“You know, if you’re worried about being recognized,” Britt said, “you could wear your hair down and maybe, I don’t know, add some glasses? You know, like Supergirl?”
“Like Supergirl,” Emma repeated. Was she being serious? Her face was so earnest, and at camp in Utah she had seemed like a genuine type of person.
“Britt is a comic book nerd,” Jamie supplied.
“Like you’re not!”
“I prefer graphic novels,” she said, her tone haughty.
This was also news to Emma. She thought she might like hanging around the London version of Jamie, particularly if Britt was going to continue to dole out glimpses of the person Jamie had become in the years they’d been apart.
The siren call of karaoke could not be denied. Soon the four of them were on a train headed into the heart of the city, dark tunnels and brightly tiled stations with their distinctively rounded walls slipping past. Being underground reminded Emma of Boston. It had been easy there to hop a train to anywhere she needed to go. Seattle, meanwhile, had buses. Emma routinely thanked the powers that be that her building (1) was only a few blocks from sushi, frozen yogurt, Trader Joe’s, and Safeway; and (2) had a garage.
At the Leicester Square stop, they piled out and headed up to street level where they emerged onto the narrow, crowded streets of central London. The short walk to the bar took them past theaters and restaurants, red double decker buses and black old-fashioned taxis. Emma had spent time in London before, but she had always visited for soccer. Never had she come as a tourist; the difference was startling. Here she could walk arm-in-arm with Jamie without worrying that someone would stop her to exclaim, “Oh my god, you’re the girl who made that penalty kick in the World Cup!” While making the final penalty kick that sent the US into the 2011 World Cup semifinals in Germany was one of the most memorable moments of her career, it had also made her face recognizable all over the soccer—and non-soccer—world.
A year later at the 2012 Olympics she’d made a different kind of name for herself during an epic semifinal match against Canada. When Emily Shorter, her fellow defender, slipped in the box during a corner kick and Canada’s Catherine Beaumont trod purposefully on her head, leaving ugly red cleat marks across her cheek, Emma was one of the only players close enough to witness the dirty play. Instead of punching Beaumont on the spot—an automatic red card—she helped Emily to her feet and bided her time. Ten minutes later the opportunity for revenge presented itself, and she slide-tackled the Canadian midfielder so hard that Beaumont had to be stretchered off the field. The following day, ESPN showed the match highlights as an example of the opposite of the Olympic spirit. But when the interviewer asked Marty about Emma’s tackle, her coach insisted that Emma had shown quite a bit of spirit in her defense of an injured teammate.
“Are you saying that you encourage your players to seek revenge?” the interviewer had pressed. “Don’t get mad, get even?”
“I prefer to think of it as natural consequences,” Marty had replied, her voice infused with a touch of the playfulness she was known for. “Blake’s tackle was legal, whereas the foul against Shorter that the ref missed? Not at all. Blake simply sent a message to the opposing team that they had better think twice about any more funny business. I think the message was received, don’t you?”
Half the time when a stranger approached her on the street or in the grocery store, they referenced either the PK in Germany or the slide tackle in London. That was actually the last time she’d been in the UK: for the Olympics. Then, she’d been sequestered for weeks, training, eating, and sleeping with the same twenty-one teammates—eighteen official plus four alternates. Now, there was only her, Jamie, and Jamie’s friends, and they could do anything and be anywhere they wanted. Including a women’s bar in Soho.
She clutched Jamie’s arm more tightly, excited by the sheer novelty of the evening. Earlier she had watched Jamie help win a round of Champions League, and now they were going out to a gay bar. Emma had been to a few in the States, but never to one in a foreign country.
On Old Compton Street, Britt and Allie led the way to a discreet doorway that opened onto a steep set of stairs. At the bottom they entered a dimly lit room with a low ceiling that arced overhead in a half-circle, lending the space (in Emma’s opinion) a claustrophobic air.
“You guys,” she said as they wound past faux leather club chairs and small glass tables lit by candles. “I swear this place used to be an actual Tube station.”
Britt laughed over her shoulder. “I know, right?”
Apparently Emma was the only one who found the idea of a gay bar in a bomb shelter disturbing.
They ordered drinks from the tattooed woman working the bar situated at one end of the room before following the sounds of drunken singing into the next room. Or the next bunker, as Emma was beginning to think of it. At least if there happened to be a terrorist attack or other disaster, they should be all good down here.
A drag king and a woman in lingerie were running karaoke. Emma felt eyes on her and Jamie as they pored over one of the song books. She was fairly certain the other patrons were checking them out because they were in a women’s bar, not because anyone recognized them, and started to relax—until she remembered that she was about to sing in public. She would need to be tipsier for this, especially with Jamie in the crowd. But for once, she wouldn’t have to feel guilty about drinking too much. Her next game was weeks away, and while she needed to keep up her regular work-outs, she could also afford to let her hair down a bit.
After they made their selections, they found a cocktail table to cluster around while they waited. Conversation flowed easily as they rated other singers’ song choices and discussed their current home cities. The same week Jamie had moved to Portland, Britt and Allie had moved to Maryland so that Britt could play with DC’s NWSL team. As a British national, Allie was in the country on a tourist visa. Fortunately, she had found work through an online tutoring company teaching English via Skype from their apartment in Germantown. With their combined income and the Champions League pay Britt was picking up on top of her NWSL salary, they were doing fairly well for themselves.
As they complained about the small town feel of Germantown—“There’s a Walmart and a movie theater and that’s about it!”—Emma listened enviously. She and Jamie had to fit their time together around the edges of their individual lives, all while living in different cities. Barring a fortuitous trade, she didn’t see that situation changing, either. That was why they needed to enjoy moments like this one, she reminded herself, gulping down the last of her beer as the hosts called her name.
Was she drunk enough to stand up in front of a roomful of foreign lesbians (and Jamie) and sing? No. But too late to remedy the situation now.
Emma hadn’t sung karaoke in years, not since a private national team party at a bar in North Carolina on what was supposed to be a victory tour after the last World Cup. She was glad she’d decided to go with her old stand-by: Pat Benatar’s girl-rock anthem, “Hit Me With Your Best Shot.” Her voice was shaky at first, but soon she found her rhythm, encouraged by the enthusiastic cheers from Jamie and friends and, surprisingly, a whole bunch of women she didn’t know. Girl power anthems, it turned out, were popular in lesbian bars.
She was grinning and sweaty by the time Jamie came up for her turn.
“Nice song. Wasn’t it on one of the mixes I sent you back in high school?”
“Maybe,” Emma said, and winked at her as she handed over the mic. “Have fun!”
Jamie sang another song from the CD Emma had listened to for years until her car stereo devoured it: Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive.” Jamie might have struggled to stay on pitch, but that didn’t stop half the bar from shouting out the words with her as she strode across the stage with sure steps, her entire being screaming “survivor.” Emma’s heart swelled with love and her eyes filled with stupid tears, and when Jamie returned to the cocktail table, Emma swept her into a tight hug,
not caring who saw. But that was the beauty of singing karaoke in a dimly lit underground bar in a foreign city. People were there to have fun, not to stalk American soccer players.
“I love you,” she said into Jamie’s ear. “I’m so proud we’re together. You know that, don’t you?”
“Same.” Jamie pulled back to smile down at her. “And I love you too.”
Up on stage Britt and Allie launched into a cheesy duet that had the women near them rolling their eyes. They were cute together, though, and for the second time that evening, Emma found herself envying the simplicity of their relationship.
Maybe someday, she thought, glancing at Jamie only to find her already gazing back, a slight smile on her lips, blue eyes hooded in the dark bar. Jamie reached for her hand, tugging her closer until their hips bumped.
“Thanks for surprising me,” she said, her breath stirring the loose hair at Emma’s nape.
“You’re welcome.” She slipped an arm around Jamie’s waist and leaned against her as Britt and Allie’s song reached a crescendo.
Then again, today was pretty awesome, too.
Chapter Seven
“I have a plan,” Jamie announced the following morning when Emma emerged from the master bedroom, freshly showered. “What do you say, Blake? You up for an adventure?”
Emma pursed her lips. She was fairly certain she hadn’t had enough coffee for this conversation. “Depends. What kind of adventure?”
“You’re just going to have to wait and see,” Jamie said, gazing at her over the top of her A-Z map.
Her look was challenging, and Emma felt her temper flare. Then she tamped it down. She had crossed an ocean to surprise Jamie with an impromptu vacation. She could probably let her decide how to spend one of their too-short days together.
“Fine,” she made herself reply. “Lead away.”
“That killed you to say, didn’t it?”
“Yes. Yes, it did.”
The thing about Jamie, however, was that she apparently rivaled her friend Britt in not being able to keep a secret. By the time Allie pulled up in her cousin’s Volkswagen Golf, Emma had managed to wrangle the gist of the plan out of her girlfriend: visiting the home stadiums of all six top tier Premier League clubs in London—in a single day.
“Britt convinced me to cut out the second tier,” she’d admitted as they loaded her messenger bag with bottled water, protein bars, and bananas. “Otherwise we would have been hard pressed to get to all thirteen stadiums.”
Six top tier soccer clubs in a city of eight and a half million (according to her Fodor’s guide) was like New York City having six NBA or NFL teams. Emma couldn’t even begin to imagine the viciousness of the rivalries among neighbors and coworkers throughout the city.
Jamie’s itinerary had them driving in a wide circle around London, starting with Queens Park Rangers FC in the northwest and Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge on the north bank of the Thames. Next they journeyed south of the Thames to Crystal Palace FC in Selhurst. From Crystal Palace they wound their way northeast to West Ham’s London Stadium, Tottenham Hotspur’s White Hart Lane, and finally, Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium, the last stop.
Naturally, Jamie knew someone who slipped them into the Emirates Legends, a stadium tour led by a legendary Arsenal player. Their guide that afternoon was Charlie George, a long-time Gunner who had scored the winning goal in the 1971 FA Cup Final.
“He’s the reason we’re doing this today,” Jamie confided to Emma as they followed George through the interior of the huge stadium. “The others are great too, but Charlie is a character.”
This became clear over the hour-long tour as George led them past the trophy cases and through the changing rooms, providing color commentary all the while on Gunner history, the new stadium, and the current coach and players. Even Emma, a United fan, got goose bumps walking down the players’ tunnel. It wasn’t difficult for her to imagine the roar of sixty thousand fans. The gold medal game against Japan at the 2012 Olympics, a rematch of the 2011 World Cup final, had drawn more than eighty thousand fans. That match, played only a few miles away at Wembley Stadium, had been one of the highlights of her national team career. So far, anyway. She was hoping that next summer would trump even their gold medal run in London—assuming she made the team. Maddie said she was ridiculous to worry. Ellie too. But Jo had been clear about her expectations, and Emma was fully aware that she hadn’t met them.
With difficulty, Emma pushed her anxiety away. This vacation was supposed to be about her and Jamie, not the national team. But realistically, on a soccer tour with Jamie of the very city where only two years earlier she’d stood atop an Olympic podium, her second gold medal hanging around her neck, the national team wasn’t likely to be far from her mind.
The sun had set by the time they left the Emirates and headed back to the flat, tired from the long day.
“My sister would think we’re crazy for spending a vacation day like this instead of at a museum,” Jamie commented as the car idled in North London traffic.
“She’d have a point, wouldn’t she?” Britt said as the light turned and traffic surged forward.
Everyone laughed in rueful agreement. Emma sat content in the back seat, her hand in Jamie’s as non-touristy parts of London skimmed past their windows offering varied glimpses into what regular life might be like in this foreign city. But it was familiar, too. People here ate, drank, and breathed soccer the same way she and Jamie always had, even if they called it by a different name.
Britt and Allie dropped them off back at the flat, declining an invitation to stay for an ultra-fancy dinner of cold beer and frozen pizza. They had an early flight out to DC in the morning and still needed to get packed, so after hugs all around, they headed back to Lizzie’s flat, leaving Emma and Jamie on their own again.
The pizza was in the oven and Emma was checking the weather app on her phone when Jamie slid an envelope with Arsenal’s logo across the kitchen counter.
“What’s this?” Emma asked, frowning. Her eyes flew up to Jamie’s. “Wait. Are you joking? Because if you are, Jamie Maxwell…”
“Open it and find out,” she said, half-smiling.
Emma tore the flap open and gasped as a pair of red and white tickets fell into her palm: ARSENAL v MANCHESTER UNITED, BARCLAYS PREMIER LEAGUE, Saturday, 22 November 2014, Kick-Off 5:30 PM.
“You said we couldn’t get tickets!” she said, her brain stuck on what she had known—or believed, anyway—to be true.
Her shrug was casual. “I called in a favor. Besides, you’re not the only one who can be sneaky.”
Emma dropped the tickets on the counter and flung herself at Jamie. “You’re—I’m—holy shit, Jamie!”
“Is that a good holy shit, or…?”
Emma laughed and kissed her. “What do you think?”
When Jamie had first agreed to extend their trip, Emma had suggested they try to find tickets to the match between their favorite clubs that just happened, by wonderful coincidence, to be scheduled for the Saturday before Thanksgiving. But Jamie had told her that none of her friends had any extras, and refused to let her “blow” five hundred pounds, the going rate online for decent seats to the fixture. Emma didn’t want to miss the match, but she knew Jamie was already uncomfortable with the amount of money she was spending on the flat. Reluctantly she’d agreed to watch on the big screen at the Twelve Pins, where Jamie had assured her she would still get the taste of a real English football match.
“Huh,” Emma said now, arms looped around Jamie’s neck. “I didn’t know you had it in you.”
“I didn’t either,” she admitted. “That envelope has been burning a hole in my freaking pocket since before the Legends Tour! Sheesh. I would make a terrible secret agent.”
“Yes, my sweet, you really would.” Emma kissed her again, scrunching up her nose as the timer went off.
Jamie pecked her lips and set her aside, reaching for the oven mitts. “Sorry, babe, but I need calories pronto.”
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“No worries. We’ve got time.”
While Jamie checked the pizza, Emma bent her head to study the tickets again. ARSENAL v MANCHESTER UNITED. What were the odds their teams would play the one time she and Jamie were in London together? Maybe she should get on board with the whole soccer gods notion. After all, soccer was the reason they’d met, the reason they’d fallen in love the first time, the reason they were together at last.
Gods or no gods, Arsenal and United were playing and Jamie had gotten them tickets. Emma bit her lip, barely suppressing an embarrassingly non-badass squeal. She couldn’t wait for the game—except she could, actually, because it would signal the approaching end of their European vacation.
Good thing it was still a week and a half away. Like she’d told Jamie, they had time.
#
As the days passed, filled with exercise and sex and the relaxation that comes with never having to set an alarm, Emma tried to hold onto the disparate moments as best she could, etching them into her memory before they could fade and dissolve into mere flashes of light and color. Jamie took her on touristy adventures, like visiting the British Museum and the London Tower; touring Westminster and the Churchill War Rooms, an underground complex that had housed the British government command center during World War Two; and taking a turn on the London Eye, during which she mostly kept her own eyes shut. But Jamie also showed her the gems she’d discovered during her years in the British capital: Hampstead Heath at sunrise on a clear morning; the Camden Markets on a crowded weekend day; and the statue of Boadicea against the backdrop of the Westminster Bridge at night.
There were other forms of entertainment, too—watching and rewatching the newly released Pitch Perfect 2 trailer, for one, which contained a cameo by the Green Bay Packers that they both found hilarious. After Emma’s mother texted that they shouldn’t leave London without seeing a play in the city’s West End, they went online and found last-minute tickets to a Shakespeare production in a famous theater near Leicester Square. The play ended up being one of the highlights of the week, they agreed, as did their pre-show dinner at a China Town restaurant where the staff seated patrons with strangers at large tables and dished out whatever the special happened to be that evening.
Outside the Lines Page 15
