Chapter 11: The Motorcycle Promise

By the time I dragged myself out of bed the next day, it was almost noon. I had a soccer game to play. After that, I was supposed to go over to work with Davey and Kip again. I called Molly while I was eating a bowl of cereal for breakfast.

"Hi," I said when she answered the phone. "How are you feeling?"

"I feel great," she said. I could almost hear her smile in her voice. "A little sore, but even that's going away. How are you?"

"I'm a little tired, but I'll be okay. I've got a soccer game this afternoon, and then I have to go over to the Wilkinsons. Are you doing anything tonight?"

"I was going to go over to Tessa's. Want to come along?"

"Sure," I said. "What time were you going?"

"We're going shopping this afternoon, but we should be back around five. Ummm... Sean?"

"Uh-huh?"

"Bring along a couple of those... things you got yesterday, okay?"

It was a good thing I was sitting down, because my knees turned to water as soon as she said that. "Yeah, of course," I said. "Anything you say."

"Good. Just remember that, and you'll get along with this Irish lass just fine," she said with a laugh.

The soccer game was a laugher. I was playing with a club team that consisted of guys from all over our area, not just from our community. The team we were playing was just a pickup team thrown together for the summer league, and they were not very good. All summer long, I had played just about every position on the field, including keeper, but I was learning that I really liked playing defense, and especially right-side defense. My coaches discovered that I had a knack for stealing the ball more often on the right side, and I would streak up the sidelines until I was past the centerline. Depending on how my opposition reacted to this intrusion, I would either continue down the field, switching positions with my right midfielder, or I would loft the ball across to our offensive players in the middle, and let them take over. Against teams with weak midfielders, I could make it almost all the way down to the penalty line before crossing the ball, and a couple of times I was able to waltz the ball in and score from the side when the defense was still scrambling around trying to cover all our players down the field. At any rate, the coach pulled most of his starters, me included, for the entire second half, because we were already up 6-1 by halftime. Even so, we ended up winning 9-3, and I was feeling pretty good.

I went right from the game over to meet Davey and Kip. We warmed up and stretched, and played Heads-Up for about fifteen minutes. After taking a drink break, we started on a game of Keep-Away with me in the middle. The boys were still prone to standing still and waiting for the ball, instead of moving to it on a pass, and I hoped that Keep-Away would make them see why they had to move on the ball. Passing into open space, give-and-goes, and leading the receiver were still too advanced for these little guys, but they were working hard toward being better soccer players. I knew that when the fall season began, they would be more skilled than most of the other kids in their age group.

We ended up our session by playing Heads-Up on the way back to their house again. As we got there, Lori opened the front door to let an older man out. He was dressed in a dark suit, and was wearing a loud pink and yellow tie. He shook her hand, walked down to his car parked at the curb, and drove away without a second glance at the boys or the house. Lori, as usual, invited me in for lemonade while Kip and Davey ran upstairs.