FULL THROTTLE
Chapter Nine: The Night Before
The last shoot of Road to Regionals was supposed to be simple, ten minutes of reflection, both captains looking back on the season for the cameras, and Mia Reyes had absolutely no plan to end up sitting cross-legged on the Bayview turf at nine at night with Jordan Cole's hand wrapped around hers, both of them staring up at a scoreboard that hadn't lit up in hours, her heart doing something it had never once done during an actual soccer match.
That was in about two hours. First, there was the part where Ms. Alvarez made them cry on camera.
"Episode nine," Ms. Alvarez announced, setting up two folding chairs at midfield one final time, the same spot where this whole ridiculous, wonderful mess had started nine weeks earlier. "Corporate wants a season-in-review segment. Both of you, reflecting on the road here. Try to be honest. The honest stuff is what got four million views on episode seven."
"Define honest," Jordan said, settling into his chair.
"Whatever's true. That's the whole note."
The interview started easy enough, questions about training, about the group-stage draw, about the pressure of the final looming two days away, and then Ms. Alvarez asked the question that neither of them had quite braced for. "Nine weeks ago, you two could barely stand being in the same room. What changed?"
Mia looked at Jordan. Jordan looked at Mia. Neither of them answered right away, and for once, Ms. Alvarez didn't rush the silence, letting the camera hold on both their faces while they worked out, live, in real time, exactly how much of the truth they were willing to say out loud.
"He drove past a broken-down bus in a flood," Mia said finally, "and instead of just honking and driving on, he stopped. That's not nothing. That's the kind of thing that tells you who somebody actually is, underneath the highlight reel."
"She scored a goal on me and then applauded my own save on the very next play," Jordan said, "which nobody does, by the way, that's not a rivalry thing, that's a person who cares more about the game being good than about beating me specifically. I noticed that before I noticed anything else about her."
"What changed," Mia added, quieter now, "is I think we stopped performing the rivalry for the cameras and started actually becoming friends in between takes. And then it turned into something more than friends. I don't know exactly when. I just know it happened."
"Any regrets," Ms. Alvarez asked, softer now, "about how public all of this got? Nine episodes, millions of views, an entire fandom naming your relationship before either of you did."
Jordan considered that honestly, for once not reaching for the easy joke. "I used to think being funny about people was the safest way to be around them. Never say the real thing, just say the joke version, so if it goes wrong you can pretend you didn't mean it. This whole thing kind of forced me out of that habit, because the cameras were always rolling, so eventually the real thing was the only thing left to say. I don't regret that. I think I needed it."
"I used to think winning was the only thing that could prove I was worth something," Mia said. "That if I just worked hard enough, ran enough extra sprints, scored enough goals, it would matter more than anything anyone said about me. This season taught me that the people who actually see you, on your worst day and your best one, matter just as much as any scoreboard. Maybe more." She glanced at Jordan. "I didn't expect to learn that from my rival's documentary crew, but here we are."
"For the record," Ms. Alvarez said, wiping suspiciously at one eye, "I did not expect to cry filming a youth soccer sponsorship series, and yet, here we also are."
The words hung in the cool evening air, more honest than either of them had planned to be with four cameras rolling, and Ms. Alvarez, for once, looked less like a producer chasing content and more like someone watching something real happen in front of her.
"That's the segment," she said quietly, waving off her crew. "Give me twenty minutes, then I want ten more of you two just talking, no questions from me. Natural stuff. I think the season deserves an ending that isn't scripted."
*
The crew packed up their equipment and cleared out, headlights sweeping across the empty parking lot one final time, until it was just the two of them left on the field, the scoreboard dark above them, the stadium lights slowly dimming on their automatic timer until only the moon and a few security floods lit the pitch.
"Nine weeks," Jordan said, sitting down on the turf instead of standing, and Mia sat down next to him without needing to be asked. "I still remember thinking you were the single most stubborn person I'd ever met, back at that first shoot."
"I still am the single most stubborn person you've ever met."
"Fair. I've just also learned it's one of my favorite things about you." He reached over, slowly, giving her every chance to pull away, and took her hand, lacing his fingers through hers the way he'd wanted to since that very first accidental touch over a microphone. Her hand was warm in his, and neither of them said anything for a moment, just sat there under the dimming lights, letting nine weeks of built-up feeling finally have somewhere to land.
"Can I tell you something I never put in any of the episodes," Jordan said after a while.
"Always."
"The night the bus broke down, I almost didn't stop. I saw the flood, saw your team stranded, and for about two seconds I thought, that's not my problem, Derek's waiting, just keep driving. And then I saw you standing under that awning looking annoyed at the entire sky, and I turned the car around before I'd even finished the thought. I don't know what that means, exactly. I just know it was the first time all season I did something without stopping to think about how it would look on camera or what Derek would say or any of it. I just wanted to help you."
"I'm glad you turned the car around."
"Me too. Turns out it was the best decision I made all year, and it didn't even involve a soccer ball."
Mia leaned her head against his shoulder, watching the last of the stadium lights flicker through their dimming cycle. "Can I tell you something too? That night, in your car, I almost didn't tell you about my mom. About the scholarship, all of it. I've never told anyone outside Priya and my mom herself. I don't know why I told you, except that it felt safer to say it to you in a stalled car in a flood than it would have felt to say it to anyone else in broad daylight."
"I'm glad you told me."
"Me too." Mia lifted her head from his shoulder just enough to look at him properly, the moon doing most of the work the stadium lights had given up on. "I think that's the thing nobody tells you about rivals. Sometimes the person who pushes you hardest is also the one who ends up seeing you clearest."
Mia felt her face go warm, grateful for the dark. "You're doing the thing again."
"What thing."
"The thing where you say something that makes it very hard for me to keep pretending I'm not completely gone for you."
"Good," Jordan said, quiet and certain. "I'm done pretending too. Have been since the parking lot, if we're being honest, same as the interview."
"Regionals is in two days."
"I know."
"Whatever happens on that field, win or lose, I don't want it to be about us. I want us to be true no matter what the scoreboard says." She squeezed his hand, the words costing her something to say out loud, the way real things always did. "I've spent my whole life making sure nothing distracted me from winning. I don't want you to be a distraction. I want you to be the thing I get to have on top of it."
"You're not a distraction," Jordan said. "You're the best thing that's happened to me all season, and I include an unbeaten group stage in that comparison, so that's saying something."
She laughed, the sound carrying out over the empty field, and he watched her laugh with an expression she'd never once seen from him on camera, something unguarded and completely without a punchline attached. When she looked back at him, he was closer than she'd realized, close enough that the space between them had shrunk to almost nothing without either of them consciously deciding to move.
"Jordan."
"Yeah."
"I think this is the part where something happens."
"I think you might be right." His free hand came up, gentle, brushing a strand of hair back from her face, and for a moment neither of them moved, both of them simply looking at each other, nine weeks of rivalry and banter and stolen parking lot conversations narrowing down to one quiet, suspended second under a dark scoreboard.
Then he leaned in, and she met him halfway, and the kiss that followed was soft and brief and utterly unhurried, the kind of first kiss that felt less like a fireworks finale and more like a door quietly opening onto something neither of them had words for yet. When they pulled back, both of them were smiling in the helpless, slightly dazed way of people who had just done something they'd been circling for two months.
"Okay," Mia said, a little breathless, cheeks warm, heart still going faster than it had during any sprint she'd ever run. "That happened."
"That happened," Jordan agreed, grinning at her like she'd just handed him the Regional Cup a full two days early. "For the record, worth every single week of the wait, every awkward take, and at least one deceased school bus."
Ms. Alvarez's voice carried across the field a moment later, calling that the crew was ready for the final ten minutes of footage, and Mia and Jordan scrambled up from the turf, laughing, straightening themselves out, neither of them quite able to wipe the smile off their faces for the cameras, not that either of them tried very hard.
Priya texted the second Mia was back in cell range, as if she'd somehow sensed something across town without being told a single detail. Well?? You've been radio silent for two hours, that's either very bad or very good and I need to know which immediately.
Mia looked over at Jordan, who was gathering up the last of the cables for the crew, humming something under his breath, grinning at nothing in particular the way people do when they think no one's watching. Very good, she typed back. I'll tell you everything tomorrow. Tonight I just want to keep it mine for a minute.
Priya's reply came back almost instantly. Took you long enough, Reyes. Proud of you.
Two days until the final. Whatever happened on that scoreboard, Mia thought, walking back toward the lights hand in hand with the boy she'd spent eleven months publicly despising, she was already certain of one thing the whole season had been building toward, long before either of them had been brave enough to say it out loud.