by Lulu Pratt
Christ, what had I done?
You sabotaged your star player, my brain supplied by way of answer. You spent the entire night selfishly fucking her, not even bothering to keep track of the time, and now she’s going to be in terrible shape for tomorrow’s game.
My brain, though cruel, was right. It was my job, as her coach, to make sure that she played the best game she could, every time, and I’d completely failed her. I should’ve kept an eye on the clock, I shouldn’t have let my passion get away with me — I should’ve done better by Catya.
It hurt worse in that it wasn’t like I was the one who had to play tomorrow. All I had to do was stay upright and try to seem as though I had it together. She, on the other hand, had to do a physically demanding task for several hours with few breaks. Getting little sleep would be shitty for me, but it would be absolutely unbearable for Catya. More than anything, she’d be embarrassed to play poorly in front of the team she loved. I wasn’t sure her pride could stand it.
I felt things for Catya, serious things. But with all this anger and guilt raging in my head, I thought maybe this wasn’t destined to work, and maybe I’d have known this earlier if I’d followed all the signs the universe sent us — our age gap, my job and immigration status, her scholarship and position as team leader. Our stars kept telling us not to do it, but we decided to cross them anyways.
This game had seemed like such a slam dunk, pardon my mixing of sports, but now? Now I wasn’t so sure. The team was strong, but neither Catya nor I would be doing our best work, and who knows what that would mean in terms of the entire group.
Sighing, I laid back in bed, determined to catch what little sleep I could.
I dreamt of nothing but her.
Chapter 24
Catya
Had my head even touched the pillow? It didn’t seem like it.
Because when the alarm rang at six, I had barely even begun to dream. I’d fallen asleep quickly, exhausted from the rigorous sex, but three hours wasn’t enough time to entire one REM cycle, let alone several. My joints ache, my eyes burned with dryness and the fucking alarm was blaring in my ears.
“Rise and shine!” Sharon-Ann squealed, obviously well rested. Damn her.
The other three skipped out of bed, excited about the day ahead. I pulled the covers to my chin and tried to mentally fortify myself.
Riri turned to me and asked, “Hey, when did you get back last night? I must’ve fallen asleep really fast.”
Grace eyed me but said nothing, and I replied, “A little later than I expected. I ended up having to go out of the hotel to find tampons.”
“In your bathrobe?” Sharon-Ann asked incredulously.
Grace’s gaze was beginning to bother me, so I looked at my hands, crumpled around the bedsheets, and just said, “Yep.”
Sharon-Ann and Riri both dropped the subject, no longer interested. Grace just shook her head and said nothing. I knew she was probably more disappointed than anything, but her face was all anger.
I managed to get myself out of bed, get dressed and go downstairs with the rest of the girls. While we ate breakfast from the hotel’s continental buffet, I kept my head on a swivel, waiting for Simon to show up. He didn’t, for the entirety of the meal. The team talked about the upcoming game, not seeming to notice his absence. I stayed silent.
Breakfast wasn’t sitting well with me. Nothing was. I could feel the lack of sleep like a punch to the gut. I drank more coffee than I’d once thought humanly possible, and it did zero.
When Simon did at last show up, he looked terrible. Well, as terrible as he can look, anyways. There were deep, dark bags under his red-rimmed eyes, he was covered in two-day stubble, and his hair was growing like wild weeds. I wanted to curse him for still managing to look hot despite all those adjectives. He stole a glance in my direction, and then quickly concentrated on something else.
Listen, it takes two to tango. I was angrier at myself than him last night. I should’ve been watching the clock too, it wasn’t just his responsibility. My annoyance most definitely appeared to be directed at him, though, and for that I was sorry. However, at the moment, I was too tired to work myself up for any kind of apology. After all, shouldn’t he shoulder a little bit of the blame, him being my coach and all?
That’s no way to think, I said to myself. Either he’s your lover or he’s your coach. One man can’t be both.
Ugh, this was too much to consider right now. It was a big problem on a good day, and thus far, today was not a good day.
We finished breakfast, and boarded the bus. This time, I sat all the way in the back, leaving Simon alone in the front. I wasn’t ready to talk, emotionally or physically.
The stadium came up around the bend before I knew it — possibly because I fell asleep during the ride there. The team disembarked, and I realized I was unsteady on my legs. It was going to take everything in my power just to stay upright.
I’ll skip ahead to the interesting stuff. Or, more precisely, the horrible, awful, really very bad stuff.
The game began. It was instantly clear to all present that I was sucking, and hard. I missed every pass in my direction, I shot passes to the wrong people, hell, I even kicked the ball in the opposite direction. My teammates were looking at me like a demon had possessed my body, and I was beginning to wonder if they were right. From the sidelines, Simon was looking visibly distraught, as though my every misstep were a dagger to his heart.
You and me both, buddy, I thought.
This victory, which we’d all believed would be a shoo-in, was no longer quite so assured. In fact, by halftime, our teams were tied. Tied! With a team we should’ve been able to trounce in our sleep. Well, if I’d had any sleep.
My teammates gathered around in a huddle near the benches, and I reluctantly moved to them. As I moved into the circle, each girl looked at me with a mixture of confusion, frustration and fear. I’d never played this poorly in my life, even as a little kid, I’d had the good sense to pass in the right direction.
Simon couldn’t even stand to look at me.
Tanya spoke first.
“Hey, um, Catya,” she said timidly. “Are you… is everything all right?”
“Yeah,” Nora chimed in, “are you okay? You seem, er, off.”
The rest of them looked at me, waiting for an answer, probably hoping that I would say I had food poisoning, or something else that could justify this mess I was making.
“I’m just out of it,” I murmured, holding back tears of embarrassment.
Rose asked, “You sure? ‘Cuz it seems like, I dunno, more than that.”
Next to her, Riri nodded vigorously.
“I’m tired,” I elaborated, though to call that an elaboration seems unjust.
Neidin interrupted, “But—”
“Enough,” Simon said, vehemently cutting her off. “That’s enough.”
Everyone immediately whirled to look at Simon, who was standing just a little outside of the huddle. His brows were drawn, and his cheeks hollow from no sleep. He was visibly pissed.
No, no don’t say anything, I tried to tell him through telekinesis. Stop, before anybody suspects the truth.
While nobody opened their mouths to conjecture as to why Simon would defend me like that, with such full-throated rage — especially since I really was performing like shit — it was written across each girl’s face that they knew something was off, though not exactly what was off.
Except for Grace, who was staring at the ground, her fists clenched. I wanted to talk to her, but the whistle had just sounded, signaling the start of the second half. I’d let her down, I knew. She had let me be, let me make my own stupid decisions with Simon, and now it was coming back to bite all of us in the ass. If I were her, I’d be wishing that I’d just outed the news and kept the team intact. As me, obviously, I was grateful she hadn’t, but I wouldn’t have blamed her for making the other decision.
Sorry to say it, but the second half didn’t go any better. In fac
t, it went arguably worse. I wasn’t sure I could deteriorate anymore from the first half, but the combination of sleeplessness, fear of being exposed, and general possibly misplaced anger concerning Simon made me distracted. Well, more than distracted — awful, really.
To my teammates’ everlasting credit, they picked up all of my slack. The girls, having evidently decided that something was extremely wrong with me, covered all my usual spots and avoided passing to me whenever possible. I wanted to hug and kiss each one of them for being so sympathetic to my state, but we had a game to play.
At the midway point of the second half, Simon benched me. He was right. Frankly, I was surprised he hadn’t benched me sooner. My deleterious presence on the field had indeed been holding the team back, and while I watched from the sidelines, they caught up to our opponents in no time, evening the score.
I looked on, attempting a weak cheer or two. Simon kept several yards between us, save for one moment when he came over and whispered, “I’m sorry,” an apology which I wasn’t quite ready to accept. We had no other contact for the rest of the game, during which the Stallions managed to overtake the other team. With one excellent shot by Grace, we took the lead seconds before the whistle sounded.
On the field, the girls hollered and whooped. I got reluctantly to my feet and clapped. Though I didn’t have the energy to show it, I was so proud of them.
They ran over to me and Simon. The younger girls looked thrilled just to be victorious, but the older ones were still staring at me with confusion and worry.
“We did it!” one of the freshmen said, rejoicing as we gathered in a circle to do a post-mort on the game.
“Yeah,” Tanya said, glum. “Just barely.”
All eyes turned to me, Tanya had triggered the obvious conversation that needed to be had. I swallowed, my neck immediately dry, as though I were being led to my execution.
Beth began quietly, “Catya, what happened out there?”
“We already covered this,” I snapped back with too much bitterness.
“But,” she continued, “last night. What were you doing in the hall?”
“I was getting tampons,” I said automatically.
“All night?” Riri asked. “You were gone for ages. I sat up a couple of times, and you still weren’t back.”
There were murmurs beginning to circulate in the group, and I could feel the guillotine lowering, the blade getting closer to my neck.
I couldn’t even get enough saliva in my mouth to formulate words in response to Riri. That was when Neidin said:
“And why were you in front of Simon’s door?”
The air went still. Each blade of grass seemed to grow rapidly beneath my feet, to twist its tendrils up into the air, wrap around me and suck me into the earth.
Neidin said, “I guess I shouldn’t have done this, but when I went into my room, I looked through the peephole, out into the hallway, and… and… you put on heels. And then you knocked on his door. I told myself that maybe you two were going out clubbing, since you’re twenty-one and all, but—” she broke off. After a moment, she finished, “but now I don’t think that’s what happened.”
And then, from the silence, came Grace’s voice.
“Just tell them, Catya,” she said. “It’s time.”
“Grace—”
“If you don’t, I will.”
Her eyes, which had been affixed to the ground, rose to meet mine. They blazed with anger and disappointment.
Somewhere else in the huddle, Simon’s shoulders stiffened, and his lips drew into a firm line. He was preparing for the blade, just like me. Could I bring myself to tell the truth, or would Grace out me first?
My courage came too slow.
Grace, somehow even more let down than before, said, “Fine. You won’t tell them? I’ll do it, then.”
The girls parted so that Grace could move to the center of the circle, and face the whole team as she announced, “Catya’s been sleeping with Simon. That’s the big secret. They’ve been sleeping together, and I think we’ve all deduced by now that last night she was up with Simon until early morning, got no sleep and that’s why she’s playing like shit.”
A whole ring of mouths hang open in my direction, stunned. Neither Simon nor I opted for a single word.
“Is that right, Catya?” she asked. “Did I miss anything?”
“What do you want me to say, Grace?” I murmured. “No. You didn’t miss anything. That’s pretty much the whole story.”
Grace nodded, then swiveled around to face Simon, who looked as if he’d left his body and was in an entirely different dimension. That is to say, his face was blank, absolutely, eerily devoid of emotion.
“Coach Simon?” Grace said, forming the statement into a question. “You got anything to add?”
His eyes bored holes into mine, and the girls watched the tension fly between us like it was a ball on the tennis court.
At last, he replied, “No. I don’t have anything else to say.”
“Well, all right, then,” Grace concluded. “Great talk.”
Time seemed to freeze frame, with the team in mid-gasp, mid-whisper, Grace staring at me with utter dismay, and Simon, looking at me with the full knowledge behind his bright blue eyes that we were both so, so screwed.
Chapter 25
Simon
I was done for.
What else was there to say? There would be no coming back from this, of that I was certain. I might as well just go on and book my flight back to London.
Originally, I’d had reasonable faith that Catya alone could keep the secret. She was smart, mature and we’d established several times that we’d keep everything between us. I now knew, of course, that she’d told Grace about what happened, so my trust was ill-advised. Could I blame her, though? No, of course not, my brain replied. You can’t blame her for any of this.
But that aside, I’d believed we could keep this from getting to higher powers when it was just the two of us in the know. With the whole team in on the thing? It seemed unlikely. No — impossible. Asking any group of twenty-odd people, but especially a group of young women who spend all day together chatting, to keep a secret of that magnitude… it wouldn’t work. I felt fairly confident that David and all the other powers that be would know about Catya and me within twenty-four hours. Maybe forty-eight, if the gossip mill was churning sluggishly. An invisible hourglass had been started on my remaining time at ULA, and the sand was running out fast.
Needless to say, the bus ride back wasn’t as fun as the bus ride there. Everybody was wide awake, but there was silence, save for the occasional frantic whisper — a whisper which it was safe to assume referred to me, or Catya. You could’ve tried to cut the tension in the air with a knife, but I suspected you’d require something closer to a metaphorical chainsaw.
The ride back seemed to take twice as long, but nobody complained, or even asked for a bathroom stop. There was the scent of fear in the air, fear of trying to address this enormous thing that had just happened to us all, as if to be the first one to bring it up was to sacrifice yourself.
We arrived at the ULA campus in the afternoon. The campus hadn’t changed in the days since we’d been gone, of course, but with this new target on my back, everything felt more sinister, as if I were back in London and my every move were being watched by the CCTVs. Not to co-op somebody else’s words, but the trees truly seemed to have eyes.
The girls disembarked silently, grabbing their bags from beneath the bus and quickly scurrying off into the sunset in groups of two and three. Their heads leaned close together in conversation, which was now no longer taboo since they were out in the open, not pent up in the same bus as Catya and me. Suppose I couldn’t blame them for being anxious to talk about it. I would’ve been, were I in their position.
I’d hoped, prior to the news breaking today, to use the arrival at ULA as a time to congratulate them all on our first big win together, maybe give a little celebratory speech, perhaps eve
n buy the legal ones a round, but that no longer seemed appropriate. For one, it might be my last game with them, and for another, I doubted anyone was in the mood to hear from me. So I stayed silent, letting my first win as a head coach go by unmarked.
I turned around to make sure the bus was empty and saw Catya standing in the aisle.
“Hey,” I said softly.
I wondered what she’d been thinking about during the bus ride, if she’d played on her phone, or stared out the window, or pretended to sleep. It seemed unlikely that she could’ve managed real sleep. I know it was beyond my grasp.
“Hey.” Her tone was hollow, lifeless, as though she’d been tipped upside down and drained of joy.
“Listen,” I began, but she cut me off.
“I’m sorry,” she blurted out. “I’m sorry, I should never have told Grace, and I didn’t mean to, of course, it wasn’t part of the plan, but then there was this party and I kept being handed drinks and I got drunker and drunker and there was this guy, Robert, who I didn’t dance with even though he wanted to dance with me, and they, the girls that is, had been pushing me all night, the whole group, to do things and suddenly I was just spilling my guts, like, telling Grace the whole story because I couldn’t take it anymore, couldn’t take the constant needling, and—”
“Shh, Catya,” I interrupted. “You have nothing to apologize for. I was asking too much of you.”
She hung her head, her tone morose as she said, “No, you didn’t. That’s what people say to children who fuck up. I’m an adult and you can ask anything of me.”
“You’re wrong,” I insisted. “I did ask too much. It wasn’t fair of me to ask you to tell no one. All my friends and family are in a different country, so if I wanted to tell them about you, I could. There was no risk of it getting back to ULA. But you… most of your close friends, like Grace, are at ULA, right? And I understand that your parents might be, er, upset if you explained that you were seeing your coach. What I’m getting at is, I had plenty of people to talk to. You had none. And that’s not okay.”