"I'll help you in any way that I can, Honey. I gave some thought to your program, and I think we should do a lot more work on your shoulders and back, and we should keep working your legs. If we can get you in top shape, that will really give you an edge."
Jamie got to her feet and extended a hand to her partner. "You give me an edge, Buffy. Just knowing you’re there to support me is all I could ever ask for."
When they entered the house, Jamie turned and gazed at her partner with a puzzled grin. "Did Martha Stewart come by here this afternoon?"
"Whatever do you mean?" Ryan batted her eyes ingenuously, trying to play dumb, but failing.
Jamie looked at the neat piles of laundry folded on the dining room table, caught the tangy scent of tomato sauce bubbling away in the kitchen, and marveled at the simple, elegant arrangement of gladioli on the coffee table. "I had no idea you were this domestic," she mused, just the hint of teasing in her voice.
"It’s just laundry, tomato sauce and a bunch of flowers, Honey." Ryan’s head was cocked just a bit, trying to figure out why Jamie was so surprised. "I’ve been cooking and doing laundry since I was seven."
For reasons that she could not understand, Jamie was a little taken aback by this fact. She sat down rather heavily on the sofa and made an admission that embarrassed her greatly. "I’ve never done laundry in my life," she said softly.
"Sure you have, Babe," Ryan laughed gently. "You washed our bike clothes out when we got back from the ride. Remember?"
"Oh, I’ve washed things out in the sink when I’ve traveled, but I’ve never sorted a bunch of clothes and figured out how to use a washer and dryer." She was blushing furiously, and Ryan knew there was something going on in her head, but she could not, for the life of her, figure out what it was.
"And that bothers you…why?" Ryan assumed that Jamie never had to perform the mundane tasks of daily life, and it was very puzzling that her partner looked so upset about this.
Jamie sat back and looked at Ryan for a few moments, finally lifting her hand to gently tuck some stray hairs behind her ear. Her touch was very tender, and she gazed deeply into Ryan’s eyes the whole time. "It’s never really it hit me how it must have been for you," she whispered. Her eyes filled with tears, and a few drops slid down her cheeks, where they were caught by Ryan’s fingertips. "I’ve never really considered how many adult tasks you had to take on—but it makes perfect sense. I just suddenly feel like a big overgrown child—and you were a little adult when you were only seven years old."
Ryan wrapped her arms around her partner and tenderly kissed her head, finally coming to her forehead, where she swept the fine blonde hair away with her lips. "It wasn’t that bad, Baby," she soothed. "We had lots of help—my aunts and my older cousins were over every day when I was little. I wanted to help out, Babe. I wanted to do my own laundry and help with meals. It made me feel like I was a part of the family. You know?"
Jamie nodded her head slowly…that was the difference. Working together made the O’Flahertys grow closer; having servants cater to their every whim made each Evans family member function as a separate, autonomous entity. It took a second, but she realized that she was not crying for Ryan and the hardships she had experienced; she was crying for herself, and for the tremendous emotional distance that existed between her and her parents. "I’m sorry for going off like that, Babe," she finally murmured, not ready to share her thoughts at the moment. "I feel kinda shaky this afternoon."
Ryan brought her hand up to feel Jamie’s forehead. "You haven’t looked quite right since you got home. Tell me what’s wrong, Babe."
"Nothing big." Jamie got up and ran her hands through her hair, shaking her head a bit to clear it. "I got my period today, and I’m a little crampy and a little emotional."
Slipping an arm around her shoulders, Ryan pulled her partner close and gently rubbed her back. "My poor baby," she soothed. "Let me take care of you tonight, okay?"
Uncharacteristically, Jamie shrugged off the offer and pulled out of the embrace. "It’s no big deal, Honey." She got to her feet and offered a smile to her puzzled partner. "I started to feel twinges when we were on the golf course, and I didn’t have any pain pills with me. I’m sure I’ll be fine after I take some ibuprofen."
Ryan remained seated on the couch, casting a thoughtful glance at Jamie’s departing form, while the smaller woman went up to her bedroom. That was odd. Either something else is bothering her, or she just doesn’t like to be touched when she’s feeling under the weather. She shook her head and got to her feet, Guess I’ll find out eventually.
A few minutes later Jamie came into the kitchen wearing one of Ryan’s oversized tank tops and a pair of her roomy cotton boxer shorts. The bright blue shirt was so huge that it nearly covered the pink striped shorts, and Ryan toyed with her by ostentatiously peeking into the armholes to observe her bare body.
"Nice look for you, Sparky," she said conversationally.
"I like big clothes when I don’t feel well. You don’t mind, do you?"
"Nope. You can start wearing my jeans if you want," she gently teased. The fact that you want to wear my clothes lets me know you’re not mad at me, she silently surmised. That takes one possibility off the list. "Did everything go okay today, Babe?"
Jamie was leaning against the counter, legs crossed at the ankles, looking more like a five-year-old than her true age. She nodded, sparing a small smile. "Everything’s fine, Ryan. Really." Her tone was friendly, but it was clear that she didn’t want to converse any more about her mood, so Ryan tried a different tactic.
"Why don’t I bring in one of the chaise lounges, and you can sit down and have a glass of lemonade while I finish dinner?"
Pushing away from the counter, Jamie walked over to the stove and stirred the delicious-looking sauce. "This looks absolutely great, Hon. Thanks for working so hard."
"No problem," Ryan assured her. "Umm…do you want me to bring in that chaise?"
Although her lover's back was turned to her, the taller woman could see the sigh that caused her shoulders to rise and fall. "Honey, I have cramps. I’ve been getting them since I was thirteen. It’s no big deal." Jamie turned to face her with a slightly exasperated look on her face. "I took some pills, and that’s all that can be done."
Ryan crossed the room and gently slid her hands onto Jamie’s hips. "No, it’s not," she said softly, rubbing her thumbs across the cotton material that engulfed her lover’s torso. "I could give you a massage, or get you a heating pad. I’m sure you’d feel better if you laid down until your pills started to work, too. I can tell by the way you move that it’s bothering you, Jamie. Why won’t you let me help?"
She dropped her head onto Ryan’s chest, embarrassed that she was acting so hardheaded. "I don’t like to give in to minor little aches and pains," she admitted. "I try to ignore them, you know? It kinda seems like they go away faster if you don’t acknowledge that they’re there."
Ryan considered this tactic for a moment, finally agreeing that it had some merit. "That works for me if I’m out in public and don’t have time to think about pain. But once I get home and relax, it always come back full force. Then I do my best to pamper myself a little."
Jamie cocked her head and gave her a slightly puzzled look. All at once it became clear to Ryan that her partner really had no idea what she was talking about. "Weren’t you pampered when you were sick?"
"No, not really," she muttered, looking a little embarrassed.
"Well, you’re going to start now," Ryan decreed, the tone in her voice allowing no argument. "Go get your mail while I get you set up here. I swear, you get more mail than my whole family does. Go on," she shooed her out of the kitchen, smiling at the puzzled look she got as Jamie left the room.
When Jamie returned, one of the chaises from the yard was sitting in the kitchen. A little wrought iron table was placed next to it with a cool glass of lemonade just waiting to be savored. "This is kinda weird," Jamie said as she plopped down on
the lounge chair, but she looked immediately grateful when she allowed her cramping body to relax against the thick cushion. Ryan bustled over with some pillows from the living room and spent a few minutes making sure that her lover was completely comfortable.
"I like being pampered when I don't feel well, so I assume you’ll feel the same way once you get used to it," she said as she bent to kiss her tenderly.
"Were you really pampered when you were ill?" Jamie wasn’t sure why she thought this, but she had assumed that the O’Flaherty household would be filled with Spartan ideas about dealing with illness.
"Oh yeah. If Da couldn't be home to watch me, Aunt Maeve would come over. They'd make me cocoa and play cards with me, or read to me if I was really sick. The boys would even take a turn at nursing me back to health as they got older. How were you treated?" she asked, slightly afraid of what she might hear.
"Not much nursing," she admitted. "Elizabeth didn't think it was good to coddle a sick child. She said it gave you no incentive to get well. She would provide the bare necessities, then give me little rewards when I would get out of bed."
Ryan suddenly was hit with the image of little Jamie in an observation room, with Elizabeth watching her though a one-way mirror, taking notes about the experiments she was conducting. "Well, you are going to be coddled from now on, Princess. This is one more area in which Elizabeth had her head up her ass!"
"Of all the places that I can picture Elizabeth's head, that is one that I cannot begin to imagine," she said with a laugh. Ryan went back to her chores and Jamie looked up at the stove again. "Where did you learn to make spaghetti sauce?" she inquired.
"My father is a cook you know. It wouldn't do to serve nothing but Irish stew and soda bread to a bunch of hungry firefighters. He has a rather international range," she said proudly.
"Your father is an excellent cook," Jamie agreed. "I'm really a little nervous about cooking for your family tomorrow."
"You could serve peanut butter sandwiches and Da would rave about them. He's quite over the moon with you, you know."
"If he likes me half as much as I like him, I'm doing well," she said with a grin. "And, speaking of liking people, Ms. O'Flaherty, tell me all about this soccer thing."
Ryan crossed her arms and leaned back against the counter, a relaxed grin covering her face. "Sure, what do you want to know?"
"I didn't even know you played soccer seriously, Ryan. Now I find out that they want you to play for Cal. I think this is a very big deal!"
"You know I'm athletic," she said by way of explanation. "I told you I played basketball at USF"
"So I should assume you played soccer?"
"It's a different season, Honey. Soccer is a fall sport, and basketball is in the winter." The slightly puzzled frown crossing her face indicated that this should have been obvious to Jamie.
She blew her bangs off her forehead in frustration. "I swear, Ryan, sometimes it's like playing 20 questions with you."
"Jamie, I'll tell you anything you want to know. I just don't always reveal things if I'm not asked. It's how I was raised, Honey. It's considered impolite to brag about your accomplishments."
Jamie nodded slowly, recognizing that her partner was always going to be a bit reticent about blowing her own horn. "Okay, let's start over. I want to know everything, so I’ll just cross-examine you."
Ryan’s grin brightened as she assured her partner, "You can examine me in any way you want, Hot Stuff."
"Right. Don’t try to distract me, now. I’ve got business to conduct here." Her tone did not extend to her eyes and Ryan was happy to see the sparkle return to them. "Tell me how you know this Coach Greene."
"Oh…I’ve known her since I was a freshman in high school. She practically lived with us during my junior year."
"WHAT?" Jamie’s mind reeled from this information. Wait a minute…Martin wouldn’t allow that!
"Don't take that literally, Honey. She recruited me to play for Cal when I was in high school."
"Yeah…"Jamie nodded, assuming that was the case. "But why was she at your house all of the time?"
Ryan laughed a little and set the record straight. "I was exaggerating, Babe. NCAA rules are very stringent on how many home visits you can have, but you can call and write and attend games that the recruit plays in as long as you don’t have any contact with them. So she called me every day for almost two years. She attended every one of my soccer games, and she sent me a handwritten note after every game. She'd tell me how my performance that day would have fit into the Cal system, and all that type of nonsense. Since she had a little more free time during the winter, she’d come watch my basketball games too. We’d be playing some team down in San Jose, and I’d look up and she’d be sitting in the stands—watching me like a hawk."
"Wasn’t that weird? I don’t think I could perform well if someone was evaluating me all of the time."
Ryan thought about that for a moment and agreed. "It’s hard at first. But you get used to it after a while. I actually think that’s one of the prime predictors of how successful an athlete will be. Being able to block out distractions is a very important factor, Jamie. I learned early on not to pay attention to my family, or the crowd. It actually helps my focus if there are a lot of distractions. Kinda funny, huh?"
Jamie nodded, slowly beginning to understand some of the many factors that made Ryan such a gifted athlete. "So, you saw her a lot, but you didn’t really speak that often, right?"
"Kinda," Ryan agreed. "If you’re on a high school team, you can go to all of Cal’s home games without charge. So some of my teammates and I would take BART over here for the home soccer games. I’d say that we saw nearly every game my freshman, sophomore and junior years." Ryan had a wistful look on her face, remembering the carefree days of her youth. "No matter where we were sitting, at the end of the game she’d always catch my eye and give me a smile or a thumbs up. It was kinda nice."
"When did you see her last?" Jamie knew something was bothering her partner by the sad look in her eyes, and she was a little reluctant to bring up bad memories. But Ryan looked like she wanted to talk, coming over to sit on the edge of the chaise. Jamie began to gently stroke her back as a small sign of encouragement.
"I played in two games senior year." Her flat monotone was very uncharacteristic, giving evidence of how difficult it was to talk about this period of her life. "She was at both of them. In my final game we had a shoot-out. You know what that is, don’t you?" Blue eyes shifted to look for confirmation.
"I’m not sure," Jamie admitted. "Is that when each team gets to take a shot?"
"Yeah, that’s pretty much it. Five players get to try to score with only the goalie defending the goal. Anyway, it was tied four to four when my team made their final score. I made a pretty good save and we won because of it. It was pretty cool, and everybody came over to congratulate me. I looked into the stands for Da, but I saw Coach Greene before I caught sight of him. She gave me a smile that I still remember, and…it meant a lot, Jamie. It just meant a lot." The uncharacteristic slump to Ryan’s shoulders reflected the burden that she still bore over the entire incident.
"Then what happened, Honey. What did she say when you quit the team?"
Ryan barked out a bitter laugh, shaking her dark head slowly. "She said nothing."
"What do you mean, nothing?"
"She said nothing." Ryan got up and went to the refrigerator, pulling out a beer and taking a moment to open it and take a long pull. "After I quit the team, she fell off the face of the earth. Not one phone call, not one letter. No one from Cal called to try to figure out what happened. They just abandoned me." Her head dropped a little, the dark hair shifting forward to drape around her regret-filled face. "When it was time to make my choice about college I called her, and she said she had decided to offer the scholarship to another girl."
"But why?" Jamie was off the chaise immediately, wrapping her arms around her partner. "Why would they do that, Honey?"
/> "I don’t know," Ryan murmured. "They must have figured I was doing drugs or something. I mean, my grades did plummet…I did stop participating in every sport…I did start acting pretty wild, and I’m sure that information got back to the Athletic Department. I guess they were just being cautious."
"So is today the first time you talked to her since then?"
"No, she contacted me last year when she heard I transferred. I couldn’t play then because of NCAA transfer rules, plus I wouldn’t have been given medical clearance because of my head injury. But she told me then that she wanted me to try out for this year’s team. She called me several times last year, actually. It felt like she was recruiting me all over again." She gave a small, bitter laugh as she added, "I told her I wasn’t interested and she finally quit calling."
"How do you feel about her?" Jamie had to admit that she was puzzled by Ryan’s behavior. She'd treated the coach as a best friend rather than a person who Ryan thought had betrayed her.
"Okay, I guess," she said. "We talked about it last year when she called me. She said she couldn’t give me any details, but that she was really sorry how things had worked out. I have no way of knowing everything that went on then, so I just chose to believe her." Ryan looked up with one of her guileless expressions, and Jamie felt the emotion well up in her chest as she once again considered how Ryan tried to see people in the best possible light.
"Could you play for her, or do you feel too betrayed?"
"I think I could." Ryan took another pull on her beer, and stared up at the ceiling for a moment. "I’m trying to get past that part of my life, and in some ways I think this might help me."
"Okay, that makes sense. But it seems like there’s another part of you that doesn’t want to play. Tell me about that."
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