Game Time

by Kate Christie

  “It is. You’ll see.”

  “I’m sure.” Jamie paused. “Can I ask you something?”

  Emma closed her eyes, blocking out the Seattle skyline. “Yes.”

  “How are you these days about your dad? In general, I mean.”

  “Fine,” she replied automatically, and then stopped to think. “Or mostly good, I guess. Every once in a while something bad happens and I totally regress. Like, everything bad that has ever happened in my life comes rushing back, and I wish I could go to bed for a day. Or two. Three, tops.”

  Jamie hummed in agreement. “Sometimes I think that saying, ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,’ is bullshit. There are things that make you weaker, that take so much of your energy you need time to yourself every once in a while to recover.”

  “Exactly.” She smoothed the blanket across her lap, tracing the snowflake pattern. Her mother had sent her the fleece blanket and matching pillows from Minnesota where, unlike Seattle, snow was not uncommon. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Of course.”

  “How are you now with what happened in France?”

  “You know, despite the whole panic attack thing last month, I’m good. It took a lot of therapy and a lot of years, and I’m not perfect. It still comes up, but nowhere near as much as I thought it would.”

  “Well, that’s good, isn’t it?” Emma asked, genuinely happy to hear this. Over the years she had wondered and worried for Jamie, and to hear now that she was in a good place and had been for a while was so, so great.

  “Totally. It’s funny. Sometimes I think that what happened helped shape who I am, and because of that I don’t regret it. Other times, though, I would give anything to take it back. Kind of depends on the day.”

  Emma knew what she meant. “Do you think you recovered so well because of your therapist? What was her name, again?”

  “Shoshanna. Yeah, she was awesome. I still call her every so often. But my first girlfriend in college helped a ton, too.”

  “The a capella girl?” Emma almost called her “the pitch,” but that felt too close to name-calling. Which, if she was honest, wouldn’t have been a complete stretch. Someone else had been Jamie’s first girlfriend, someone who was not and never would be her.

  “Yep. Laurie was amazing. We’re still friends, even though she lives in New York and we don’t get to see each other much.”

  Of course she was still friends with her ex. She was probably friends with all of them. How many—she stopped the thought. She didn’t think she wanted to know how many women Jamie had dated. “You’re such a lesbian.”

  “Or as the Tumblr kids would say, ‘Gay as fuck.’ What about you? Are you and Sam still in touch?”

  “We’re Facebook friends, but that’s about it.” Sam had wanted to put distance between them, and Emma had understood. She had kind of wanted that herself. It was hard to come back from someone telling you that if you wanted to be together, you probably should think about stocking up on mace. Oh, and maybe a firearm while you were at it.

  “What about Tori?” Jamie asked.

  “Tori?” she stalled, reaching for her water bottle. For some reason, her throat was suddenly dry.

  “Come on, Emma. Everyone knows about you guys. You were basically the go-to example for why players in the youth pool shouldn’t date.” As Emma sighed and hid her face, Jamie added, “Not that I minded hearing you’d broken up.”

  “It was such a disaster. I’m not even sure why I tried to make it work with her, except that I wasn’t in a very good place.”

  “How long did it take you to get to a good place?”

  “Who says I ever did?”

  “I don’t know—by the time the soccer gods finally got their acts together, you seemed pretty good.”

  “You and your soccer gods.” Emma leaned back against the couch cushions. “Aren’t you ever worried they’ll steer you wrong?”

  “They brought me back to you, didn’t they?”

  Emma touched her lips, feeling the curl of a smile.

  “Sorry,” Jamie said quickly. “Can I blame ibuprofen for my descent into cheesiness? Like, maybe all the Advil I’ve been popping has softened my brain?”

  “If that’s the case, then I think you should keep taking it.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Definitely.”

  The silence grew between them, but it was a comfortable silence with undercurrents Emma didn’t think she’d mind getting swept away in.

  Sheesh. Who was being cheesy now?

  “I almost called you over Christmas break that first year, you know,” Jamie said.

  No, she most definitely did not know. “Seriously?”

  “Seriously. I followed the under-19 World Cup online, and when the tsunami hit a few weeks later, I really wanted to call you. Especially when I saw that video of the beach in Phuket.”

  Emma knew the video she meant—the one that showed the older European couple who had almost made it to safety when the final wave, the biggest one of all, crashed onto land and buried them under a wall of water and debris.

  “It seemed stupid to hold a grudge,” Jamie added, “when you didn’t miss that by much.”

  “I know.” She chewed her lip. “I almost called you, too.”

  “You did?”

  “Well, yeah. I was home for winter break and I—well, I missed you.”

  “So why didn’t you then?”

  “Because you told me not to. Why didn’t you?”

  Jamie paused, her breathing shallow over the phone line. “I think I was afraid you’d gone off with Tori and forgotten about me. Which, as it turns out…”

  She lowered her voice even more. “I didn’t forget about you, Jamie. I could never do that.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “Well, good, because I don’t think I could ever forget you either. Though not for lack of trying.”

  Emma laughed a little. “Ditto.” And then because she had been waiting all day to find out, she said, “Can I ask you something else?”

  “Shoot.”

  “So punny.” Emma hesitated, trying to figure out how to broach the topic. Finally she decided to rip off the Band-Aid: “You said in your text that your conversation with Craig didn’t go well.”

  “No. It went pretty much how I expected it would.”

  As Jamie recounted the conversation she’d had that morning with Craig from a rest stop along I-5, Emma listened quietly, her heart sinking. She still didn’t know the head coach all that well, but she’d spent enough time with him by now to know that his subdued response to Jamie’s news did not bode well. He hadn’t assured her that an injury wouldn’t affect her chances at making the team. In fact, he’d clearly stated that the groin pull—and the way Jamie had hidden it, possibly? But maybe that was only in Emma’s head—did change things.

  “He said I should give him a call once I have a prognosis, though,” Jamie finished, “so maybe it’ll work out. Maybe the doctor will clear me and I’ll be on my way to Texas next week.”

  Emma may not have known the national team coach well, but she knew Jamie. She could hear the note of bravado in her voice, could tell she was trying her best to look on the bright side. But was there a bright side in any of this? They both knew how this went. So many players over the years who could have performed brilliantly for the national team never got a chance. Instead they fell out of the pool due to a second or third ACL tear, a stress fracture, a chronic injury. Those were the risks of playing at this level. You pushed your mind and body far and fast with little rest or recovery time, and sometimes your mind or body—or both—said, “No. Stop. Enough.”

  That was the reality of their profession, of the crazy, unstable life they had chosen with eyes wide open.

  “So doctor tomorrow?” Emma asked, trying to infuse positivity into her own tone.

  “That’s the plan.”

  “Good. I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you.”

&n
bsp; The conversation eased back and moved on then, shifting to previous injuries and then circling back to youth national team travel experiences. They’d covered assorted adventures at the U-20 World Cup in Russia (Emma) and were on the Pan American Games in Brazil (Jamie) when Emma must have dozed off, because she jolted awake at the sound of a siren, momentarily disoriented for the second time that evening. Slowly her awareness returned, and she realized that she was warm and safe in her own living room, an old Bonnie Raitt album playing softly on her iPad, iPhone headphones still tucked into her ears.

  She turned the screen on, intending to shut her phone down for the night, but before she could hit the power button she heard it: a faint sigh repeating rhythmically in her ears. She looked at her phone and realized that her call to Jamie was still active, one hundred twelve minutes later. They had fallen asleep listening to each other breathe, like when they were teenagers and on the phone late at night, sleep-starved from soccer and studying and the hormonal swings of sixteen- and seventeen-year-old girls.

  She stayed where she was a little while longer, listening, and then finally she forced herself to end the call.

  “Good night, Jamie,” she murmured softly, finger hovering over the brightly lit screen. “Sweet dreams.”

  Getting back to sleep wasn’t as easy as falling asleep on the phone had been, and she lay in her bed watching the lights of the city try to filter through her blinds, thinking about Jamie’s future and, by extension, her own. Would a pro career and a brief byline from the previous year’s Victory Tour—two caps, two assists—be enough for Jamie? Emma doubted it. It definitely wasn’t enough for her as far as Jamie was concerned. She wanted to stand beside her on the podium in Canada and watch her face light up in joy, in relief, in gratification when they hoisted the World Cup trophy as a team. She wanted to watch Jamie’s eyes crinkle at the corners as Angie opened a bottle of champagne and sprayed it all over their shrieking, laughing teammates. She wanted to dance with Jamie at the post-match family and friends celebration, to flit around the room, hands connected and lips occasionally connected too, knowing they were in a safe space where no one from the outside world could see or touch them.

  But coaches were the team bosses, and even though sometimes—often—the decision they made wasn’t what she wanted, she still had to find a way to live with it. That was another reality of their profession, of the crazy, unstable life they had chosen, and no matter how strongly she wanted Jamie on the team, despite how damned hard Jamie had worked and how deserving Emma might believe she was, at the end of the day she would have to accept whatever the coaches decided and get back to work because she had long since accepted that she was powerless when it came to player selection decisions. She was fortunate to be on the national team, and she would do almost anything to keep her own dream alive—even if it meant having to watch Jamie lose hers.

  That didn’t mean she wasn’t hoping for a shift in the heavens, a realignment of the stars—or at least the federation—that would give Jamie another chance. She didn’t often pray, didn’t believe in a benevolent white-haired old guy who was sitting somewhere in the sky keeping tabs on the human race twenty-four/seven. She didn’t believe in God, not really, but she did believe in the power of positive thinking. So she squeezed her eyes shut tightly and called up the visualization techniques she had learned as a teenager in the youth pool and carefully honed over the years. Only instead of envisioning herself performing optimally in a game-like scenario, she pictured Jamie. She saw her recovering from this latest injury without complications and going on to an awesome pre-season with Portland and a solid showing in Champions League. She imagined the federation coaches watching her set the NWSL single-season assist record with Ellie as her teammate, pictured Craig picking up the phone and inviting Jamie to a future residency camp. Then she envisioned Jamie sitting down with the federation and the player reps and signing her name to a US Soccer contract, her beautiful eyes alight with happiness.

  And when she was done envisioning the perfect beginning to Jamie’s USWNT career, Emma imagined Jamie in her living room, curled up beside her on the couch sharing a carton of pad thai or a tray of salmon nigiri, wine glasses within arm’s reach on the coffee table. They would be talking and laughing as they had always done, and in mid-sentence one of them would stop, lean forward, and press her lips to the other’s. Because they wanted to, and because, finally, they could.

  Emma opened her eyes in her quiet bedroom in her quiet condo and smiled. It could happen. For years she’d waited and wondered, but now she knew. She loved Jamie, and she wasn’t going anywhere.

  #

  Jamie wasn’t sure when Emma had once again become the first person she spoke to in the morning, the last voice she heard at night. But whenever and however it had happened, on Monday morning it seemed perfectly natural to roll over in bed, kick off the sheets, and turn on her phone. She yawned as she waited for it to fire up, remembering why it was so imperative that they talk first thing this morning. Emma had a video chat later with the board of a children’s medical research charity she was involved with, and Jamie had her doctor’s appointment after lunch. They would be lucky to speak much once the day got going.

  It didn’t occur to her to question the constant need to talk to Emma. That was just a given at this point.

  “Morning,” she said when Emma picked up. She stifled a yawn, blinking in the cool darkness of her bedroom. The sky beyond her window looked gray and foreboding, so she snuggled down into her covers, trying to hold the day at bay for as long as possible.

  “Morning, sleepyhead,” Emma replied, a smile in her voice. She sounded disgustingly awake—probably because she’d gotten up at five to meet with her trainer before the conference call. Chat. Whatever a group video chat was called.

  Group video chat. Duh.

  “So how does the whole conference call thing work?” she asked. “Do you use Skype, or is there a different software program involved?”

  Emma laughed. “Is that really the burning question keeping you up at night?”

  Jamie squinted, because of course there were more important questions keeping her up: Will I make the national team? Will we make it past quarter-finals in Champions League? Do you love me?

  Emma seemed to read her silence because after a moment she briefly explained the process, ending with, “The main office is in New York, but that’s the beauty of the Interweb, as Ellie calls it.”

  “Skype is a beautiful thing,” Jamie agreed, “even if Microsoft bought them out.”

  “The first time I ever heard of video-conferencing was from you. But by the time Skype got going, we—well, I was in college by then.”

  “And we weren’t speaking.”

  Emma paused. “Right.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” she said, rubbing her fingers against the stitches in the quilt her grandmother had made her a quarter of a century earlier. “For ending things the way I did. I definitely could have handled everything better.”

  “You don’t have to apologize, Jamie. You had to take care of yourself. I always understood that, even if I hated losing you.”

  At that moment, she was grateful for the distance between them. If Emma had been standing in front of her, she might not have been able to ask, “Did you hate it?”

  “Are you kidding?” She stopped. “Wait, did you really think I was fine with never talking to you again?”

  “No. Not really,” she told Emma. “But at the same time I wasn’t sure. Sometimes I thought I imagined our friendship. Like, what would someone like you be doing with someone like me?”

  “What the actual fuck?” Emma drawled, sounding like one of the many college kids in the pool. Taylor O’Brien, for example.

  Jamie laughed softly. “Maybe you didn’t know this, Emma, but you were pretty freaking impressive as a high schooler.”

  “You weren’t so bad yourself—except for the skateboarding while stoned thing. That spooked me, I have to admit.”

&
nbsp; “I wish I could say it only happened that one time…”

  “But seriously,” Emma said, “it was incredibly difficult for me to let you go. Ask my exes.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Emma told her how she’d recently run into her ex-boyfriend, Will, who Jamie was unreasonably happy to hear was engaged to be married. “Apparently I kept mentioning you, because he ended up asking me if the newbie named Jamie in the national pool was the same girl I’d told him about from high school.”

  Jamie tried not to let the grin overtake her face. Her voice would give her away, and she sort of didn’t want Emma to know how adorable she found it that she was doing the same exact thing Jamie was: slipping her name into conversation at every little chance, sometimes even when there wasn’t a legitimate reason.

  She squinted up at her ceiling where the stars and planets still stuck firmly in the patterns she and her dad had laid out when she was younger. “Clare had the same reaction after Britt and I practiced with you guys in London.”

  “Seriously?” Emma asked.

  “Yeah. Apparently I couldn’t stop talking about you, either.” She hesitated. “I think that’s why she struggled so much with me being invited to residency camp.”

  “Because of me? But we were barely even speaking at that point.”

  Jamie pointed her toes toward the ceiling. “I know. But she knew how I felt about you in high school, and I think she worried that spending so much time around you might bring everything back.”

  Ask me if it did, she thought, even as she was terrified by the possibility.

  But Emma only murmured something that sounded like, “Oh, yeah, right.” Then, more clearly, she said, “You know, I don’t think I ever told you how sorry I am for the way things turned out, either.”

  “Nah, we’re good. You did email me that one time.”

  Emma huffed a little, as if she didn’t want to laugh but couldn’t help it. “I’m trying to apologize here, Maxwell.”

  “I know, Blake, and apparently it’s my turn to tell you that you don’t have to. I was so utterly clueless back then, which couldn’t have been easy for you. Plus your dad had just died. If you’re not allowed to go a little crazy then, when are you?”