Page 1 of More Than Dad's Best Friend

CHAPTER 1

Myles

My narrowed eyes follow her across the field as I feel my heart throttling in my chest.

My hands are by my sides, but my fingers are rubbing each other, squeezing tight. I make fists to try and stop the obvious motion, but my white-knuckles only press the tips of my fingers harder into my palms.

I feel light headed and it’s not even that warm out. I’ve drank an entire two liters of water since practice started, but I still have this overwhelming thirst, this need…for her.

Number ten, Morgan Malone. My best friend’s daughter.

I should blow the whistle and tell her to quit horsing around with her friends, but it’s that youthful exuberance that she often displays which is so damn infectious…hitting me right in the chest.

I can’t find the words to yell or the breath to blow the whistle. I swallow hard, a gulp, and it’s only then I realize I was holding my breath this entire time.

She makes a move, kicking the soccer ball to the side and her body jerks one way and then the other, her breasts shaking despite that practice jersey that’s a size too small, damp, and shows her pebbled nipples poking out through both the jersey and the sports bra underneath.

I want to turn away, to coach some of the other players, but I can’t. I’m fixated on her no matter how much I shouldn’t be looking at her like this.

This is all so new.

Just three months ago it was the beginning of summer and Morgan, her parents, and I were heading out to celebrate her acceptance letter to college.

Then a week later her parents were killed by a drunk driver on her eighteenth birthday.

I was devastated and so was she. We spent hours talking about it, asking ourselves, and the universe, why. Why did this terrible thing happen to two amazing people?

But now all I can ask is why have I been having these thoughts about her? Why is it that she went from being my buddy’s kid to a woman, practically overnight?

The way she fills out that jersey now blows my mind, and causes me to jam my hand in my pants pocket and audibly fiddle with my keys so no one will realize what I’m really doing…trying to conceal my need for the school’s star forward on the soccer team.

It’s her last year before moving on to college to study medicine. She wants to help people…and I want to help myself to her.

But this is wrong, so wrong. This is the girl I watched lose her first tooth, get braces, and then get her braces taken off. I was there when she got a tricycle for Christmas, then a real bike. When her dad propelled her forward with his hand on the back of her seat years later when she got her first two-wheel bike, I was the one five feet ahead ready to catch her if she wobbled.

But now, I’m the one who’s all wobbly whenever I’m in her presence.

I never had a thing for her. Never. She was just a kid, so shy, small, and innocent. She’s always been that way, which is why, all those years ago, her parents started her in kindergarten one year later than most other kids. But that’s all different now. She was forced to grow up this past summer, which makes seeing this innocence in her again so damn rewarding. She deserves her childhood. I shake my head, reminding myself she’s not a child anymore.

She’s eighteen. She can vote. She can buy cigarettes, even though she never smokes. She can join the military and go off to foreign countries.

But she can’t be mine. It’s just not right.

When the school asked me to move up from assistant coach to head coach after her dad was killed I told them I had to think about it. Head coach was my buddy’s role. A part of me didn’t want to be with the team anymore. How could I step into my best friend’s shoes this way? But when I thought about what he’d want, and when his daughter asked me, told me it was okay, I had to say yes.

And now here I am. Another practice and another day I’m telling myself no. No, this isn’t right. No, these feelings can’t continue. No, I have to keep denying myself what I really want.

It could ruin my reputation and hers…that’s the truth.

But the real truth is I’m in love with her. There are no if’s, and’s, or but’s about it. We should just stay friends, but whenever I think about that it just makes me angry.

We can’t just be friends. We need to be more than that. I’m more than her dad’s best friend now, or at least I want to be. I want to be her everything, and that’s what I’ve been trying to do.

---