“You are amazing,” she said, and moved forward to take Emma in her arms. “I love you.”
“I love you too.” Emma wound her arms around Jamie’s neck and reached up to kiss her lingeringly. Then she pulled back, head tilted, one eyebrow quirked. “Maybe we should give the steam shower a whirl, you know, test the water pressure?”
“Last one there’s a rotten egg!” Jamie answered, tugging off her hoodie as she sprinted, laughing, toward the master bedroom.
#
Later, they dressed in comfy sweats and returned to the kitchen where Jamie reheated the water and Emma scrounged a pair of mugs from one of the slate gray cupboards above the sink.
“Babe,” Emma said as she rifled through the tea tin, “I can’t wait to see you play on Wednesday! Do you realize it’ll be the first time I’ve ever gotten to watch you? Well, in person, anyway.”
“What do you mean, in person?”
“I saw your first cap against Ireland on TV. Your second one too, although that one wasn’t quite as enjoyable.”
Jamie took in the information. She’d seen the replay on YouTube, the resounding crack of her ankle audible on the sideline mics, her own disturbing shriek, followed by the silence of the crowd somehow louder than anything that had come before. What must that have been like for Emma? Probably just as bad as it had been for Jamie to watch the fan video of Emma collapsing at open practice after her appendix burst.
“I didn’t realize you were watching,” she said.
“Well, I was.” Emma wiped a few drops of water from the granite countertop. “With my mom, actually. I was staying with her for a few weeks.”
“Oh, you mean after you neglected your health and had to be rushed to the hospital by ambulance? Yeah, I should hope you stayed with your mom.” She shook her head, unreasonably irritated by the fact that Emma had nearly died.
“If my appendix hadn’t decided to explode,” Emma said, propping her elbows on the countertop and resting her chin on one hand, “we would have both been at those games. I wonder if anything would have happened between us?”
Jamie didn’t bother telling her that she and Clare had still been happy at the time. It was possible it might not have mattered anyway.
“It’s hard to believe that was only two years ago,” she said instead. “It feels like so much has happened since then. You know?”
“Well, yeah.” Emma gave her an affectionate smile. “I do.”
A few minutes later they were curled up facing each other on the couch in the nearest living room, mugs cupped in hands, feet tucked under each other’s bodies for warmth. They had talked, texted, or video chatted every day since the first week of October, but it simply wasn’t the same as being together in real life. Despite their near-constant contact, somehow Jamie still felt like they had tons to catch up on.
For example: “Anything new to report on the lawsuit?” she asked, sipping her steaming tea.
At the beginning of October, a group of international players had filed a lawsuit against FIFA and the Canadian Soccer Association alleging gender discrimination. The suit called for grass to be installed over the turf fields selected for the World Cup, and had been brought in front of a Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, a court that focused on mediation, as a signal that the players were seeking a workable compromise.
Emma made a face. “Don’t even ask.”
“Oh. Okay. Sorry,” she said awkwardly.
“No, you can always ask. It’s just not good news.”
“What’s going on?”
“FIFA’s attorneys are using every trick in the legal book to torpedo the case—or at least slow it down so much that it can’t be decided before the World Cup. In a way, it’s our own fault,” she added, her hand tightening on Jamie’s calf. “We admitted we had no intention of boycotting the World Cup, and since no boycott means no leverage, Amy Rupert says only one party is operating in good faith. It sure as hell isn’t FIFA.”
“God, they’re such assholes. Why can’t they do the right thing?”
“They’re not going to do the right thing until someone forces them to because as far as they’re concerned, we should be grateful for whatever amount of funding they grace us with.” She sighed. “Ellie and I thought calling them out in front of the entire world would make them even pretend to listen, but nope. Our bad.”
Jamie had played soccer for years in the UK, where the attitude toward female players was only a step above atrocious. But still, it was disheartening when that attitude turned into real world consequences—like forcing the best teams in the world to play a World Cup, the penultimate competition of the international game, on sub-par fields. It reminded her of how Jo Nichols had once said in an interview that her high school program had been funded because someone’s parents had threatened a Title IX lawsuit, and even then the girls’ team had played their matches on the JV football team’s practice field, with long grass, ankle-deep holes, and no stands to speak of.
“It gets worse,” Emma said, wrinkling her nose. “You know Veronica Padilla from Mexico and Sophie Durand from France?” Jamie nodded. She had faced Durand in Champions League more than once. “They dropped out of the lawsuit a few days ago because they said their national federations threatened retribution. They’re not the only ones facing threats, either.”
“What?” She stared at Emma, aghast. “The federations can’t do that, can they?”
“Whether or not they can, they are. The good thing is that a bunch of other women have stepped forward to sign on, including twenty players from the German team.”
Women footballers were badass, even if male federation officials weren’t.
“Anyway,” Emma added, “have you heard about the Brazil tournament?”
“Nothing definitive yet. But Ellie thinks it looks good.”
“I hope so.” Emma squeezed her leg. “It would suck to be apart that long, especially so close to the holidays.”
Jamie’s heart skipped at Emma’s use of the words “together” and “holidays” in such close proximity. When it came to being in the same place at the same time, they’d been living week to week since the start. Pro athletes didn’t have a long shelf life, so they’d both agreed that the game had to be their priority for now. In some ways Jamie was relieved to finally date someone whose commitment to soccer matched hers. She understood when Emma had to be away for national team duty for weeks at a time, and didn’t take it personally if Emma turned down a date or even sex for more sleep or a scheduled workout.
In other ways, being with a fellow athlete was harder. With Clare, when Jamie was out of town for an away game or training with the national team, there had been someone at home keeping the refrigerator stocked and the rent paid, the mail sorted and the electric bill current. Not only that, Clare had been in the stands for every home game and many of the away ones. Before now the only time Emma had seen her play was when their NWSL teams met, and rarely had they gotten a chance to be together for more than a few stolen nights. While their current arrangement was necessary for their careers, Jamie didn’t feel like she could up and ask Emma to come home with her for Thanksgiving or Christmas or—the holiday she really hoped they could spend together—New Year’s.
Good thing her girlfriend didn’t have that particular hang-up.
When Jamie remained quiet, Emma nudged her hip. “What about you? Still planning on Berkeley for Thanksgiving?”
“Well, yeah. It’ll be my first Thanksgiving in the States in a while.”
“Feel like company?” Emma gazed at her over the top of her mug, eyelashes fluttering prettily.
“You mean you?” Jamie asked.
“No, I meant my brother.” She poked her leg. “Of course me. Do you think your parents would mind?”
“No!” Jamie said quickly. “I think they would love it.”
“And you?”
“I think I would love it too.”
“I should hope so.” Emma squinted at her. “In that case, I hav
e a proposal for you.”
“Okay?” Jamie held her breath.
“I propose we stay here an extra week and fly back to California right before Thanksgiving. Because after that…” She trailed off.
After that, the national team would be headed to Brazil for most of December, with or without Jamie. And then it would be 2015, a new year that would be even busier than the current one.
“By here, do you mean this flat?” Jamie clarified.
“Yeah. With the fitness room and mini pitch, we can keep up our training. Plus this way you can show me London. I didn’t get a chance to see much of the city last time I was here.”
On the surface, Jamie thought, the plan sounded ideal. Showing Emma the places she’d lived and played in London would be amazing. Since they’d hung out in each other’s hometowns as teenagers, this was the closest she would get to sharing unknown parts of her past with Emma. But this flat was posher than anyplace she’d ever stayed, and Emma had already laid out so much more for their relationship than Jamie could ever repay…
“I don’t know, Em,” she said, waving at the art-clad walls around them. “This place is—”
“—perfect for us,” Emma interrupted. “I know it’s a bit much, and I know you worry about money, but let me treat you. Please?” When Jamie only continued to stare at her, lips twisted uncertainly, she added, “If it helps, any spending money I have comes from the interest on my father’s insurance policy. I own my condo outright, and I have a retirement fund and investments and I give fifteen percent of my annual salary to charity. The rest of it goes to food, travel, and training. Please, please let me do nice things for us? We don’t get to see each other all that often, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“Low blow, Blake.” Jamie could feel herself weakening. It would be sort of ridiculous to let her pride come between them, wouldn’t it? Wasn’t this chance to be with Emma everything she’d been hoping for? Give or take an extra sitting room or two.
“Totally,” Emma agreed with zero remorse. Her hand pressed warmly against Jamie’s leg. “What will it be?”
Jamie sighed. “Fine, you win. You may treat me to a fancy European vacation.”
“Twist your arm, huh?” Emma asked, smiling back.
“Exactly.” Considering how little Emma’s father had liked her, Jamie couldn’t help appreciating the irony of his insurance money funding their super-gay London holiday. She sipped her tea and regarded Emma over the top of her mug. “Thank you, by the way. In case I forget to say it later.”
“I’m pretty sure you already thanked me in the shower,” Emma drawled, her voice simultaneously lazy and suggestive.
And suddenly even two weeks in this flat didn’t feel like nearly enough time together.
* * *
Emma checked the scoreboard, knowing what she would find. The game was nearly over, and Arsenal was still only up 2-1. If they didn’t score again, and soon, they would lose on aggregate goals and their Champions League run would be over in the Round of Sixteen.
“Come on, Jamie,” she yelled, unable to bring herself to shout out the name of one of Manchester United’s biggest rivals. There was love, and then there was football. She was here, wasn’t she? That was more than she could say for most of London.
Jamie had warned her that the Women’s Super League didn’t draw even a fraction of the fan support that the NWSL did. Seattle’s attendance this past season had averaged close to four thousand, a fifty-five percent increase over their inaugural season. Those figures were embarrassing when compared to Portland’s thirteen thousand or the Sounders’ forty-five thousand, but even the Reign’s attendance figures dwarfed the numbers she could see in the stands at Arsenal’s home pitch, which seemed smaller even than her high school stadium. What were there, 800 people here to witness a Champions League Round of Sixteen playoff match? No more than a thousand, surely.
Allie, Britt’s girlfriend, grabbed Emma’s arm and pointed. Jamie was sprinting through the midfield, head up and ball at her feet, and Emma could see the play unfolding even before Jamie slotted the ball between a pair of defenders and into the path of a striker Emma recognized from the English national team. The fleet-footed woman took a touch and then blasted the ball into the corner of the net.
Emma and Allie leapt out of their seats, cheering mightily. They had done it! They had taken the lead in the two-game series. She checked the clock again. Two and a half minutes left in regulation. Now all they had to do was hold on until the referee blew the final whistle.
As Jamie jogged back to the center circle, her eyes sought out Emma in the stands.
“You got this,” Emma mouthed at her, shooting her a thumbs-up.
Nodding, Jamie waved and turned away.
That’s my girl, Emma thought, exchanging a grin with Allie. Watching Jamie play was so fun. Why hadn’t she done this sooner? Oh, right. That thing called a job. Playing for club and country didn’t leave much wiggle room.
Four agonizingly long minutes later, the referee blew her whistle in the standard three long tweets. Arsenal had won 3-1, and in doing so they’d stolen the round from the Swiss team and earned a spot in the quarterfinals in March.
Emma followed Allie down to the field and jumped the barrier. She would have been content to wait near the center line, but Allie took her hand and dragged her over to the home bench while the two teams shook hands. After a brief team talk with the coaches, Jamie and Britt came jogging over all pink cheeks and smiles. Britt pulled Allie into a hug, but Jamie stopped a pace away and held her hand up for a high five, eyes slightly questioning.
Emma closed the space between them and hugged her firmly. “Well done,” she said into Jamie’s ear before stepping back.
“Thanks.” Jamie was grinning again. “We’re in the quarterfinals!”
“Barely,” she teased. “Allie and I almost drew blood, we were clutching each other’s arms so tightly.”
“It’s good entertainment, right?” Jamie waved at the sparsely filled stands. “We’re all about the fan experience here, obviously.”
While Jamie and Britt changed out of their cleats, several of their teammates approached, greeting family and friends and grabbing assorted gear from the bench.
“Yo, Yanks, are you coming out to celebrate?” a tall woman with a nearly shaved head asked.
“Wouldn’t miss it. The pub?” Britt asked as she tucked her gloves into her team bag.
“Natch. And bring your ladies,” the tall woman added with a wink.
Ladies. With difficulty, Emma bit back a sarcastic retort. These were Jamie’s friends and teammates, she reminded herself. She was only along for the ride.
A little while later they were gathered around a table in the Twelve Pins Pub’s function room, where the wait staff knew the players by name. At first the conversation centered on who their competition might be in the next round of the tournament. Results from most of the other matches weren’t online yet, and the draw to determine quarterfinal, semifinal, and finals match-ups wouldn’t take place for another week. But with only fourteen teams still potentially alive, they could make some educated guesses. One possibility was the Lyon club. Emma glanced at Jamie. As far as she knew, Jamie hadn’t been back to the French city since her trip there as a teenager. What would she do if Arsenal ended up with a Champions League match there?
Jeanie, the center striker who had all but leered at her in the stadium, picked that moment to start chatting Emma up about Seattle and the NWSL. She had known who Emma was all along, she admitted, and had merely been “jerking her chain.” With half a pint of English amber in her, Emma relaxed and joked back with Jeanie and the other Arsenal players. The only touch-and-go moment came when Britt, tipsy and happy, let it slip that Emma was a United supporter. Emma quickly bought a round for the table, and the momentary flare of enmity faded away.
The celebration was raucous but short-lived, mostly because it was a week night and the majority of the team had to work in the morning
. Emma huffed in frustration when Jamie told her why the party was breaking up early. Even in the UK, where soccer was the most popular sport, women players in the top league weren’t paid a living salary. Meanwhile Arsenal’s men side, she knew, had paid a fifteen million pound transfer fee to steal Danny Welbeck from Manchester United a couple of months earlier. Fifteen million pounds for a single player, while the women at this table earned on average, Jamie had told her, fifteen to twenty thousand pounds from their club contracts. She supposed they should be grateful that male soccer players in the US only made ten or twenty times what female players earned, rather than a thousand times more.
When most of the others had gone, Britt leaned in, her arm loose around Allie’s shoulders, and said, “It’s karaoke night at She. What do you say? Up for a sing-off?”
“She Soho,” Jamie explained to Emma. “It’s a women’s bar in London.”
“Oh.” Emma paused, wondering if she could afford the potential exposure. Not only was there Twitter to worry about, but for years Emma’s agent had counseled her to keep her sexuality to herself while she was a national team regular. From a career standpoint, she understood why he thought the closet was the better choice. He repped Ellie too, and her sponsorship deals had narrowed significantly since she’d come out a few years earlier.
“It’s okay,” Jamie said into the weighted silence, offering a smile that Emma recognized as fake. Judging from her frown, Britt did too. “I’m tired, you guys. Maybe another night.”
“No,” Emma said, one part of her mind making itself up without telling the other, “let’s go. How often are we in London?”
Jamie stared hard at her. “Are you sure? Because we don’t have to.”
She touched Jamie’s hand. “I know. I want to. Don’t you?”
“She totally does,” Britt said, back to smiling. “Jamie loves karaoke, don’t you?”
This was news to Emma. “You do?”
“Not as much as Britt and Allie,” Jamie said. “Oh, god, maybe we should call it a night…”
Outside the Lines Page 14