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Tori: Still up?

Leah: I’m not a mom, I don’t need to be up that early.

Tori: So, yes?

Leah: Of course I am.

Tori pressed the call button and gave up on the texting.

“You’re something else tonight,” Tori said when Leah answered.

“Awe, you enjoy me,” Leah quipped back.

“I’ll call the sitter tomorrow. It’s too late tonight, but I’m in.”

Leah squealed. “Yes! We need this. It’s going to be so fun.”

“Ow, that noise hurts through the phone.” Tori pulled the phone away form her ear and rubbed it.

“Shut up. Let’s talk about this weekend. What are you going to wear?” Leah asked.

“Jeans?”

“You can do better than that. We need to dress to kill.”

“I don’t do that. Besides, it’s just Carey’s. We will stand out if we dress for the club,” Tori pressed. She wasn’t about to dress like she was 21 and going clubbing, not that she ever had.

“I’ll bring something for you to wear then,” Leah pushed back.

“Ugh, fine. It better be Emmett appropriate.” She couldn’t walk out of here in something skimpy past Emmett, plus she wouldn’t wear it anyway if it was.

“You’re such a mom,” Leah teased.

Leah joked with her about having a kid, but she’d always been there for Emmett like a second mom. She’d probably attended more of his soccer games than Isaac had.

Tori yawned. “Okay, I think I’m really going to go to sleep now.”

“Yeah, yeah. Good night.”

“Night.”

As sleep settled over her, she thought about all the things she still had to do and what Leah had said. She was such a mom, never really thinking of anything or anyone else except Emmett. She wouldn’t change it either.

Two

“You can wait right there,” Ms. Allie told him.

Chance took his seat and looked around. Ms. Allie was a younger woman that worked as the secretary for Sam Harrison, the owner of Bardley FC. She was always just this side of nice to him as though it killed her to be kind.

Only with him though, not with any of the other players that he’d seen her talk to. Then again, he spent the most time up here waiting for disciplinary actions. She must just be protective of her boss or something.

He sighed and stared at the painting on the wall across from him. It was some abstract thing with soccer balls in varying colors. It was weird and he didn’t understand the purpose of it other than because this was soccer he guessed.

“He will see you now,” Ms. Allie told him.

Chase stood and let himself through the heavy wooden door and into Sam’s office. Derek Park, the team coach was in there as well. That was his first clue that this wasn’t going to go the same as every other time.

“Take a seat, Chance,” Sam told him.

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