The Road to Canada

by Kate Christie

  THE ROAD TO CANADA

  Book Four of Girls of Summer

  by Kate Christie

  Copyright 2019 by Kate Christie. Second Growth Books, Seattle, WA.

  All rights reserved. This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be resold or given away to other people. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual organizations, persons (living or dead), events, or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Dedication

  To the ’15ers: Thanks for inspiring a nation of women and girls to reach for our dreams—and to fight for equality, both on and off the pitch.

  Acknowledgments

  Once again, many thanks to the able Margaret Burris, copy editor extraordinaire. Any errors contained in the following pages are mine, likely the result of last-minute changes I know I shouldn’t make but can’t seem to stop myself from doing—just one more tiny edit…

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Jamie tried to blink away the sweat dripping into her eyes. She would have used her hands, but they were currently occupied.

  “That’s it,” Emma said, her voice urgent. “Don’t stop, Jamie!”

  Breathing hard, Jamie closed her eyes and narrowed her focus. She wasn’t about to stop now, not with Emma urging her on. Besides, the burn in her muscles was only lactic acid.

  Above her, Emma’s voice rose in pitch. “Come on, Jamie. That’s it. Yes!”

  Jamie strained, concentrating her energy on one task. She could do this. Just a little more…

  Another voice broke in. “Gross, you guys. Keep your sex talk to yourselves!”

  Jamie’s eyes flew open, and she glared at Angie as fiercely as she could muster while lying on her back. “Dude. Fuck off.”

  Angie smirked. “That’s what she said.”

  A white towel snapped and caught Angie in the ass, and Jamie grimaced in a grin of sorts as her friend squealed in pain.

  “I can’t believe you did that,” Angie said, scowling over her shoulder.

  “You know you love it,” Maddie replied.

  “Ew,” Emma said, shaking her head. “And I did not need to hear that.”

  “Serves you right,” Jamie grunted at Angie. She glanced up at Emma. “How many is that?”

  “Nine,” Emma told her, hands extended, ready to catch the bar if Jamie needed assistance.

  “Three more,” Jamie said, gritting her teeth as she prepared to lift the bar again.

  “You can do it,” Emma coached. “You got it.”

  Around them, their teammates worked individually and in pairs, moving through the machines and other stations as prescribed by the national team’s fitness staff. Lacey Rodriguez and her assailan—assistants were pacing the weight room on the lookout for cheating reps and improper form, their sharp eyes missing nothing. Except, Jamie hoped, Angie’s wildly inappropriate comments. At least her January camp roommate had waited until no one else but their girlfriends were around to crack one of her many tasteless jokes.

  Two weeks into the twenty-day residency camp, Jamie felt like she’d spent more time in the gym and on the track than on the soccer field. She now understood why the veterans on the team referred to January camp as “Death Camp.” During the opening meeting the first night, Lacey had joked that they were all going to hate her when they saw what she had in store for them, but Jamie hadn’t realized just how intense the off-field workouts would be.

  Still, none of them would be here if they didn’t enjoy pushing their bodies to the point of almost breaking. Lacey sent out regular training updates throughout the year with sample training plans and information on the program’s semi-annual fitness testing, so it was your own fault if you came into camp unfit. Jamie had been around the youth and senior national teams long enough to know that you would be sent packing if you allowed your sprint times or endurance to drop off during downtime away from the team.

  Maybe that was why the coaching staff had taken the team to Brazil in December: so that no one would be tempted to take an extended break from their fitness routine. Like any of them would. It was a World Cup year, for eff’s sake, and they had something to prove. The international rankings had come out in December after they lost to Brazil, and for the first time since 2007, the US had dropped to second place in the world behind Germany. That meant they would almost certainly have to do better than the German side in Canada to regain the top slot.

  At the same meeting where Lacey had apologized in advance for the fitness torture she was about to inflict, an unusually serious Jo Nichols had stood at the front of the conference room, flanked by her unsmiling assistants as she gazed around the room. “There are twenty-nine of you here,” she had said, briefly making eye contact with each player, “but only twenty-three can make the World Cup roster. That means we need to see the absolute best you can give us, athletes. That means each of you needs to elevate your game. That means you need to come to every single training session prepared to give your best. You control your own destiny. We can give you the tools to succeed, but ultimately you’re the one who decides what you do with those tools.”

  Now, as Jamie struggled to lift the bar, stacked with more weight than she was accustomed to lifting, she could feel the seductive lure of negativity. Six people would be cut between now and the spring when the official roster was announced, and the only roster she’d managed to make in the past year was for Brazil. She’d made the cut then, but they’d taken twenty-four players to South America. Twenty-four—one more than the World Cup roster allowed.

  What if she was the last player cut before Canada? How would she ever face her friends and family—and Emma—again?

  “You can do it,” Emma said, smiling down at her. “One more, Jamie. You got it.”

  Jamie took a deep breath and closed her eyes again, focusing her energy on her hands, arms, shoulders, and abs. Teeth clenched, she pushed up, muscles burning, arms trembling.

  “You got it,” Angie added, followed by Maddie’s encouraging, “Get it, Max!”

  And—there! She’d done it.

  Emma reached out and helped her guide the bar back onto the rack. “I knew you could do it.”

  “That makes one of us,” Jamie joked, sitting up on the bench and wiping the sweat from her face at last.

  She sat for a moment, catching her breath and reminding herself to take the journey one step at a time, one day at a time. Less than a year ago she had been cut from the program, and now here she was with a credible shot at making the World Cup roster. THE WORLD CUP ROSTER. If that didn’t show what was possible, she wasn’t sure what did.

  “My turn,” Emma said, stretching her arms over her head. Her shirt rose with the movement, revealing a tanned swath of muscled midsection.

  “Totally.” Jamie bit her lip as she rose from the bench. Team time. Professionalism. Totally.

  #

  The afternoon session later that day took place outdoors at the National Training Center’s practice fields and centered on one of Jamie’s favorite parts of the game: set pieces. It could have been ninety minutes of one v. one defensive drills and sprint training and she still would have been happy to be in the warm Southern California sunshine i
nstead of the smelly, fluorescent-lit interior of the weight room. Fitness training, as far as she as concerned, was a necessary evil of the game. Lofting perfectly weighted corner kicks into the box for her teammates to run onto, on the other hand, was a definite perk of the job.

  Practice was almost over when Jo called her over to discuss her ball placement on free kicks.

  “When we’re within our offensive third, I’d like you to look for Ellie,” Jo said, turning Jamie with a hand on her shoulder and gesturing toward the goal where Ellie, Jenny, and a handful of other offensive players were taking shots on Phoebe and Avery. Trish and Britt, the third and fourth string keepers respectively, were at the other end of the field working with the keeper coaches.

  Or, at least, they had been.

  “Just Ellie?” Jamie asked, frowning a little. “Because I thought you said—” She stopped as Britt popped out from behind her and, before Jamie could react, pushed a whipped cream pie into her face.

  “Happy birthday, James!” Britt crowed, laughing.

  What the fuck? Jamie shoved blindly at her friend with one hand while wiping away—was that Cool Whip?—whipped cream with the other. “Jackass,” she choked out, but she was laughing, too, because with this team, the ambush could have been much, much worse. Although, now that she thought of it, was Cool Whip even on the approved team diet? Probably she’d better steer clear of Lacey and Bianca, the team’s nutritionist.

  “And with that,” Jo said, her tone amused, “I think practice is over. Happy birthday, Maxwell.”

  “Thanks, Coach,” Jamie said, still wiping whipped cream from her cheeks and eyebrows.

  “Hey,” Angie said, slinging an arm around her waist, “are you ready for some dancing? Because I think Ellie said something about mandatory team bonding tonight…”

  If she were being honest, mandatory team bonding was not how Jamie would have chosen to spend the evening. When the coaches had mentioned at lunch that the team would have the following day off, she and Emma had exchanged a hopeful look. Maybe they would actually be able to celebrate her birthday on their own. But then Phoebe and Ellie had squashed that plan with their whole captains’ shtick, and now Jamie and Emma would be celebrating with the entire team en masse.

  Which might not be a bad thing, really. Jamie vividly remembered her last January camp, right before Craig cut her from the program. Going out with the team hadn’t stopped her and Emma from holding hands under the table at the club Ellie and Phoebe had chosen for their team outing. She doubted it would stop them from making ou—ahem, from hanging out tonight, either. But first, she needed a shower to wash off the cream pie.

  And yeah, that wasn’t a line she had ever expected to think.

  #

  A few hours later, Jamie glanced toward the dance floor, wondering if she should cut in between Emma and Jenny, who were laughing it up after a round of shots. Nah. She was just being selfish. Emma and Jenny were clearly having fun, and it wasn’t like Jamie and Emma hadn’t spent time together that night. Just like on previous occasions, the team had eaten dinner at a large eatery with a back room that could accommodate thirty people. This time, though, Jamie had sat at the same table as Emma and Ellie. No more Ellie making creepy spying gestures between Jamie and Maddie, no more guzzling wine with newbies. She was now routinely hanging out with veteran stars even though she had fewer than a handful of caps to her own name and, as Jo had pointed out on New Year’s Day, was squarely on the bubble for the World Cup.

  After dinner, they’d driven the team vans to the same dance club they’d patronized previously, where confirmed party girl Jenny Latham had insisted on a round of birthday shots. Jamie had declined, but Emma hadn’t. Afterward, those who wanted to dance had gone straight to the dance floor while those who didn’t—Ellie, Gabe, and Jamie, to name a few—ordered nachos, fries, and other food that was most definitely not on the approved team diet list. One night wouldn’t hurt, would it?

  Unexpectedly, Jamie missed the previous year’s birthday celebration. She and Emma had sat pressed up against each other in one of the semi-circle booths, holding hands and flashing secret smiles at each other while a very pregnant Tina Baker had chatted with Ellie, Steph, and Phoebe. They weren’t officially together yet, but Emma couldn’t seem to stay away from her. Tonight, though, she was having no problem keeping her distance. She’d sat across from Jamie at dinner, and now she was out on the dance floor, sandwiched between Jenny and Maddie, apparently content to share an occasional look while maintaining the separation US Soccer demanded.

  “Yo, Max,” Gabe said, flicking her in the bicep.

  “Ow. What the hell, man?”

  Gabe rolled her eyes at Ellie as if to say, Can you believe this idiot?

  “Why don’t you just go dance already?” Ellie asked.

  “Fine.” Jamie grabbed the last of the nachos from the platter and jammed them in her mouth, leaving the booth to a chorus of boos.

  She planned to join Emma and her group of friends, but then Britt and Angie waved her over, and Lisa and Rebecca were there too, and anyway, Jamie and Emma weren’t exactly an old married couple. They could dance with other people, couldn’t they?

  Only, she thought a few minutes later as she moved to the beat and tried to avoid Britt’s elbows, this wasn’t really where she wanted to be right now. She had hoped she and Emma might find some time to themselves tonight, especially since it was their first time spending either person’s birthday in the same city since they’d become a couple. They’d been on different continents in October for Emma’s big day—a freezing, closet-encumbered occasion Jamie preferred not to dwell on—and though they’d talked to each other on their birthdays back in high school, they had never been in each other’s physical presence. Until now.

  She caught Emma’s eye once again, and once again her girlfriend smiled at her before turning her attention back to Jenny. As Jamie watched Jenny take Emma’s hands and spin her around laughingly, she tried to push down a wave of envy. Stupid US Soccer and their stupid professionalism clauses. At least they’d gotten a chance to celebrate that morning. Emma had taken her out to breakfast, where she’d presented Jamie with a gift certificate for tickets to Pitch Perfect 2, due to open in May. They’d spent most of the day together, and yet thanks to team rules, Emma seemed more like just another friend than her long-term girlfriend. And yes, Jamie knew she was behaving a bit like an entitled douche, but she had been trained since early childhood to think of this day as the one twenty-four-hour period each year when she got to embrace her own inner selfishness.

  The team stayed out until close to curfew, and Emma remained tantalizingly out of reach. She didn’t even sit next to Jamie in the van on the way back to the hotel. Jamie spent the ride squished between Angie and Britt, lamenting the fact that she was sober, more exhausted than she’d been in what felt like years, and the arms around her shoulders belonged to her best friends instead of her girlfriend. And yet, she reminded herself, she was at training camp with the national team and so was Emma. Wasn’t that birthday present enough?

  Gabe, Emma’s camp roommate, flashed them a knowing smile when the group reached Jamie and Angie’s room first. Angie and Maddie slapped hands—they were planning to go out for breakfast the following morning, Jamie knew—and then Angie tugged Emma toward the room with a breezy, “Come on, Blake. I’ve got that medicated rub you wanted.”

  Jamie saw Ellie’s brow lift, and yes, the phrase did sound indecent, but it wasn’t like teammates didn’t routinely share their pain-relief secrets, she thought as she followed Angie and Emma into the room, closing the door securely behind them.

  “Tick, tock, mothafuckas,” Angie said as she slipped into the bathroom, her phone in hand. “Don’t say I didn’t give you a present this year, Jamieson.” The door shut and the bathroom fan went on, and seriously? Was Angie scrolling through Instagram or was she actually…?

  Never mind. Jamie didn’t want to know.

  Emma grabbed her hand and t
ugged her to the bed by the window. “Was this your idea?” she asked as she pulled Jamie down onto the comforter cover.

  “No,” she admitted. “I thought it might be yours.” She held herself still as Emma leaned in to kiss her neck, blinking up at the ceiling.

  After a moment, Emma paused and levered herself up on her elbow. “Are you too tired for this?”

  “Probably.” But it wasn’t that. She could tell Emma the truth, couldn’t she? “It’s just, you seemed really distant tonight. Like, all night.”

  “Oh.” Emma pulled back even more. “Well, we sort of have to be, don’t we?”

  Jamie gazed up at her. “We could have at least danced near each other. I mean, Jenny was legitimately dry-humping you for half the night, Emma.”

  Her girlfriend’s head tilted. “Are you jealous of Jenny?”

  “No,” Jamie said, and then let out a frustrated breath. “The word is envious. She got to touch you and I didn’t.”

  “She’s not touching me now,” Emma pointed out. Her hand slid across Jamie’s collared shirt and rested on her belt as she leaned in and whispered, “Besides, I would much rather you touch me, Jamie. You know that.”

  Jamie’s breath hitched at the light pressure on her belt buckle. Why was she pouting when she wouldn’t have Emma in her bed much longer? That was the challenge of team time: to make the most of their brief alone time. Besides, it wasn’t Emma’s fault they couldn’t show PDA around the team, not even on their birthdays.

  She turned her head so that their lips brushed lightly. “I would much rather that, too.”

  “Good,” Emma murmured against her mouth. Then she maneuvered on top of Jamie and slipped one leg between hers. “Guess we better make this fast, hmm?”

  An in-person quickie was so much better than skexing from a thin-walled closet in a dank North London basement apartment, Jamie thought a short time later when Emma flopped down next to her again, breathing hard. So. Much. Better.

  “Happy birthday,” Emma whispered, kissing the corner of her mouth.

  “Happy—I mean, thanks,” Jamie whispered back, smiling besottedly.