Girls of Summer

by Kate Christie

  “From here on out,” Jo said, looking around the room with that steady, confident gaze of hers, “the competition only gets steeper. We created a lot of chances tonight, and that’s what the coaches and I have been hoping to see from you. Now the next step is to finish those chances. Let’s make that our goal for the next match, eh?”

  Some of the players laughed at the teasing tone in her voice, or maybe at the pun, but Ellie didn’t, Jamie noticed. Neither did Phoebe, or Emma, or Maddie. They only nodded, their expressions dead freaking serious. It had been sixteen long-ass years since the ’99ers had won the World Cup. Clearly, the veterans saw nothing remotely amusing about their current run for gold.

  Jo nodded, short and decisive. “All right, then. Time to lock this game down, athletes. Your families are waiting to celebrate with you back at the hotel. You’ve got two hours before curfew. Use them wisely. Oh, and one more thing.” She paused, a smile slowly spreading across her face. “Happy equality day, my friends. Love is love, and the laws of our great nation have finally caught up!”

  A cheer rose up through the concrete- and metal-lined room, echoing and rebounding until Jamie couldn’t tell which sound waves were coming and which were going. As she shouted herself hoarse and jumped up and down with her teammates, she decided she didn’t really care. Love was love, and she wasn’t going home yet. The Supreme Court had made same-sex marriage legal throughout the land, and the US would live to play another day in Canada. Whether or not Jamie ever saw another minute of playing time, she could think of plenty to celebrate.

  #

  At the hotel, they were greeted by fans who provided a cheering gauntlet through the first-floor corridors, chanting “U-S-A!” and singing the national anthem. It reminded Jamie exactly whom they were playing for, and she smiled at the crowd, even though she hadn’t done anything today to deserve their recognition. As they headed toward the team’s meal room, Taylor O’Brien and Lindsay Martens, genuine newbies, slapped the hands of girls and boys dressed in red, white, and blue headbands and tank tops. But Jamie noticed that Emma, Jenny, and Maddie were less enthusiastic, eyes assessing the crowd shrewdly as they moved from one corridor to the next.

  When they finally reached the meal room, they found their friends and family members waiting just like they’d done in Edmonton after the match against Colombia. There was also a buffet dinner waiting, since match time had forced them to eat mid-day, but for once the players bypassed the food to embrace and be embraced by the family members who had, as the cliché went, gotten them this far. And yet, like many clichés, this one was accurate. Without the parents in this room committing to their daughters’ soccer journeys, the USWNT roster would be much, much different.

  As she wove through the tables toward her own family, Jamie saw Angie and Ellie greeted by theirs, the hugs awkward and seemingly superficial. But she didn’t have long to worry about her friends because her parents and Meg and Todd were before her, smiling and jostling each other to see who could reach her first. Predictably, Meg won, but then the rest of her family joined the hug and she sighed, her shoulders falling as the last of the tension in her chest eased away.

  “Good job, honey,” her mother said.

  “What? I didn’t do anything.”

  “I think we all know that isn’t true,” her father said.

  And, yeah. He was probably right.

  Emma’s brother and his fiancée were at the next table, and they arranged the chairs so that the Maxwells and the Blakeleys were mostly sitting together. Emma and Jamie even switched places after they’d demolished their first helpings of food, in order to get caught up with each other’s families. In fact, they were sitting in each other’s seats when the hotel staff rolled in a giant cake decorated with a rainbow heart, a soccer ball, and the number 29.

  “That’s right, it’s Jenny Latham’s birthday, isn’t it?” Bridget asked.

  Jamie nodded, belting out the birthday song with the rest of the crowd.

  When they’d finished, Jenny bowed to the crowd and took up the cake knife, as team tradition demanded. “I asked for this design,” she announced, “because as most of you know, today is a historic occasion, and not only because it’s the anniversary of my birth.”

  Jamie whistled French-fan style at her former WPS teammate, who smiled and nodded regally.

  “Anyway,” she continued, brandishing the knife in a somewhat alarming manner given that Jamie had noticed the empty beer bottle at her place setting, “while we are obviously celebrating our win tonight, we are also rejoicing—yes, I said rejoicing—because today, at last, love has won. Gay marriage is now legal in all fifty of the United States, and even more than our win tonight or my birthday—I guess—” she paused for the wave of laughter that rolled across the room, “we are celebrating a court decision that affects all of us in this room. Look around you. There are women and men sitting shoulder to shoulder with you who will now be able to marry the person they love. So without further ado, let’s eat some cake and have a party, my friends!”

  A cheer erupted, forks clinking against glasses in accompaniment, and Jamie was pretty sure she heard the ubiquitous “U-S-A” chant from somewhere in the far corner. Jenny bowed once more and commenced cutting the cake.

  A few minutes later, as Jamie stood in line with Emma waiting for a slice of cake, she watched Ellie carry a couple of plates back to her table. Jenny had given her part of the rainbow heart, and as Ellie lifted her fork, Jamie heard Mrs. Ellison say, “I don’t understand why she would put a rainbow heart on her birthday cake. It’s not like it really applies to her, is it?”

  Ellie winced while most of the players in earshot immediately looked at Jenny to gauge her reaction. The birthday girl finished cutting the piece she was on and then paused, her eyes on Ellie’s mother.

  “Actually,” she said, her voice carrying, “who says I won’t end up marrying a woman? It’s a free country, last time I checked.”

  Audible gasps sounded across the room while Jamie bit back a smile. Beside her, Emma leaned her head against Jamie’s shoulder to hide her own mirth. Things were never dull when Jenny Latham was part of the team.

  The surprises weren’t over yet, though. Jamie was next in line when she heard Lisa’s mother asking if now she and Andre would finally get married. They’d been waiting until same-sex marriage was legal, Jamie knew, out of solidarity. Apparently Lisa’s mother knew that fact as well.

  “I don’t know,” Lisa said, her eyes on her longtime boyfriend. “What do you think, Andre? Should we get married?”

  “Is this you proposing?” he asked.

  “Maybe,” she replied impishly.

  “Hmm,” Andre said. He folded his napkin and set it on the table. Then he stood up. “Well, I don’t think that’s good enough of an answer.” He reached into the pocket of his leather jacket, pulled out a small velvet box, and knelt down on one knee. And just like that, the room of two hundred people fell silent. “I’ve been carrying this around for more than a year now, and I don’t want to wait another second to ask you. So this is it, Lee. Will you allow me to spend the rest of my days showing you just how much I love you?” His gravelly voice was breaking by the end of the speech, and Jamie could see the tears in his eyes more than reflected in Lisa’s as he smiled up at her, the literal embodiment of heart eyes.

  “Oh my god, yes!” she practically shouted. She launched herself at him, and he stood up, wrapping his arms around her as the oohs and ahhs swept across the crowded conference room.

  Jamie turned her own not exactly dry eyes to Emma, only to find her girlfriend watching her. As they shared a secretive smile, Jamie thought that someday, somewhere down the road, they would be starring in their own version of this same ritual. Today’s court decision confirmed that they had just as much right to do so as Lisa and Andre, and while Jamie hadn’t expected legal recognition to mean as much as it did, she was willing to take it.

  “Did you see Jessica North’s Instagram post?” Meg as
ked, leaning across the adjoining table to catch Jamie’s eye.

  “No.” She winced preemptively, bracing herself for what would no doubt be homophobic douchebaggery shared for all the world to see.

  Sure enough: “She wrote some pseudo-Christian BS about the world needing to pray like never before,” Meg confirmed.

  “Pretty sure the research proves you can’t pray away the gay,” Tyler said, scraping up cake crumbs with his fork.

  “The only one who needs to pray is Jessica North,” Emma said. “That she ever gets another call-up to the national team, that is.”

  Everyone within earshot laughed, and Jamie smiled as she gazed around at her friends and family. This day had been almost perfect. Or no, actually, it had been perfect. Even Jessica North’s vitriol—and the active hatred of people far worse than her—couldn’t touch them. The only ones who could rain on their parade were the Germans, and Jamie didn’t intend on letting that happen.

  The semifinals were four days away. Tomorrow they would begin video review, position scouting, and strategic offense and defense preparation. For now, though? For now, Jamie was going to scoot her chair closer to Emma’s and sip the glass of wine the team’s nutritionist had approved. For now, she was going to celebrate a double win on this extra-historic day with the friends and family she loved most in the world.

  “To winning!” she said, holding up her glass.

  Voices responded immediately all around her: “To winning!”

  Boo-yah.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Emma gazed out the window as the coach glided through Montreal, taking in the city’s eclectic mix of Gothic, Art Deco, and modern architecture. She hadn’t been here in years, not since she’d been a teenager traveling across Canada for CONCACAF’s Under-19 qualifying tournament. That was the summer when she and Tori Parker… She winced slightly and glanced sideways at Jamie, who gave her a quizzical smile. Probably best not to remember the last time she’d visited Montreal. She smiled back at Jamie and returned to the view outside their window, sunny and idyllic and different somehow from her memories of the largest city in Quebec, Canada’s only predominantly French-speaking province.

  To be fair, the last time she’d been here, she’d still basically been in shock from losing her father a couple of months earlier. Emma had changed immeasurably in the years since, though thoughts of her father’s death still occasionally reduced her to a stuttering mess. This time around, Jamie would be with her, their relationship solid despite the difficult spring. If her teen self could see her now, she’d be ecstatic. Of course, she’d also be pissed because, really? No World Cup title since ’99?

  I’m working on it, she thought to her hypothetical annoying younger self. Honestly, this World Cup was looking better and better, even with Germany looming ahead in the semis. They just needed to keep improving, game by game. So far, so good.

  The coach slowed as they approached a swank downtown hotel not far from Olympic Stadium, where the semifinal would take place. At least they were nowhere near the stadium where they’d played their qualifiers nearly a dozen years earlier.

  And yet, a lack of proximity didn’t prevent Angie from piping up, “Ah, the hotel that shall forever live in US Women’s National Team infamy. Right, Blake?”

  “Wait.” Jamie’s eyes narrowed. “This is the hotel where you guys stayed during under-19 qualifying?”

  “Of course not,” Emma said, glaring at Angie who was snickering openly now. “Shorty’s just messing with you.”

  The insult didn’t appear to phase Angie’s amusement. She only smirked harder and elbowed Maddie, who said without looking up from her phone, her tone long-suffering, “Yes, Ange, I saw her face.”

  That was the best way to handle one of Angie’s pranks, Emma knew: simply ignore her. Jamie, somehow, didn’t seem to have learned that lesson during the many years of her friendship with Angie.

  Outside the hotel, a sizable contingent of fans cheered as they disembarked, pillows clutched to their sides. That was one of the small improvements Lacey had implemented: Everyone now traveled with their pillows from home. Emma nodded at the gathered fans and resisted the urge to look over her shoulder as she followed her teammates into the hotel. Just inside the double doors, the friends and family who had beaten the team bus to Montreal waited—including one family member Emma hadn’t expected to see just yet.

  “Mom!” she said, and rushed to where her mother was standing with Ty and Bridget.

  “Emma, sweetheart,” her mom said, tugging her into a warm hug, Emma’s pillow smushed between them.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, pulling away to slap hands with her brother. “I thought you couldn’t get here until Tuesday.”

  Her mother shrugged. “I decided they could do without me. It’s only work, honey, while this is the World Cup.”

  “I’m really glad you’re here,” Emma said, blinking back sudden tears. “I just have to get settled, but then could we maybe go for a walk?”

  “That sounds perfect,” her mom said, smiling. Ty and Bridget flashed her a thumbs-up, and Emma started to turn away only to find Jamie brushing past her to hug her mom, too. Jamie was so much more of a hugger than she’d been when they were younger that it still sometimes startled Emma.

  “You made it!” Jamie exclaimed.

  “I did,” Emma’s mom agreed, her eyes warm as she gazed from Jamie to Emma. “I wouldn’t miss out on this time with my girls. Nice work, you two, in getting the team this far.”

  My girls. While Jamie characteristically minimized her role in the US team’s advancement, Emma blinked back more tears. Geez. It wasn’t even the end of the tournament yet, and here she was ready to break down at the smallest provocation. Or, not the smallest, exactly. But still. Clearly she needed to pull it together.

  Her mother made that goal exponentially harder a little while later while they were strolling through the Parc Maisonneuve, a large city park not far from the team hotel. Emma was walking arm in arm with her mom, talking about the dog her mother and Roger were planning to adopt—a little Maltipoo named, predictably Emma felt, Mollie Mae—when her mom gestured toward a bench.

  “Can we sit?”

  “Of course,” Emma said.

  They sat together for a few peaceful minutes, watching pedestrians pass. In her cut-off jean shorts, baseball cap, and sunglasses, Emma was dressed not to be noticed, but that didn’t stop the occasional passerby from clutching their companion unsubtly when they recognized her. Emma, for the most part, ignored the attention as she and her mom shared fond memories of Lucy, her dad’s sweet dog who had died of cancer Emma’s first year of college. She had always felt guilty for not being there, but at least Ty and their mother had been with her at the end.

  “Speaking of your dad,” her mom said, reaching over to take her hand, “remember how he thought you could be the next Mia Hamm?”

  Emma laughed, though there might have been a slightly watery quality to the sound. “If that isn’t an example of parental blindness, I’m not sure what is.”

  “He genuinely believed you could be,” her mom insisted. “I did, too. Still do, truth be told.”

  Emma shook her head, but she couldn’t deny the way her shoulders straightened at hearing of her mother’s—and father’s—confidence in her soccer abilities.

  After a pause, her mom asked, “Do you still feel like your life will be incomplete if you don’t win the whole thing? Because from where I’m sitting, winning seems almost inevitable at this point.”

  “Mom!” Emma half-turned toward her. “You can’t say things like that!”

  Her mother regarded her blankly for a moment before her brow cleared. “You mean because of the sports jinx phenomenon. This is you being superstitious, right?”

  Emma sighed a long-suffering sigh. She would bet Mia Hamm’s family knew better than to call such beliefs mere superstition. “If we lose,” she groused only half-jokingly, “I guess we’ll know why.”

 
“Oh, sweetheart, I’m from Minnesota. You know I don’t believe in all that you-know-what kind of hooey.”

  Emma tried and failed to prevent the laugh that burst out of her, and she had to admit that it felt good, just for a minute, to think about something other than soccer.

  “By the way,” her mom added, reaching into her sizable purse and pulling out a tightly folded gray sweatshirt, “I wanted to give you this. I found it when I was cleaning out the Shoreline house a few years ago, and I’ve been waiting for the right time.”

  Squinting slightly, Emma took the proffered sweatshirt. As she undid the rubber band compressing the material, her curiosity morphed into confusion. A brand new UNC Women’s Soccer sweatshirt with a branding design that was at least a decade old made little sense. Unless…

  “Your dad bought it right before he died,” her mother explained, her voice as soft as the hand that brushed back the stubborn curls that had managed to escape Emma’s ponytail. “He just, well, he never got a chance to wear it.”

  Emma’s grip on the crew neck sweatshirt tightened before loosening again. She smoothed it across her lap, surprised to note that it didn’t seem much bigger than her own many UNC Soccer sweatshirts. Had her dad been smaller than how she’d always remembered him?

  For a moment, the busy Montreal park faded away and she was back on a Chapel Hill practice field on an early Sunday morning, the August day already hot and humid, the cicadas keeping time to her labored breathing after a sprint rep. But instead of listening to her coach talk about how the work they were putting in now would pay dividends in November, she had been picturing her father doing wind sprints with her the previous summer on her high school field, trying his best to keep up until finally he’d flopped down in the grass and lay on his back, laughing. Had his heart been in trouble even then? She’d thought he was just traveling too much and not exercising enough, but maybe she’d simply missed the signs.