Girls of Summer

by Kate Christie

  Of course, the US needed to round this game out in order to provide Ellie with a chance at breaking the record. After piling onto the pile of players congratulating Ellie, Jamie jogged back to her position on their defensive end to await kickoff.

  Except she never got the chance. The digital display board the fourth official was holding up had her number on it. Jo was subbing her out. Automatically Jamie glanced over at Emma, who gave her a subtle nod. She nodded back and jogged off the field, slapping hands with Emily Shorter, who had made the squad despite only recently coming back from a knee injury. Shorter took over right back and pushed Taylor O’Brien into the six—Jamie’s position. She’d barely reached the sideline when Gabe’s number flashed, with Angie’s on the opposite side of the display board. Obviously the coaches weren’t taking any chances with their yellow cards.

  Jamie and Angie hugged as they passed. Hopefully, they’d get to be on the field at the same time again soon—although not if she wouldn’t be allowed to play in the next match. Fuck. She’d really drawn a second yellow, hadn’t she?

  “Nice job out there, kiddo,” Jo said, slapping Jamie’s shoulder as she reached the bench. “Now take a break, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” Jamie grated out, even though she didn’t want a break. Like, at all. But she caught herself as she found a spot on the bench beside Britt. Speaking of acting entitled… Apparently she was finally feeling comfortable on this team.

  “Way to go, James,” Britt said, and offered up her fist.

  Jamie bumped it and reached for her recovery shake, stashed under the bench near her kit bag. “Thanks, man.”

  “I must say, I believe that we will win,” Britt said in a cultured English accent, giving each word in the phrase a slightly different emphasis than Jamie was used to hearing.

  “I must say, I agree,” she replied in a suitably haughty accent.

  They were right. The US held on to win easily, holding Colombia to another shutout. The victory was such a relief that Jamie temporarily let it overshadow everything else—including her stupid, ridiculous yellow card.

  “Well done tonight, athletes,” Jo said in their post-game team huddle as they stood at the edge of the field, arms around each other’s shoulders. “You handled each challenge thrown at you and came out on top. Tomorrow morning we head to Ottawa to face China. But tonight, celebrate the win with your family and friends. As long as we keep moving forward, we get to keep playing. So here’s to forward progression!”

  “Boo-yah,” the players called out in unison, laughing.

  What wasn’t funny was that their offense was still struggling to finish. Still, the win tonight gave them more chances to fix that aspect of their game. As Jamie overheard Ellie tell a TV reporter immediately after the match, “We keep telling you guys we haven’t peaked yet. Give us time. We’ll get there.”

  The same reporter commented to Maddie that the Americans had been lucky Colombia’s starting keeper wasn’t able to play. She’d replied, “Tournaments like this always come down to a bit of luck. So yeah, we’ll take it.”

  Once again, luck had been on their side—if you didn’t count the two yellow cards in the first half. Jamie definitely counted them. Gabe, she was pretty sure, did too.

  “At least neither of us will be alone in the stands,” Gabe commented as they walked to the waiting bus a little while later.

  Jamie had been assessing the straggling fans, memories of St. Louis making it difficult to concentrate on much else. They’d had fans waiting for them at every hotel before and after matches; at various training facilities; even in hotel lobbies during their unofficial breaks from the team. Emma, she knew, was struggling with all the potential moments of stranger danger, as she sarcastically referred to them. But, typically, Emma didn’t want to talk about her fears. She simply wanted to focus on the team. And winning, of course.

  Now, as Gabe’s words sank in, Jamie glanced at her quickly. “Wait, what do you mean ‘in the stands?’”

  “We’re not going to be allowed to sit with the team,” Gabe said. “You didn’t realize?”

  “No.” Jamie shook her head. “I’ve never been suspended.”

  “Wow. That’s impressive.”

  Jamie shrugged. What did it matter that she had never drawn a red card when she had managed to get herself suspended during the biggest tournament of her life? And now, to find out she would be exiled to the stands, away from the rest of the team?

  She stalked toward the bus, her eyes resolutely forward. Friday was going to suck.

  Chapter Twelve

  Jamie refreshed the browser on her tablet again, scrolling impatiently through the new additions to the SCOTUS live blog. She had spent the previous morning’s training session checking her phone surreptitiously at breaks in the action, but today was Game Day, so she didn’t have to be anywhere between breakfast and lunch. She didn’t have any place special to be later, either, except in the stands with Gabe to watch as their teammates took on China in the World Cup quarterfinals.

  Whatever. There wasn’t anything she could do about that except get through it. Refreshing her tablet screen, on the other hand? That she could definitely do.

  She wasn’t supposed to be online, given the coach-imposed moratorium on reading the news, but she couldn’t help it. She’d been waiting for the Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage ever since oral arguments had been heard in April. So maybe she occasionally saw headlines about the World Cup while searching for an update on only the most important SCOTUS decision ever for American queers. It wasn’t like she read (all of) the articles that mentioned the US team directly, just enough to know that the sports press was unimpressed with the team’s performance so far.

  From Jamie’s perspective, the press was simply trying to drum up drama where there wasn’t any. The most important thing was not getting sent home, and the US team had managed that objective every step of the way so far. If they hadn’t, she wouldn’t be sitting here now on yet another hotel bed in yet another Canadian city.

  Where were they again? Not Edmonton anymore but Ottawa, the nation’s capital located in uber-flat Ontario. They’d only been given three days between the Round of 16 against Colombia and their quarterfinals match against China—including a travel day. China, on the other hand, had played their Round of 16 match two full days before the US side faced Colombia. That meant China would have a slight leg up over the US in this evening’s game. Those sorts of advantages tended to even out in the course of a month-long tournament. If the US won tonight—and of course they would, Jamie told herself fiercely—their semifinal match would be played in Montreal, only a couple of hours away by bus. Jamie was looking forward to the break from jet travel and, more importantly, jet lag.

  But she was getting ahead of herself and the team, she thought, stretching slightly on the bed and glancing out the window. This hotel was one of the nicest she’d ever stayed in, a century old Gothic and Renaissance chateau—the French word for castle—with marble and granite accents, antique furnishings, and a view of Parliament directly across the main thoroughfare. The building felt like a real castle, with its marble staircase, an art deco swimming pool complete with a Greek fountain at one end, and Renaissance-style arches that reminded Jamie of the traboule she and Emma had explored in Lyon with her Arsenal teammates.

  It almost seemed as if the farther the American side went in the tournament, the nicer the accommodations got. Not that she minded. Canada was even broader across than the US, and the grind of travel had definitely set in by now. Having a comfortable space where they could rest and recover was nearly as important as balanced meals and daily training time. The veterans had been complaining the most about Canada’s sheer enormity, reminiscing nostalgically about the comparative ease they’d enjoyed getting around Germany in 2011. Not to mention playing in the UK during the London Olympics—so many football stadiums in such close proximity!

  Ah, well. Jamie imagined they would survive Canada, though she didn’
t say as much. Personally, she had found the reality of maneuvering the national team from location to location fascinating. The size of the dedicated support crew it took to load their boxes of gear in an enormous tractor trailer and transport it from one team hotel to another was mind-boggling. From the players’ boots and kits to the coaches’ video projectors and the team’s athletic treatment tables, the amount of money required to fund the national teams was ridiculous, especially on the men’s side. Rumor had it that the men’s head coach was paid ten times what the women’s head coach made, though the federation was secretive about actual figures. Jamie had even heard that the under-20 boys’ coach made more than Jo, but whatever. Worry about what you could control, right?

  In addition to all the travel, Jamie had struggled to manage the feeling of being under a microscope. The veteran players didn’t seem to mind or even notice the number of cameras following them, but Jamie did. Not only were there fans with phones and digital cameras waiting at all hours of the day and night at the stadiums, hotels, and airports the team navigated, but US Soccer staff and members of the international sports media were constantly lurking in both expected and unexpected places, telephoto lenses attached to their DSLRs, video cameras perched on their shoulders. Jamie suspected there had been more photos and video taken of her in the past few weeks in Canada than in the totality of her life to date. Well, maybe not more. But possibly an equal amount.

  The unlocked door opened, and Jamie smiled when Emma poked her head into her and Rebecca’s room.

  “Everyone decent?” her girlfriend asked with a cheesy dad wink.

  “Pretty much,” Rebecca said without looking up from her phone.

  “Come on in,” Jamie said, still smiling. She couldn’t help it. Emma looked cute with her hair loose around her shoulders, the damp ends leaving wet marks on the team sweatshirt she was rarely without, even in the middle of the summer in Eastern Ontario.

  “Any Supreme Court news yet?” Emma asked, and dropped onto the bed beside her. Rebecca side-eyed them from the other bed but didn’t comment. She and Gabe had been doing their own hanging out, so to Jamie’s mind, it would be a case of the pot calling the kettle black if her current roommate ratted them out for holding hands behind closed doors.

  “Not yet,” Jamie admitted, scrolling back to the top of the page. She couldn’t remember now how she had found her way to SCOTUSblog, a site that live-blogged Supreme Court opinions and orders—Facebook link? Twitter post? Google search?—but two days down the rabbit hole and she was thoroughly hooked.

  Emma rubbed her shoulder. “Didn’t the blog people say it was probably going to be on Monday?”

  “Yeah, but no one actually knows. Today’s the anniversary of the DOMA case, so other people have been saying the justices might pick today. You know, for reasons of historical resonance.”

  “It’ll only resonate if it’s good news, though,” Maddie said as she walked into the hotel room, Angie, Britt, and Ellie on her heels. And, wait, was Jodie allowed to be in a team member’s room? Then again, Ellie was the team captain. What would Jo do, suspend her on today of all days for hanging out with her fianc—wife?

  “I’m telling you guys, it’s going to be good news,” Jamie said as she hit refresh again.

  The Supreme Court, true to form, had left their same-sex marriage ruling until the last week of the current SCOTUS term, along with a handful of other hotly contested cases like state redistricting, the Clean Air Act, and the death penalty. You know, just a few light questions about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

  “Isn’t it the anniversary of the Lawrence decision, too?” Emma asked.

  “The what decision?” Angie asked, flopping down beside Rebecca while Britt stretched her long body across the foot of the queen bed.

  “Lawrence versus Texas, 2003,” Jamie said without looking up. She had done a senior project at Stanford on the history of LGBTQ+ rights in America and could still recall most of the details that had gone into her presentation. “It’s only been twelve years since SCOTUS struck down the sodomy law in Texas to make gay sex legal everywhere.”

  Angie frowned. “Are you honestly saying gay sex was still illegal like ten years ago?”

  “Yep—at least, in a dozen states or so. And most of those still haven’t gotten rid of the laws that Lawrence invalidated.”

  Several audible expressions of disgust echoed across the room as Jamie hit refresh again. Then she gasped as a single word flashed across the screen: MARRIAGE. “Oh my god, you guys! Kennedy’s got the opinion. Shhh!”

  From Emma’s other side, Maddie murmured, “Why do we need to be quiet?”

  “So she can think,” Emma replied. “I think.”

  Britt and Angie snickered, but Jamie ignored them and read aloud, “Holding: The Fourteenth Amendment requires a state to license a marriage between two people of the same sex! Holy crap!” She lifted her eyes to Emma’s as her girlfriend’s arm tightened around her. “They did it! They freaking legalized gay marriage! Like, everywhere!”

  The stunned silence that had fallen over the room broke when Angie leapt off of Rebecca’s bed, whooping, and proceeded to dance around the room while everyone else cheered. Maddie soon joined her, and if they kissed? Well, they could be forgiven. After all, gay marriage had just been legalized in every single state in America. Even in the Bible Belt.

  Jamie read aloud again over the cacophony: “It also says the Fourteenth Amendment requires states to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex when their marriage was lawfully licensed and performed out-of-state. Oh my god, you guys. We won! We totally won!”

  Britt leaned over to give her a high five, and Jamie captured her friend’s fingers and held on for an extra-long moment, grinning. This win was even more important for Britt, given she was involved with a foreigner. Allie was careful to abide by the rules of her tourist visa, but if she and Britt were to get engaged or married, her path to citizenship would be easier to navigate.

  Emma hugged Jamie against her side, breath warm against her ear. “I feel like this is a good sign, don’t you?”

  “Um, yeah! A great one!”

  “I love you,” Emma added, her voice almost a whisper.

  “I love you, too.” Jamie leaned in and pressed her lips against Emma’s for a brief, heady moment. They had actually won. Not just the battle, but the entire war.

  She sat back, smiling around at her happy friends. SCOTUS—thanks to Kennedy and the four awesome liberal judges—had once again acted to protect the dignity of queer Americans. In a matter of minutes, the legal realities of gay and lesbian couples across the country had shifted. From now on, no matter where they went in the United States, a married lesbian or gay couple could not be denied their basic rights. Not legally, anyway. As one SCOTUSblog reader helpfully commented, this decision effectively legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states, and forced each state to recognize one another’s licenses.

  Just like that, the war over her right to marry the person she loved had ended, and the right side—the only side, as far as Jamie was concerned—had emerged victorious.

  The raucous noise settled into a dull chatter as everyone grabbed their phones and proceeded to text friends and family members and post celebratory messages to Facebook and Instragram. As she and Emma huddled together, heads nearly touching over their phones, Jamie was happy to see the rainbow wave of posts on both of their personal Facebook feeds. The outpouring of support was unsurprising given how carefully they curated their feeds, but still, it was something to see.

  Eventually, she clicked back over to the live blog to review additional details of the decision. The vote had been 5-4, as expected; the ruling took up three of the day’s four boxes of files; each of the dissenters had written an opinion, including Chief Roberts—his first ever; the majority opinion relied on the dual rationales of fundamental rights and equal protection; and, last but not least, the ruling had established as fact that the Fourteenth Amendment
’s Equal Protection Clause and Due Process Clause prohibited the unjustified infringement of the right of gay and lesbian couples to marry. She couldn’t stop smiling as she followed a link to supremecourt.gov and skimmed the majority opinion. Obergefell v. Hodges had determined without a shadow of a doubt that marriage was a fundamental, constitutional American right, and that any discriminatory attempt to prohibit same-sex marriage was an unlawful violation of the Constitution.

  Jamie was in shock. She may have told everyone that she anticipated good news, but honestly, she’d been hoping for this decision, not expecting it. No one had known which way it would go. The anti-gay marriage arguments had been pathetic at best, with arguments based on astonishing levels of prejudice without any legal footing of note. But those same bullshit arguments had worked for decades, in and out of courtrooms across the country. Jamie still couldn’t get her head around the fact that Kennedy, a Catholic social conservative who had been nominated to the court by Ronald Reagan, had swung the same-sex marriage vote to the liberals. This was the same justice who had sided with the court’s conservatives two years earlier when they gutted the Voting Rights Act; the same justice who had agreed in Citizens United that corporate donations to political campaigns were protected by the First Amendment.

  And yet this man, this deeply problematic, openly conservative judge, had written eloquently about the hopes and dreams of same-sex couples:

  It would misunderstand [the petitioners] to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.