by Tara Wimble
“Just your calves.” Bella feels her right leg being lifted and Oliv’s hands begin to work on the knots. That lasts about five seconds before she looks up and sees Oliv pulling something out of that bag of hers. It looks suspiciously like a needle.
Bella shrieks and pulls back and refuses to let Oliv do anything else.
Oliv begs and pleads but eventually Bella gets thrown her keys and directions to a place that Oliv says will do the trick.
That place turns out to be a massage parlor.
“This was the agreement.” Oliv stares her down. “You said, there was no way in hell that I was going to sort out the crick in your back-”
Bella groans and holds her towel up. “A crick I wouldn’t have if you didn’t insist on that trail run-” A trail run that ruined her new pair of running shoes and maybe her shins in the process.
“-despite the fact I’m fully qualified-” Oliv overpowers the conversation. “So this was the second option.”
Bella stares at the woman standing in the middle of the room waiting for her to lie down on the massage table. “I’m not too sure how I feel about this.”
“Relief from pain.” Oliv tells her. “That’s all you’re gonna feel.”
She also feels pretty naked and Oliv’s on her way to joining her and there’s not a towel big enough in the world to cover up in.
But she tries to relax because the woman tells her to and she actually needs to not feel as stiff as a board.
It’s not as easy as it sounds. There are a few complications.
Bella would feel relaxed if it weren’t for Oliv’s running, grumbling commentary that this could have been sorted if Bella had just let her fix her back for her. To which Bella makes a rude hand gesture that makes the massage therapist press down uncomfortably on her spine.
“I don’t know why you’re upset.” Bella groans out as the woman hits where the run messed her up yesterday. “I let you stretch out my legs.”
Oliv makes a scoffing noise. “Oh sure, the whole five seconds I had my hands on your calves before you begged mercy.”
“You had acupuncture needles out!”
“They’re decorative!”
“This is a calm place.” The massage therapist bites out as she rubs out the knot in Bella’s left calf.
Bella stops talking for fear of retribution from the person currently in control of all of her muscles and other than a few grumbles from Oliv the rest of their massage goes off without a hitch.
They leave and Bella makes sure to tip the staff generously for having to put up with their bickering.
Oliv walks out onto the street in front of her and Bella jogs a little to catch up.
“Hey!” Bella shouts out, causing a few heads to turn. “Don’t walk away from me.”
More heads turn and one woman even gives her a pitying look. It’s when she realizes that it looks like they’re having a lover’s quarrel on the street that she slows her job into a smooth gait and just hopes Oliv slows down.
It takes a ‘Do Not Walk’ sign for them to even out and Bella nudges Oliv from behind, causing her to bump into an old man. Once she’s done apologizing for almost knocking him into the street she glares at her companion.
“Do you think maybe the rest of this trip could be a little less hands on?” Oliv looks to consider it for a second, shrugging her shoulders.
“How do you mean?” Is the answer she finally gives and they break off to the side, no longer standing at the crosswalk.
“Less deathly trail runs would be nice.” Bella pauses. “More relaxing would be good.”
Oliv pauses a beat, biting the inside of her lip. “Do you guys have an XBOX?”
“I don’t think so.” Bella contemplates, doing a quick inventory of the apartment. “Why?”
“Ok. Step one: get XBOX. Step two: get FIFA. And then step three.” Oliv starts back towards the crosswalk.
“Step three?”
Oliv turns back. “Junk food and beer.” She jumps into the street with only a quick glance and narrowly avoids getting taken out by a car. She’s halfway to the electronics store by the time Bella catches back up.
“So we’re going to play video games?” Bella inquires. “And get drunk?”
“Exactly.” Oliv smiles at her like she just passed the master class.
The smile turns predatory when she spots steps one and two on her list and she jogs over to snatch the items up like someone is going to buy the twenty in stock before she can get over there.
Bella sighs and looks up at the heavens and begins to count down the days until Jacque returns.
*
It’s not until they’re sitting on the floor in front of the TV in sports bras and boxers passing a bag of chips back and forth playing FIFA that Bella starts to think Bro Week 2015 is a really great idea.
The beer only adds to the experience.
An experience that includes a FIFA game that actually has women’s national teams and that’s a novelty that’s not about to wear off soon except for the fact that Oliv keeps choosing Canada quicker than she can and forcing her to play as other teams.
And refusing to sub her in.
“Play me!” Bella whines, slide tackling Oliv’s video game counterpart with a digital version of Hope Solo, stopping a goal.
Oliv groans in frustration and shoves a few chips in her mouth. “Nope.” She says around half chewed potatoes. “This is the big game.”
“I get Canada next.” Bella pouts as Oliv steals the ball again on a clearly dirty challenge and maybe it’s her cloudy mind but these digital referees are just as bad as the real ones.
“No way. I called Canada for life.” Oliv grumbles, trying another shot that Bella punches away.
“My house, my rules.” Bella taunts, sprinting up the flanks with Rapinoe. “And my chips. And my beer.”
Oliv sighs. “You make a good argument. Fine. You get Canada next.”
“Yes!” Bella shouts as she crosses the ball in, silently cheering when virtual Jacque heads it out. “Guess who’s riding the bench?”
“Fuck.”
*
They wake up still on the floor, XBOX long since having put itself to sleep but the TV remains on and Bella groggily looks around trying to swallow against the immense dryness of her throat. She reaches out for the first liquid she can find which ends up being an hours old warm beer. It’s disgusting but it lubricates her throat so it’s the little victories that count.
Looking around her living room she wonders when they passed from funny buzzed to hilarious drunk and then crossed the line into black out.
It’s a losing battle but she tries to sit up and finds that she’s covered in chip crumbs and surrounded by empty bottles. On top of it all her body refuses to let her stay up. A mixture of the trail run still wreaking havoc and the amount of alcohol and junk food she put into her body.
“Sadie?” Oliv’s mumbling on the floor, having woken up but apparently still lost. “Sadie stop banging around my head is pounding.”
Bella would laugh but all she wants is cuddles and Jacque and those two things are in Italy probably eating delicious food and the injustice of it all strikes again.
She closes her eyes and tries to fall back to sleep.
It’s successful.
At least for a few hours until she’s awakened by being shaken until her eyes open.
“Wake up!” Oliv sounds way too chipper for a person who was delusional only hours before. “I made pancakes.”
She had her at pancakes and it’s enough to get her legs moving though she still can’t understand the chipper attitude.
“Have you been taken over by aliens?” Bella has to ask as Oliv just sits there and shovels in pancakes and smiles in between, showing no sign of the hangover that should be there.
“You wish.” Oliv smirks. “Sadie called to check in.”
“Oh so this is all love then?” Bella deadpans. “Creepy.”
“Shut your face. But while we’re o
n the subject.” She trails off waggling her eyebrows suggestively.
“Use your words.”
“Bella and Jacque. Jacque and Bella. The dynamic duo together again.” She’s making the quintessential scissoring motion with her hands and Bella can only roll her eyes. “Are you guys just fucking around or what?”
If it was anyone other than Oliv it would be offensive to just come out and ask that but she’d been the one to walk in on them and even through their more awkward than necessary Christmas dinner reserve judgment. Plus she was almost entirely sure that this was Sadie’s question and Oliv’s though the wording was completely the latter’s.
“We’re getting over the past, I think.” She keeps it vague, everyone knows what they think happened and some have been filled in on the ‘specifics’ but there’s no need to dwell.
“With sex?” Oliv pries.
“There’s sex.” Bella pauses and thinks about it. “There’s a lot of sex. But it’s not just that. It’s--.” She trails off, trying to put a word on it.
“It’s--.” Oliv is still pulling a face at her mention of all of the sex they’re having but it’s her own fault because she asked.
“New.” That’s the word she can finally place on it and finally mean it. It’s the most fitting word. It is new and they’re just taking it one step at a time. Some bigger than others.
“Fair enough.” Oliv pours some more syrup onto her pancakes. “All I’m saying is if you guys get married again I better be in it.”
“I make no promises.” Bella laughs, happy to move on and get on with their day.
“Rude.” Oliv is more than happy to oblige but Bella can still see her tapping out a message under the table, no doubt to Sadie.
*
Oliv finally leaves after a week of pure chaos and Jacque comes back looking tired but happy. She doesn’t ask if Bella’s had a good time because the effects of a weeklong hangover are coming at her all at once.
Meaning Bella is still in bed when Jacque’s keys sound in the door and alert her to the fact that nowhere has been tidied.
She lies there holding her breath and maybe crying a little bit because this is just a really shitty thing to do when your girlfriend has had a long flight and family vacation where everything was probably spotless and shit-
Okay, so she is quietly sobbing into her pillow now because everything is loud and she’s a terrible person who shouldn’t be able to play FIFA or have friends ever again until she cleans the apartment and apologizes forever, and ever, and ever-
Her back is to the door and there’s no noise coming from outside, other than Jacque dropping her bags on the wooden floor and walking. Maybe she is waiting for the sigh, the loud sigh, or even for some cursing while Jacque wades through all the mess she and Oliv made. But the crash from their pyramid of empty cans and great wall of beer bottles doesn’t come.
Jacque does open the door though. Carefully getting past the set of traps that are various sports bras and unopened packets of candy to sit on the bed behind her. Bella waits in a silence, only broken by an unfinished amount of self-pitying crying, for Jacque to say something. But she doesn’t.
The bed groans under her being joined and Jacque throws her arm around Bella’s waist, pulling her entire body back into her own and settling her chin on Bella’s back like she was never gone at all.
She’s never experienced a moment like this. Feeling pathetic and overjoyed because someone isn’t saying anything bad but choosing to just collapse on the bed next to her, despite how her hair and her stupid crying face must look, to cuddle her. It makes the damage done while Oliv was here lift.
“I’m not leaving you in charge here ever again.” Jacque mumbles.
“Okay.”
*
The host gives the camera a beaming smile and finishes off his announcements. “And with the start of the NWSL season also starts the countdown to the 2015 Women’s World Cup in Canada. For those of you counting you only have to wait three more months-”
The season has only just started with a long stretch at home and their first away game is at Seattle, which is why her bag is packed beside her feet. She’d only switched the TV on because they were showing highlights from the Portland v Boston game last night and Whembs had scored a hat trick but the countdown had flashed under the highlights. There was the number.
Jacque laces her hands behind her neck nervously. That was her number in a sense. How many days, how many call ups, how many plays to be ran through before Canada hosted the women of the world?
Winning bronze at the Olympics was one thing and now it seems so far away. Gold seems even further away. Winning is the only way and with winning comes blood, sweat, tears. Dedication and above all else, time.
Ninety minutes. One hundred and twenty minutes. Extra time. Half time.
Three months. Three weeks. Three days. Three hours.
In season, off season, out of the season. On the bench.
Jacque pulls the ends of her hair and sighs.
John stressed a lot for this World Cup. Home crowd, home field, home advantage. Bronze was good but their legacy will always be bronze and a last place finish if they don’t take the stage while it’s open to them. Their record, their best record, is fourth. That’s the first goal, to get further than that, to taste that semi finals win and to reach.
When Jacque looks up she can only see the starting line and the journey to get past it.
Her excitement bubbles around her soaring moments. When Bella is running all the way to the backline to jump on her in goal celebrations. When fans ask how she’s feeling coming up to the games. When she wakes up dreaming about it.
But lately she feels like she’s crashing. Her tackles are getting harder. Her protests are getting stronger. Her frustration evident.
She’s tired. Exhausted for a sleep that will never be long enough.
Sometimes she thinks Bella can see it in her eyes when they’re in bed. That she’s looking deep enough into her soul or something that she can see the words Jacque is starting to string together before she even knows what she wants to say. Every time Bella shakes it off like she doesn’t believe it. Jacque’s good at making her forget about it.
Winning also helps. They’re sitting in fourth for the first time in the league. A comfortable fourth after Boston’s loss and Washington’s shock win over FCKC. Chicago is storming forward and taking them all along for the ride. Jacque is happy but sometimes it feels like the momentum is the only thing keeping her on her feet.
Lexi jogs back through the apartment and tells her that they’re ready to drive to the pickup point. She waits a beat but leaves before Jacque gets up. She switches off the TV and takes a deep breath.
And the world spins on.
*
A few weeks before their World Cup journey starts, Sadie, Jacque and Bella sit down to a conference call with the rest of the Canadian women’s national team. It’s nice to hear her teammate’s voices over the line rather than to have them slide tackling you on the way to goal.
The call is a preparation call. John is on the line giving them details of their training camp, the one they head to straight after their next couple of games in June, and other details like the fact that their all due to change kit sponsors- which raises an interesting response from Bella when they say that Under Armor wants to see them through the next five years, which Jacque thinks is more to do with how small of a jersey she can wear than anything- as well as details on their wages for this next six months.
Jacque has a small heart attack when it’s announced. Bella whispers, her jaw dropping, at the very generous increase in their pay up to the Word Cup and directly after. Placing top three would see them all pocket a small bonus as well. Sadie isn’t the only one to voice a thankful mention to John and the team who has negotiated this for them.
It’s all building on them. The belief is real. The amazing belief in this team to do something out of this world and win the biggest title in women’s
soccer. The World Cup.
It’s not an unachievable dream. They rank sixth in the world and in the last few years they’ve managed to beat a lot of their higher ranked competition in friendlies. Everyone, that is, but the USA. Their chances aren’t bad, especially with a home crowd cheering for them the loudest.
The call breaks down after the official business and a few people hang up, knowing that the next call is for media requiring some of them to stay online. It’s no surprise when Whemb and Carla rally the most requests for questions but there’s always one journalist who needs to get a quote for their lifestyle sections about Bella and Jacque’s marriage.
When it comes up, Sadie mills around in the kitchen where they’re taking the call making amused faces because while the guy is asking about them playing together post-divorce in the most subtle way possible, Bella is resting her head on Jacque’s shoulder. It’s in a way that Sadie would later describe as ‘canoodling’.
They handle it well. The only people who know they’re ‘back together’ in a sense are Oliv, Sadie and Kathryn and, of course, their roommates. It’s sort of difficult to get around that part. They haven’t gotten around to telling other people yet and with the tournament coming up, Jacque doesn’t really want to add another distraction to their plate. Not when they’re this close.
It suits them well enough. And it’s funny in a way that they’re deceiving people again in the opposite way that they once was. The irony isn’t lost on either of them.
“I know it’s a little early to be talking about what the long term plans are for after the world cup-” One reporter asks. “-but with Coach Herdman signing on until 2020 what do you expect to see happen within the team after this world cup, win or not?”
The word rings loud and clear in Jacque’s head, so vividly that she almost blurts it out on the conference call, only for Carla to speak up first. She talks about development, a lot of development and obviously seeing where people’s bodies stand after the end of this long and tiring road. There will be personal decisions to make, she says, but the future of the team will always be to keep pushing.