Settling the Score (The Summer Games #1) - R.S. Grey Page 0,107

The energy spreading through us was enough to make me feel as if Kinsley had accidentally given me a tablet of ecstasy instead of an Excedrin that morning. I was hopping back and forth on my legs, keeping my body warm.

“Hands in!” Coach Decker shouted.

We stacked hands on hands until all of us were woven together in a tight circle. Our hearts were beating in time, our bodies were humming together, excited and nervous. Our eyes locked and our heads nodded. We got this.

KINSLEY AND I took off for the field, jogging in tandem. “You good, Foster?”

“Other than the fact that I’m about to throw up?” I laughed. “I’m great.”

She shook her head. “Do you hear that?”

I held my ear up to the stadium and listened.

“That’s the sound of eighty thousand people who seriously don’t want to see your breakfast.”

I shoved her shoulder and took off for the goal.

“Keep that net clean!” Kinsley shouted after me.

“Get theirs dirty!”

I stepped past the goal line and inhaled a deep breath. This was it. This was my space. For twenty years I’d worked to earn a spot standing inside that net and as I turned toward the crowd and listened to them shouting my name, I knew that win or lose, I’d done it.

I was an Olympian.

“USA! USA! USA!”

The entire crowd inside the bar was shouting the three-letter chant, holding their beers overhead and sloshing them around. There was a mix of athletes and fans congratulating us. Japan had knocked Brazil out earlier in the tournament, so Rio residents were more than happy to join in our celebration. Kinsley stood on top of the bar, leading the crowd through the chant another few times before she cut her hand through the air to silence everyone.

“Gather round! Gather round!” she said, swirling her hand so that everyone pushed closer to the bar. She was on her way to being plastered, but it didn’t matter. We were world champions.

“You all saw it! The game was neck and neck,” Kinsley said, jumping into her tenth dramatic retelling of the game. No one stopped her though. It was like gathering around a campfire the way she dropped her voice and built up the suspense. “The score was zero-zero. Japan turned up the heat, pounding and pounding away—”

“Stop making it sexual!” Becca yelled beside me. “Get to the good part!”

The crowd laughed as Kinsley continued, “Okay so after my goal—off of Becca’s team-leading fifth assist of the Olympic games—we were up one-nil! But that only made them angrier after the half.”

Becca wrapped her arm around my shoulder and pulled me into the crook of her neck. She stank—god, we all did. We hadn’t stopped celebrating since the end of the game, but no one seemed to care.

“They came storming back, first with the header, which Andie tipped off the crossbar, and then with the penalty kick, which Andie blocked as well. But Japan wasn’t going down without a fight. After Kawasumi tackled the shit out of me,” Kinsley said, holding up her bloody and bruised knee to prove it. “And breezed right past Michelle—”

“Hey!”

“—nothing stood between her and our own little Andie in the net.”

“I KNEW ANDIE HAD HER!” Michelle shouted, tossing her beer into the air so that most of it spilled out onto the crowd around her.

I laughed and shook my head, trying my best to hide against Becca’s shoulder.

“But did Andie panic? Did she charge out at her like we were all shouting at her to do? No! She stood poised, daring her to take the shot!”

Becca jostled me around. “And it worked! She got a little too confident, drove a little too deep, then what happened Kins?”

“Andie pounced and blocked that ball like it was the easiest thing she’d ever done!”

I could feel my cheeks burning red with all the attention. I wasn’t nearly drunk enough to have an entire bar full of people focused on me.

“Kawasumi was no match for our Andie!”

“TO ANDIE!” Nina shouted, and the bar echoed back. “ANDIE!”

Kinsley was embellishing the story a little bit. I hadn’t blocked the shot that easily. I’d blindly dove, praying it’d be enough to stop it. And it had. But we hadn’t won the game because of me. Our offense was the reason we had two scores on the board by the time the whistles blew.

“Andie! Andie! Andie!”

Oh Jesus. No matter how much I tried to quell the chanting, the crowd just grew louder. I assumed it couldn’t possibly get any worse, until I