Page 108 of Well Aware

My lips twitched when I saw Texas’s best thrower come up.

What it also did was leave their defense short because their best thrower also happened to be their center mid.

I whistled at Nettie, who looked at me with raised brows.

I gave her the signal and she knew to be ready to run for a through ball.

The ref blew the whistle to play, and my old teammate threw it in, exactly where I expected her to throw it. We’d done the same play a hundred times in the exact same scenario.

The ball came exactly where I was expecting it to, allowing me to get there before the midfielder could make her play. With one solid kick, I booted it out of the defense and straight to Nettie’s waiting feet.

She took one touch and shot it from the eighteen, before any of the defense was close enough to stop her.

The ball was a perfectly placed missile, landing in the top right corner of the goal, much to the goalie’s dismay.

I squealed, raising my hands above my head and hollering her last name. “Thatta girl, Windsor!”

We met halfway and slammed into a hug, our teammates surrounded us with excitement.

That was exactly what I wanted for the rest of the game.

Alas, my old team learned from their mistake and didn’t do that again.

They played high, forcing Nettie to stay farther back than she wanted to avoid the offside calls.

They double-teamed her, too.

But by double-teaming her, they also allowed our midfielder to run circles around them and distribute the ball anywhere it needed to go.

By the end of the first half, we were still one to zero, but we’d dominated the game.

As always, Coach Eddie—she was Coach Eddie to me when we were on the field and Eddie when we weren’t—gave the best pep talks. By the time that we were ready to go back in after halftime, we were in good spirits.

The other team came out with a vengeance, though, and hammered us with shots.

Unfortunately for them, all of them were too far out, and our great goalie was able to save every single one of them. The wind that was against us the first half was now on our side, making the shots they were trying to take utterly impossible to get in.

They kept trying, though, and started to play hard and rough—way rougher than they should have been—letting their irritation and frustration show.

Some roughness was expected, seeing as we were playing professional soccer. However, the amount of roughness they were demonstrating was reckless and thoughtless.

There was no worrying about the officials this game, though. It was too high-profile, and there wasn’t a single person who wasn’t watching this game with the scrutiny to lose jobs if they weren’t careful.

At one point, the center defender fouled Nettie in the box, giving her the opportunity for a penalty kick. A penalty kick that she missed.

However, the team was ready with the follow-up, and we were able to get it in with a header from our defensive midfielder.

My voice was hoarse as I met them mid-field.

When we set up for the next kick off, the time showed we had eleven minutes left to play.

One of the players muttered something to me that sounded suspiciously like “bitch” and I side-eyed her.

“I’m sorry, what?”

She turned her back on me, and I watched the ball as it once again sailed out and left.

I didn’t fall for the same trick this time, and neither did the rest of the defense.