Ryan Hunter

coated every inch of her skin and breathing still troubled her after running the three laps. But I couldn’t let her fail in this qualifying, so I tried to tickle out her ambition with a smirk. “I’ve seen you kick Mitchell’s butt harder than that.”
    Since she didn’t back off, I guessed she was up to another try, so I dropped the ball in front of her. Then I placed my hands on her shoulders and moved her several steps back. “Now take a short run and put a little more power in your thrust.”
    This was the first time that I ever touched Liza Matthews. And I thanked God for the invention of tank tops. Her skin was smooth and heated, emitting the warm scent of some flower mix. I didn’t know what she used to rub on her body after a shower, but the smell of it drove me crazy and close to not giving a fuck about who might see it when I was going to kiss that girl in just another moment.
    Unfortunately, she didn’t look very happy about what I did to her. She grabbed the collar of Tony’s jersey and whined, “Ah no, don’t let him make me do that. We both know I will just trip over the damn thing.”
    She looked so hilariously panicky that I couldn’t stop myself from laughing while Tony pried her fingers loose from his collar. “No, you won’t,” he told her in a confident way. Then he shot me a quick glance that looked like he was asking my permission…for whatever. I nodded, because I trusted him fully. Anyway, we both wanted the same today, which was getting Liza on the team. “Tell you what, if you hit Frederickson straight in the chest, I’ll buy you a chocolate decadence ice cream sundae,” he tempted her. “Deal?”
    It wouldn’t be a goal if the ball didn’t make it past Frederickson, but as long as the outcome at the end of the day was the same, I didn’t care.
    Liza considered the new task for a second then grinned. “Deal.” Two steps she ran, then she kicked the ball with an amicable thrust. It dropped like a baby in Frederickson’s arms. At least she mastered it this way.
    “Well done!” I told her, wishing I would be the one to buy her ice cream later.
    I returned to the table and to Susan. “Forty-seven gets three points for the goal shooting,” I told her. She’d seen what happened, and of course it earned me a quizzical look from the book lover, but I was the captain of this team, and what I said was law. It took only my arching one brow to make her understand that, and she scribbled a perfect 3 next to Liza’s name. When she grinned up at me in a nice schoolgirl manner, I smiled back. I liked how we communicated without words and understood each other so well.
    I finished the goal contest with the remaining attendees then joined my buddies, Alex and Sasha, who trained running and kicking across the lawn with some of the girls. Tony did the same with Liza, and though she wasn’t a pro, she managed a few very promising passes to Mitchell. I watched them for a while deciding whether to give her the deserved two points in this task or the full five. She was really lame at the next event, which was testing their balance and skills at juggling the ball with one leg, doing kicks without dropping it. I grimaced and dragged my hands down over my face. There was no need to even start counting how many she did.
    I scratched my head. If I gave her a fair rating, she’d never make it on the team. There were at least twenty other girls better than her. On the plus side, she wasn’t the worst, and having her on the team wouldn’t turn out to be a total loss.
    On the way over to Susan, a sneaky attack made me drop on all fours. One of the girls hit me on the backside of my left knee with a really hard kick that Alex failed to stop. Me going down like a shot buffalo caused a round of laughter and some bantering from Alex. It took exactly two seconds, until he was on the ground underneath me, and we wrestled around like a couple of puppies.
    “Hey Sash,” Frederickson yelled above us. “Help me get the kids apart. They’re always so rollicking when they get coffee in the morning.”
    Alex and I grabbed each a leg of Frederickson, which was his downfall.
    “Oh, come on, guys.” I heard Cloey’s annoyed voice. “Can you wait with the man-part until later? Some of us would like to know if we’re on the team.”
    I wrestled myself free from Alex and Frederickson and gave Cloey a wry look. “You got maximum score in every event, Summers. I guess it’s okay to say that you