Chapter 3: Patti

The upside of coaching the Ravens, a U-17 team instead of U-18 like the Strikers, was that most of the players were juniors, which meant that they would playing club soccer for two years before they graduated. That gave me more time to develop their skills. I started the first season with my head on straight and my moral compass pointing in the right direction. I managed to make it all the way through a busy and successful Fall season with no inappropriate thoughts. Well, OK, I had a few thoughts, but nothing came of them. One of the things that helped keep me out of trouble that season was that one of the mothers on the team was a nurse, and had volunteered to be the team trainer. I was relieved that she was there to keep things like my massaging Susan's calves, or patching Elena's thigh, from tempting me.

But all my good intentions and determination to maintain a strictly business-like attitude toward my players slowly eroded as the season wore on. For one thing, there were even more attractive girls on this team than had been on the Strikers. There was one girl in particular that I found more and more difficult to think of as just a soccer player. Patti Ellsworth was a cute sixteen-year-old who seemed to have been sent over from central casting to play the role of the dumb blonde on the Ravens. She looked younger than her age, and had a little-girl voice that seemed to emphasize her ditzy attitude. I usually don't go for that type, preferring sharp, intelligent women, but something about Patti's smile, dimples, and big blue eyes attracted me to her. Even when she was saying something stupid that made her sound like a vacuous beauty pageant contestant, I still enjoyed being around her.

On the field Patti took on a different personality. There was nothing goofy or girlish about how she played. She was one of our best forwards; fast, aggressive, and selfish. When she got the ball at her feet anywhere in the offensive third of the field, she usually tried to take on all defenders and try to score every time. Passing was not in her vocabulary. That began to cause some friction on the team, and it was part of my job to convince her of the benefits of being a team player. That's not as easy as it sounds, because I had to admit that goal-hungry, ball-hogging players are usually the ones who become stars, at least if their abilities match their attitude. And in Patti's case, I thought that was true. I felt like she could develop into a major college player if she learned to throttle down her aggressiveness just a little. I started spending a lot of time talking to her at the end of practices, trying to adjust her attitude. Eventually that led to me calling her at home occasionally just to make sure she was getting my message.

Gradually our conversations began to cover more than just soccer, and she started treating me as a friend and confidant. I wasn't entirely comfortable with that. I realized that to a degree I was falling into the same trap that I had with Susan. Regretfully, I started ignoring her calls, or at least trying to keep them on subject when I did answer. After a few days she appeared to get the message, and stopped calling. For awhile she acted like she was angry with me, deliberately defying my instructions and becoming even more self-centered on the field. She was treating me like a boyfriend who had dumped her, which I guess in her vacuous way of thinking might be true. Since we were nearing the end of the season, and had two big tournaments to prepare for, I didn't have time to deal with one pouting player, so I ignored her as best I could. I was glad to see the end of that season, because I knew that Patti and I would both benefit from a cooling-off period before our Spring season.

In Florida, high school soccer is a winter sport, coming between the Fall and Spring club soccer seasons. I had intended to stay away from soccer during that time, but I soon found myself checking line scores in the sports section each day to see how the Raven players were doing on their school teams. It brought a smile to my face when I saw their names showing up frequently as having scored goals or assists. Finally I decided to catch a few games, just to see how high school play compared to the intensely competitive club games the Ravens played.

I checked the schedules and found a game between two teams that involved eight of the Raven players, including Patti. So on a chilly Friday evening I found myself sitting in an almost empty high school stadium, watching with some pride as "my" players easily demonstrated that they were the class of both teams. A lot of the schools scheduled the boys and girls games on the same night, so the visiting teams could share a bus and hold down transportation costs. This was one of those nights. The girls played first, which meant that after their game, the girls on Patti's team had to wait around while the guys played. I didn't want to stick around that long, but I did stop and say hello to the Raven players and congratulate them on their efforts. As I was leaving, Patti grabbed my sleeve. "Can I catch a ride home with you? I really don't want to stick around for the guys' game." Patti's family lived about a mile from my apartment, and I had given her rides home from practice before. But this was a little different. I didn't think her high school coach would even let her leave separately from the rest of the team, especially with someone who wasn't a parent. But the coach knew who I was, and after a few moments of Patti's pleading, she agreed to let Patti go with me.

It was almost an hour drive back to our part of town. I decided to take advantage of our time together in my car to talk to her about some thing that had been on my mind I knew that she was going through some rough times at home. Her father had been out of work for over a year, and her mom was working two jobs to keep everything going. Her dad had started drinking, and ignoring Patti and her brother, which didn't help. I had experienced something very similar to that when I was younger, and I wanted to let her know that I sympathized with her situation. I turned the radio down and started my speech. "How are your parents doing?"

She was silent for a few seconds, then mumbled, "fine", which I knew, meant just the opposite.

"Has your dad found work yet?"

"No!" she snapped. "And why do you care anyway? Just leave me alone."

She curled up in a ball against the door, as far away from me as she could get. But I was determined to let her know that I really did care. "Patti, I kind of know how you feel. When I was twelve, my dad's business went bust, and we were bankrupt, overnight. Sheriff's deputies came in and took everything we had. My teenage years weren't very good after that, but I stuck it out, tried to help as much as I could, and now that's all just a bad memory. I managed to get a college education, I have a good job, and I'm even lucky enough to get to work with the Ravens."

I glanced over at her, and it seemed like she wasn't even listening. She was staring straight ahead, not saying anything. But I did detect a tear trickling down her cheek. I felt a little bad about that, but I had to finish. "I just wanted to let you know that if there is ever anything I can do to help, let me know. Even if you just need somebody to yell at, give me a call and you can vent. OK?"

She still didn't say anything, but she did nod her head. She reached over and turned the radio back up, a not so subtle way of telling me that the conversation was over. Oh well, I thought, I tried. I felt like I had failed to get through to her, and wrote off the exchange as a waste of time for me, and probably an annoyance for Patti.

But she had heard me, as I found out a few weeks later, when my phone rang at two a.m. on a Sunday morning. When I answered I heard her easily recognized little-girl voice. "Coach, this is Patti. I need your help."

Any time you are awakened by a call in the middle of the night, your mind automatically switches to disaster mode. I assumed something terrible had happened. "What's wrong?"

"I need you to come pick me up."

"Huh? What do you mean? Where are you?"

'I'm at a party at the college."

"The college" was a large state university in our town. It was certainly not a place where sixteen-year-old townies should be, especially at two a.m. on a Sunday morning. I remembered a few wild parties from my college days, and I knew that when guys saw a girl as cute and sexy as Patti at a keger, they wouldn't bother to check her id. "What are you doing there?" I must have sounded like a protective parent, and in a way that's how I felt. One of my "kids" was it trouble, and I was ready to help if I could.

"I told you, I'm at a party. Can't you hear?"

She must have held the phone away from her ear, because now I could hear the unmistakable sounds of a frat party in the background. "Look, things are a little wild here, and there are some guys who have been trying to get me to go upstairs with them. They're telling me that if I don't have sex with them, they won't let me leave."

"Patti, did you tell them how old you are?"

"Yeah, but they don't believe me. Please, coach, I'm a little scared. The girl I came with left, and I really want to get out of here."

"Why don't you call your parents?" I knew what a stupid question that was as soon as I asked.

"Are you nuts? They'd kill me just for being here. I'd rather walk home than call them."

The idea of Patti walking five miles in the middle of the night was even more frightening than what might happen to her at the party. I began to understand why she had called me. From the little contact I had had with her father, he seemed like a hair-trigger kind of guy, and all the stress he was under from being unemployed probably wasn't helping. I remembered my promise to help her if she needed it, and it seemed clear she needed it now. "OK, tell me where you are, and I'll be there as soon as I can."

I dressed quickly and went to get her. I didn't see where I had any choice. She ran out to my car as soon as I pulled up to the curb. "Thanks coach," she said as she slid into the seat next to me. "That was getting a little wild."

"What were you thinking, Patti? Didn't you know what you were getting in to?"

"My friend Jenny and I've done this before, and it's always been fun, you know, lots of music and dancing, and booze of course. But tonight it seemed like all the guys could talk about was sex, from the time we got here."

"OK, OK, it's not my job to tell you how stupid you were. It's almost three o'clock, so I'll just take you home."

"Please, don't do that," she looked at me, trying to melt my resolve with those big blue eyes. "You can't take me home."

Now I was getting mad. I felt like she was trying to take advantage of my kindness. "What do you expect me to do," I almost shouted. "You should have called your folks in the first place, and faced the music. I don't think I should help you hide from them any more. You're in deep shit, but you've got nobody to blame but yourself."

"Please, coach," she pleaded. "My dad will be so pissed. He'll probably beat the crap out of me, then ground me for six months or something insane. I know he'll pull me out of soccer. He almost did that a few months ago when he found out I was drinking. All I need is this one favor from you." Either Patti was really scared of what her father would do, or she was a good actor, because as she finished that little speech, large tears started rolling down her cheeks.

I knew she was trying to manipulate me with the "no more soccer" threat, but that one wasn't going to fly. Losing her would hurt the team, but on the Ravens, unlike the Strikers, there were no irreplaceable players. But I did feel a little sorry for her. She was a goofy teenager, with a face and body that were more mature than her brain, and she was obviously headed for trouble if she didn't get her act together. But when I had told her I would be there if she ever needed someone, I hadn't expected to end up in this kind of situation. I took a deep breath, letting my anger out as I exhaled. "OK, so just where am I supposed to take you? I'm guessing your parents think you're spending the night with your friend Jenny, right?"

She nodded as I handed her a tissue. She blew her nose and said, "Yeah, I'm supposed to be at Jenny's, but now I don't know where she is. She and some guy took off in her car."

"Can't you give her a call?"

"I tried, but she's not answering."

"OK, then what's plan B? Can't you sneak in if I take you home? I thought all teenagers had ways of doing that."

"That's not easy in our house. I only have a key for the front door, and my parents' bedroom is right there. They always wake up when I try to sneak in. If they catch me, they'll smell the beer on my breath, and want to know why I'm not at Jenny's, and then the hell will start."

"Then just what am I supposed to do with you?"

"Let me stay with you tonight." She must have realized how ridiculous that sounded, because she quickly added, "it's just for a few hours. I'll call Jenny in the morning, and she can take me home, and it'll be OK. I can crash on your sofa or something. You're not married, right?"

Blame it on the late hour, or the two beers I had before I went to bed, but for whatever reason, I actually thought that was a workable plan. When we got back to my apartment, I threw a blanket and an extra pillow on my sofa, and told Patti I would see her in the morning. I showed her where the bathroom was, closed the door to my bedroom, and collapsed back into bed. But there was no way I could go back to sleep. Too much had happened in the last hour, and I was having a hard time processing it all. I still wasn't at all sure I had done the right thing, but it seemed a little late to worry about it now.

After a half-hour or so of tossing and turning, I decided I needed another Sam Adams. I opened the bedroom door and headed for the kitchen as quietly as I could. To get there, I had to go by the sofa where Patti was sleeping. She was curled up in a ball with her face buried in the cushions. She had taken off her jeans and sweatshirt, but hadn't bothered to get under the quilt I had given her. I hesitated on my way to the fridge, taking a moment to let my gaze wander over the sleeping, half-nude girl. She was wearing a sports bra and a pair of very brief bikini panties. I already knew that her legs were marvelous, a fuller, more muscular version of Susan's enticing limbs. But this was the first time I had seen her ass this exposed before, and I paused to admire it. It was somewhere between Susan's lean, trim athletic butt and Elena's round and brown full moon. Patti's ass was blemish free, as all sixteen-year-old bottoms should be, no cellulite or pimples to be seen. It jutted out from the small of her back with just the right curvature and fullness to draw attention when she dressed to emphasize it, which was often. From the waist down, she was magnificent, and apparently she knew it. Away from the soccer field she always seemed to dress in ways designed to draw attention to those great legs and amazing ass. I had seen her in short skirts, tight jeans, and once when the team had gone out for dinner during a tournament weekend, a pair of Daisy Dukes that had every guy in the restaurant staring at her, even the gay waiters.

I thought about covering her with the quilt but feared that might wake her. I pictured her suddenly opening her eyes and seeing me standing over her, staring at her exposed body like some deranged voyeur. Instead, I decided to even forget about the beer and just go back to bed. I turned and headed back toward my bedroom, but I had forgotten that her clothes were on the floor. In the semidarkness I stepped on her belt buckle. It really hurt, and my involuntary response was to jump back. That caused me to bang into the coffee table, which knocked over a stack of magazines I had left there. The whole thing must have looked like a scene from a Three Stooges movie. Of course, my thrashing woke Patti up, the one thing I had wanted to prevent. She rolled over, saw me, blinked once as if she couldn't believe what she was seeing, and sat up. "What are you doing here?" she asked.

"Well, it is my apartment," I answered, realizing how dumb that sounded. Still looking for an excuse to explain why I had apparently been standing by the sofa watching her sleep, I blurted out, "I want to talk to you." If she thought it was suspicious for me to creep up to her in the wee hours of the morning to have a 'talk', she didn't let on. But then Patti wasn't the brightest bulb in the chandelier.

"Talk about what?" she asked as she at last reached for the quilt to cover herself.

"Your behavior, that's what. Look at you, you're sitting in my apartment in the middle of the night, half-naked, after having just been rescued from a possible gang rape. You've been drinking and God knows what else, and you're only sixteen. Hell, Patti, you should still be interested in boy bands and trips to the mall with your friends, not frat parties. Are you trying to get even with your parents, or do you just have a death wish?"

I hadn't intended to jump on her quite that hard, but in my panic to come up with an excuse for standing over her it had just come out. But my harsh tone must have gotten through. She wrapped herself back up in a ball and started sobbing. Okay, I should have expected that - one of the first things I had learned about coaching girls is that they are more sensitive to criticism. You can't yell at them like you can guys, without expecting an emotional response. But still, I wasn't used to bringing a young girl to tears, but it seemed like every time I tried to talk to Patti, that's what happened. I meant what I had said, and it was something she probably needed to hear, but as Patti sat crying on my sofa, I couldn't help feeling bad for her.

Up to that point I felt like I had been handling things pretty well. But then I made a big mistake. I sat down on the sofa and put my arm around her shoulders. Her head fell onto my chest, and I let her cry herself out. Eventually she quieted down and started breathing normally. I thought she had gone back to sleep, and that the crisis was over. I was trying to slide out from under her and go back to my bed when her arm, which had been lying across my chest, slid down onto my lap. It was only when her forearm landed there that I realized I had an erection. I looked down at her innocent face and admitted to myself that I had grown fond of her goofy sexiness. Having her in my arms was not something that I had tried very hard to prevent. I made one more attempt to do the right thing, but as I tried to move her arm away from my groin, she turned her wrist and grabbed my prick. She giggled slightly and I knew she hadn't been asleep at all, but I didn't care. She was still better off here on my couch than she would have been with a bunch of drunken frat rats, I rationalized.

"Coach," she whispered in that little girl voice of hers, "make love to me." I opened my mouth to protest, but as I did I felt both of her hands working in my lap. She unzipped my shorts and started to burrow around in my jockeys. When she found my cock she pulled it out roughly, scraping it against the zipper. "Please, I've really wanted to do this for a long time, but until tonight I didn't think you were interested in me ... that way."

At that moment I finally realized just how badly she had duped me. I had overlooked several obvious signs that she had been setting me up. When I picked her up, she hadn't been nearly as drunk as she had sounded when she called me, or that a young girl in trouble at a frat party should be. And the whole story about her friend just taking off with a guy and leaving her there suddenly seemed ridiculous. I should have been upset by her deception, but with her hands now wrapped around my staff, my lust far exceeded my anger.

My prior experiences with Susan and Elena had left my conscience in tatters, so I was spared even a fleeting moment of guilt about what was happening. Hell, if this was what she wanted, and she had gone to this much trouble to arrange it, then I was ready to fulfill her needs. Age wasn't even an issue with me anymore. Patti might have been sixteen, but from what I had observed over the last few months, she was a very mature sixteen. I had heard several rumors about her, from both players and parents, and the word was that she was already sexually active. I didn't know how many men and boys she had been with, and at that moment I really didn't care.

She bent down and put her mouth on my cock. It didn't take me long to realize that despite her wild reputation, she obviously didn't know a lot about giving head. Her approach to oral sex amounted to putting her lips over the head of my cock and sucking on it like she was trying to give my dick a hickey. After a few seconds, the coaching instinct in me took over, and decided to give her a few pointers. "Stop," I whispered.

She looked up at me, bewildered. It was likely that no guy had ever asked her to stop giving him head before. "What's wrong?"

"Look, you are very cute, and I'm sure all the guys in your high school think you are the hottest thing going, and would love to be in my position, but if you're going to be fooling around with older guys, you need to work on your technique." Yeah, it really hurt to think of myself as an "older guy".

"I'm not doing it right?"

"It was okay, but when a girl that looks as good as you do puts her mouth on a guys cock, it should be spectacular. But this," I gestured at my lap, "was kind of ... dull." For some reason, I felt like Simon Cowell tell some sweet young thing that she just doesn't have what it took to be a star.

"Can you teach me?"

I took her head in my hands and pulled her face toward me. "I would love to". I kissed her, gently at first, then more passionately as she responded. She was a lot better at kissing than giving head, but I had promised to help her, so I reluctantly pulled myself away from those sweet, pouty lips and got down to business. "First, you just kind of jumped on me, with no buildup or tease. Sex, oral or otherwise, has a lot to do with visuals."

"Huh?" She looked at me with one of her dumb blonde stares.

I simplified my approach. "I think you have a nice body, and you should let the man your are with see it and enjoy it. Guys like seeing girls naked." I really didn't know if I had needed to add that very obvious point, but with Patti I didn't want to take any chances.