He and I were spitting images of each other. Same five-foot-eleven, 135-pound build, same wavy brown hair. When his dark green eyes—my dark green eyes—stared at me, uncomfortably cool, it felt like having the future version of you travel back in time and tell you how disappointed they are with how their life turned out.

“I have to study.”

“You have to get a scholarship.”

The open textbook sat between us like a shield.

“You had all detention yesterday for homework,” he said. “Put your shoes on.”

Instead of good cop/bad cop, my parents liked to play mad cop/disappointed cop. Much less straightforward. Much more effective to get an admission of guilt.

“Fine.” Hitting the floor with a thud, I rummaged through the duffel hanging on the bedpost and grabbed a pair of mud-caked cleats, their stench diffusing around my small room. The AP book lay forgotten with my unfolded laundry. “What are we doing?” I asked.

“What you missed at practice. One-on-one shooting and hill sprints for time.”

Fantastic.

All the time, people ask if it’s hard to have my dad as the high school soccer coach. Most people know him as their eighth-grade English teacher, but they didn’t know he’d rather injure his other knee before coaching the middle school soccer team—boys’ or girls’.

All the time, my answer changes. Sometimes it’s good, because it makes me work a little harder. It brings an extra thing to prove.

Sometimes it’s hard, for exactly the same reasons.

My dad sped through North Cassidy at the helm of a whale-sized minivan that shouldn’t have been physically able to speed. Like most things in this world, it obeyed his every command. Despite having just one child, he’d wanted a minivan to transport me, my friends, and all our sports equipment to our travel games. He’d bought it when I was born, long before I could have even showed an interest in playing sports.

The brakes hissed a sigh of relief as he glided towards parking at the intercourse and a long, looming hill that overlooked the track and football fields inside it. It was my fault that my dad discovered this as a good workout hill; during a snow day in elementary school Austin and I had gone sledding on it, and I’d complained about having to run back up to the top.

I still complained, ten years later.

“All right,” I muttered, “let’s get this over with.”

“Stop right there,” said my dad. “Want to edit that statement?”

My fists tightened, the grass catching my cleats as they dug into the dirt.

“Going through the motions—” he started.

“—is a waste of everyone’s time, I know,” I finished.

Like your wife making you roast chicken, he liked to say, it gets the job done, but at the end of the day, it’s not really what you want. If you want her to make roast beef, you’ve got to work harder.

“Let’s go, Nicky.” He clapped. “Three, two, one . . .” Tweeet, went his whistle, “This hill is yours.”