“One more go,” I confirmed. “I’m going to make it harder this time!”
“Okay. I can do it!” Leo kicked the ball back to me.
I stopped it with my foot and waited until he was ready and in position, then kicked it with a view of getting the top right corner of the goal. He moved like a little lightning bolt, stretching his arm out as far as he possibly could, and his fingertips brushed the ball.
It wasn’t enough, and the ball hit the back of the net.
“Oh, snickerdoodle!” Leo kicked the ground, tossing up a clump of dirt.
“Hey, hey!” I slowly approached him, bending down on one knee in front of him. He was looking at the ground with his gloved hands hanging listlessly beside him, and I could almost feel the despair rolling off him. “Hey, buddy,” I said softly. “Don’t be sad, okay? It happens. You did amazing to get your fingers on that ball. That’s better than most kids your age would do.”
He sniffed and looked up at me. His cheeks were flushed, and his little eyes shone with one too many tears for my liking. “But I really wanted to get that one.”
“I know you did, and you almost did. It just means you’ll have to work a little harder next time to get it, doesn’t it?”
“I guess. I just want to save them all.”
“Ah, but that would be boring. How would anyone ever win a football game? We’d have endless penalty shootouts, and as an England fan, I can tell you that penalty shootouts are so painful to watch.”
“Why?”
“Because we usually lose them,” I admitted with a dry laugh. “So I definitely don’t want to watch an infinite round of pens.”
He rubbed his nose and laughed a little bit. “It would suck if the other team saved all our goals.”
“Exactly. As long as you do your best, that’s all that matters. You can’t win everything, but if you lose and you know that you tried your hardest, then it just means they were a little better on the day.” I tapped his nose, then opened my arms and drew him in for a hug. “Shall we go inside now? I can smell that lasagna your mum cooked.”
He nodded against my shoulder. “I’m hungry.”
“I bet you are. That was a lot of hard work you just put in there.” I got up and rested my hand on his shoulder, guiding him back towards the house.
“Do you think she made garlic bread?”
I made a big show of sniffing the air. “Smells like it.”
“Yummy.”
“Everything okay?” London asked, peering over her shoulder as she tossed a salad.
“Yep!” Leo undid his gloves and pulled them off. “Did you make garlic bread, Momma?”
“Would I dare serve you lasagna without it?” She winked at him, and he giggled. “Go and wash your hands, please. And your face. You look like you got in a fight with a mud monster.”
“I did!” Leo grinned, his earlier upset apparently now gone, and ran off out of the room.
London shook her head. “He’s crazy. Missing that last one really upset him, huh?”
“You were watching?” I raised my eyebrows. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Of course I was. There’s water in the fridge if you wanted to put some in the jug for the table.”
Water. I could do that. It was about all I could do, but still. “He’s improving, even just tonight. I’m glad I did this.”
London set plates out on the table. “He looks a bit more confident. That last one was hard, though.”
“It was, but there will always be some that get past him. I have to admit that I’m surprised he got his fingers on it.” I put the jug full of ice water on a mat in the middle of the dining table. “He’ll be fine, though.”
“Looks like you talked him through it.” She smiled at me and reached for the oven gloves.
“I’ll get that.” I darted around and took them from her. “Where do you want this dish?”
“Are you sure?”
“London.”
“On the board in the middle of the table,” she acquiesced, reaching for the bowl of garlic bread instead.
I placed the dish down right as Leo came running back in at one hundred miles an hour.
“Leo. What have I told you about running in the house?” London scolded him.
“Don’t do it,” he muttered in response.
“Exactly.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay. Please sit down at the table.”
“Can I sit next to Ollie?”
“You can sit wherever you’d like,” she replied, putting the bowl of salad down. “And you will be eating salad before you start filling up on garlic bread.”
“Aww, Momma.”
I grinned. “My mum used to say the same thing to me when we had a roast dinner every Sunday. I’d eat all the potatoes first, so I wasn’t allowed to have any on my plate until I’d eaten at least half my vegetables.”
Leo’s eyes widened. “Is that true?”
I drew a cross over my heart. “One hundred percent.”
London glanced over at me and dipped her head to hide a smile.
Little did she know I was, in fact, telling the truth.
“Oh. Do I have to eat the tomatoes?” Leo peered into the wooden salad bowl. “I don’t like them.”
“I got cherry ones this time. I’d like you to try one, please,” London said with the practiced tone of a woman who’d had this conversation one thousand times before.
“They’re yucky.”
“So are video games, and I assume you’d like to play Mario after dinner, hm?”
Leo’s face fell as he realized what she was saying. He reached into the bowl and plucked a small cherry tomato out between his finger and thumb, peering at it as if it was going to leap up and bite him.
I leaned over and plucked one out of the bowl myself, then bit into it. “Mm, that’s good.”
He frowned at me before he looked back to the tomato and did the same. He wrinkled his face up before he raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Oh, it’s yummy.”
“There we go, then,” London said, slicing into her food. “So yes, you have to eat tomatoes.”
Leo quite happily spooned salad onto his plate after that.
London caught my eye. “Thank you,” she mouthed.
I grinned and reached for another tomato, then popped it into my mouth.
***
“Thank you,” London said, joining me on the back porch. She passed me a cup of steaming tea with a smile. “You didn’t have to do any of that tonight.”
I took the cup gratefully. My thumbs were killing from playing Mario with Leo for half an hour without a break—I hadn’t gamed in years, but I’d enjoyed it so much I was considering buying myself something to play on. “Do what? Help convince a kid to eat tomatoes?”
“The soccer practice. The tomatoes. The Mario.” She shook her head and sat on the sofa next to me. “I know you said you didn’t, but I’m sure you have much better things to do than amuse my kid all evening.”
I put my tea on the table in front of us and looked out at the back garden. There were at least six footballs in various stages of inflation scattered across the grass, plus a basketball and freestanding hoop with a torn net.