sonder

sidereal

Chapter Forty:

Sidereal

(adj.) determined by or from the stars.

~ ~ ~

    The first game of the U-14 season came a week before the high school team's first game. To say it was going to be an eventful week would be an understatement. This was literally the start of something great, I could feel it.

    Jeremiah was buzzing as we stood on the side of the field waiting for the day to start. Since I was a junior coach, we were expected to show up a little earlier then the players and the other team. It was also a home game meaning we got to set up on the field to do routine daily drills before the game; at least, that's what they did here.

    "It's gonna be a good game, right?" Jeremiah voiced a little nervously. His outward appearance seemed like confidence, it had all morning seemed to be that way. Hearing his voice though, you could hear the insecurities creeping through. He sounded exactly like me when I first started playing too.

    "It's not gonna be a good game... it's gonna be a great game." I tell him enthusiastically. "You guys are amazing players. You are an amazing player, Jere. You've been working hard all summer for this game and it's gonna be great." I encourage.

    A small hint of a smile flickers across my little brother's face, just the hint of a dimple popping out of his cheek. "Don't get all sappy on me now." He deflects with a joke but I know that I got to him. And it feels good to have him joke with me, to see him start to go through the teenager phase of hating having emotions. More in the healthy way though, not the hardships that I'd been through.

    I'd become a lot more introspective with the start of senior year. I once thought that I wasn't going to be at graduation, to be honest, I hadn't even thought about the possibility of making it to graduation. But now, I was just six months away. Already, I'd applied to colleges where I was planning on studying kinesiology. Our cap and gown orders were submitted at the end of October. And even though it was only three months into the year, it felt like this new school was more of a home then my last one.

    "You look like you're not really looking here at the field." An older gentleman's voice woke me from my zoned out state. Blinking, I noticed that some of the other players had already shown up and Jeremiah had since joined them. Mr. Harvey stood beside me now, his bellowing voice and knowing look familiar and calming.

    "You're right, I wasn't here." I tell him. I hadn't talked to Mr. Harvey since everything with Kali went down. Honestly, I was afraid to see him and have him ask me what happened, it would make it all too real.

    "We've missed you around the store, you know that?" Mr. Harvey immediately cuts to the chase. If it were anyone else, I probably could've come up with a lie but something about Mr. Harvey made me want to tell the truth, so I tried my best.

    "Kali and I-" I begin, a little lost for words. "We, just aren't exactly friends anymore." I finish, completely coping out of saying anything at all really.

    "You two were never friends, were you?" Mr. Harvey ponders out loud, turning to meet my eyes with a grin. We were both still looking at the field though, to anyone else, it would look like just an ordinary conversation. To me, this was not where I thought this was going.

    "I'm not sure how exactly to answer that." I reply, mentally still unsure of everything that really happened with Kali.

    "The way you look at each other is definitely more than friends." Mr. Harvey mentions. "Besides, I've never seen Kali grin from ear to ear like that other then when you'd walk through that blue door."

    I find myself shaking my head in disbelief at that comment. I'd already convinced myself that she did not and will never love me or even feel slightly the same way about me. Mr. Harvey's confessions makes my heart clench uncomfortably, the last thing I wanted was hope.

    "She's still working through her issues. She'll come to you when she's ready, trust me." Mr. Harvey explains. "You know that everyday when I leave the store, I go to my favourite place by the river and I write a poem. They're not very good, but they're always somehow about Mrs. Harvey. I used to hate reading and writing before I met her. And then she walked into my life and it was as if I couldn't hold back the words.

    Sometimes I write about the stars or the people I see or the songs I hear. There always about something that I want to share with her and I do, through words. She made me believe in myself when I couldn't believe in me. And although it sounds crazy, I use poetry as my gift to give back to her. It's not much but she loves them, or so she says at least. But that's the thing with love, you build them up when their at their lowest and you laugh at the jokes that aren't funny and you love them even through the darkest days.

    Love is a constant give and take. It's thinking as a team as opposed to thinking as only player one. And at the end of day, you put team above all else but transitioning to that mentality takes a bit. Especially at your age, especially with the complicated realities you both have lived. But one day, you'll find each other and it'll all be worth it. Trust me." With that, as if conjured up by merely talking about it, Kali and her family are getting out of their car.

    Mr. Harvey tips his head to me, his smile leaving me completely at a lose for words. One of the other coaches catches up with me before I can fully process everything that he said. A feeling in my gut says that maybe, he wasn't all that wrong though. Maybe, hope wasn't the worst thing possible.

~ ~ ~

    Kali's perfect green eyes met mine as she followed behind her mom and siblings up to the sidelines. Austin was quick to join his teammates, Courtney and Kali's mom set up camp right near the middle of the field, and Kali walks right beside them except she faces me directly from across the field.

    There's something about her gaze that makes me not want to break its hold. I almost feel like I could decipher what she's telling me silently if we hadn't stopped talking, if I hadn't closed myself off to the idea of being more than.

    I could almost feel myself being pulled over to her, the magnetic field that surrounded her being was drawing me in once again. She was only 40 yards away, in seconds I could be within reach of her. I could feel myself reliving all of the feelings I once had for her, or maybe still had for her.

    "You think that'll be good, Damian?" The senior coach asks me, reminding me that life has continued on whilst I was living in Kali's eyes.

    "Yeah, that sounds like a good plan." I dismiss, not knowing at all what I just agreed to. Assuming by the pleased look on his face, I chose the answer he was looking to hear so I didn't feel too bad; besides, at the end of the day, he got to call the shots so if was about a drill or a play then it was ultimately his decision.

    I found my feet taking tentative steps to her before I could think better of it. I watched as she sat down next to her sister, her eyes now filled with love... that emotion I could easily read on her face when it came to her siblings.

    I slammed on my brakes as soon as I took notice of the man walking up to Kali's mom, his eyes familiar yet horribly different than his daughter's. He was the same man who came to the bookstore all those months ago, the one who gave me the bad vibes as he searched for Kali.

    And just as I'm about ten feet away from the scene, Kali meets the man's eyes. Hate registers over her entire face, completely absorbing all of her features. Everything happens for a reason, I repeat in my head before retreating from the girl of my dreams.

    Everything happens for a reason and no matter how much I wish to go be her knight in shining armour, that isn't my place. My place is on the field, coaching the team, away from Kali and away from our summer filled of heartbreak.

~*~*~*~*