faster you can pull this move off, the more effective it is. Let's try pairing off and you can take turns trying to get past each other," I call out, rolling my eyes when Lane hits his whistle in two short bursts, as if they couldn't hear my instructions without his interference. I make a mental note to hide his stupid whistle from him the moment he falls asleep tonight.

"This is a waste of time," Lane says, crossing his arms as he looks at the field of players. "They'd be better off doing one-touch drills and wind sprints."

"Oh yeah, because that's so much fun. I peeked at your stupid clipboard, bro, and all that shit sucks. You're going to bore them to death."

"They're here to learn?—"

"They're here to play soccer. And they deserve to have some damn fun with the game. Plus, learning to control the ball is the most important part of the game." Lane grunts at that, and then grits his teeth when I flick his damn clipboard out of his hands. By the time he picks it up and looks back to tell me off, I'm already halfway to midfield.

The kids decide it would be fun to try to defend against me, and I'll use the move I showed them, plus a few variations they can build up to later, to get around them. I break them up into two groups, having one half defend against me while the other half observes. We're having a great time, and the kids seem to be actually getting the hang of controlling the ball. Apparently we're having too much fun, though, because Lane loses his temper and comes marching out onto the field to break it up. One of the kids from Lane's group, Sean, I think, calls out for Lane to go up against me. I make a mental note to slip him a candy bar later. He's my new favorite.

Lane is a good player. He's specifically a great defender. I'm man enough to admit that. We've been playing on rival rec teams for the past three years, and our parents force us to go to watch each other's games whenever our schedules don't conflict. But as big and tough as he is, he can't match my speed and control, and he knows it. I beat him every time, and then he beats himself up over it for weeks afterwards. It's highly gratifying.

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