Girls of Summer

by Kate Christie

  “Yes. And you know, I’ve thought a lot about it, and you weren’t wrong. I don’t mean that I wasn’t excited to go to France with you, but for a youth soccer tournament? I think we both know that was more your father’s speed. I just couldn’t pass up the chance to visit a city I had read so much about.”

  More memories came flickering back. Jamie had been lying in the hammock when her mother tried to talk to her after France, hadn’t she? At least, it felt like maybe she had. The day had been warm and dry, and she had just come home from club practice when her mother cornered her to ask about her latest session with Shoshanna…

  “Oh, god,” she said, lifting her eyes to her mother.

  “Do you remember?” her mom asked.

  “I think so. I told you…” She stopped, because the words seemed too cruel to repeat now. Assuming she even remembered them correctly?

  “You told me it was my fault you’d been hurt,” her mother said. “That I’d only come to France for the art; that I hadn’t paid enough attention to you and that was why you snuck out with your friends.”

  What an awful thing to say. Jamie swallowed against the tightness in her throat, squinting against the pain throbbing in her temple. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice low and tight. “I shouldn’t have—”

  Her mother reached across the table and took her hand, holding it tightly. “No,” she said, her voice fierce. “No. Don’t you be sorry. You weren’t wrong. You weren’t right, either, but you weren’t wrong, Jamie. I should have come to your game that morning. It was the final match, and I chose to be somewhere else. Your father never would have done that to you.”

  “Maybe not, but even if he’d been there, I still probably would have gone out that night,” Jamie told her. “It was Goose and Frankie. They were a year older than me and from the city, and I thought they were so cool. I wouldn’t have told them no, even if Dad had been there. I don’t think I could have.”

  “But I was there,” her mother said, her voice faltering. Tears stood out against her light brown lashes, making her blue eyes that were a mirror version of Jamie’s shine in the dim light. “I was right there, and I couldn’t stop it. I shouldn’t have been sleeping. I should have known there was something wrong.”

  The phrasing stirred another memory. At one time, Jamie had thought the same thing. How had her mother not somehow sensed she was in danger? How had she not found her way to the bar to save Jamie? But a decade later, she knew exactly why: because her mother was human, and so was she. There was nothing magical about what had happened that night. Jamie had made a series of bad choices, and she would forever be stuck with the consequences. That was all.

  “Mom,” she said softly, and turned her hand up so that their palms were touching. “It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t even my fault. Going to that bar was definitely my responsibility, but what happened there wasn’t my fault. The only person responsible is the guy who did it. Not you, not me, not Goose or Frankie, not anyone except him.”

  Her mother shook her head, staring down at the table. “But I should have—”

  “Mom. It wasn’t your fault,” Jamie repeated. “It wasn’t. I promise.”

  Her mom looked up at her, hand clenching in her grasp. “Do you mean that? Do you really believe that’s true?”

  “I really do,” she said. “I’m sorry I ever made you think I didn’t.”

  Her mother waved away the apology and dabbed at her overflowing eyes. “You were young and you were in pain. I just—I guess I always thought that you blamed me, probably because I blame myself. Even if it wasn’t my fault, I won’t ever forgive myself for not being there for you when you needed me. I should have tried again to talk to you. I should have kept trying. But I suppose after that, I was afraid of what I would hear, so instead I pushed it all down and convinced myself that I couldn’t help you. That Shoshanna was the only person who could reach you.”

  In a way, she hadn’t been wrong. Shoshanna had the experience—and the emotional distance—that made the difference. Jamie’s parents could have tried identical tactics and she would probably have rejected them simply because they were family.

  “I’m not going to lie,” Jamie said, because she was done with that. “I do wish you had tried again. But I understand why you didn’t. One of the things Shoshanna taught me is that rape affects more than just the victim. Collateral damage, she called it. I’m just sorry it’s taken us this long to figure it out.”

  “No, I’m the one who’s sorry,” her mother said, chin jutting out in that typically stubborn manner she had.

  And Jamie laughed, because it was nearly one in the morning on Mother’s Day and she was hopped up on sugar and blueberry tea and her mother was half-smiling, half-crying across the table from her. And because, for now, everything made sense in a way it hadn’t in much, much too long. Still painful, but far more comprehendible.

  When she went back to bed a little while later, Emma sighed deeply and pressed her lips to the side of Jamie’s head.

  “Love you, Maxi,” she murmured sleepily.

  And Jamie laughed again, softly, even as she cursed Angie and her ridiculous nicknames.

  Her laughter soon faded, though, and she lay awake in the bed beside Emma, staring up at the dark ceiling where she knew the constellations she and her father had mapped out in painstaking, glow-in-the-dark plastic detail still resided. Bits and pieces of her conversation with her mother flashed through her consciousness, and she couldn’t help wondering what else lay inside her mind, hidden and unyielding. Forgetting was a technique the brain used to protect against traumatic memories, but as a strategic tool, it was imprecise at best and catastrophic at worst. She didn’t remember saying terrible things to her mother, but she knew she probably had. She had been so battered and bruised that she didn’t doubt she’d lashed out at those closest to her.

  God, it was so fucked up. All this time Jamie had thought her mother was making what had happened about herself when in reality she, too, had been traumatized. And Jamie, in her pain, had only made her mother’s trauma worse. Her throat tightened and an ache lodged inside her chest, and for a brief moment she wondered if she might be having a heart attack. It happened sometimes to athletes—a congenital defect went unnoticed until too late. Maybe she was going to die here in her childhood bedroom with Emma sleeping beside her… But no, this pain was familiar. She knew exactly what this feeling was.

  Jamie squeezed her eyes shut and focused on her breathing. She picked one of her mantras, the phrase about all beings everywhere being happy and free, and went through it slowly, picturing her mother first and then herself. But not herself as she was now. Rather, she concentrated on the memory of herself as she had been right before she left for Lyon. She sent waves of love and support to that old, vulnerable version of herself, and it must have worked because her breathing steadied and the ache in her chest eased. It worked, and the tingling in her hands and feet and the dizziness swimming at the edge of her vision gradually subsided.

  Her eyes were open again when a car’s headlights swept across the room, momentarily revealing the universe of stars studding her ceiling. Down the hall, a bed creaked, followed by the sibilant sound of her parents murmuring to each other in the dark quiet of the room they’d occupied ever since she could remember.

  At last, when she was certain it would never happen, Jamie slept.

  Chapter Seven

  Emma glanced around the restaurant. It had been a while since she’d been here—the previous year’s January camp, maybe? Now that they were back, she wasn’t sure why they’d stayed away so long.

  When she was first on the team, rarely had a residency camp passed without a visit to Manhattan Beach Post, a former post office turned social house. At five on a Friday night, they hadn’t had to wait long to be seated. Initially they were shown to a table near the front windows that was big enough to accommodate the lot of them: Emma, Maddie, Ellie, Gabe, Ryan, and Jenny. But before they could settle in, Ellie ha
d pulled the host aside, and the next thing Emma knew they were being led to one of the larger group tables farther inside.

  “I didn’t want to be so close to the windows,” Ellie had said by way of explanation. “It’s getting chilly.” Then she’d looked down at her phone and typed what Emma had assumed was a text.

  Five minutes later, Tina Baker and Steph Miller had filed into the restaurant, followed by Jodie and an older couple dressed in brightly colored clothes and speaking in unmistakable Midwestern accents. The two USWNT mainstays had been hanging around the National Training Center for the past few days, but Jodie’s parents were a new addition. Emma always forgot that sophisticated, fashionista Jodie was from Wisconsin. When exactly had her parents arrived? And what were all of these seemingly random and yet not random at all people doing here, anyway?

  Emma had quickly texted Jamie: “Something’s up. You guys should get here ASAP.”

  Despite Ellie’s strong encouragement to come along, Jamie had stayed back at the team hotel to finish watching Pitch Perfect with her U-23 buddies. They had tickets to the sequel, Pitch Perfect 2, later that night, and Jamie and the others wanted the first installment to be fresh in their minds.

  “On our way,” Jamie had replied with a running woman emoji.

  Now Emma took a sip of her fancy cocktail and exchanged a raised-eyebrow look with Maddie, who appeared to have sent a similar text to her girlfriend. Maddie shrugged subtly and went back to her conversation with Ryan about the newly released USWNT World Cup kit. Nike had invited Maddie, Jenny, and Ellie to attend the official unveiling, where they had modeled the new environmentally friendly uniforms—each kit had been made from a dozen recycled plastic bottles—and answered questions from the sports press.

  The following night, Jenny and Ellie had appeared on American Idol, where they’d presented Ryan Seacrest with his own custom jersey and put in a plug for supporting the World Cup. It was just the start of the pre-World Cup marketing frenzy, which Emma was so not looking forward to. She didn’t mind public speaking, but talking politically expediently about herself and her teammates? Not her strong suit.

  “I heard you said at the unveiling that players who look good perform better,” Ryan said, smirking at Maddie. “Did you come up with that, or were you just toeing the party line?”

  “What do you think?” Maddie answered, and rolled her eyes at Emma.

  Maddie and Ryan might have each other’s backs on the field, but they had never gotten along all that well off of it. Maddie claimed it was because Ryan was bitter that UNC had ruined Cal’s chances of winning the College Cup too many times to count, while Ryan said Maddie simply didn’t have a sense of humor. Emma had never forgotten—and neither had Maddie, obviously—Ryan’s crack her first year on the team about how bisexuals should freaking make up their minds already. Emma didn’t think Ryan really believed that, but the damage had been done. Maybe if Emma’s mother had said that same thing to her on repeat for the past decade, she would hold the monumental grudge Maddie had carried all these years, too.

  Then again, maybe they simply didn’t like each other, and Ryan’s crappy joke had only made their natural enmity worse. There was always that.

  Fortunately, Emma didn’t have to get involved in their enduring feud because at that moment, Jamie and Angie waltzed in. Even though it had only been an hour since they’d seen each other, Emma felt her mood lift instantly. Although, admittedly, her cocktail on an empty stomach already had her feeling fairly good. Jamie scanned the restaurant until her gaze fell on Emma, her face lighting up. What a life, to be dorks in love. And, you know, elite athletes with Nike contracts and the opportunity to win a World Cup.

  Angie quickly claimed the spot beside Maddie while Jamie slid an extra chair in beside Emma’s.

  “Hey,” she said, smiling.

  “Hey.” Emma smiled back and took another sip of her drink, trying not to feel too giddy at Jamie’s appearance. It was dinner out, but technically they were on team time. Actually, they would be on team time basically from now until the World Cup final on July 5. Assuming they made the final, which Emma was definitely assuming.

  Jamie drummed her fingers on the table and eyed Emma’s glass. “What are you drinking?”

  “A Dementor’s Kiss.”

  Jamie’s laugh took the form of a short huff. “A what?”

  “It’s an Old Fashioned made with Fidencio mezcal, Amaro Nonino, cocoa, and chili powder,” Emma explained. They didn’t have practice the following day, so she—and everyone else at the table—was taking advantage.

  Jamie stared at her. “I don’t recognize half of those ingredients, and the other half sound disgusting together.”

  “They’re not,” Emma protested, laughing. “Here, want to try a sip?”

  “Um.” She hesitated briefly. “Okay, why not.”

  Emma slid the glass over. When their hands connected, Emma told herself that she was a grown-ass woman with a successful career and her own condo to boot, but her mini lecture to self didn’t stop her breath from catching as Jamie’s fingers brushed against hers. She watched Jamie lift the glass to her mouth, eyes closing as she first inhaled the drink’s scent and then tested the taste by drawing a tiny bit of alcohol into her mouth, swallowing it, and then licking her lips afterward. Daaaamn. Jamie made sipping whiskey look sexy as hell.

  Then again, Jamie looked good even without the Old Fashioned. Her hair and make-up were on point, just like it had been on Mother’s Day weekend. But this time around, her outfit was more sophisticated than the jeans and crewneck sweatshirt she’d worn to coffee with their moms. Lightweight gray pants hugged her thighs and calves, while her sky-blue collared shirt matched her eyes almost perfectly. The sleeves were rolled above her elbows, revealing a chunky watch that emphasized her forearm muscles. Emma couldn’t help but stare at the fine hair on her arms, bleached golden by the California sun. She wanted to run her hands up those arms, wanted to trace Jamie’s tattoos with her fingertips…

  Okay, then. With difficulty, Emma tore her gaze away from her girlfriend. Apparently her drink was more aptly named than she had realized.

  Their server brought more menus, and soon the new arrivals were debating their drink orders. Jamie decided on a virgin Golden Hind, a passion fruit mojito topped with a maraschino cherry. Angie’s drink was similarly adorned—though definitely not virginal—and as soon as their cocktails were delivered to the table, the two were racing to see who could tie her cherry stem faster with her tongue.

  Emma couldn’t help glancing at Maddie. Her similarly enamored friend bit back a smile and waggled her eyebrows, and Emma shook her head. Honestly, these two. Did they know how hard they made it to stick to team time rules?

  After they’d ordered a dozen or so tapas-style dishes for the table, Jamie leaned closer. “I like your dress.”

  Taking advantage of the warm Southern California weather, Emma had brought along her favorite dress, a subtle paisley print maxi in muted greens and blues with a V-neck in front and dual straps that crossed in the back. Not only was it comfortable, but it made her shoulders and back look good.

  “You can borrow it anytime,” she said, and flipped her loose hair over the opposite shoulder.

  “I might just take you up on that.”

  “Really?”

  “Why not? I’ve been known to do drag before.”

  Across the table, Gabe’s eyes widened. “Did you just say you’ve done drag?”

  Jamie hesitated, glancing at Emma before answering. “I might have dressed up once or twice in college.”

  “Me, too. Drag king champs, baby!” Angie said, holding her hand over Maddie and Emma’s heads for Jamie to slap.

  As Jamie’s palm collided with Angie’s, Emma conjured an image of her girlfriend in a tailored shirt and dress pants, a tie knotted loosely at her throat. Were there photos somewhere? She hoped so. She would have to remember to ask Jamie later.

  The first tapas dishes to arrive were plates of gi
ant potato wedges also known as Fee Fi Fo Fum Fries, followed by several orders of green beans, bacon cheddar buttermilk biscuits, and grilled naan. Lastly, cheese plates from Italy and Vermont arrived with pomegranate cous cous, cured meat, and truffle honey-laced chicken—Maddie’s favorite. Conversation briefly paused around the table as they all dug in, the ensuing quiet punctured mainly by requests for plates to be passed and the happy moans Maddie insisted on (over)sharing.

  When Angie began feeding Maddie cheese and pastrami, her fingers lingering on her girlfriend’s lips, Gabe made a slightly disgusted sound.

  “Whatever,” Maddie said. “I was there when you and Ellie were doing your thing, remember?” She had the decency to keep her voice down, though, so that Ellie and Jodie and, more importantly, Jodie’s parents, all currently engaged in conversation with Steph and Tina at the opposite end of the table, wouldn’t hear the reference to Ellie’s Sapphic past.

  Gabe blushed, as well she should. The team had all but caught the two with their hands down each other’s shorts in a hallway outside a locker room in Texas a few hours before a match. The self-appointed nerd squad—Emma, Ryan, Avery, and Kristie, a now retired goalkeeper—had taken considerable delight in puns on the word “friendly” for months afterward.

  Actually, maybe the team time policy was a good idea, after all.

  “I do not know of what you speak,” Gabe said primly, pushing her hair away from her face.

  Emma joined in the group laughter, but as Gabe’s gaze settled on her, she immediately wished she hadn’t.

  “Really, Blake?” She lifted an eyebrow. “Should the pot actually be calling the kettle black?”

  Emma could feel Jamie’s eyes on her. “I didn’t say anything.”

  “Uh-huh, that’s what I thought.” Just as Emma was sure she’d dodged the bullet, Gabe fake-coughed, two words carrying clearly through the sound: “Tori Parker.”