The anxiety swirled and morphed inside her brain, distracting her on the soccer field where usually nothing did, until she started to wonder why she’d ever been called up in the first place. Maybe she didn’t belong here, she thought as she waited in line for her turn at a crossing drill. Maybe there was a reason other than injury that the federation had never offered her a contract, she worried as she half-listened to Mel coaching up her team in a small-sided scrimmage. Maybe she simply wasn’t good enough, she thought, chewing her cuticles as they paused for a water break. And always in the background as she worked on taking the ball out of the air cleanly, as she analyzed her mark’s body language, as she moved off the ball for one teammate or another, was the same question that had plagued her since the last camp: What if walking away from London—and Clare—was the wrong decision?
At the end of her least successful practice in recent memory, she threw her cleats in her bag and stalked from the field while the other players were still chatting and laughing in the warm afternoon sunshine. She had just passed the parking lot—she was way too worked up for a van—when she heard someone call, “Jamie?”
She knew that voice. She’d heard it at different times of the day and night, tear-filled and tipsy and happy and angry, scared and elated and sweet. She’d heard it in her dreams for years before finally getting over it. Before finally getting over her. Clenching her fist around the strap of her team duffel, she slowed and stopped.
“What?” she asked, eyes narrowed as Emma neared.
“Can I walk back to the hotel with you?”
The question was so far from what she was expecting that Jamie could only stare at her. What the fuck?
“Please?” Emma added, eyes lowering, fingers fiddling with the strap on her matching team bag.
Jamie was tempted to tell her where she could go, but that was about as unprofessional as one teammate could get with another. Although, was it really less professional than ordering mimosas and flirting? Or, for that matter, asking for someone’s number and then never calling them?
“Suit yourself.” She started off down the sidewalk, not waiting to see if Emma would follow.
They walked in silence for a few minutes, not a comfortable silence but a heavy one filled with the weight of things unsaid. Jamie waited for Emma to speak, but the other woman walked beside her, staring down at the sidewalk and clearing her throat softly every so often. Was she nervous? Jamie couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen Emma Blakeley unsure of herself.
When she couldn’t stand the silence anymore, she blurted the first thing that came to mind: “What’s up with Maddie and Angie?”
So far the two had been even flirtier than at December camp, and Jamie was seriously starting to wonder.
Emma’s head came up. “Didn’t Angie tell you?”
“Tell me wha—” Jamie cut herself off. “No way. Are you serious?”
Emma nodded. “They spent the weekend before camp at Maddie’s condo in Palm Springs.”
“You’ve got to be joking.”
“Nope. Believe it or not.” And then, as Jamie’s mind was still struggling to absorb that piece of news—although looking back, if she hadn’t been so caught up in her own drama she probably would have noticed—Emma added, her voice lower and huskier than usual, “I’m sorry.”
It was Jamie’s turn to glance quickly at her. “What?”
“I said I’m sorry.” Emma looked steadily back at her, forehead slightly creased.
“For what?”
“For being such a dick to you this week. You don’t deserve it.”
Jamie couldn’t stop the snort that erupted.
Emma’s forehead smoothed out. “What? You know I have been.”
“No argument here,” she allowed. “So why stop now?”
“You seem like you’re not having the best day, and I wanted to make sure it wasn’t because of…” She trailed off, gesturing awkwardly between them.
Jamie felt herself bristle. “Don’t flatter yourself. People can have bad days all on their own, you know.”
“Right.” Emma’s hand returned to worrying her bag strap. “Well, okay, then.”
They walked in silence again, as far from each other on the sidewalk as possible without Emma falling into the street. Jamie speeded up, tempted to hide out in her room for the rest of the day. But there was still team dinner to get through, followed by another meeting in the conference room. Or was it virtual reality training tonight?
The hotel was in sight when Emma grasped her arm, forcing her to stop. “Jamie, wait.”
She barely resisted the urge to rip her arm away. “What, Emma? I tried to apologize the first day but you didn’t seem interested. Do you feel sorry for me or something? Because I don’t need your pity.”
And there were the quills, flying out before she could stop them at the one person in LA she really didn’t want to hurt.
Emma’s brow furrowed again, but her voice came out gentle. “I don’t pity you. You’ve always been one of the strongest people I know.”
The admission made Jamie’s throat tighten, but she swallowed down the threat of tears. “So what then? Do you want me to say it’s fine if you don’t want to be friends? Is that it?”
Emma’s voice came out so quietly Jamie almost couldn’t hear her over the sound of traffic speeding past. “No. I was going to say that you were right before. I was upset about the break. You were the one who wanted us to exchange numbers, and then it was like you dropped off the face of the earth.”
Jamie squinted at Emma, unaccustomed to such straight-forwardness after dating a cagey Brit for so long. Her anger receded a little as she took in the way Emma was watching her, lips pursed, shoulders tense.
“That totally makes sense. Again, I’m sorry I didn’t get in touch. Things have been kind of—intense, I guess, the last few weeks.”
“Ellie mentioned you broke up with your girlfriend.”
Jamie rubbed her palm over the soft, shaved hairs at her nape. “Yeah.”
“Was it—did it have anything to do with the Tumblr thing?”
“No,” she said quickly. “We split up because of the distance. Her future’s there and mine is here, so…”
“Of course.” Emma paused. “I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”
“Thanks.” Jamie felt a little better now that they were talking, but she could still feel the noxious tension twisting under her skin. She nodded toward the hotel. “Want to keep going?”
“Sure,” Emma said, and started walking again. “I need to shower before dinner.”
Jamie fell into step beside her. “Best news I heard all day.” The response emerged from some back corner of her brain, sneaking out while she focused on keeping any remaining quills firmly in check.
Emma laughed, and for the first time all week, the smile she aimed at Jamie seemed genuine. “I can’t believe you remember that. My dad used to say that to me and my brother.”
For a moment, Jamie forgot about the anxiety creeping through her bloodstream. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“No, it’s okay. It’s kind of nice. I don’t have that many people anymore who were around before he died.” She glanced sideways at Jamie. “For the record, I would like us to be friends again. It’s just, I don’t know if I can handle the on again off again thing, not after what happened when we—well, before.”
So she’d been right. The less-than-neutral look in Emma’s eyes had been hurt. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that if we decide we’re going to do the friends thing, you can’t just back out again. Neither of us can.” Emma paused, the worried crease back again. “What do you think?”
She wasn’t supposed to make big decisions on days like this. She was supposed to hide out from humanity, not have important discussions with people, especially not people named Emma Blakeley. But it wasn’t like Emma was giving her a choice. She nodded slowly. “I think you’re right.”
“You do
?”
“Yeah. I’m in—if you are, I mean.”
Emma gave her a shy smile that almost made Jamie forget she’d woken up on the wrong side of the bed that morning. “I’m in.” She stopped walking and held out her hand.
After a moment, Jamie shook it gingerly, feeling her tension recede as she pressed her palm against Emma’s. A handful of memories came sweeping back, of sunlit bedrooms and glass-walled pavilions and train station platforms, but she pushed them away. Those memories were from a long time ago, when they were entirely different people. Or mostly different, anyway.
The rest of the short walk was quiet, but Jamie thought it was more a thoughtful type of silence than the earlier oppressive kind. At the hotel they took the stairs to the second floor where they parted ways, heading back to their rooms in opposite directions.
Before they got far, though, Jamie turned back and called, “Emma?”
“Yeah?”
She jogged back to face her, nearly overwhelmed by another sense of déjà vu. The night they’d met, Emma had called back to her and they’d met in the middle of the hotel corridor as their disapproving parents looked on. Now it was only the two of them—and half a dozen unseen but easily heard teammates lurking behind nearby closed doors.
“Thanks for coming after me today,” she said when they were a few paces apart. “You didn’t have to.”
“I know, but I wanted to.”
Jamie’s brow rose skeptically. “Really?”
“Well, no.” Emma gestured between them. “But I wanted this to be better. I like you, Jamie. I don’t want to have to pretend I don’t.”
“I like you too.” And then because even on a good day this conversation would feel like too much, she added, “Despite the fact you’re a manure—sorry, a Man U fan.”
“That’s United to you, Rook.”
“Whatever.” Jamie raised her hand. “See you, Blake?”
Emma slapped her palm. “Later, Max.”
As she headed off down the hallway again, Jamie tried to quiet the tingle that had moved from her hand, up across her shoulder, and down into her chest. It wasn’t hope. She couldn’t afford hope. She needed to be thinking about her attitude, work ethic, and effort, especially after such an awful training day.
Back in her room she threw herself onto her bed, grateful that Ellie was apparently occupied elsewhere. This way she could be on her own to process—or sulk, as the case may be. Before she could decide which, her phone vibrated, signaling a new text message. Her heart rate picked up, even though it could be any number of people texting her. But it wasn’t any number. It was Emma.
She stared at the notification, allowing herself to feel the flickering ball of warmth in her chest at the thought of Emma on her own bed a few doors down, thinking of her. Then she clicked.
“Hi,” blinked out at her.
She smiled and shook her head. “Hi.”
“Thought I’d try the friends thing.”
“Good idea.”
“I think we’re going to be fast friends,” Emma sent, followed immediately by a winking emoji.
Jamie laughed at the Pitch Perfect reference and then paused. Laughter on a quills kind of a day? Practically unheard of.
“Why do you always get to be Chloe?” she typed.
“Um, hello, alt girl…”
“I’m sunny! Well, usually.”
“One word: tattoos.”
Jamie thought about it. “Valid.” Then she typed, “Thanks for earlier,” and hit send quickly.
The response came back equally fast. “You’re welcome. Nerd.”
“Dork.”
The next message took a little longer: “Maddie says Netflix in our room tonight. If you’re up for it.”
“Cool.” Though she should probably see how dinner went before inflicting her company on anyone.
“Assuming you can play well with others,” Emma wrote. Then, “Lol!”
“Guess we’ll have to see,” Jamie replied, adding a wink emoji.
“Sounds good. See you at dinner?”
“I’ll be there.”
After a minute her phone screen dimmed, and Jamie leaned back on her bed. No great mystery as to why she should suddenly feel less like throwing metaphorical daggers at the world. Earlier, when they were walking, Emma had asked if her standoffishness could have triggered Jamie’s mood. And, despite her assurances to the contrary, maybe it had. Now that they had talked, now that they had voiced a mutual wish to be real friends again, the dark cloud that had followed her around all day was dissipating. She could still feel the emotional hangover her bouts of anxiety had a habit of leaving in their wake, but the feeling was growing fuzzier, easier to combat. If the light in Emma’s eyes when Jamie said she liked her too had something to do with driving away the darkness, who did that hurt?
No one, she decided as her body relaxed further, the jitters fading to a dull murmur under her skin. Absolutely no one.
Chapter Nine
Emma walked down the brightly lit corridor, headed for one of the many training rooms at Home Depot—no, Stub Hub Center. The sponsor had changed the previous year, and she still had to remind herself of the training center’s new name. Practice had ended a little while earlier, but she’d stuck around to work on penalty kicks. Now she was hoping it had been long enough that she wouldn’t have to wait in line for a spot in the tub reserved for ice baths. Her body ached in a way that always reminded her of preseason at UNC her first year, when she and Jamie had stopped talking and she and Tori had started dating and everything was new and her body had hurt, despite the pre-preseason workouts she’d diligently put in.
“Yo, Ems,” Maddie said as Emma entered the training room. She was already ensconced in the large pool in the usual ice bath uniform of compression shorts and sports bra.
“Yo, Mads.”
Maddie, who had been a junior when Emma started at UNC, had introduced her to the practice of soaking in a cold bath to boost recovery time. For that alone the midfielder had earned her undying love. It had helped that the Chicagoan had also revealed her own bisexuality early on that first fall and offered to help Emma navigate the perils of coming out at a university in the southeast, a region not generally known for its embrace of non-heterosexuals. Emma couldn’t remember hearing anyone use the term “homosexual” non-ironically before moving to North Carolina.
“Come on in,” Ellie said, glancing up from her phone. “It’s positively balmy.”
Just then a timer went off, and Phoebe climbed out of the tub, water dripping from her muscular physique. “All yours, Blake.”
“Thanks,” Emma returned, dropping her bag and stripping out of her practice jersey and training shorts.
She was about to step in when she heard a sound behind her—Jamie had paused inside the training room doorway and was now looking at her, eyes slightly wide. Or, rather, looking at her mostly bare back. Emma waved a little and slipped inch by inch into the water, hoping her own blush could be passed off as ice-bath-induced. Jesus, she’d forgotten how cold fifty-eight degrees actually felt. And yet the cold felt so good, too.
“What are you doing here?” Phoebe asked Jamie.
Jamie offered the keeper a slight smile. “Taking an ice bath.”
“Aren’t you a little young to need one?”
“Leave her alone, Phoebes,” Ellie said without looking up from her phone. “She’s older than she looks.”
Emma settled fully into the water, glad Ellie had shut the keeper down so that she didn’t have to. She preferred not to cross Phoebe unless completely necessary. The older woman didn’t take kindly to challenges from players who hadn’t been on the team as long as she had—which meant anyone other than Ellie, at this point.
As Jamie stripped down and approached the tub, Emma kept her eyes on the far wall. They had been doing the friends thing successfully for a couple of days now, sitting together at meals with friends and hanging out after dinner. She didn’t want to ruin the progress they
’d made by ogling Jamie’s admittedly lovely lats. Or, say, her tattoos.
“Do you want me to set a timer?” Jamie asked.
Oops. “Yeah, that would be great.”
“For how long?”
“I usually do six minutes.”
Jamie set the time and climbed in beside her. Unlike Emma, though, she didn’t lower herself a little bit at a time. Instead she submerged her body completely and then burst upward, gasping. “Fuck!”
“You said it.” Ellie smiled as her phone vibrated. “And that’s my cue. See ya, kids.”
“Mine too,” Maddie said as they both escaped the tub and reached for towels. After a quick rubdown, they stepped into soccer sandals and followed Phoebe toward the door, towels wrapped around their waists. At the last minute, Maddie turned back and snagged the van key from Emma’s bag.
“Hey! I’ll be done in like five minutes!”
“You could use the exercise,” Maddie said, winking as she ducked into the hall. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” Her laughter, accompanied by Ellie’s shushing and Phoebe’s questioning tone, floated back to them as Emma looked at Jamie and realized that they were alone. Half naked. In a tub of really, really cold water.
“Looks like we’re walking back,” Jamie commented.
“Looks that way.” Maddie and her transparent matchmaking—Emma had never met anyone as unsubtle in her life.
“How are you sitting there so calmly?” Jamie asked, swimming away from her into the middle of the pool.
Emma took advantage of her turned back to examine her tattoo. It was beautiful—dark and elegant, the bird’s wingtips arcing over her toned, perfectly symmetric shoulders. She had read somewhere that Jamie had designed it, and not for the first time she found herself admiring her talent. Art was something Emma admired but had next to no skills in herself.
Jamie glanced back, eyebrows lifted, and with a start Emma realized she was waiting for an answer.
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