by Katie Heaney
“Quinn!” she called. She reached me and extended her hand. I shook it firmly, the way my dad had taught me when I was six, and then, finally, I remembered: Lisa. One of the assistant coaches at UCLA. Not my primary recruit contact, another assistant coach named Wendy, but I’d met her at the camp they’d invited me to last spring.
“Hi, Lisa,” I said. “Wow. I was not expecting you. I’m sorry the weather is so bad,” I added, for some reason.
Lisa waved me off. “Not at all,” she said. We both blinked back drizzle, and she laughed. “I mean. It is bad. But I don’t mind.”
But what are you doing here? I thought. I worried I’d said it out loud, because she continued, “Wendy wanted to be here, actually, but something came up, so she sent me.”
“Ah,” I said. “That’s okay.” I couldn’t breathe.
“We wanted to let you know you’re off the wait list.” Lisa grinned. “We would love for you to play for us.”
Much to my surprise, and Lisa’s, I found myself suddenly crying. Everything I’d been feeling for months, all my doubting and dreaming and disappointment and pride, all the games I’d won and lost, the nights I went home sore and skinned and bruised, the teammates I’d watched grow up and leave and the ones who were still here, who’d been with me all along, the ones I couldn’t imagine being without—all of it rushed to the surface and streamed down my face.
Lisa, looking concerned, gave me a kind pat on the shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” I managed to say. “I’m really happy.” Unexpectedly, I meant it. And it wasn’t just relief that I’d gotten in somewhere (though that was part of it). Maybe UCLA wasn’t my first choice, and I wasn’t theirs, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t be great for each other. Maybe I was wrong about what it was I wanted, I thought. The possibility flickered through me, a series of unending question marks. It didn’t scare me like I thought it would. It felt like being forgiven.
“Good,” she said. “No need to apologize. This is a really stressful time for all of you. I hope this helps.”
I nodded, struggling to hold back more tears. “It does. Thank you.”
“Okay,” said Lisa, giving me another gentle smile. “I’m off. But we’ll have a formal offer to you shortly.”
Not seconds after Lisa left, I felt Ronni’s firm grip on my shoulders. Much of the rest of my team loitered behind her, trying and failing to look otherwise occupied.
“Was that…?”
I nodded. Ronni screamed. She picked me up, and the team I loved rushed to fill every inch of space around me.
I called my dad from the floor of my bedroom, where I wedged myself between my closet’s two open doors. This was where I conducted my hardest phone calls: my coming out to Ronni; my first real fight with Jamie; all the times the love of my middle school life, Cara, called to cry about her boyfriend. With my back pressed to one door and my feet against the other, I felt solid and supported. I took a deep breath and counted each ring, hoping he wouldn’t answer, hoping he would.
“Quinnie, hey!”
I exhaled. “Hey, Dad.”
“I’ve been meaning to call you.”
“Oh yeah?” What stopped you? I thought.
“Yeah, so listen. Good news.”
I closed my eyes. Shit. “Wait—”
“I’m staying put. The job out there…I’m not gonna take it,” he said. “I like it here. I’m used to it. And I want to be here for you.”
He sounded so proud and so excited. He’d done the right thing and he wanted me to be grateful. I was, but not for the right reason. I didn’t want him here, I realized. I felt guilty just thinking it.
“Dad,” I started again. “UNC turned me down.”
Silence. I ground hard against the closet door, watching my toes turn white with pressure.
“What did they say?”
“Not much.”
“I’m gonna give them a call—”
“Dad, no,” I said. “It’s done. I don’t want to go.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, incredulous. “You’ve wanted this for ten years.”
For a long time, I thought, I did. But when I’d started wanting it, I was a little kid, and then I kept wanting it because I’d wanted it for so long already, and soon it became part of my story. I believed it completely, and maybe that meant it was true. What was the difference between wanting something and wanting to want it? Of course I’d hoped they would want me. If they had, I’d have gone happily. But they didn’t, and it felt okay. I felt happy where I was, and where I was going. It was exciting, and scary, to realize I wanted something I hadn’t expected to want.
But I didn’t say any of this. That was a conversation I could have with my mom, but not my dad.
“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
I paused, waiting for him to tell me there was no need to apologize. He didn’t.
“UCLA is making me an offer, and I’m going to take it,” I continued.
“What about Baylor?”
Anger radiated through me. “I was never going to go to Baylor,” I said evenly. “Ever.”
“I understand,” said my dad, softer now. “I just want you to be happy.”
This was half wish, half warning, the implication—I don’t know if you can be happy if you stay in California, if you aren’t on the very best team, if you don’t become the person I hoped you would—just barely below the surface. I ignored this half. I wanted to get on with my day.
“I am happy, Dad,” I said. “But I’ve gotta go, okay?”
“Okay,” he said. “Come visit me sometime?”
This was his line, meant only as much as he’d be pleased to see me if somehow I showed up without any work or disruption involved. For once, I was okay with that, and I recited my line, meaning it just as much.
“I will,” I said. “I promise.”
* * *
—
Every year on Black Friday, my mom insisted we go shopping at “the nice mall,” which was fancy, and outdoors, and had rich-people stores like Prada and Rolex. It was a tradition that arose when I was a kid: my mom dragged me along on her search for deep, deep discounts, and as a form of repayment for my boredom, finished the trip in See’s Candies, where I was allowed to fill a four-piece box however I wanted.
As soon as I saw the first billboard for the mall I started salivating, craving raspberry truffle and Scotchmallows. Still, I decided then and there that I wouldn’t ask my mom to buy me See’s, or bring it up unless she did, and I felt proud of myself for my maturity.
“So when do you think UCLA’s gonna send their offer?” my mom asked. I watched as she changed the radio channel once, and then again, and then a few more times, before finally turning it off with a dismissive wave of her hand.
“I can set up music streaming for you,” I said for the eighty-seventh time. “It’s not hard.”
“I like being surprised,” she said.
“They have radio, too,” I reminded her. “Like, based on music you actually like.”
My mom shrugged. She didn’t say what I knew she was thinking, which was Yeah, but I like to complain. “I asked you a question,” she said.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Hopefully soon.”
She glanced over at me. “How are you feeling about it?”
I knew she meant not just UCLA, but all of it—UNC, the dashing of my childhood dreams, having been wait-listed, et cetera.
“Good, surprisingly,” I said. “Better than I thought I would.”
“Have you thought more about what you might want to study?” My mom asked this question so gently I immediately stopped feeling annoyed and instead wanted to hug her. I’d been such a brat about school for so long, as if it were rude for a mother to suggest her kid might want to learn something in college. I’d taken
it for granted that soccer would be my thing, and that whatever I studied hardly mattered so long as I maintained the 3.0 GPA necessary to stay on the team. The point was not the degree. The point was to be noticed by the national team. My face flushed with shame and panic as I realized, right then and there, that I might not make the national team. I turned to the window, leaned my forehead against the window’s cool glass. I stared at myself in the side mirror and was comforted a little by how good I looked there. Why don’t I ever look like that straight on?
“Quinn,” my mom said.
“I’m thinking.”
“I’m not saying I don’t think you’ll play professionally,” said my mom, apparently reading my mind. “But I think it’s worth exploring some other interests.”
“I don’t have any interests,” I said.
My mom laughed. “That’s not true.”
“I don’t know how I’m supposed to pick the right thing to get me the right job for the rest of my life when I haven’t even had a job before,” I said. Embarrassingly, my eyes welled with tears, sprung out of nowhere.
“You’re not. Nobody gets a job in their major. You know that, right?”
I sniffed. I did not know that. “Everybody is acting like they will,” I said. “Alexis is doing international business so she can be a fashion buyer for Saks Fifth Avenue.” It was easy for me to remember this because she had been reminding us once a month for the last three years.
My mom snorted. “Good luck to her with that.”
“Mom!”
“Sorry,” she said. “I’m just saying, nobody knows what they’re doing. You just pick something you like. It’s great if it’s something practical. I would prefer you don’t pick, like, ceramic arts. But if it turns out you’re really good at it, great!”
“I doubt it.”
“You’re going to have lots of jobs in your life. Even if soccer is the first one, it won’t be the last.”
“Yeah, but if it is the first one, I can make enough money off sponsorships to be rich forever,” I said.
“Maybe that’s true for the men’s league, but…”
“Good point,” I said. We both took a moment to shake our heads at systemic sexism. By then we were pulling into the mall parking lot, and we were silent while my mom circled the lanes about a dozen times until she found the perfect spot. There was something else I wanted to say, and I knew that if I let her get out of the car, I wouldn’t say it. Outside, in the open air, I would feel like a traitor for speaking critically about my dad, but here in her car, my mom had cracked something open in me, and the wall of protection I kept around him fell away.
“Dad really made me feel like shit the other day,” I said.
My mom froze, unbuckled seat belt still in hand.
“I mean, it wasn’t that bad,” I added reflexively.
My mom let the seat belt go and sat back. “About UNC?”
“Yeah,” I said. “How’d you know?”
She gave me a look that said: I was married to the guy, wasn’t I?
“Yeah, okay,” I said. “Anyway. He pretty clearly thinks it’s over for me. He even threatened to call them.”
“Okay, well, that’s not going to happen,” said my mom. “I’ll make sure of that.”
I gave her a sideways glance. She looked so righteously pissed off it was hard not to smile.
“He probably wouldn’t anyway,” I said. “He always says he’s going to start petitions for things and he never does that, either.”
“He means well,” my mom said. Whether she meant it or felt she had to say it because divorced parents weren’t supposed to try to get their kids to take sides, I wasn’t sure. Either way, it annoyed me. What I wanted more than anything was for a side to be taken: mine.
“Well, it didn’t feel that way,” I said. “He couldn’t have cared less about UCLA, even though they’ve been very nice to me. All he heard was ‘I didn’t get an offer from UNC, so I’m not moving out there, because I am just a big, gay disappointment.’ ”
“Hey,” my mom said, grabbing my wrist. “You are not a disappointment. Especially not for being gay.”
“I know you don’t think so,” I muttered. Here come the freaking tears again, I thought. I looked down and tried to blink them back.
“Neither does your dad,” she said. “He’s just…He wanted you close by, is all. He missed you. But he made it so much about school for so long that he forgot how to express that to you in a way that doesn’t make you feel bad.”
I considered this for a moment.
“That’s a generous interpretation,” I said.
“I know,” she said, which made me laugh. For a few minutes we were silent, watching other mall-goers cross in front of our parking spot, listening to their muffled chatter.
“Parents are just people, Quinn,” my mom said. “And people fuck up. A lot.”
I smirked. “What about you?”
“Me? I’m perfect,” she said. She opened the car door and stepped out. “Let’s go get some chocolate.”
* * *
—
A few days later, I sat alone at a table at La Posta, cradling a small box of See’s in my hand like a baby bird. Five minutes after my mom bought me my own, I decided I should also buy one for Ruby, seeing as our two-month anniversary was coming up. Not that either of us had called it that, or chosen a day. But I did the math, and today was two months to the day after she first kissed me. On the cheek, but still. It was the moment I knew for sure that there was something between us, and I wanted us to celebrate it. Our texting had been erratic lately, and though I knew she’d been busy with family, and I’d been preoccupied with soccer and the Save Triple Moon campaign, I still worried something was wrong. So I’d suggested a dinner date, at “our” spot, and picked up a long-stemmed rose to go with my chocolates. I offered to drive, but Ruby was granted permission to use her car, so we agreed to meet at seven, by which time I was starving. I arrived ten minutes early and ordered a horchata, and it was gone by the time Ruby walked in at 7:02. I watched her scan the restaurant for me. She found me, and smiled, and then her eyes dropped to the rose sitting on the table in front of me. I knew right then that I’d made a mistake. I dropped my hands below the table, hiding the chocolate in my lap.
“Shit,” she said when she reached the table, still wincing at the rose. “What did I forget?”
“Oh, nothing,” I said, laughing. “It’s our ‘two-month anniversary,’ ” I explained via air quotes, and Ruby relaxed. “This is just from Ralphs,” I said, gesturing at the cellophane-enclosed rose, which now looked sad-tacky instead of cute-cheesy, the way it had looked to me in the store. Maybe it was the lighting.
“Well, thank you,” said Ruby. “Happy ‘anniversary.’ ” She leaned across the table to kiss me, perhaps out of pity, I thought. But then, no. The kiss was warm and reassuring, and just long enough to make the family two tables over stare.
“What do you want? I’ll order. You can hold down the table,” I said, slipping the candy box into my jean-jacket pocket.
“Let me get it this time,” said Ruby. She quickly stood up, and my cheeks burned a little. I liked seeing myself as the gentleman, the one who took care of things. Jamie had put considerable effort toward coaching me out of it, but with Ruby I’d resumed the habit. She’d never stopped me, or tried to pay, until now.
She’s just being egalitarian, I told myself. That’s a good thing. You’re a feminist. Plus, she has more money than you. By a lot.
“Okay,” I said shakily. “I’ll have the number four. Thank you.”
“You got it,” she said, grinning. I watched her cross back into the entryway and place our order, grateful her back was facing me so I could take a series of very deep breaths and mess with my hair in my front-facing camera. It’s fine, I told myself. It’s fine it’s fi
ne it’s fine. It was weird for a second, but you made it into a joke, and now everything is fine.
Ruby carried our tray of food back to the table, and when she set it in front of me I searched her face for clues. She mostly looked hungry.
“I’ve thought about this burrito once a day since the last time,” said Ruby. She took a big bite and chewed contemplatively.
“Is it still as good?” I asked.
“Almost,” she said.
My shoulders slumped. “Just almost?”
“For me, that’s really good,” she said. “I usually hate going back to places I loved because it’s never as good as I remember.”
“Restaurants or, like, all places?”
“I meant restaurants, but I guess it’s other stuff too,” she said before taking another big bite. “Like, I think it’s weird when families go on the same Hawaii vacation every year. Or Disneyland.” Ruby made a face, and I flushed, picturing the refrigerator at home, covered with photos of my mom, my aunt, my uncle, and my cousins and me at Disneyland, when they were young teenagers and I was the eight- and nine- and ten-year old kid trying desperately to match their pace and hear everything they said.
“I don’t know,” I said slowly. “I think it’s comforting. I know it’s for kids, but I still like Disneyland. I know where everything is and which rides to do when so the lines are shorter.”
Ruby smiled. “That was just an example.”
“I think I’ve watched The Two Towers at least fifty times,” I said.
“Really?”
“Five times a year for the last ten years? Yeah. Easily.”
“Isn’t that movie, like, eight hours long?”
“The extended version is four,” I said. “You have to watch the extended version. The theatrical leaves a lot of important things out.”