Out of her stepmom's shadow

Moving away from one to the other

(Greyson POV) 

      "Greyson we're leaving now" are the only words spoken by my father. 

I stop juggling my soccer ball and climb into the passenger seat of his truck and throw my ball into the back seats. He backs out of the driveway, and I wave at my sisters looking through the window. We make the long drive up to Seattle, Washington, to start our new chapter. We eventually get to the new house, and he pulls into the driveway. I look at him and then back to the house. He tells me to go inside and look around. 

I walk all the hallways in the house and peek in the rooms. He had all of the rooms done. He walked behind me when I was looking at the last room. A queen bed was placed in the middle of a powder blue room. 

"You like it?" I nod in response. 

"Good because this is your room" I whip around and hug him. We finish bringing the boxes inside about an hour later and start to unpack. I play country music through my speaker while unpacking my clothes and putting them in the closet. When all of my clothes were done, I opened the box of soccer stuff and started to put the soccer jerseys and shirts in a different part of my closet. After that, my bathroom was the next to be completed. Then, all of my other soccer stuff was placed into the garage. We ordered a pizza for supper and retired for the night.

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A while later, my dad came and got me from soccer practice (I made the high school team) and he looked really happy. He started to talk about this woman that he met and I was really interested. 

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I was moved from playing forward and mid to goalie and defender for the high school team. I have two more years left after this high school season to play. Dad and the woman that I have yet to meet have gotten together. 

I grabbed a pair of sweatpants and a USWNT department of defense shirt along with my black Nike shoes, grabbing both my soccer bag, school bag, and a cereal bar, I head out the door making the six-block walk to the school. 

At practice, we were playing a scrimmage and one of the forwards went up for the same ball I almost had my hand on, but her elbow swings back and nails me right in the eye. 

I flinch and land on my back, but pop back up when I realize the ball is still in play. I knock the ball out and then I can feel the pain of my eye. I rip off my gloves as the trainer comes over to me to check my eye out. I end up being fine and practice is over by the time we're done talking. I take the time to take the tape off of my hands and remove my cleats before getting another drink. I slipped my shoes back on, grab both my bags, and make my way out to where my dad is waiting. At this point I could barely see out of my eye. 

"What happened to your face kiddo?" 

"I took an elbow to the face playing in goal" I take a snap of my face and send it to my best friend while my dad talks, and the most important part caught my attention. 

"I want you to meet her Grey, I think that you'd love her" 

"Finally! I wanna meet the only other person that makes my dad soft" he shakes his head at me. We walk into the house, and I go and take a quick shower. 

After I shower, I braid my hair and put on shorts with a soccer shirt from my old school. I walk back down the stairs and grab an ice pack from the freezer and set it on my eye. The door opens and I hear a feminine voice along with my dad's. 

"Is this her?" the female voice questions 

"Yeah, Greyson, I want you to meet someone" I put the ice down and my good eye widened at the realization of who the person was.

 "H-hi, i's Greyson" I say as I hold out my hand. 

"Hope" she says and shakes my hand. Dad went to go and get the food, and Hope told him that she would stay with me because she wanted to get to know me better. 

"You play soccer?" 

"Yeah, I was a forward, but the coach moved me to goalie and has played me a little bit in every place" I reply to her, looking down and playing with my fingers. 

"Let me guess, you're freaking out in the inside right now?" nodding I choose to speak.

"A little but I know that at the end of the day you're human, just looked up to by a lot of people" she smiles at me and then dad walks through the door with Chinese food. Dad decided to actually ask me how practice was, and I was a tad bit taken back. 

"It was good, we scrimmaged the whole time and I played in goal. We won after I got that elbow" I say and chuckle.