Page 13 of Chasing Football Dreams

I nodded and tried not to be stiff when I shook his head.

“Came to me as a surprise as well,” I would lie if I didn’t think it was quite an impressive picture, they took of me. Their plan wasn’t to exploit my femineity but capture my talent—the drive of my arm and the width of my stance before I rocket thefootball across the field. I wanted to go back in time and tell that little girl who didn’t believe in herself that things happen to those who don’t give up.

“I was astounded when I learned of a girl quarterback,” He looked at Coach Shane, covering up an undeciphered look in his eyes.

When he looked back at me, I felt a spine quivering feeling shooting up my back causing the hairs on the back of my neck to rise.

“So, how come you want to play football?” He asked.

I didn’t know if his question was an insult or if he was honestly curious but my team showed their discomfort with the pointless question. “Are you asking because I am a girl?”

His face flushed. “I am just not used to girls picking to play a guy sport, you know,”

I don’t know why people see football as a men’s sport and that girls are not allowed to haul a ball across the field or even play any other position on the team. I believe that if you put a girls’ team up against each other, they will be more aggressive. We don’t fear pain. We are driven to beat anybody’s ass.

I didn’t have an answer to his question without insulting his way of thinking. “Maybe people should stop living in the past and see us girls as fragile little things,”

Chapter Six

There was a time when I would have given everything to have parents. I yearned for a mother’s love and a father’s insight. But I wasn’t ready to handle the truth lying hidden in the file I took from the orphanage. The evidence was so clear as daylight and yet. I didn’t want to accept it.

I didn’t want to acknowledge that the person I looked up to as a mother and believed was making change was responsible for kidnapping children.

Unable to close my eyes, I rolled away from Duncan’s sleeping form when the first strike of sunlight touched the curtains. I got dressed, left the house, and walked over to the diner, wanting to clear my head.

Brenda was at her usual spot when I slipped through the diner doors.

It was tough facing reality with the obvious truth that my pitiful life had meaning after all. I didn’t curse the life I lived or the tough upbringing of believing I would forever be stuck here.Life gave me a sister that I will never forget and a mother who took me and Eliza under her wing.

So many times, I caught myself shedding a tear about how I was taken from my family and how my life could have been different. But then I think about how I would have never met Eliza or Brenda or even Duncan and my team.

I wasn’t sure I wanted my life to change.

“You’re early,” Brenda noted with a slight suspicion when she looked at the entrance and there was no sign of Duncan.

“I couldn’t sleep,” I answered with a shrug, walking to the back and greeting everyone before getting ready for my shift.

I took a walk around the diner to refill everyone’s coffee and orders of newly seated customers when I suppressed the urge the groan when I came face to face with one of my regulars. He had a different girl with him this time and it pained me to know that she was looking at him as if he was the best man walking this earth—if she only knew he was the scum.

I took their orders while trying my best not to give my disapproving opinion of his game.

“Why is it that I keep getting this conceited fraud sitting at my table?”

Brenda frowned, gazing over my shoulder at the table where the cheat was sitting flirting with his 100th victim. I don’t know how girls can’t notice that he is cheating on them. I don’t even want to know what this guy’s schedule looks like to keep tabs on when he sees who at what time.

“Maybe he feels like he can trust you to keep his game a secret,”

I wrinkled my nose and shook my head. “If it was up to me. I would have called up all his girlfriends and had them here to see him playing them,”

Brenda smiled at me. “Don’t get me wrong but you’ve got too much of a big heart to drift that low,”

I rolled my eyes. “He’s a jerk that needs to learn of karma,”

“I would want someone to come up to me and warn me,”

Brenda’s deadpan look brought a frown to my face. “Imagine how it sounds if a girl comes up to you and tells you that your boyfriend has three other girlfriends,”

I bit back my remark when out of the corner of my eye I saw a certain broad-shoulder eye candy entering the shop. Butterflies erupted in the pit of my stomach when he caught my eye and a smile broke out on his face.

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