The Road to Canada

by Kate Christie

  “So how does it feel?” Emma asked as they walked, the careful space between them feeling particularly conspicuous after their alone time together in Seattle.

  “Which part?” Jamie asked, smiling at her from behind aviator sunglasses. She was dressed in the blue Nike team sweats that matched her eyes and a white US Soccer snapback, and she looked so strong and gorgeous that Emma experienced a not-uncommon jolt of elation at the realization that this amazing woman was her girlfriend. “The jet lag part or the luxury hotel part?”

  “Are you trying to say that my apartment isn’t the height of luxury?” Emma huffed, swinging her hip into Jamie’s. But gently—wouldn’t do to make her splatter tea all over her team sweats, nor would Emma dream of spilling her own coffee even if they hadn’t just flown halfway across the planet. Supposedly you acclimated to a new time zone an average of one hour per day, which meant she and Jamie should be used to Portugal’s time by the third and final group match. Great. Just what you needed when you were fighting for a starting spot. The only good thing was that the other players were in the same boat—except for those who, like Taylor O’Brien, hailed from the East Coast, three full hours closer to Western Europe.

  “Whatever. You know your apartment is amazing,” Jamie said.

  “Amazing enough that you might want to, I don’t know, share it with me?” Emma asked, keeping her voice teasing. That way if this went sideways, she could pretend she had been joking. Because that was obviously the mature, adult way to handle asking your girlfriend to move in with you.

  “What do you mean?”

  Damned aviator sunglasses—Emma couldn’t tell what Jamie was thinking from the tone of her voice alone. “In the off-season,” she explained. “We don’t get all that much time together, and I hate losing even a single day with you. Besides, you already spend most of your downtime in Seattle.”

  “I don’t know,” Jamie hedged, chewing her lip as they walked, the sun rising at their backs. “It hasn’t quite been a year, Emma. Don’t you think it’s a little too soon?”

  “I don’t, but apparently you do,” she said, trying to keep her voice light.

  “Emma…”

  “No, it’s fine.” She gestured with her coffee cup in a way that even she could see demonstrated an absolute lack of fineness. She softened her voice. “It’s just hard to be apart, you know?”

  Jamie nodded and reached for her free hand, squeezing it gently. She didn’t let go, either, just held on as they walked, a fact that went a long way to making Emma feel less like an idiot for bringing up their living situation.

  “Can we say that we’ll spend as much time together as we can without calling it moving in together?” Jamie asked. “Because I’ve never actually lived on my own, and if I do get a contract from the federation next month—”

  “You totally will,” Emma assured her.

  “—then I think I’d like to get an apartment in Portland, maybe one that’s walking distance to the stadium. It’s not that I don’t want to keep moving forward with you, because I do. I’ve just never had my own space before.”

  “That makes sense,” Emma said. And it did. She’d known all along that they were at different places in their lives and careers. Jamie was just starting her national team journey, whereas lately Emma had felt like hers might be winding down—whether or not she was prepared for it to do so. She tried to think of a subject change, settling eventually on an old favorite. “Anyway, are you ready to see your boys go down?”

  Jamie glanced at her sideways, but Emma stared at the path ahead of them, willing her girlfriend silently to accept the face-saving pivot. Manchester United and Arsenal were due to meet in the sixth round of the FA Cup the following week on the same day the US was scheduled to play Iceland in their third and final group match. Emma wasn’t sure yet how they would manage to see the game, but this wasn’t something they could wait to watch on DVR back in Seattle. For one thing, someone was bound to tell them the score, seeing as they were currently in Europe, football capital of the world. For another, Emma had no intention of bypassing the opportunity to rub Arsenal’s inevitable loss in Jamie’s face.

  “Dream on,” Jamie said after a moment, elbowing her lightly. “As if ya boys even have a chance.”

  “Um, your boys are the ones who only won two out of their first eight matches, not mine.”

  “That was like five months ago. We’re ahead of you in the tables, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  “By one point!”

  “Yeah, well, you lost to Swansea City. Swansea City!” Jamie repeated, laughing.

  And yes, United’s performance the previous weekend had been unfortunate. “Whatever. One point, Maxwell.”

  They walked on, holding hands and sipping their caffeinated beverages, and Emma felt surprisingly content despite the fact Jamie had shot down her invitation to move in together. She’d been willing to wait before without even a friendship between them. A Jamie who loved her and wanted a future with her but still wanted a chance to succeed on her own? That, Emma could definitely wait for.

  Playing time on the national team, on the other hand, not so much.

  She didn’t start against Norway, which was fine. Totally fine. The smile stretching across her face as she cheered for her teammates against a typically ultra-physical Norwegian side did not resemble a grimace in any way because she was TOTALLY FINE. When Norway took a 1-0 lead late in the first half on another error by newbie defender Lindsay Martens, it was all Emma could do not to glare at the coaching staff. Jo might like offensive prowess in her outside backs, but the decision to put Martens, a lifelong striker, in at left back against a quality opponent like Norway so soon after her abysmal performance against France risked damaging Martens’s confidence irrevocably. Not only that, but this squad wouldn’t rebound easily from a repeat of the previous year’s disastrous finish at the Algarve.

  The first half went from bad to worse when, in injury time, Steph went up for a header at midfield, crashed into a Norwegian player, and landed awkwardly. The ref blew the whistle for the foul, and the Norwegian immediately started to argue. Emma could see her point. There hadn’t been that much contact. But Steph didn’t get up as Emma expected her to do. Instead, she rolled onto her back and lay flat, her knees bent as she stared up at the sky. Maddie knelt beside her and leaned in close, one hand on Steph’s. But only for a moment—whatever Steph said made her immediately rock back on her heels and gesture urgently toward the bench.

  Crap. That did not look good.

  Jo apparently agreed because as the team’s trainers jogged onto the pitch, she barked, “Max! Warm up.”

  Jamie jumped up from her position at the other end of the bench and started warming up, her movements practiced and sure. If she was nervous, it didn’t show. Probably she was just excited to play.

  Emma knew that feeling. She missed that feeling.

  Silence descended over the mostly empty stadium while the trainers examined Steph. After a short discussion, they helped her rise and hobble toward the bench, her gait uneven.

  “It’s her back,” Emma heard the head trainer tell the coaches while her intern grabbed ice bags and a wrap from the kit.

  Jo glanced down the sideline to where Jamie was warming up. “Maxwell! You’re in.”

  Even as Emma worried over Steph—she’d been out for three months before the Olympics with a lumbar disc issue—she couldn’t help being excited for her girlfriend. She watched, biting back an unprofessional smile as Jamie checked in with the fourth official and waited to be waved on. The center ref had barely lifted her hand when Jamie sprinted toward the center circle, kicking up her heels the way she always did when she subbed into a game. It was endearing, and Emma temporarily forgot her own frustration at riding the bench. Jamie was in the game, and Emma didn’t think she was the only one who felt better about their chances.

  The ref blew her whistle to end the half less than a minute later, and the two teams filed off the field and int
o the tunnel that led beneath the stands. The American players were quiet as they headed for the locker room they’d been assigned, their shared frustration at the game’s physicality and the current score obvious in the set of their shoulders and the snap in their steps.

  Steph was waiting in the locker room when they reached it, her face grave as she reclined on a training table, ice secured to her lower back by an Ace wrap. She tried to smile at her teammates, but understandably, it came out as more of a grimace.

  “How are you doing?” Emma asked, pausing beside her.

  “Peachy,” Steph said.

  “You’ll do anything to get out of fitness training, huh?” Maddie said, leaning in to muss Steph’s hair.

  “You know it.” The veteran midfielder exchanged a weighted glance with Maddie, and Emma read what she didn’t say aloud: Steph’s back was wrecked. Fuck. Canada was only three months away.

  “All right, athletes,” Jo said from the front of the locker room. “Let’s talk.”

  While the coaches leaned against the cheerful white and blue tiled walls, the players launched into a venting fest over the first 45 minutes of the game. Jo stood near the dry erase board still littered with colorful magnets from their pre-game talk. She projected her usual calm unflappability as the players hashed out the match’s on-field dynamics, until finally, at a lull in the conversation, she jumped in.

  “I’ve got to tell you, you put together a decent half, even if the score line doesn’t reflect that fact,” she told them. “The other coaches and I saw some good things out there, so keep doing what you’re doing because it really is working. You just have to finish your chances.”

  The players murmured in assent, but no one sounded particularly energized. Everyone was probably remembering the previous year’s utter collapse against Denmark in a similar stadium only an hour’s drive away. Of course, they’d been down by three at halftime of that game. But the stakes were considerably higher now. If they couldn’t beat Norway in front of 500 mildly interested spectators, how did they plan to win the World Cup in front of tens of thousands of fans who would consider anything less than first place a failure?

  “Come on, guys,” Ellie said, glancing around the room. “You heard Jo. Keep doing what you’re doing out there. We just need to win the first fifteen minutes. If we can get an early goal, we’re back in it and the momentum swings our way. Be patient. The opportunities will come.”

  Emma blinked at the national team captain, unaccustomed to seeing her midway through a game with neat hair and an unmarked uniform, her face free of sweat. Then again, Emma wasn’t used to feeling so clean and untouched herself in the middle of an important match.

  “Two things this team has never been short on,” Melanie said, glancing around the room, “are effort and perseverance. Let’s show them what we’re made of, athletes. What do you say?”

  This time the chorus of replies was stronger. They had come back in bigger games than this. In fact, the rest of the world had learned never to count America out. Look at the quarters in Germany four years earlier—down a goal and a player with no time left in extra time, and they’d still managed to pull off the win. And yes, that was years ago, and their more recent record wasn’t doing their confidence any favors. But Emma knew that if they could wrench the lead back from Norway, then going down in the first half might turn out to be the best thing that could have happened. Resilience begat resilience, and struggle always made victory sweeter.

  “All right,” Jo said, motioning them in for a huddle. “We’ll start the way we ended, except Martens and Perry, you’ll take a rest in the second half. Blake, I want you in the middle and O’Brien on the outside. Ellie, I want you up top with Latham. Novak, you’re in the ten. Any questions?”

  For once with this team, there weren’t. Emma exchanged a look with Jamie, who gave her a subtle thumbs-up. Emma nodded, adrenaline surging through her bloodstream. She was back, bitches.

  Jo nodded around the huddle. “Go remind them who they’re playing. Team, on three.”

  Ellie quickly counted it out: “One, two, three, TEAM.”

  The chant echoed through the dressing room as Emma headed for the hallway, shaking out her arms and legs to keep them from trembling. Jamie was waiting in the corridor and fell into step beside her.

  “Congrats,” she murmured as she bumped Emma’s hip, voice barely audible over the sound of their cleats thudding against the concrete floor.

  “You, too,” Emma said, watching her out of the corner of her eye.

  “See you out there.” And then Jamie was jogging ahead, briefly outlined by bright sunlight at the end of the dim tunnel.

  Win the first fifteen, Emma thought a little while later as she waited for the whistle. She felt the usual pressure on her bladder as Ellie and Maddie lined up on the ball, but she knew it would pass as it always did. She smiled, feeling the warm Portuguese breeze teasing at the curls that somehow always managed to pull free of her ponytail. It was a perfect soccer day, and she was about to shut down the front line of Norway, one of the USA’s oldest and most bitter rivals.

  Bring it, she thought as the whistle sounded. Fucking bring it.

  #

  “Love-three,” Ellie said, scowling, and held the ball to her paddle. Then she unleashed a serve that almost made it past Emma. She managed to tip it back over the net, but Ellie was ready and crushed the return.

  “One-three,” she said smugly, preparing to serve again.

  Morning sunshine shone in the wide windows, lighting up the resort’s game room. The coaching staff had given them the morning off after their come-from-behind win against Norway the previous day. Jo’s substitutions had worked out beyond well. Ten minutes into the second half, Ellie had scored a header on a beautiful cross from none other than Taylor O’Brien. Seven minutes later, Jamie had driven into Norway’s penalty area only to be tripped from behind. Ellie had slotted the resulting penalty kick into the right side netting to win the game for the US.

  With the morning off, Emma could have slept in this morning. But she and Ellie were both early risers, so they’d met for coffee and “a friendly game” of ping pong before breakfast and sight-seeing with the rest of the team. One game had turned into two, and now they were rounding out the best of three. Why Emma hadn’t predicted this spontaneous tournament was a mystery, really.

  Despite her best efforts, Ellie went down early in the third and never managed to recover. Emma couldn’t resist teasing her when the older woman slammed her paddle down at the end of the match: “I bet you went through a ton of tennis rackets.”

  “I probably would have,” Ellie admitted, “but my parents refused to buy any more after I broke the first two.”

  “Is that how you became a one-sport woman?”

  “Pretty much. You can’t really break a soccer ball.”

  Coffee cups in hand, they left the hotel and headed toward the water, following the same path Emma and Jamie had taken after breakfast most mornings that week.

  “It’s funny that you get worked up over ping pong but not over being benched,” Emma commented, subtly stretching her hip flexors as they walked.

  “What makes you think I don’t get worked up over riding the bench?” Ellie asked.

  “I just mean you seem so calm. Like yesterday—you psyched everyone else up at halftime, and then you came off the bench to win the game.”

  “It was a team effort, Blake. You know that.”

  Emma sighed. “Jesus, Ellie, you’re only proving my point. How do you stay so positive all the god-damned time?”

  “I’m not positive all the time,” Ellie said. “Ask Jodie. I call her and text her at all hours with my rants. I think for me, the key is to vent those emotions in a safe space without letting them spill over onto the team or, god forbid, the coaches.”

  Emma sipped her now-cold coffee, pondering Ellie’s words. Jamie wasn’t exactly a safe person to vent to because she was also fighting for a spot on the team. As a rostered
player who had been a regular starter for years, Emma would feel awkward complaining about playing time to Jamie, who only had a handful of caps to her name and no guarantee there would be more in her future. Emma knew Jamie thought some of the veterans were entitled, and she didn’t want Jamie to associate that quality with her.

  “Jo says we all need to accept our roles,” Ellie added, “and that’s completely right. We win as a team and we lose as a team. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to fight to get the role I want. Besides, you know as well as I do that the lineup is in flux right now. This is the last real chance the coaches have to make any tweaks. By this time next month, they’re going to have to decide who gets to go to Canada and who doesn’t.”

  That was one of the primary reasons the US played in the Algarve Cup: to evaluate personnel. They came back to Portugal every year not for the palm trees and ocean vistas but for the opportunity to face top teams that knew how to play against them. In a little over a week of tournament time, the US gained experience with different styles of play, diverse lineups, and a variety of game day scenarios. There weren’t many opportunities in the women’s game to play in an international final, which was why the Algarve was so important to the team’s development. This tournament was the closest they could get to a dress rehearsal for the World Cup.

  But Emma didn’t want to think about the World Cup right now, not when she wasn’t sure game to game if she would be on the pitch.

  “Who do you think Jo will start tomorrow against Switzerland?” she asked.

  “With three games in six days, I bet she changes thing up,” Ellie said. “I don’t think Martens is going to see daylight anytime soon, though.”