Outside the Lines

by Kate Christie

  No. Why had she ever thought this would be a good idea? Ty had said his mother was fully supportive, but what if she was only being polite? What if she didn’t want Jamie invading their family time? It wasn’t like they got all that much of it these days.

  Too late for second thoughts now. “Ready.”

  Giggling and shushing each other, Tyler and Bridget led the way into the mudroom off the garage. There Jamie paused while her chauffeurs and fellow confidants continued into the house.

  “I thought you were getting beer,” she heard Emma say.

  “Oh, right,” Ty said, and opened the door again, nodding at Jamie.

  Showtime. She took a breath and stepped past him into an open plan kitchen that immediately reminded her of the house in Seattle. “Surprise!”

  Emma’s mom was at the sink while Emma was perched on a stool at the breakfast bar. She stared at Jamie, her mouth open in shock, and then she was throwing herself off the stool and crossing the space between them in a matter of steps as she squealed, “Jamie! I don’t believe you!”

  By now Jamie was accustomed to Emma’s weight—and enthusiasm. She absorbed the impact of her body easily, relief washing over her in an almost literal wave as she squeezed her eyes shut and buried her nose in Emma’s loose curls.

  “Merry belated Christmas?” she asked.

  “I’ll say it is,” Emma said, and then kissed the corner of her mouth quickly, the touch barely there and then gone again. She gripped Jamie’s hand as she turned to shoot what passed as an accusing glare around the room. “You guys were in on this, weren’t you?”

  Everyone laughed and nodded, and then Emma’s mother stepped forward, reminding Jamie of the night she’d arrived in Seattle for Emma’s father’s funeral. Mrs. Blakeley had a little more gray in her blonde-brown hair now, and her face and figure were fuller than they’d been back then, but her smile was as welcoming as ever.

  “Jamie,” she said, embracing her in a hug that was steady and firm. “I am so pleased you could be here with us. It’s wonderful to see you and Emma in the same space and time again, my dear.” With a final squeeze, she stepped back, still beaming at her.

  Jamie felt herself blush. She wasn’t used to such a warm welcome from a partner’s mother. Her previous girlfriends’ parents had almost uniformly failed to hide their dismay that instead of a man, their daughter had brought her home to meet the family.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” she said, falling back on formality to cover her awkwardness.

  “Oh, sweetheart, call me Pam. Now, you’re just in time for lunch. Where are your bags? Emma, help her with her bags, will you?”

  “Absolutely,” Emma said, grabbing the keys from her brother and tugging Jamie toward the garage. She hadn’t let go of her hand yet, rendering her mother’s hug a bit cumbersome but totally fine as far as Jamie was concerned.

  “I can’t believe you’re here,” Emma said as they freed the bags from the car’s trunk.

  “I can’t either,” she admitted, following her girlfriend back inside the house. “Good surprise?”

  Emma flashed a smile over her shoulder. “The best.”

  Whew.

  They headed up a staircase that opened onto a landing with a bookshelf and a comfy arm chair. Emma led her down the hallway to the right, away from the kitchen side of the house, and waved her into a small, neutrally-decorated bedroom. Jamie had barely set the bag down when she felt herself being shoved unceremoniously onto the double bed. Laughing, she rolled over as Emma climbed on top of her and settled astride her waist.

  “I can’t believe you,” she said again, smiling down at Jamie.

  “I think you already said that.”

  “Doesn’t make it any less true.” Emma leaned forward, her hair encircling their faces, and kissed her.

  “Wait,” Jamie said after a while. “We have to get back down there.”

  “No we don’t.” Emma’s hand drifted lower.

  “Emma!” She gasped as she felt warm fingers slip inside her shirt. “They’ll know what we’re doing!”

  “So what?” Emma nipped her earlobe, her breath doing amazing things to Jamie’s ear and neck just as her fingers were doing elsewhere. “Between team time and family time, I haven’t been alone with you in entirely too long.”

  She had a point, Jamie realized, shutting her eyes against the sunlight streaming in the window as her own hands gripped the hem of Emma’s sweater.

  Lunch could wait.

  #

  Returning downstairs with Emma in prime post-orgasm glow was every bit as mortifying as Jamie had anticipated, but other than Bridget and Ty exchanging an amused glance, the fallout wasn’t too bad. Emma’s mom acted as if she didn’t know that her daughter had thrown Jamie on the bed upstairs and had her quick but satisfying way with her, a pretense that Jamie could appreciate. Soon they were seated around the dining room table at the front of the house overlooking the lake, and Jamie was fielding the same kinds of questions Emma had faced from her family in Utah: “How are your parents and sister? How was Christmas in Berkeley? How’s Portland? And what have you been up to since we last saw you a decade ago?”

  Jamie answered the questions as openly as she could, which was quite openly seeing as this wasn’t the first time she was meeting Emma’s family. Then she turned the conversation back on Pam and Ty, asking about their current lives as well as the years since they’d last seen one another—and about future plans, too. Like Emma’s brother and his fiancée, Ellie and Jodie had been dodging questions about setting a date for a while now too. Jamie figured it didn’t hurt to ask.

  “We’ve decided to have it after the World Cup,” Ty explained. “Probably at New Year’s since we know there won’t be any games that week.”

  “Wait, what?” Emma’s half-eaten tuna sandwich sat frozen in her grasp.

  “You heard me,” Ty said, tilting his chin upward in the same stubborn, slightly challenging way Emma had.

  “You put a hold on your wedding because of me?” Emma clarified.

  “It’s not a big deal.” Ty’s frown matched hers. “We aren’t in a huge hurry, so we thought next year would work. You know, like maybe we’ll have two amazing things to celebrate in the same year? And if not, well, hey, there’s guaranteed to be one awesome party in 2015. Am I right?” he added to Jamie.

  Automatically she held her hand up for him to slap. It had been years, but she had always thought of Ty almost like a younger brother, one she didn’t have to share a roof—or a bathroom, thankfully—with. The familiarity and sense of connection came back now as easily as it had been forged back in the day, only this time they were talking about weddings instead of funerals, a conversational upgrade she was sure they were all only too happy to accept.

  Except, possibly, Emma. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You shouldn’t have to plan your wedding around my availability.”

  Ty rolled his eyes. “Get over yourself, Em. We’re not planning around your schedule. We’re doing what works for us, and if it means you can be there too, all the better. Right, Bridge?”

  “Right.” The younger woman nodded at Emma. “If we want you to be part of our day, it only makes sense that we take the World Cup into consideration. Besides, we were hoping to be in Canada next summer… If that’s okay with you?”

  “Of course it’s okay,” Emma said, her frown smoothing out. “I would love if it you guys were there. Assuming I’m on the team.”

  Jamie gazed at Emma in surprise. Had Jo told her she might not get her contract renewed in 2015? Sometimes new coaches cleaned house, but to get rid of a player like Emma when she was at the top of her game would be insane.

  “I thought the new coach was merely resting you in that last match,” Pam said, her frown a mirror image of her children’s. “Did something else happen?”

  “No,” Emma admitted, poking at her sandwich with a finger. “But no one’s job is secure. That’s a given at this level.”

  Jamie released the breath s
he hadn’t realized she was holding and reached for her glass of water. Emma was just being Emma.

  Pam appeared to agree. “That sounds like nerves, honey. I’m sure you’ll be in Canada next summer. As will I—Roger and I have already put in for the time off.”

  Though Emma’s family was too polite to ask, Jamie felt the need to address the elephant in the room. “I’ll be there too, one way or another,” she said, aiming for plucky and upbeat.

  The moment of silence that fell over the table was—well, awkward, until Emma’s mother came to the rescue. “I don’t doubt that for a second, sweetheart.”

  That made one of them.

  As they finished lunch, the assembled group made a plan to explore The Cities. Ty and Bridget had only arrived the previous day after spending Christmas in Boston with Bridget’s family, and Emma’s mom said she wanted to show Jamie some of the sights, same as she’d done with Bridget on her first visit to Minnesota. Jamie resisted the urge to dwell on Emma’s mom equating her with her future daughter-in-law and instead focused on the potential to-do list: ice cream at Sebastian Joe’s in Minneapolis, a visit to an outdoor sculpture park, dinner at a downtown restaurant, and a drink at a St. Paul “ice bar.”

  Exploring the great outdoors in near subzero temperatures was questionable enough, but ice cream and drinks at an ice bar, whatever the heck that was?

  Out of the corner of her mouth, Jamie asked Emma, “Is your mom joking about ice cream?”

  “Minnesotans never joke about something as serious as ice cream,” Pam declared as she and Bridget loaded lunch plates into the dishwasher. “Besides, it could be worse, you know. Twenty-five degrees is positively balmy.”

  Could be worse. Had she actually said that? Next thing you knew she’d be saying, “Oh fer cute,” a phrase that Emma claimed her relatives habitually invoked at the holidays.

  “It’s too bad you won’t be here in a few weeks for Icebox Days in International Falls,” Pam added.

  “Icebox Days?” Jamie echoed. “That sounds—interesting.”

  “Suck-up,” Ty muttered, smirking at her.

  Jamie flipped him off, lowering her hand quickly as Pam turned away from the sink. Had she been busted? No, she didn’t think so. Whew.

  “It’s a winter festival in the northern-most town in Minnesota,” Pam explained.

  As she went on to describe the various and sundry competitions in the tiny town’s festival—a frozen turkey bowling game, a toilet seat toss, and a moonlight ski race, cross country because apparently there weren’t many hills in the state that could support a downhill course—Jamie shifted closer and whispered to Emma, “Do you think the extreme cold has addled people’s minds here?”

  Emma murmured back, “More like mind over matter. It takes incredible powers of concentration to trick your brain into not noticing you’re about to freeze to death.”

  Their first stop was, in fact, the ice cream shop in Uptown only fifteen minutes from Emma’s mother’s house. For a Saturday in late December, the tiny shop was remarkably crowded in Jamie’s opinion. They waited in line to place their orders, and then they waited in line again to pay. They were still waiting when a table opened up in the corner, so Jamie and Ty went to stake their claim.

  Jamie was dragging a fifth chair to the small circular table when Ty said, “I’m glad we have a moment. I wanted to say something.”

  “Fire away.” She dropped into the chair she’d retrieved and sucked on a spoonful of Oreo vanilla, watching him curiously.

  “Okay. Well, the thing is, my sister is fairly crazy about you. Don’t know if you’ve noticed?”

  She smiled, hoping it didn’t seem too giddy. “The feeling is entirely mutual.”

  “Good. Right. Well, I wanted to tell you that I’m psyched you guys are finally doing the couple thing.”

  “Thanks, Ty,” she said, touched.

  “Sure. But at the same time, if you do anything to hurt her,” he added, hazel eyes narrowing and lips slanting dangerously, “I will hunt you down and make you regret the day you were born.”

  Jamie stared at Emma’s brother, aware of brightly colored posters lining the walls behind his glaring visage and the scent of chocolate and strawberries wafting incongruously between them. And then his face cracked and he started to laugh, pointing his waffle cone at her.

  The little fucker. Although really the fault lay with her. She should have known the old Ty was still in there somewhere.

  “Holy shit,” he gasped in between laughs, “you should have seen your face, Max. Classic!”

  Reluctantly she smiled, and then she punched him in the shoulder. Hard. “Dickwad. I can’t believe I thought you would give me the shovel talk.”

  “That makes two of us.” His laughter finally faded, and he lifted his eyebrows at her. “Anyway, it’s more you having to be careful of what Emma brings to the table, isn’t it?”

  “What are you talking about? Your sister is awesome.”

  “No, of course she is. I meant the Sam thing.”

  What Sam thing? But before she could ask, he smiled over her shoulder. Jamie glanced back to see Emma leading her mom and Bridget through the dense clump of tables to their corner. As they approached, she tried to remember what Emma had said about her relationship with Sam. Not much, she didn’t think. They’d always been so pressed for time together that neither had wanted to spend it talking about past relationships. Besides, whatever had happened between Emma and her ex-girlfriend wasn’t really any of Jamie’s business.

  “How’s your Oreo vanilla?” Emma asked, sliding into the seat beside her.

  “Fantastic. What about you? How’s your Lavender Truffle?” she asked, not bothering to keep the disgust from her voice.

  “Incredible. Want a taste?” Emma waved her cone under Jamie’s nose.

  “Ew!” she said, flinching away. “Gross. There’s no way that’s real ice cream.”

  “Now you’re drawing a line between real and fake ice cream?” Ty said. “Okay, Sarah Palin.”

  The conversation switched gears from dessert items to politics, and Jamie settled back, content to listen to Emma’s family’s banter and check out the shop’s other patrons. The group at the next table caught her attention. With their matching red hair and stocky builds, they looked like three generations of Vikings descendants. While Jamie was observing them, the thirty-something dad of two freckle-faced cherubs shot the older man a glare and said, his voice carrying clearly over the din of the shop, “Come on, Dad, that’s a giant load of you-know-what kind of hooey.”

  Jamie blinked rapidly. “Did you hear that?” she asked Emma, her voice low.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Can you translate? Because I’m not sure I know what hooey is, let alone—”

  “—the you-know-what kind of hooey?” Emma finished for her. “Sorry, I don’t speak Minnesotan. I’m a Seattleite, remember?”

  “Thank god,” Jamie replied fervently.

  “What are you guys talking about?” Ty asked.

  Emma kept her voice low as she repeated the conversational tidbit they’d overheard, and soon everyone at their table was trying to contain their laughter—even Emma’s mom, a native Minnesotan.

  Jamie finished off her dish of Oreo ice cream, her thigh pressed into Emma’s. While it was colder outside than should ever be allowed, the shop was warm and bright, as was the company. Maybe ice cream at Christmas in Minnesota wasn’t such a crazy idea after all.

  #

  “Admit it,” Emma said, burrowing into her side under their bed’s flannel sheets and down comforter that night, “you had fun today.”

  “I did,” Jamie agreed. “When I wasn’t freezing my ass off.”

  From Sebastian Joe’s they’d moved on to the Walker Art Center (indoors) and Minneapolis Sculpture Garden (outdoors), where they’d wandered shivering along trails that offered views of downtown Minneapolis and, notably, a giant spoon sculpture with a cherry on top until Ty and Bridget made the mistake of attem
pting a snowball sneak attack. Emma and Jamie had ended up kicking their butts, of course—not only were they professional athletes, but they played a team sport. Together.

  After Ty and Bridget conceded defeat, the group had headed downtown to Emma’s mom’s favorite used bookstore. The next stop was sushi, where the excellent quality of the fish had surprised Jamie, given their land-locked location. Roger, Pam’s “gentleman friend,” as Ty and Emma referred to him in snooty English accents, joined them for dinner. He was a nice guy and clearly adored Emma’s mom, and as another plus he claimed to believe that soccer was superior to most other American sports.

  The last stop of the day was the aforementioned ice bar, where they sat in an outdoor courtyard on huge blocks of ice that were covered in blankets, their drinks resting on carved ice tables, a large fire roaring in a nearby firepit. Ty and Bridget kept singing Olaf’s song “In Summer” from Frozen, and despite its exaggerated Great White North vibe, the ice bar was an entertaining way to end the evening. Although with Emma by her side and spiced wine warming her insides, Jamie probably could have frozen to death quite happily.

  “Your ass feels fine to me,” Emma said now, her wandering hands dipping lower to demonstrate the truth of her statement.

  Jamie fought her off. “Keep your fingers away from me! They are literally like ice. And I should know after today’s itinerary.”

  Emma followed her across the bed. “But you’re so warm! You know you love being my heater.”

  “Normally, yes. But this kind of cold isn’t normal. Would it kill your mom to turn up the heat?”

  Emma relented, relaxing against the pillows again. “She likes to sleep cold. Otherwise she says her hot flashes keep her up all night.”

  Jamie’s mother was currently in the throes of menopause too, so she understood the need for a cool house. She moved closer to Emma and lay facing her, head pillowed on her elbow. “You’re not planning to move here, right? Because that would be a total deal-breaker for me.”

  “Uh, no. I’m a Left Coaster for life, babe. Which is too bad because I think Ty and Bridget are planning to settle on the East Coast.”