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The kid walked slowly towards the plastic seats, while eyeing the team, in the Exy court, training their drills. He sat down, keeping one of the players under his watchful eye and would have remained there if not for one of the coaches noticing him and approaching the kid.
“Hey! Who are you, buddy?” Coach Thomas asked, closing the distance between them and grabbing the kid’s attention.
“I’m Luke…” he answered simply.
“And what are you doing here, Luke?”
“I’m watching my old man train…” Luke replied, pointing towards one of the players.
When Coach Thomas followed his finger’s direction saw that the boy was pointing at his goalkeeper, Andrew Minyard.
“You are Andrew’s kid?” the coach blurted, clearly shocked with the revelation to which the kid nodded. The man’s eyes flew to his black hair and blue eyes.
“How old are you?”
“Ten…” Luke answered, seeing the man make his mental math and reach a wrong conclusion. Luke wondered if he should say the word adoption, but he was having too much fun messing with the coach to actually clarify the situation. He saw the man murmur teenage pregnancy and smirked.
“Do you want to come closer? We are finishing… I can tell your dad that you are here…” Coach Thomas offered and Luke smiled mischievously.
He saw the coach walk away and followed him.
“Hey, Minyard! Your son is here!” Thomas said, opening the Plexiglas door.
The entire team turned as one to stare at Andrew and then at the kid waving at him from the door.
Andrew’s eyes squinted and he sighed, walking towards Luke.
“What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be at school? Don’t tell me you blew up the chemistry lab again…” Andrew’s expression was one of annoyance when the kid huffed and crossed his arms, a clear mirror of Andrew’s stance.
“There was never a first time, it was all a confusion…” Luke replied, pouting.
“Yeah, confusion… tell that to someone that doesn’t live with you, pest!” Andrew’s hand flew to Luke’s hair and messed up with his already unruly hair.
Luke smiled bashfully at Andrew and the team blinked in surprise when something, the closest to a smile that they ever saw grace Andrew’s face, made an appearance.
“My teacher got sick, so I didn’t have my last class…”
“And you had to come to my practice?” Andrew’s eyebrows rose.
“It was closer…” Luke said in a blank tone, eerily similar to Andrew’s and the team snickered under their breath, now recovered from the shock of knowing that Andrew Minyard, their incredibly mysterious goalkeeper, had a son, that looked nothing like him.
Andrew shook his head, and flicked Luke in the forehead.
“Crazy pest… Wait for me, here, alright? I will take a shower and then we can get some sundaes before the drama queen sees what your snack was…” Andrew suggested and Luke nodded excitedly.
“Caramel and chocolate…”
“And marshmallows…” Andrew concluded to the kid’s clear excitement.
Seeing Andrew like that with his son made the team wonder just how much they knew or didn’t know about the man. He had been in their team for the last four months and they only knew the guy was crazy for chocolate, always carrying bars of it with him and had a very old ringtone in his phone, that 90% of time he answered in Russian. There was no wedding ring in his finger, but he mentioned a “drama queen”, which peaked their interest about his relationship with Luke’s other parent.
From then on, the presence of Luke was a regular thing in the stadium and the team learned more about his relationship with his father. Luke was an incredibly mischievous child, able of hiding cat toys inside Andrew’s sports bag that would pop out when he opened it in the locker room, and apparently had a thing for annoying Andrew, since every time they played at home, the kid would come to watch the game, always wearing the other team’s jersey.
“Your kid sure has a lot of shirts…” Craig, the captain, mentioned after the sixth game, snickering at Andrew’s sigh.
“He has a bunch of crazy uncles and aunts…”
Hum, a new snippet in the life of Andrew Minyard – a big family to surround himself with.
“Do you know what? I think he is from the mafia…” Theresa, one of the dealers, once said when they were leaving the stadium, after a practice. They were observing Andrew talk in the phone, this time in German. “He has a fucking luxury car, speaks all kinds of weird languages, always has some kind of knife in his bag, has a big family, clearly knows how to kill someone…”
“Clearly knows how to…” Craig repeated. “Are you crazy? He is so small!”
“I’m with Theresa, you know?” a voice suddenly said from behind them and the team jumped to see Luke staring at them.
“Lu-Luke…” Craig stuttered and the boy smiled weirdly.
“Never let those knifes out of your sight…” and the kid started whistling and moved towards his father.
Anna Carter and John Miller, two of the strikers, face-palmed themselves.
“You are all a bunch of idiots…” John said, laughing at the others’ still shocked expressions. “The kid was pulling your legs!”
However, the mysterious life of Andrew Minyard only became more tangled the last day of the season, after their winning game that gave them second place, after Kevin Day’s team, when they received the news that a new striker would be joining them next season.
“Neil Lightning Josten…” Anna said, after hearing their coaches’ news.
The man was a star among strikers, small, but incredibly fast, younger than the entire team, but still better than all of them. His team was in third place, and didn’t rose higher because it was public knowledge that two of the strikers fought continuously, while Josten kept the rest of the team from killing themselves.
“How did we get him? I heard he was going north…” Craig asked.
“That’s something that I don’t care about. What I do care is that we are gonna get the best striker out there and we are going to clean that court with the other teams…” one of the coaches said.
“Jeez, thanks…” the other strikers said in unison.
While the conversation moved around Neil’s coming, Andrew was quiet, observing everyone. Luke was sitting beside him, ready to go home, and the goalkeeper had his elbow over the kid’s shoulder.
“Andrew, you played with him in the college, right? How is he as a teammate?” Craig asked and the rest of the team looked at their captain like he had grown another head.
It was no novelty that Andrew and Neil had a rivalry going on. They could still remember the last time they played with Neil’s team, how for fifteen minutes straight, every ball Andrew defended would hit Neil in the shins and how, after an almost impossible goal Neil had yelled “Suck it, fucking asshole!” in Andrew’s face.
“He is not bad…” Andrew simply said and Luke coughed.
“You are always saying that you hate him… and that he is an Exy junkie…” the young boy said and Andrew knocked him in the back of his head, while the team feared the start of the next season.
Another peek into Andrew’s life: the man talked about Neil Josten at home, and not in a good light.
When the first day of the new season arrived, the team approached the stadium with some kind of trepidation. They saw Andrew’s car parked already and wondered when Neil Josten would arrive and how much bad blood actually existed between the two.
As soon as they neared the door of the locker room, they heard an unknown laughter.
“And then Allison actually sent me Nicky’s picture… I almost died!”
“I could have helped you with that…”
Oh, it was Neil Josten and Andrew in the locker room. And apparently, they were not killing each other, even after Andrew’s threat was still in the air.
“Oh, hey!” Craig said, moving to stand in front of the team and welcome Neil into their midst.
The striker’s previous laughing face froze and a polite expression fell as a mask. Andrew was sitting in a bench, while Neil was already dressed in their team’s training gear.
“Hello… Neil Josten…” Neil approached the group slowly, observing every one of them like a cat watching a group of dogs and the team felt a bit worried. And then Neil’s lips opened in a smile and he extended his arm to shake hands and it was like his last tense expression never existed in the first place.
Craig started presenting the rest of the group, too much people for Neil to remember their names, or that was what they thought at first, proving themselves wrong when during the first practice he never got a name wrong.
It was weird for the team to see Neil and Andrew play together, not because they fought, but because it was like they could read each other’s thoughts. When Andrew sent a ball, Neil was already there to receive it or when the line of defense was keeping him from moving forward, he would signal somehow to Andrew to send him the ball and then move forward in time to catch it again. For someone that hated Neil, Andrew was incredibly attuned to the man.
When the practice ended, the familiar presence of Luke made himself known. The team was so used to the kid, that having him there made no difference, especially when they were still in awe of Neil’s game.
The coaches opened the door to enter the court, at the end of practice and Luke followed them, smiling openly.
“Dad!” he yelled, as soon as he passed the coaches.
However, to everyone’s shock, surprise and everything in between, instead of moving towards Andrew, he stopped in front of Neil.
“Hey, Squirt, how was practice?” Neil asked, hugging the kid.
A sudden silence fell over the court, only stopped by the boom of the rackets falling to the ground.
The team looked between Andrew’s bored expression and Neil’s excited one. Luke was explaining how he was able of keeping the team from scoring, explaining the movements with jumps and dives that could belong in an action movie.
“What… What is going on?” Anna finally asked, her hand moving from Andrew to Neil and then back to Luke.
“Aren’t you Andrew’s kid?” Coach Thomas asked and Coach Richard looked like he was trying to solve a math problem.
“Yes…” Luke said, with a naughty smile on his face.
“But you called Neil dad…” Craig joined the conversation.
“Yes…” Luke repeated, clearly trying to keep himself from laughing.
“Wait!” Neil said, hands in the air. “They don’t know?”
“I don’t spend my time talking about my personal business…” Andrew said.
“Oh! Don’t tell me, Neil is dating Luke’s mother!” Theresa gushed and both Neil and Andrew looked at her with repulsion in their faces. “That’s why you hate each other!”
Luke couldn’t keep himself in check any longer and a loud laughter fell from his lips.
“Oh my god…” Neil said, rubbing his temples.
“They are even worse than Nicky…” Andrew scoffed.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Luke asked and to the still blank expressions of the team, he pulled Neil next to Andrew and made them grab hands. “Ta da!” Luke said, like in a magic trick, waving his hands around Andrew’s and Neil’s holding ones.
“Oh my god…” John said slowly and it was like a wave, the rest of the team’s expressions changing to ones of understanding.
“Wait! So you don’t hate each other! You are actually Luke’s parents and… oh my god! You’re a couple!” Theresa exclaimed, her hands over her heart, like she was watching a rom-com.
“No shit, Sherlock…” Andrew said and then pulling Neil behind him, moved towards the locker room. “Luke, explain, since you are so good at it after all your confusions…”
“Old man, I already told you! I didn’t blow up the chemistry lab the first time or the second!”
“What second?” Neil asked, freezing.
“Nothing, nothing… I will explain…”