Back at the house, they popped popcorn, put in Love, Actually, and lay around the living room, enjoying each other’s company and the cheesiest of holiday movies. At one point, their mom excused herself to call Roger, who was spending the evening with his grown children in Anoka, leaving Emma with her brother and his fiancée snuggled up on the couch. They were adorable together and obviously very much in love, and it occurred to her that somehow, everyone in her family had someone but her. Even Dani was starting to get serious about Booty Call Guy, as Emma still mentally referred to Derek, press officer for the Mariners.
Was her mom right? Did she create obstacles to keep love at bay? If so, then she was a big ole cliché: the girl who lost her father and couldn’t bear the thought of losing anyone else, so she held people at arm’s length to make sure she didn’t have to risk feeling that way ever again. That, or choose emotionally unavailable people to get involved with. That was what she’d done in high school and college, again and again. She finally broke the pattern with Sam. Or rather, Sam made her break it by being so amazing that Emma had forgotten why she usually scheduled her love life as rigidly as she organized her daily work-outs and caloric intake. At least, for a while. Then the hectic nature of a long residency camp in LA combined with a long WPS season, the failed World Cup bid, and crazy fan stalking in the aftermath of Germany, and Sam was gone.
Emma had never told her family why Sam left—she hadn’t wanted to worry them—but for once she hadn’t been the one with commitment issues. She couldn’t blame Sam, though. Her first (and only to-date) serious girlfriend’s announcement that they needed to break up had arrived almost predictably on the heels of the latest Twitter attack by a particularly disturbed male “fan” of Emma’s. This same man had targeted Sam on multiple occasions with kidnapping and rape threats, among other violent fantasies shared in one hundred forty characters for all of Sam’s friends, family members, and co-workers to see. They had reported him each time, but that hadn’t stopped him. He merely created a new account under another fake identity so he could go after her the next time another photo of the two of them surfaced.
The final straw had been different, though. This time he’d described in vivid detail how he would stalk and kill her in front of Emma, thereby releasing her from Sam’s “sick obsession.” The police officer they spoke with in Boston explained that they could try to track him down through his Internet service provider, press charges, and obtain a restraining order. Or they could try to become invisible and wait for him to fixate on some other target, which was what happened in most cases like this. Either way he suggested they arm themselves in case he broke the pattern of the majority of social media stalkers and decided to approach them in real life.
“Arm ourselves?” Sam had repeated, her hands clenching and unclenching spasmodically as she stared across the cluttered desk. “Do you mean get a gun?”
“That might be good to have in your home. But I would definitely recommend getting mace, for starters.”
Emma had sat there in silence as the officer droned on about steps they should take to protect themselves, wondering how she’d gotten from the vibrant green of the soccer field to this gray, dingy room.
The officer gave them a handout, and Emma had skimmed it: Remove home address on personal checks and business cards; place real property in a trust and list utilities under the name of the trust; utilize a private mail box service to receive all personal mail; file for confidential voter status or register to vote utilizing mail box address; and on and on. One of the items further down the list had grabbed her attention: Get a new driver’s license with the new mail box address on it. Seriously? She’d glanced at the revision date at the bottom of the page, July 2009, and wondered how many times the list had been given out since it was created. How many women had followed these steps to try to convince themselves that they were safe?
Safety was an illusion, though. As a female professional athlete, she understood that better than most.
“I can’t live like this,” Sam had announced when they got back to Emma’s apartment that evening. “I’m sorry, Emma. I care about you but I hardly ever see you and now this? It’s too much.”
Emma had sat on the couch watching as Sam packed up the few items she kept at the loft. Of course it hurt. Of course she had hoped Sam would miss her enough to reconsider. But in a way she’d been almost relieved to be on her own again. The online harassment had been so much worse when she was with Sam, far worse than when she dated Will the year after she and Sam broke up. She didn’t worry that he would get stalked, didn’t worry that some random person would leap out from a Seattle doorway and stab him Monica Seles-style. No one had ever threatened him for being with her, as far as she knew. It was as if the crazy dudes who fantasized about her went ballistic at the thought of her with another woman, especially a slightly butch, gender non-conforming woman like Sam.
That description fit Jamie, too. Jamie, who she’d last seen in the airport about to catch a flight to Heathrow. Jamie, who had held her hand and taken her number and then neglected to even text her. Emma glared at the screen as Emma Thompson’s on-screen husband flirted with his personal assistant. For the first time ever, this movie was hitting a little too close to home. Why did it have to be set in London, of all places? She should have known it would only remind her that Jamie was probably sound asleep in her flat that was no doubt all lit up with Christmas lights, curled happily in slumber around her girlfriend trying to eke out as much quality time before she headed off to America and they had to live through Skype and stolen weekends and holidays the way other national team members did with their spouses and significant others.
It was better to be alone, honestly, than to try to make something work in the narrow spaces that playing for club and country allowed; better to be unattached than to have to worry that some nut job was waiting around the corner to pounce on the woman she’d had the gall to fall in love with. She wrapped her blanket tighter around herself and tried not to feel quite so much kinship with the lonely and very fictional Prime Minister of England who found himself falling for someone he worked with. Hollywood had written the ending to this particular story, so the excessively heterosexual and potentially mismatched couple would end up together in the end. In real life, it wasn’t quite as easy as that. Watching people hug and kiss their hellos at airports was all well and good, but half of all marriages still ended in divorce, and for professional athletes the rate was even higher.
As her brother giggled—giggled!—at some private joke and kissed the top of Bridget’s head, Emma threw a handful of popcorn at them. “Hey! Knock off the PDA.”
“Scrooge much?” Ty said, eating the popcorn that had landed within reach.
“Be nice to your sister,” Bridget said.
“Yeah, be nice to me,” Emma echoed. “Glad to see someone is keeping you in line, Ty.”
Bridget smiled. “It’s a tough job but someone’s got to do it.”
“Shh, you guys,” Ty said. “I like this part.”
On screen, the kid who’d lost his mother was practicing the drums twenty-four/seven in an attempt to impress the girl he loved. It reminded Emma a little of how her brother had thrown himself into skateboarding after their dad died, learning trick after trick until he was so good he got scouted by a West Coast brand. Jamie had taught him a few tricks when she’d come up to Seattle for the funeral, and at first Emma had thought he might have a crush on her and that was why he was working so hard on ollies and kick flips. But then she’d realized that with her heading off to college and their mom devoting even more time than usual to her pediatrics work, Ty had been the only one not busy enough that he wouldn’t have to notice how much he missed their dad.
How did everything tonight come back to Jamie? No matter what she’d told her mother, she wasn’t sure what was going to happen if Jamie made the national team and they had to spend weeks upon weeks together away from their regular lives, training and playing matches togeth
er and possibly even sharing a hotel room at some point. For a moment she allowed herself to imagine what Christmas might look like if things were different. Would she and Jamie ever be wrapped around each other on the couch in her mom’s living room watching Love, Actually? Singing carols on the dark highway and relating the inane conversations they’d overheard at the party? Waking up to each other on Christmas morning, the frost on the window pane sparkling in the Minnesota sunshine while they snuggled in bed, waiting for the rest of the house to wake up?
God damn Hollywood, she thought, glowering at the television screen as the eleven-year-old boy raced through the airport, trying to track down the girl he was in love with before she flew off to America. It was an impossible myth, this notion of romantic love, one they were told starting from birth, practically. And yet, even though she knew that the movie version of love and real life love were different beasts, even though she honestly believed she was better off on her own at this particular point in her life, she still wished she had someone beside her to share Christmas Eve in her mother’s new house on the frozen tundra of Minnesota.
#
By the time Jamie cleared customs at the San Francisco Airport, it was already mid-afternoon on Christmas Day. With her backpack over one shoulder and her carry-on rolling behind her, she walked into the main hall of the international terminal to find her entire family, including Todd, waiting for her. As she shook her head at the sight, half-laughing, she felt the tears that were never far off these days clouding her vision. She blinked them away and watched as Meg handed the large hand-written sign she’d been holding (“Welcome home, Jamie! Best. Christmas. Ever.”) to her husband and set off toward her, skirt billowing in her wake.
Just before Meg reached her, Jamie realized she probably should drop her bags, since her sister showed no signs of slowing. Meg slammed into her, hugging Jamie as tightly as any teammate ever had.
“Did I nail it?” she asked, laughing as she pulled back. “That’s how soccer players greet each other, isn’t it?”
Jamie pressed a kiss against her sister’s forehead and picked up her bags in one hand, continuing toward their parents with her arm around Meg’s shoulders. “Totally. Well done.”
Their parents were standing together, matching smiles curving their lips as they watched their girls approach. Their mom was the first to break away and pull Jamie into a tight hug.
“You’re back,” she murmured, and Jamie could hear the choked-back tears in her voice.
“I’m back,” she confirmed.
Her dad moved forward and enfolded them in his arms, and then Meg joined in, too. Jamie saw Todd standing a little ways away, and she jerked her chin at him.
“Get in here, bro. Family hug time.”
They opened their arms and he joined in, and the Maxwells and the Kirschoffs stood in a huddle at the edge of the main hall while strangers moved about them enacting their own touching reunions.
Eventually they took the escalator to baggage claim, chatting as they waited for the carousel to kick into motion. Jamie had had her final meeting with Arsenal management the day before and filled her family in on the deal that would loan her to an NWSL team yet to be determined—on the condition that she come back for Champions League. That meant she would be in London during the NWSL pre-season and again at the end of the NWSL regular season. She was fine with the deal because it meant she would have the best of both worlds—NWSL, which was far more competitive than the English WSL, and Champions League, which brought together the best of the best in European club football.
Assuming an NWSL team signed her, Jamie’s combined season would last nine months, which was all any football player wanted, anyway. The men worked ten months out of the year, and played thirty-five (MLS) or forty-five (Premier League) matches in that time. But in the US, as in the UK, the women’s league operated on an abbreviated summer schedule with only twenty-four regular season matches. Champions League, which ran in the fall and spring, offered additional opportunities to train and play.
“So you’re not back for good, then?” Jamie’s mother asked.
“No, I am. I just have the chance to go back and play Champions League if I want to. That is, if Arsenal makes it next year. Only the top two WSL finishers each season go on to Champions League.”
“Any word on Portland?” her father asked.
“I have a meeting with the GM on the third of January. Ellie says it’s looking good.”
He shook his head. “Rachel Ellison going to bat for my kid. It boggles the mind.”
“I know,” Todd put in. “You’re bringing me all sorts of street cred. Even music majors know who she is.”
“Soon everyone’s going to know who you are too,” Meg said, smiling.
Please, God, Jamie prayed, don’t ever let my parents discover Tumblr, L Chat, or fan fiction. They worked for a software company, though. The odds they wouldn’t somehow stumble across all manner of mortifying speculation seemed fairly low.
Maybe she would have to hold a family meeting about it. “So, guys,” she imagined herself saying. “I am officially banning you from Googling me. If you insist on breaking the ban, you must never speak to me of what you find.”
She knew how her mother would respond: “Why, sweetie? What are you worried about us seeing?”
Probably she should break her no-heavy-drinking rule beforehand. That way she wouldn’t have to remember the conversation later.
The house was the same as ever—white icicle lights hanging from the gutter at the front of the house, the perfectly decorated Christmas tree framed in the living room picture window. Inside it smelled of eggnog and spices, pumpkin pie and turkey. Her mother had roasted the turkey that morning, and as soon as they got back to the house, she and Meg went into the kitchen to work on Christmas Dinner. When Jamie offered to help, they shooed her out.
“You know, I’m not a bad cook anymore,” she said, watching them from the dining room doorway.
“We know. We saw the Thanksgiving pictures,” Meg said. “But you just moved halfway across the world. Relax, okay? Let us make dinner for you.”
“Fine,” she muttered, and stalked out of the kitchen. She’d dozed on the way home from the airport and woken up cranky, and even though she knew she shouldn’t take her mood out on her family, she also knew there wasn’t anyone else to take it out on.
Her dad and Todd were in the living room, the usual Christmas Day football game on, and all at once the scene was so heterosexist—the women in the kitchen making the meal while the men watched sports and drank beer—that she wasn’t quite sure where she fit. On Thanksgiving they’d all chipped in together in the kitchen, and everyone had been equally happy with the lesbian film they’d watched on Netflix after dinner. That was one advantage of a same-sex partnered life: You didn’t have to behave in a certain way just because that was how things had always been done.
“You joining us?” her dad asked, smiling up at her from his favorite recliner.
“In a little bit. I think I’m going to go for a run first. It’s what the national team always does on travel days. Supposedly it helps with jet lag.”
“By all means, go,” her dad said. “You don’t have all that long before you have to get back on another plane.”
“Actually,” she said, “I was thinking of driving up to Portland. It’s not that far, and as long as the mountain passes aren’t bad, it shouldn’t be too treacherous.”
He frowned. “Oh. Well, okay. Did you want to borrow the car or were you thinking of renting one?”
“Neither. I sold my scooter before I left London and I already had some money saved. I was thinking I might buy a car this week.”
“A car?” He considered the idea for a moment before nodding. “That makes a lot of sense now that you’re back. Your mom and I can help.”
“Dad, I’m twenty-five. I can buy my own car, okay?”
He held up his hands. “Only trying to help.”
“I know.” She d
rifted closer and squeezed his shoulder. “But you’ve done enough. More than enough.”
From the couch beside her, Todd cleared his throat. “You know, Meg and I were thinking about getting a new car. In case you haven’t gotten our Christmas present yet, Tim.”
Her father laughed, and Jamie shook her head.
“Worth a try.” Todd shrugged and turned back to the football game.
Upstairs in her room, which was unchanged except for the sewing table that had taken the place of her old desk, Jamie dropped onto the bed, phone in hand. She opened a new text message and then paused. This was it: her last contact with Clare until she went back in March for Champions League. They had agreed on a clean break. No texts, no emails, no phone calls unless they had to discuss details of the move. In March, if they were ready, they would meet for coffee to gauge where they were at. They both wanted to stay friends ultimately. It was in the lesbian contract, after all. Besides, Britt was one of Jamie’s best friends, and Allie and Clare worked together. They didn’t want to make it any more difficult for their friends than it already was.
Britt had taken the news well. Apparently Clare had been talking to Allie about her doubts for a while now, and Allie had dropped plenty of hints while Jamie was in LA. In fact, Britt was probably less surprised by the break-up than Jamie had been. The NWSL move hadn’t come as a shock, either. Britt had fielded offers herself and hadn’t ruled it out completely. She even had a meeting planned with DC in mid-January when she came back to the States to participate in a mini-goalkeeper camp at US Soccer headquarters. She was one of eight keepers invited to the mini-camp set for the week after residency camp. Depending on what the coaches said, she’d told Jamie, she might consider a move back to the US as well. But Jamie knew it would take more than a tepid offer to get her to leave Arsenal and, more to the point, Allie.
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