Game Time

by Kate Christie

  Jamie’s phone had gone to sleep while she sat on her bed trying to figure out what to write. Finally she turned it back on and typed, “Arrived safely. Hope you’re having a good Christmas with your family. Take care, and I’ll talk to you in a few months. XO.” She paused, deleted the “XO” at the end, and then put it back in before hitting send.

  There. That was that. No more Clare. No more “we” or “us,” no more afternoon tea dates, no more holidays in Cornwall. They were officially done now, and there was no chance that Clare would change her mind or that Jamie would move back to London. Her sister had once said that a relationship didn’t end if it didn’t end badly—referring to her friendship with Emma, if she recalled correctly—but that wasn’t the case here. She and Clare had ended their relationship on more of a technicality, really, and yet there could be no doubt that their lives would be moving forward separately.

  Her friendship with Britt was slipping away too. She knew they would always be the kind of friends who could talk or visit and feel like they’d never been apart. After all, they’d known each other for more than a decade and had been teammates for all but one of those years. But there would be no more match day drinks at The Twelve Pins before making their way to UAE Stadium to watch Arsenal take on Chelsea or Liverpool or Man City. No more larks about London, no more double dates with their girlfriends, no more quiet afternoons hanging out at one flat or the other while Britt read whatever historical mystery series she was currently obsessed with and Jamie messed around in Illustrator. No more long bus rides to various corners of the UK, no more mystery meat pub suppers on the road, no more shared hotel rooms in four hundred year old buildings. Although perhaps that last bit was just as well, given Britt’s snoring issues.

  Tears threatened but she blinked them back again and rose from the bed. Time to go for that run. The fitness coach would be pleased. Thoughts of Lacey reminded her of training camp, which, inevitably, led to Emma again. She was in Minnesota with her family, a recent photo on Instagram had confirmed. As Jamie changed into work-out gear, she thought about texting her. She could use Christmas or the move as an excuse. But if she told her she was back earlier than expected—last Emma knew, Jamie wasn’t coming home until January camp—then she would have a lot of other things to explain, too. Better to maintain silence on all fronts. They would see each other in LA soon enough. Two weeks to the day, to be exact.

  Not that she was counting.

  Some things apparently never changed.

  A week later, Jamie was eating sushi with her parents at a restaurant on the San Francisco waterfront a few hours before New Year’s Eve fireworks were scheduled to light up the city. Meg and Todd had headed down to San Diego to ring in 2014 with his family, but Meg’s best friend from high school, Becky—or Becca, as she liked to be called now—had moved back to the Bay Area the previous year and was at the other end of the table with her wife and parents. Kyle, her younger brother, was normally around for the holidays too, but this year he was back east with his girlfriend’s family. The pair had met at Penn and now worked together on Wall Street, much to his sister’s disgust. Their parents, Michael and Ruth, still taught at Cal (political science and chemistry, respectively) and seemed stunned that their youngest child had grown up to become a financial analyst at a brokerage house.

  “He admitted he would vote Republican ‘if not for the social issues,’” Becca had said scathingly on their way into the city that evening. “And to think he used to accuse me of not being black enough. Chump.”

  As their server stopped by to top off their tea, Jamie glanced over and caught Becca and Rhea exchanging a smile. They were cute together, with their matching urban, almost punk hairstyles and hipster glasses. Becca had shocked the hell out of Jamie when she came out shortly before leaving for her freshman year at NYU, but Jamie had adjusted to the idea by now. She’d been invited to their wedding two summers ago, but she’d had a match. Out of all the events she’d had to miss over the years, she had always regretted missing Becca’s wedding in particular. Not only had she wanted to celebrate the marriage of one of her oldest friends on the planet, but she also knew it might have been her only chance to experience a swanky lesbian beach wedding in Provincetown. Rhea’s family was old money from Maryland, and had been happy to go all out for their only daughter.

  Becca caught her looking and picked up her phone, nodding at Jamie’s lying on the table.

  “R and I are plotting our escape,” the text read.

  “There is no escape. Fireworks with the folks, remember?”

  “Three hours until they start. Or we could go out afterward?”

  “No. I turn into a pumpkin at midnight.”

  Becca smirked as she typed, “Is pumpkin British slang for bottom?”

  “It’s a Cinderella reference!”

  “Whatever you say, Princess.”

  Jamie sent her a pig emoji and pointedly set her phone back on the table. Meg had recently accused her of going overboard on the emojis, but she couldn’t help how much she loved the new phone their parents had gotten her for Christmas. It was too much and she’d told them so. But at least they hadn’t tried to give her a car.

  Becca, however, wouldn’t take no—or an animal emoji—for an answer, which was how Jamie ended up a little while later outside the Lexington, the sole remaining lesbian bar in the city. Becca and Rhea preferred El Rio, but the NYE party there was already sold out. As they waited in line to get in, Jamie weighed all the reasons this little jaunt was a bad idea. She actually loved queer clubs, the only place in the world outside of Pride weekend where same-sex PDA ran rampant, and San Francisco had provided the backdrop for some particularly memorable escapades back in college. But she’d been younger then and not as worried about pinging US Soccer’s radar for the wrong reasons. Then there was the fact that Becca had said to her during the short BART ride from the Embarcadero, “The best way to get over someone is to get under someone else.”

  Or, like, not.

  As they showed their IDs and paid the cover, Jamie remembered the last time she’d been at the Lex. She and Clare had come to Berkeley for a holiday during a brief break the previous fall between Champions League tournament legs. They’d had so much fun that week, cut out of space and time, and had come into the city on the next to last night of their trip to “dance their booties off,” as Clare had put it. This was a month before Jamie broke her ankle, and they were still decidedly in the honeymoon stage. Jamie remembered dancing pressed as close as they could get, tipsy from mojitos and unable to keep their hands off one another. It seemed like forever ago now.

  Inside, she followed Becca to a cocktail table in the corner while Rhea braved the busy bar. Drinks were their treat, Becca had insisted on the ride over, which was good because Jamie hadn’t budgeted the night out and her savings had taken a major hit with the down payment for the three-year-old Kia hatchback that had recently become her first official car. She was always doing things late—first (consensual) sex at nineteen; first senior national team cap at twenty-four; and now, first car only weeks before her twenty-sixth birthday.

  Becca leaned in to be heard over the music and said, “What’s your type, anyway? Girly girls?”

  Jamie shrugged. “Pretty much. Although I like an edge, too.”

  Clare appeared ultra-feminine, but underneath the penchant for make-up and dresses was a take-charge teacher. That was why Jamie knew Clare would never call her up saying she’d made a mistake and wanted another chance. Even if she thought those things, which Jamie doubted, there was no way her pride would allow her to admit as much.

  Then there was Emma. During training or a match, she had a swagger that was completely different from the way she carried herself in the rest of life. Someone on Tumblr had once called her the butchest femme they’d ever seen, and Jamie thought the description was perfect.

  “Where did you just go?” Becca asked. “Or do I even need to ask, Blakewell?”

  “Shut it.”
>
  “Oh my god, I’m right, aren’t I? You were totally thinking about Emma Blakeley!”

  Jamie rolled her eyes, ignoring the comment. It was unfortunate that Becca had been around the year she and Emma were friends. When Emma came to visit for New Year’s, Jamie had brought her to the waterfront for the fireworks show—as Becca had reminded her when she, Meg, and Jamie went to dinner a couple of nights earlier.

  Before Becca could press further, Rhea materialized out of the crowd, juggling their drinks. They made room for her and stood around the table, sipping their cocktails and people-watching. Other than the bar, the most crowded area in the club was the dance floor where women of all shapes, ages, and sizes gyrated to the music. Currently the DJ was playing Flo Rida’s “Good Feeling.” As Jamie’s gaze wandered the room, she noticed a redhead leaning against a pillar at the edge of the dance floor, mixed drink in hand. She looked a little like Emma, with curves and muscles equally visible beneath her tank top and short skirt.

  “Nice,” Rhea said, following her gaze. “Do you need a wingman?”

  “No, I’m not looking.”

  “Why? You’re single, aren’t you? Why not have a little fun?”

  Jamie pondered the question. After Laurie, her college girlfriend, had left to join the Peace Corps, Jamie had thrown herself into soccer and hadn’t dated for a few months. Then, over the next year and a half, she went through a handful of relationships in short order. Each time she broke up with one girl, she immediately found another one to date. And every time without fail she somehow convinced herself that she was falling for the girl she was seeing, even though as soon as it ended she realized that she hadn’t been. Britt had accused her of serial monogamy. At least she’d been monogamous. That was more than could be said for some of their friends—like Angie’s college girlfriend, Shay. They found out later that Shay had been dating other women on the side nearly the entire time she was with Angie.

  At this point, Jamie knew herself well enough to recognize that she would rather be with someone than be alone. But maybe she should try the alone thing, or at least not date seriously, for a while, given how uncertain her immediate professional/geographic future was. Most of the people she’d dated in college had picked her rather than the other way around. Half the time she’d been so flattered by the interest that she’d simply gone along with it. At some level, despite the years of therapy, she still saw herself as damaged. She’d talked to other rape survivors and knew she wasn’t the only one who struggled sometimes with feeling worthy of genuine love.

  But she had survived, and Rhea was right: She was single. No reason she couldn’t enjoy herself for a few hours.

  As Wiz Khalifa and Snoop Dogg started rapping about getting drunk and smoking weed, Jamie finished her Tom Collins.

  “Yo, old married ladies,” she said, grinning sideways at the other two. “Let’s dance.”

  Becca set her glass down with a thump. “Come on, Rhea. Time for us old married ladies to show this skinny white girl how it’s done.”

  Jamie hummed along with the music as they approached the dance floor. In straight clubs, too often she felt out-of-place among the women in their tiny skirts and heavy make-up, not to mention the guys who eyed her short hair and tattoos suspiciously. When it came to hetero, meat-market kinds of places, she usually steered clear of crowded dance spaces where men who felt threatened by anyone remotely gender non-conforming might “accidentally” place a well-aimed elbow into her ribs or back. But at a place like the Lex, when she got elbowed by a man it was usually because he was tripping on E and showcasing his impressive dance skills a bit too enthusiastically. At the Lex, the women in tiny skirts and heavy make-up were all but guaranteed to be queer or trans or both.

  The DJ, a bald woman covered in tattoos, kept the music going fast and furious, and Jamie soon lost herself in spinning and bouncing between hot, sweaty bodies in the center of the dance floor. A few minutes in, the redhead and her friends joined the throngs not far from Jamie and hers. Another few minutes went by, and suddenly Jamie found a cloud of red hair in her face and a firm ass pressing against her. When her hands automatically fell onto the encroaching hips, the other woman glanced over her shoulder and smiled, her eyebrows rising in a clear question. Jamie hesitated. Dancing with complete strangers was so not her thing. If not for the alcohol coursing through her veins, she probably would have backed away already. But she was feeling good and loose, and it was New Year’s Eve. And as Rhea and Becca had pointed out, she was single. She took a breath and smiled back with a slight squeeze of the stranger’s hips.

  They danced like that for a while, the redhead’s back against Jamie’s chest, Becca and Rhea grinning at her and the crowd cheering each new beat. When she closed her eyes, Jamie ended up remembering the last time she had danced here, Clare gyrating against her, arms around Jamie’s neck, her own palms tugging Clare’s hips closer. Then her eyes opened and she remembered she wasn’t here with Clare. For a moment the muscles in the stranger’s shoulders reminded her of Emma again, and she let herself pretend it was Emma whose hips were swaying beneath her hands, Emma whose eyes and lips shone under the spinning lights. Then she pushed her once and possibly future teammate from her mind. Fantasizing about someone she couldn’t have was a terrible idea for too many reasons to count. And yet, it was better than mooning over Clare. At least, she thought it was.

  She danced until, even with her button down tied around her waist, she was hot and sweaty. Then she signaled the redhead that she needed a break.

  “Want company?” the other woman shouted into her ear.

  Jamie shook her head. “Sorry, I can’t. Happy New Year!”

  The redhead nodded, her eyes only slightly disappointed as she whirled back to her group of friends.

  Bottle of water in hand a little while later, Jamie leaned against a pillar surveying the room as she cooled down. New Year’s brought out all types, from pierced dykes in leather and hipster chicks like Becca and Rhea to sporty lesbians and sorority types. Becca had been right to drag her here. It was good to remember that while the woman she’d thought might be The One had gotten away, there were still plenty of other fish in the sea.

  The evening passed in a whirl of lights, hot bodies—in every sense of the word—and heavy beats. Jamie danced a few more rounds with Rhea and Becca, who even after five years together danced like they were honeymooners. It was sweet but a little hard to take given her own current flailing at life and love, so Jamie spent more time leaning against a pillar at the edge of the dance floor than dancing. At one point she thought she saw two sporty types watching her from a nearby table, but when she stared back, they quickly looked away. Had she imagined the look of recognition in their eyes?

  A few minutes later the pair approached. “Excuse me,” the taller one said, leaning in. “Are you a soccer player on the national team?”

  Holy crap. Someone had recognized her. “Not exactly. I’m in the pool, though.”

  The taller one nudged her companion. “Told you so.” Then she smiled and held out a hand. “Chris Bennett, and this is Beth, my girlfriend. I think I saw you play in college. Stanford, right? I played basketball at Cal, so we probably know some of the same people.”

  Turned out they did. It was hard to talk so close to the DJ booth, so when they invited her back to their table, Jamie agreed. The next half hour passed agreeably as they talked about life in Berkeley, women’s college sports, and soccer. Chris and Beth had been together since college and had been season ticket holders for FC Gold Pride, Jamie’s first professional club.

  “Sorry,” Jamie said. “I heard they didn’t give deposits back after they folded.”

  “It wasn't a big deal,” Chris assured her. “We were just bummed we didn’t get to see you guys play again. You ended up overseas, didn’t you? It was cool to see you back in the pool for Ireland last year.”

  “Although not so cool to see you go down again,” Beth added.

  “Tell me about it
.”

  They asked her about the national team schedule and what she thought her chances were at making the roster, and she played it safe and answered vaguely before changing the subject to Stanford’s perpetual dominance of PAC-12 basketball.

  When Becca and Rhea caught her eye from across the bar a little while later, Jamie flashed them a thumbs-up. Time to head to the waterfront to meet up with their parents.

  “I have to go, but it was great to meet you guys,” she said, meaning it.

  “Is there any way we could get a picture with you?” Chris asked. “That way we can say we knew you when.”

  She hesitated briefly, remembering how the Internet had exploded the last time she’d posed for a fan photo. But then she said, “Sure,” and stood between the two women as they snapped a couple of quick selfies.

  “But maybe, if you don’t mind, don’t mention the name of the club if you post it?” she asked as the couple checked the photos. “Obviously I’m not in the closet, but I also don’t want to give the federation any reason to look elsewhere.”

  “No worries,” Chris said, nodding. “I totally get it. Thanks for hanging out. It means a lot.”

  “Thank you,” Jamie said, hugging each woman in turn. “Tell Cara hello next time you see her.”

  “Better yet, we’ll tag her on Instagram.”

  “Sounds good. Happy New Year!” she said with a last wave.

  “Good luck with the team!”

  Their encouraging words still rattling around her head, Jamie followed Becca and Rhea out into the chilly San Francisco night. It was bizarre to think that she had fans, people other than her friends and family who were hoping to see her suit up in a national team jersey. Twice she had thought that dream crushed, and now all of a sudden it was back, almost within reaching distance. She wasn’t sure what she would do if she crashed and burned a third time.