Good thing she didn’t drink that much normally. Her memory was questionable enough as it was. Too many headers, possibly? Or was it a trauma response? One of the things she admired about her girlfriend was that she had a mind like a steel trap. Not that her girlfriend was talking to her right now.
While Ellie and Phoebe wrestled with the DVD hook-ups, Jamie ducked into the hall and scrolled through her phone, trying to remember what time it was in London. Was the UK eight hours ahead or behind? It wasn’t like Clare was going to answer either way. She had sent a grand total of three texts in the last week, all in response to messages Jamie had sent. Jamie rubbed her eyes and hit dial, wandering down the corridor as she waited for Clare’s line to ring. But the call went straight to voicemail, so Jamie hung up and headed back to the room. She missed Clare. Why was Clare avoiding her?
Except she kind of thought she knew the reason.
In the open doorway she surveyed the overcrowded room, stopping when her eyes fell on the figure leaning against her headboard, iPhone in hand. Emma glanced up and their gazes met, and Jamie stood there looking at the girl—no, the woman—who had once been her best friend. Then they had become something indefinable but definitely more, and then they’d stopped speaking altogether until the damn soccer gods had decided to bring them back together. Clare knew all of this in theory, but she didn’t know details. The only person Jamie wasn’t related to who knew everything was Britt, and that was only because Britt had held her hand through the longest week of her life after she broke up with Emma in this very hotel—or whatever you called it when you told your best friend slash sort of almost girlfriend you never wanted to see her again.
“Max, where’s Pitch Perfect?” Ellie asked, breaking in on her spiraling thoughts.
Jamie tore her gaze away from Emma. “What?”
“Your movie case.” Ellie spoke slowly, enunciating as if she were talking to someone slightly hard of hearing. “Where. Is. It.”
Jamie frowned and glanced around, trying not to notice that Maddie, also seated at the head of Jamie’s bed, was whispering in Emma’s ear. She didn’t know, right? Emma hadn’t told her about what had happened between them? More importantly, Emma hadn’t told her about France, had she? The old panic started to rise in her chest, mixing somehow with the tide of tipsiness, and Jamie stared at Ellie blankly. She could feel her face flushing, could feel the way her mouth opened and closed like a fish that been ripped from the water. Some dispassionate part of her mind noted the symptoms of extreme anxiety coolly, as if they were happening to someone else. But they weren’t happening to someone else. They were happening to her in the presence of the entire national team player pool.
Fuck.
It was Ellie’s turn to frown, and she was clearly about to say something when Jamie felt a hand on her arm. She started to jerk away, but then she looked into familiar gray-green eyes and paused as a wave of something that was the opposite of anxiety washed over her.
“Can I borrow you for a second?” Emma asked, tugging her toward the door.
Jamie let herself be pulled, barely managing to ground out to Ellie, “Backpack. Closet.”
Emma led her across the hall and into her room where she closed the door and leaned against it. Jamie stopped a few paces in, willing away the tiny pinpoints of light bursting at the edges of her vision as she tried to force air into her starved lungs.
“Can I…?” she choked out, gesturing toward the bathroom.
“Of course. I’ll be right here.”
She pushed into the mirrored room and shut the door. Then she turned the cold water on and leaned over the sink, splashing her face and trying not to notice the scent of cucumber shampoo hanging in the air. Except cucumber was a soothing scent, one that could be found in assorted aromatherapy products. Jamie had often wondered if it had a doubly calming effect on her—she associated it not only with essential oils but also with Emma, the girl who had helped her through the hardest year of her life.
As the water cooled her body, she meditated, focusing on her breathing and on the image of each word of the meditation falling slowly through the blackness of her mind into an imaginary well. A few minutes of deliberate practice and her heart rate and breathing slowed. Whew. The old method of calming her mind still worked. She hadn’t had to test it in a while.
After another minute or two, she turned off the water and dried her hands on a white hotel towel. Then she looked at herself in the mirror, noting her red-rimmed eyes and the flush in her cheeks. This right here? This was why she didn’t like to drink.
With a last scrub of the towel over her now make-up free face, she opened the door and stepped out to meet Emma’s concerned gaze.
“Are you okay?”
“I think so.” She hesitated. “How did you know?”
“Your face got red and you looked like you couldn’t breathe.” As Jamie winced, she added, “But don’t worry. I don’t think anyone else noticed.”
“That’s good, I guess.” Jamie rubbed the hair at the back of her neck. “Thanks, Emma. I mean it. That could have been… Anyway, thank you.”
“You don’t have to thank me, Jamie.”
Emma was looking at her in a way that made her heart rate increase again, and all at once she realized that they were alone together in a room whose furniture consisted mostly of beds. No wonder she could feel the panic trying to reassert itself.
“We should probably get back,” she said, gesturing to the hallway.
“Are you sure you want to?” Emma toyed with the tip of the ponytail she had trapped her hair in at some point during dinner. “We could go for a walk, maybe get some air?”
“Ellie would be pissed if we skipped out on mandatory team bonding,” Jamie heard herself say. Which was true and yet so not the point.
“Oh, yeah. Right. Back it is, then.” Emma opened the door and held it, waiting for Jamie to pass.
Her foot had already crossed the threshold when she paused. “Hang on. Can I ask you something?” She stood half-in and half-out of the room, fidgeting a little as she made herself meet Emma’s eyes.
“Sure. Do you want to…?” She waved behind her.
“No, that’s okay,” Jamie said quickly. “I was only wondering, does Maddie know about, well—”
“High school?”
She nodded, even though that wasn’t exactly what she’d meant.
“She knows about you in theory, but she doesn’t know it was you.”
Maddie didn’t know what was her? But what Emma may have told her friends about their past relationship wasn’t really any of her business, and it wasn’t what Jamie was after, anyway. “What about France? Does she know anything about that?”
Emma shook her head. “No. No way, Jamie. The only person I ever talked to about France was my mom. Well, and Sam, my girlfriend in Boston. But I never used your name. She didn’t have any idea it was you.”
Relief poured into Jamie’s chest, and suddenly she could breathe more easily. “Okay. Thanks. That’s good to know.”
A tiny crease appeared above the bridge of Emma’s nose. “Is that what you were worried about? Is that what caused—”
“My first panic attack in three years?” Jamie nodded again. “I think so.”
Except that wasn’t entirely true. She was pretty sure the anxiety had arisen from a confluence of events—letdown from the end of the first week of residency camp; dread over Clare going underground the second she left London; and, if she was being honest, worry over trying to negotiate a renewed acquaintance with the girl-turned-woman standing before her. But she couldn’t tell Emma all of that because they were potential teammates and possible future friends, which meant their relationship existed in the past and, if she was lucky enough to land a spot on the national team, somewhere in the indeterminate future.
“Well, don’t worry,” Emma said, still holding the door open with one hand and reaching out to press Jamie’s forearm with the other. “Your secret’s safe with me.”
She believed her. Why wouldn’t she? Emma had always been so—what was the word Jamie had first coined to describe her? Conscientious. Until she wasn’t, but even then there had been extenuating circumstances that involved Jamie behaving like a clueless wonder and Tori Parker behaving like the badass girl-whisperer even Jamie could admit she had been.
“Thanks,” she said, and smiled a little. “Again.”
“Like, completely de nada, dude.”
Jamie rolled her eyes and turned away. “You sound a little too much like Angie, dude.”
“OMG, that was, like, totes the point.”
“Now you sound like Chloe. Are you a Pitch Perfect fan?” Jamie asked as they crossed the deserted hallway.
“Are you kidding?” Emma sounded almost offended. “Who isn’t?”
The opening scene of the musical comedy was already underway when they returned. Maddie had saved Emma’s spot on the bed, but Jamie wasn’t so lucky. As she went to find a space on the floor near the balcony, she noticed Ellie give her a questioning look from where she had squeezed onto her own bed with five of the older players draped over and under each other. Jamie gave her a brief thumbs-up, which seemed to satisfy her temporary roommate.
Yeah, this team wasn’t gay or anything, she thought as she intercepted the nervous glances her newbie dinner mates were sending Rebecca and Gabe Prescott, an older midfielder, currently cuddling against Ellie’s headboard. Were they harmlessly flirting or were they an actual thing? Wasn’t Rebecca straight? She would have to ask Angie for an update later.
Her gaze found its way back to Emma, tucked into Maddie’s side on the other bed, Jamie’s pillows wedged behind them. Her pillows were going to smell like Emma tonight. Britt’s words, the ones she’d carried around like a mantra since arriving in LA, came back to her again: You can’t afford any distractions if you want to make it this time. At that moment, Emma glanced up and caught her looking. Almost hesitantly she smiled and lifted her eyebrows. You okay?
Jamie nodded slightly. I’m good. Then she looked back at the screen, letting the opening chords of “The Sign” by Ace of Base wash over her. She hated this song but she loved this movie. 2015 was going to be epic. Not only would the US women be trying for their first World Cup gold medal since 1999 but—wait for it—Pitch Perfect 2, the sequel, was coming out in the spring. If she didn’t make the World Cup team and the Bechloe ’ship actually became canon in PP2? It would be debatable which event she would feel like celebrating more.
Ellie waited until after the team had filed back to their own rooms and they were lying in bed, lights out, to ask, “What happened with you earlier? If I you don’t mind me asking.”
“No, it’s okay.” She hesitated. Would Ellie get her kicked off the team if she thought she was a head case? “I had a minor panic attack. It’s the first one I’ve had in years, though.”
“Ah.” There was no judgment in Ellie’s voice, only understanding. “Is that why you don’t usually drink?”
“How do you know I don’t usually drink?”
“It’s my job, Max. Besides, your reputation as a lightweight precedes you.”
“Oh. Well, yeah. It is one of the reasons.”
“And Blake? Where does she come in?”
Where did Emma come in? Good question, but one Jamie was far too sleepy and comfy to want to ponder for long. “We were really close friends when we were younger, and I think maybe we could be again one day.”
Ellie didn’t respond, but Jamie could tell by her breathing that she was still awake. Awake and chewing on something, based on the sound of her covers rustling restlessly.
Ooh, alliteration. Her favorite. Noise when she was trying to sleep, though? Not so much, not even when the noise in question was made by a certified soccer legend.
“Stop it,” she finally muttered into the quiet room.
“Stop what?”
“Thinking so loudly.”
The team captain huffed out a soft breath of laughter. “Go to sleep, Jamie.”
After a while she did, because Ellie was the boss and not even coaches or referees messed with her. Usually.
Chapter Four
Unlike her younger brother, Emma had always been a morning person. The same could not be said for Maddie, which was why when Emma’s phone alarm went off at six in the morning on their one day off at camp, the other woman cursed colorfully and threw a pillow at her. Emma shrugged the pillow aside and continued flipping through the TV’s on-screen guide until she found what she was looking for.
“I’m muting it,” she promised as a rainy London stadium flickered into view. Perfect timing—halftime was nearly over. “Go back to sleep, grumpy girl.”
“I hate you.” Maddie rolled over and sighed loudly, grumbling as she settled back into her pillows.
“Love you too.”
Emma unplugged her phone from its charger and sat back against her pillows, waiting for the game to resume. The Premier League website had updates from the weekend’s matches, and she clicked through the stories, catching up on the action she had missed. After Manchester United had lost—again!—the previous morning, she’d stopped paying attention.
The color green in her peripheral vision caught her attention, and she glanced up as the game came back on. The score was 0-0. Apparently she hadn’t missed much. She was hoping Everton would beat Arsenal, and not only because Tim Howard, the US men’s national team goalkeeper, played for the club. With Arsenal currently in first place in the EPL, Emma was pretty much always rooting against them these days, even if she had long considered them her second favorite team.
As the game continued on scoreless, she scrolled through Instagram. Most of the early morning activity originated from the East Coast or international accounts she followed, but a photo from a location a bit closer at hand caught her attention. The image showed two pairs of bare feet resting on a hotel bed, the television in the background tuned to the game she was watching. The caption confirmed this fact: “Go @TheRealTimHoward! Kick some Arsenal booty! #Everton”
Below that photo was almost the exact same shot only from a different angle. That caption read, “Sorry, @TheRealTimHoward. My heart bleeds #Arsenal red!”
Emma hesitated and then, before she could overthink it, clicked the heart icon on both images. Not even a minute later her phone buzzed.
“Are you watching?” the text read.
“Duh.”
“Is Maddie asleep?”
“Duh x 2.”
“Come over. Door’s open.”
“K.”
Moving as quietly as possible, she changed out of her sleep tank and boxers into sweats and a long-sleeve T-shirt. In the bathroom, she brushed her teeth and applied a minimal amount of make-up. Then she shut off the TV, grabbed her key card, and crept out of the room.
The door was propped open as promised. Emma pushed inside in time to catch Ellie quietly whooping from her spot at the head of her bed.
“Yes! Way to go, Timmy!”
“That was a nice save,” Jamie allowed.
“Hey guys,” Emma said, smiling brightly at them.
Ellie gave her a quick wave, eyes glued to the game.
“Hey.” Jamie smiled up at her, eyes still sleepy. She was lying on her stomach now, head near the end of the bed, a pillow tucked under her arms. She looked adorable—
Emma bit her lip as the thought rose of its own volition. Nope. No way. Jamie did not look cute with her bedhead and black-rimmed glasses. Emma had seen her wear glasses on social media. She had just never experienced it in real life. Jamie certainly did not look simultaneously hot and nerdy, which was definitely not Emma’s favorite type of human being.
She dropped down next to Ellie and leaned against the headboard. “Thanks for the invite. Nowhere near as enjoyable on mute.”
“Thank that one there,” Ellie grunted, nodding at Jamie’s back. “It was her idea.”
Jamie glanced over her shoulder. “Watching the EPL on mute
is so not cool. The commentary is the best part.”
“Especially in a scoreless match,” Emma agreed.
She was sure they’d had this same conversation more than once, back when they were teenagers and spent hours on the phone “watching” soccer matches together. Their siblings had thought they were crazy at the time, but their obsession with international soccer had paid off. Look where they were now.
The game noise increased exponentially as Arsenal, the home side, barely missed a chance. Jamie shook her head while Ellie and Emma cheered and slapped hands.
“Wait,” Jamie said, sitting up and crossing her legs, the pillow on her lap. “Why are you cheering for Everton? They beat your boys last week.”
Emma shrugged. “National team solidarity. Besides, everybody loves an underdog.”
Jamie’s jaw dropped. “I’ve literally heard you say the exact opposite!”
“People change, Jamie.”
“Sure they do.” Her look turned sly, or what passed for sly on someone with an appealing—er, noticeable tendency to wear her heart on her sleeve. “You’re just pissed Man U are at the bottom of the heap.”
“Ninth is hardly the bottom of the heap,” Emma scoffed. “It’s not like we’re in danger of being relegated.”
“Maybe not, but four losses in a row? When’s the last time that happened?”
“1961.” As Jamie stared at her, Emma added, “What? You know I like statistics.”
Ellie frowned between them. “Seriously, guys, what happened to listening to the commentary?”
“Sorry,” Emma and Jamie murmured in unison. They exchanged another small smile and Emma thankfully managed not to say something inane like, Jinx, you owe me a Coke.
The match remained scoreless until nearly the end. Arsenal finally slotted one past Tim Howard with ten minutes left, and then, in typical Premier League fashion, Everton came back almost immediately to tie it up. The game ended with one goal apiece, much to Jamie’s voluble disgust. Emma and Ellie were still celebrating Arsenal’s failed bid to go seven points clear at the top of the standings when the door shot open.
Game Time Page 6
