“Don’t be too long,” Clare said, pulling away. “Your tea is getting cold.”
“I’ll be right there.” Jamie smiled reassuringly before glancing back at her phone.
Britt had texted, “The pub. 9PM tonight.”
“I’m in!” she replied, and then silenced her phone as she went to finish her afternoon tea.
The Twelve Pins on Seven Sisters Road was only a short bus ride from their flat in Holloway. By the time she got there that night, nearly all the members of the Arsenal Ladies FC squad currently in London were gathered around a table in the Function Room, hastily set aside for their impromptu celebration.
“Well done, Maxi! Where’s the little woman?” Jeanie, their tall, butch center forward, smiled as she clapped Jamie on the shoulder.
“She decided to stay home.”
“Smart woman,” Britt said, sliding a lager shanty light on beer and heavy on lemonade her way. “Everyone listen up! To Jamie Maxwell, future World Cup champion and Olympic gold medalist, for getting called back up to the show. May you dazzle the powers that be—and for fuck’s sake, stay out of the hospital this time!”
A chorus of cheers sounded around the table as Jamie held up her glass, grinning at her friends. “Thanks, guys,” she said, trying to memorize the feeling of happiness unfurling inside. If there was one thing sport had taught her, it was to enjoy the good times while they lasted.
This party, unfortunately, didn’t last long. It was a weeknight, and almost everyone on the team had second jobs that allowed them to moonlight as low-paid professional women footballers. Jamie covered her own expenses by running social media accounts for several players on the Arsenal men’s side. It was a pretty sweet gig as part-time jobs went, but most of her teammates weren’t as lucky.
By eleven, Britt and Jamie were the only two left. They moved into the main room of the pub as Judy, the owner’s daughter, came in to tidy up.
“Good luck in Los Angeles,” Judy said, pausing to give Jamie a hug.
“Thanks, Jude.”
“You will come back to us, won’t you?”
“Don’t worry, I still have another year left on my contract.”
As they slid into an empty booth, Britt held up her phone. “Speaking of LA, they just released the camp roster.”
Jamie gripped her glass tighter, knowing what was coming. “So?”
“So no emergency surgery to save you this time. At least, not yet.”
“Dude, it’s not a big deal. You saw us last year. She was perfectly friendly and so was I.”
In addition to being her current club teammate and longtime best friend, Britt was also the only person other than her sister who knew about her history with Emma Blakeley. Even Britt probably wouldn’t have known the details if they hadn’t been youth training camp roommates the week Jamie broke up with Emma—or whatever you called it when you stopped speaking to the best friend you had inadvertently fallen for.
“A few practices here and there is nothing like residency camp,” Britt pointed out.
“Maybe not, but I do have a girlfriend, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“I know, but this is Blake we’re talking about. If you’re trying to say you don’t find her attractive, I call bullshit.”
Jamie wasn’t trying to say that at all. In the ten years since they’d met at Surf Cup in San Diego, she had watched from afar as Emma evolved from adorable teenager to beautiful woman. At twenty, she’d been the youngest player on the roster at the 2007 World Cup, and since then her international football star had ascended steadily. Her face popped up regularly in fitness magazines, Nike ad campaigns, and articles and social media posts about the national team. As a defender, she wasn’t quite as well known to the mainstream public as the team’s leading scorers and legendary goalkeeper. But her girl next door beauty and mediagenic personality ensured that she was front and only a little off-center in nearly every US Soccer marketing campaign.
“I didn’t say she’s not attractive, Britt. But we were kids. Or I was, anyway. I’m not sure she ever was.” She pictured Emma on stage at her father’s funeral reading a eulogy she’d written herself, seemingly collected before the crowd of hundreds only a week after her dad died unexpectedly. At the time Jamie was sure she had never seen anyone or anything more impressive.
Britt touched her hand. “Be careful, okay? You can’t afford any distractions, not if you want to make it this time.”
“You’re right. Thanks, B. How are you holding up, anyway?”
“Me?” The goalkeeper shrugged and gave her a lopsided smile. “Okay. I haven’t given up all hope.”
Britt often said she’d been born at the wrong time. Phoebe Banks, the current American keeper, had held the starting job for nearly a decade and didn’t show any signs of slowing down. Her back-ups were almost as good as she was, and despite a few injuries always seemed to make it back in time for the big cycle years.
“I could put in a good word for you,” Jamie offered. “Not that it’d probably help.”
“Right. ’Cause being nominated for PFA player of the year was a fluke.”
“Shut it.” Jamie reached across the table and tried to flick her arm, but the goalkeeper was too quick.
Britt smirked. “You need to work on your hand-eye coordination, son.”
“Is that a challenge?”
“Bring it.”
“Oh, it has already been broughten.”
They played pool and darts for another hour, and then Britt walked her to the bus stop around the corner where she wrapped her up in a huge hug, lifting her off the ground and twirling her around.
“Seriously, James, I am so freaking stoked for you!”
“Thanks, buddy.” Jamie pulled away and clapped her on the shoulder. “See you Thursday. You guys still bringing the cranberries and pumpkin pie?”
“You got it. Allie can’t wait to experience her first American Thanksgiving.”
“My family still doesn’t believe I can cook, so we have to document the crap out of this meal.”
“Don’t they realize we have to find something to do other than binge on Netflix?”
During the season, the team practiced at seven thirty each evening, which left plenty of daytime hours to fill. In the last three years, Jamie had studied graphic design, learned German, and volunteered at a variety of local organizations, including a nearby community kitchen where her fellow volunteers had taught her the art of “cookery,” as the Brits called it.
“Anyway, I better get home,” Britt added. “Hi to your lady.”
“Ditto. Later.”
Britt waved and spun on her heel, heading for the nearby Tube station. As she waited for the bus, Jamie took out her phone and scrolled through the photos they’d snapped in the Function Room. She found one of her and Britt, arms around each other’s shoulders with a couple of teammates smiling in the background, and posted it on Instagram with a caption that read, “I love @BrittCrawdad12 more than she knows—or probably wants to know. Thanks for the awesome night out with fabulous friends. #Shesakeeper #ArsenalLadiesFC”
When the red double decker pulled up only a little late, Jamie slid into the first empty seat she came to. As the bus meandered south toward Camden, she scrolled through her feed. A few minutes in and her post had already garnered a couple of hundred likes, mostly from Arsenal fans and her faithful contingent of American followers, who, judging from their comments on her photos—“I can’t” and “ILYSM!!!” and “I’m dead”—were predominantly fifteen-year old Tumblr girls who wanted to either be her or be with her. She’d been out since she was fourteen, and despite the pressure on female professional athletes to refrain from using the “l” word, had never tried to hide who she was. Europeans didn’t seem to care as much about the queer thing, and since she wasn’t that well-known outside her sport, she hadn’t attracted many bible-bangers, rednecks, or other haters.
All that could change, she knew, if she became a regular on the national team.
She would take it, though. She would willingly withstand almost anything to represent her country at the highest level of her sport. Even share a hotel room with Emma Blakeley, if it came to that.
As if summoned, Emma’s name popped up in her IG alerts. Under the photo of her and Britt, Emma had written, “Congrats!” with a US flag and a clapping emoji.
This wasn’t the first time Emma had replied to one of her posts. They almost always commented on each other’s awards nominations and other soccer milestones, and since their health scares the previous year, they had tweeted encouraging messages to each other more than once. They’d followed each other on Instagram since the Olympics last year, and had been Facebook friends since the first time their WPS teams played each other the month Jamie graduated from college. The teams had gone out together in the Mission after the game, and she could still remember the way they had watched each other across the bar until finally one of her Bay Area teammates waved Emma over to introduce them.
Emma had actually held out her hand, eyes uncertain as if she thought Jamie might freeze her out. But Jamie had only hesitated a second before reaching out and tugging her into a quick hug. “It’s great to see you, Em,” she’d said, smiling as she pulled away.
Emma had smiled back, brow slightly furrowed. “Really?”
“Really. I can’t believe it took this long.”
“Honestly, I can’t either.”
“You two know each other?” Jenny Latham, Jamie’s club teammate and a striker on the national team, had watched their reunion curiously.
“Yeah.” Emma’s eyes were still on Jamie’s. “You could say that.”
They’d found a quiet corner and caught each other up on the past six years, and as the evening wore on, Jamie had felt the tension easing from her shoulders. She couldn’t remember why she’d been so nervous about seeing Emma. True, things had ended beyond badly when they were teenagers. But Emma was still the same smart, funny person she’d been in high school, and the connection between them, though frayed, was still there. By the end of the night, Emma was scrolling through her iPhone showing her photos of the woman she’d been dating for a few months. She’d seemed happy, and enough time had passed that Jamie could be happy for her, too.
The next time they’d seen each other at an early game in Boston, Emma had brought her girlfriend to the post-game dinner celebration. The group was smaller this time, and Jamie had enjoyed her conversation with Sam, a sports photographer based in Boston, about LGBT representation in professional sports. She could see why Emma liked her. Sam was attractive, intelligent, and attentive. They looked good together, too, a fact that wasn’t lost on Emma’s many social media followers. She may not be officially out, but she had posted a few photos of her and Sam all dressed up and out on the town. You’d have to be an idiot not to figure it out.
All of that was before the 2011 World Cup made Emma and her fellow national team members household names. Jamie had heard through the soccer grapevine that Emma and Sam broke up not long after the World Cup. Then the WPS folded and Emma had moved back to Seattle. Shortly before the Olympics she’d been seen out and about with a mystery man, a Seattle hipster type with a beard and tattoos. Apparently she still favored fluidity when it came to her sexuality.
Not that Jamie cared about Emma’s sexuality.
The bus dropped her off near home and she walked the short distance to her building with the hood of her lined raincoat up and her snapback pulled low, a bottle of mace held at ready inside her jacket pocket. She made it home without incident and let herself into their flat on the second floor of a terraced house as quietly as possible. Inside she dropped her keys on the table near the door, stepped out of her boots, and headed into the kitchen.
Clare had left the light on over the sink, and as she drank a glass of water, Jamie surveyed the smallest room of their flat. The refrigerator was one of those tiny English types that looked like a holdout from 1950 but had in fact been manufactured sometime this century. The stovetop was burners only while the oven was mounted at face level above a row of drawers. Jamie wasn’t sure how this had saved space, but whatever. It would simplify cooking their Thanksgiving turkey. She hoped.
This apartment had been home longer than anyplace else she’d lived since college, and Clare’s presence was a big part of the sense of well-being she always felt here. They had spent time apart, of course. Jamie had gone home to California for a couple of weeks at a time in the off-season. If she was in America and something came up social media-wise, she could always Skype into the Arsenal front office. But the upcoming trip felt different. Training camp meant being seriously out of touch in a way they had only experienced briefly before.
On the side of the refrigerator was their calendar, and Jamie drifted closer. “Thanksgiving!” was scrawled over Thursday’s square in her handwriting, with Clare’s characteristic smiley face below. A primary school teacher, she was big on smiley faces. Jamie had always found this endearing, seeing as Clare’s smile was the first thing she’d noticed when Britt’s girlfriend Allie introduced them at a dinner party eighteen months earlier. Allie and Clare had gone to university together, and Jamie had been fully aware that Britt and Allie were setting them up. But once she met Clare, she forgot to be irritated by their mutual friends’ machinations.
Her phone buzzed again, and she turned it off and plugged it into the charger on the counter. Clare had to be up early for school, but she might have waited up. She usually didn’t like to go to sleep without saying goodnight.
Jamie headed down the hallway, hopeful when she noticed the light coming from their bedroom. There she discovered Clare propped up against her pillows—fast asleep, book open on her lap, reading glasses perched low on her nose. Carefully Jamie slipped the glasses off and moved the book to the bedside table.
“Goodnight,” she murmured, kissing her girlfriend’s forehead before turning out the light. “Love you.”
Clare sighed and slid lower under the covers. But she didn’t say anything as Jamie moved quietly about the darkened room getting ready for bed.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
KATE CHRISTIE lives with her family near Seattle. A graduate of Smith College and Western Washington University, she has played soccer most of her life and counts the 2015 World Cup finals game in Vancouver as one of her top five Favorite Days Ever.
To find out more about Kate, or to read excerpts from her other titles from Second Growth Books and Bella Books, please visit www.katejchristie.com. Or visit her blog at katechristie.wordpress.com where she occasionally finds time to wax unpoetically about lesbian life, fiction, and motherhood.
Table of Contents
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Book 2 - Chapter 1
About the Author
Training Ground Page 30