by Tara Wimble
Bill has to readjust his camera and the cat calls start from DScott and Sadie on the sideline. “Work it girls! The camera loves you!”
Bill chuckles at their antics but it does the job and the stiffness they felt falls away. They’re a lot more relaxed when he’s ready for them again. “Whatever feels natural,” He asks. “Just have fun with it.”
“Keep it PG!” Oliv yells.
The hand gesture Bella makes is definitely not PG and Jacque grabs her arms down and hugs her so that they’re pinned to her sides. “Cheese!” She beams and Bill takes the chance she’s giving while Bella shows the camera how happy she is.
Looking at the final shots almost has her believing it too.
*
Flying to Germany seems to take longer than it actually does but she gets sat next to Bella on the flight and they’re able to entertain each other pretty well so it all works out. Even if there’s only so many games of Poker one can play without wagering anything more than airline pretzels. It’s fun and it’s more getting back to the way things used to be between them before, well, before everything that’s happened.
It’s reassuring because Jacque knows that in order for this to work out things have to be harmonic, they have to continue the hard sell, even through the little rough patch they went through. When she thinks of it like that it helps to solidify the facade in her head. It was just a little rough spot, just a patch she went through with her wife.
Of course, the details do a bit to muddle it all but it’s a good start to get her into the correct frame of mind.
Germany is a beautiful country, all full of old stuff and history, and Jacque wishes she could go into more detail about exactly what old stuff and history but she mostly sees it fly by from the window of a plane so, you know, it’s cool but not specific.
But nobody is really too worried about sightseeing, that can wait until after they come and do their work, kick ass at the World Cup. They’ve never quite reached the heights of Jacque’s last World Cup, the 2003 tournament, but still there’s hope that this could be a great year for Canadian soccer.
She looks over and smiles at Bella, who notices her looking and smiles freely back at her, and edits her previous thought.
Maybe just a good year across the board.
They spend less than an hour on the ground after landing before they’re ushered onto a huge orange bus with the Canadian flag on the side of it. The usual suspects run to the back of the bus and Jacque gives up about halfway back and sits in the middle seat. Bella chooses to sit on the opposite side and stretches her legs across another seat. She smirks at Jacque all the same.
Carla and Niav choose safety and sit in front of them. The further back on the bus, the louder it gets. So naturally Whemb sits up front.
From there it’s a whirlwind. They have so much to cram in a few days before the tournament starts. Jacque ends up rooming with Sophie for the first time in a while and they stare wistfully out of the windows at the German sky as they’re ushered from meeting to photo-op to training to interviews.
They spend any time not in recovery, sleeping or eating, on the field trying to acclimate to their new surroundings. The faster they do that, the easier playing will be in a few days.
The day before their first game they go through stadium training in Berlin’s Olympic Stadium. She works through drills with Niav and Loretta and looks up at the seats and tries to imagine how full they’ll be tomorrow night for their game against Germany.
At the end of the training she sits down next to Imogen and they just look out at it together. “You ready for this?”
Ready for them to do what they’ve never done and go further than the last time.
Jacque hears the roar of the 73,000 people that will sit and watch them tomorrow. When she opens her eyes the lights are shining down on them.
“We got this.”
*
They just lost to Nigeria, fucking Nigeria of all of the teams to lose to and it completes their failure at the World Cup. Three games, three losses. Not a single point in the entire group and only one goal, a Whembs goal in a loss to Germany, throughout the entire tournament.
A safe bet would be to say that morale is fairly low.
A more accurate picture would be to say that they’re imploding.
Most of them have taken it pretty quietly, other than a fairly intense shouting match between Sadie and Jayce that ended with coach storming off, it’s just been a sullen group of people. But that’s to be expected when you make it to the world stage and bomb out like this. Hell, she hasn’t been able to do the math but it’s a possibility when all is said and done that they’ll have finished last in the tournament. Having been on a squad that finished fourth back in 2003, it’s not something that Jacque can easily comprehend.
No one can look at each other when they march back to the hotel. They eat in silence. They walk in silence. Everyone’s heads are hung and depressed. Jacque knows that many of them are slinking away to drown their sorrows, in showers or in beer because this is unprecedented. This is rock bottom.
The only solace she has is Bella, Bella who had just texted her to invite her up to her room. And if there was anyone that Jacque wanted to see right now it would be her wife. Her best friend.
Because they were going through this together and they’d get through it together just like they’d done basically since they met.
Knocking on the door seems silly when they share a house and a bed most of the time but it’s the nature of being married on a team, you don’t actually get to sleep together on the road and especially not in a big deal like the World Cup.
Bella answers and smiles at her, not as brightly as normal, but still far more than most of their team can right now and it’s energizes Jacque. She’s even more excited to just be here and hang out and forget about everything.
“I’m glad you came.” Bella says as she leads her deeper into the room. “Jan is out so it’s just us.”
“Cool.” Jacque pauses and hates where her mind goes with that. “I kind of figured it would be.”
“Yeah. Do you want to sit?” She offers Jacque one of those awful hotel chairs that really is probably just some wood with a light cushion.
“Nah, I’m good. Just a little bit too antsy to sit still probably.” She still feels the cold sweat clinging to her from the game. It’s such a cold that she thinks it won’t leave for weeks.
“I know what you mean.” Bella nods and grabs a folder from next to her laptop off of the desk. “So I actually had something that I wanted to talk to you about.”
“Oh?" Jacque tilts her head curiously.
“Here.” She hands over the folder in her hand and shifts her weight back onto her heels.
“What is this?” Jacque opens the manila folder suspiciously, sliding out the few stapled together pieces of paper inside. She reads the heading on the top page and her world slides to a halt.
Bella speaks where Jacque leaves the gap. “It’s a separation agreement.” She looks down at her copy of the paper. “I guess legal dissolution of marriage is what it’s technically called?”
“I can fucking read, I mean, what exactly am I doing with a document like this with our names on it because this isn’t funny.” Jacque can feel the muscles in her jaw tightening up as she attempts to keep a rein in on her confusion.
“I was talking to Blake. We’ll have been together for almost a year when we get back -and I love him.” Bella sighs. “We want to be together and this whole marriage is complicating things.”
Jacque can’t even process everything that’s running through her head. She’s burning hot and cold and she can’t differentiate the two in her mind. It feels like there’s a furnace in her chest that Bella keeps filling with coal the longer she stares at her like nothing’s wrong. Like this is a completely normal activity like asking Jacque to pick up milk on her way home.
“You’re leaving me?” And Jacque didn’t mean for her voice to come out that small
, she’d meant to project strength and confidence, but the end result just turned on her. Her voice betraying her.
“Not leaving you, just releasing you from our agreement.” Bella smiles like that explanation makes it all okay, blind to the storm brewing inside Jacque. “We’ll go back to being friends.” She pauses and adds on. “And teammates. That will never change.”
“Releasing me.” Jacque spits out, the taste already rotten on her tongue.
“Just think of it this way, you won’t have complain about me singing in the shower anymore,” Bella laughs. “You get your apartment back, your life back, and you get to move on from me.”
But Jacque is pinching the soft part of her thighs. Moving on, like it’s become so simple.
“Are you kidding me?” She’s doing this now? Right now? “You’re choosing right now, right this second, when half our team is attempting to drown themselves in the showers down the hall, to break this to me?”
Jacque stands and pulls her hair back until it tugs against her skull. “Jesus Bella, I knew you were a little clueless but this is, this is the very top-”
Three and a half years.
“Wait, are you- are you mad about this?” Bella stops folding up her jacket and leaves it on the bed.
They’ve just bombed out of the World Cup in the most spectacular way possible and, even without Bella choosing this precise moment to make it worse, she was pissed to begin with.
“Am I--am I mad?” Jacque’s back to speaking slowly, evenly because she’s afraid that if she lets her speech get out of control than the rest of her will follow. “Of course I am. Are you serious?”
Bella doesn’t respond straight away and Jacque holds her head. “I can’t believe you right now.”
“I don’t understand why you’re even mad about this, this is perfect- this is what you want-”
“How do you even know what I want?” Jacque throws back. “This deal has never been about what I wanted, it was about you and it’s always been about you and you can’t turn around now and plead mercy on me because you fell in love with someone else.”
“Someone else?” Bella repeats. “I didn’t fall in love with someone else, I just fell in love! We’re not together Jacque, this isn’t-”
“Then why does it feel like it?” Jacque yells. “Why are we even having this conversation?”
Bella grows smaller in her eyes. She didn’t expect this kind of diverting cowardice. “Because you deserve to know-”
“As your wife!” Jacque exclaims. “Because as your legal partner you had to let me know that the benefits of this relationship stopped the minute you made the national team. And now you get to cut me loose.”
Bella looks down at the papers. Jacque’s voice cracks. There’s not much more she can take. Bella’s timing, cuts her to her waist now that coming last in the world cup has already taken her down to her knees. “Congratulations. I’m sorry it took you this long.”
“Jacque, it’s not like that at all-”
“Then what is it like Bella?” She refuses to sit down because that means that everything has to sink in. Jacque paces and Bella stands still. “Is this doing me a favor? Because the way I see it, this whole thing? I could have done without it. I could have done without the stress, with FIFA on our asses, with lying to my parents-”
“So you want to make me feel guilty? For you agreeing to this?” Bella fires back.
“No, I want you to feel guilty for making me feel like your wife.” Jacque snaps. “And thinking that it wasn’t going to change a damn thing.”
Bella knows it’s not a good move to approach her like this. A thousand warning bells that haunt her of their wedding. Blake sits in the back of her mind because she was doing this for him, and then for Jacque, that’s how she justified it. But now it’s just for herself. It’s always been about her.
“Jacque, I never meant to,” Bella walks to where Jacque has stopped to brace her elbows against the wall.
If she hadn’t been able to read between the lines of what Jacque was saying to her through angry words and accusations, then Jacque makes it that much clearer after Bella places a hand on her shoulder.
She could wax lyrical about doing this for the both of them and it being an end to what was a business deal in the beginning, but that doesn’t makes sense for them both anymore. Too much has changed between then and now and Bella gets a glimpse of just what that change has wrought on Jacque.
Bella’s hears nothing but white noise coming from Jacque’s mouth as she’s pressed against the wall. She’s been here before. Other bodies, other times, other boys. But she’s lost and Jacque’s never gotten this close to her without an audience, pressing her forehead down on hers with an angry restraint, and closed eyes.
Bella’s struck by a spark of something she can’t explain just feeling the shaking Jacque is doing as she’s pinning her there.
She’s hurting her, being this close, and Bella can’t breathe for all the words they’ve spat at each other tonight. It hits her that it’s not just tonight. This is the crashing togetherness of four years of words Jacque’s never said. Words Bella never thought to hear.
Jacque’s body is a tightened wire that cuts into her. Bella loses the gasp building in her mouth because there’s no space between them for her to hold it in and she sees in Jacque’s eyes just what Bella is telling her to walk away from.
Then Jacque pushes back, not looking at her still, and turning away. Closing a door on the conflict. Slumped shoulders underneath that mane of hair.
But Bella can’t shake that peak, crawling under her skin, in the middle of that white noise.
*
There’s no media buzz. No greeting. Nobody waiting for them when they fly back home.
After all, there’s no one who really clamors after the team that finishes last at anything. Especially not the World Cup.
But it’s just as well because Jacque isn’t sure if she could actually handle the stress of anyone getting in her face about anything right now. Because they’d bombed out of the World Cup and her wife had handed her divorce papers so it’s safe to say it’d been a pretty shitty summer.
Worse even than being blindsided with papers was coming back to their place in Toronto and realizing while she’d had her stuff shipped back from Vancouver before they left Bella had not.
Her initial feeling walking back into the apartment was one of emptiness and, at first, she’d struck it down to an emotional feeling. But then she looked around and actually took stock of what was there and found that, no, this wasn’t some sort of greater metaphorical feeling of loss.
There was actually just less stuff.
For the first time since they’d moved back up to Canada together at the end of 2007 Bella’s stuff wasn’t strewn about for Jacque to trip on and straighten up and throw at her.
And there was actually no ‘her’ to do any of those things to.
So this wasn’t some sort of practical joke, there’s no one about to jump from behind the couch and let her know that this is all in her head.
It’s real. It’s real life. The new world order.
And she has to find a way to live in it.
*
She doesn’t have a whole lot of money saved up but there’s enough to keep her going in a small place in Vancouver. She refuses Whemb’s offer to move back into her old apartment because Kathryn is still living there and it’d only raise more questions to why she’s not in Toronto with Jacque.
The party line is that she’s working with strength coaches and some old trainers to get into better physical shape. After what just happened to them in the World Cup, no one really questions it. No one cares enough.
But the universe forces her to think about Jacque almost immediately. She had all of her mail forwarded from their place in Toronto to her tiny apartment in Vancouver. Almost a week after she’s settled in she gets the notice.
It’s a official. She’s officially a dual citizen. Her full Canadian citizens
hip came through and it’s like a punch to the stomach.
Because all she can think of is the intense look on Jacque’s face when she showed her the papers. The look in her eyes when she realized she was going back to Toronto alone.
This is it, this is the ultimate goal they were working towards and yet it feels hollow. She wants to permanently curl up into a ball and never leave her bed.
In reality though, she’s spending time with Blake.
He hadn’t mentioned the World Cup, other than to tell her they’d do better next time and not to even worry about it, which had almost made her want to retreat back to her tiny apartment and cry. But other than that, he’d been so much more engaged with her. They’d actually gone on dates and seen parts of Vancouver that Bella hadn’t really had the chance to. While she trained with coaches and went to the gym, he was always waiting there at the bakery when she finished. It probably wasn’t good for the clean eating she was committing to but at the end of the day, when she felt dead on her feet, the sugar was always a kick start.
He doesn’t mention what happened before she left for Germany either. Bella knows she should be grateful that she has a boyfriend who’s willing to put to rest the fact that she lied to him for months about her relationship to Jacque and put herself before his feelings.
But it irks her. Blake actively avoids talking about anything to do with Jacque, or even Kathryn, or how the divorce is going. Shutting her down when she tries to discuss it. A part of her wants to point out that she’s doing this for him, that this was to show him how much he meant to her, but then she realizes that it’s a hollow gift.
There’s no real loss for her in terms of feelings. Leaving Jacque, ending their arrangement, isn’t breaking off emotionally. So telling him that would be lying again.
Sometimes though when they sleep together Bella can see himself pushing something down in his mind. She can feel it as well, the stiffness falters for a second and he fumbles inside of her and she knows it has something to do with Jacque. What he thought of their relationship, what he imagined it to be and stupidly she wonders if that’s something he worries about.