“So, I think I’m doing it,” Riley continues. “I mean, I don’t see any reason not to. I won’t miss camp, and I’ll end up with a degree just in case.”
It sounds way too much like what Willa’s been dreading. She focuses on the coffeemaker for a minute instead of on Riley, steeling herself for what she’s growing more terrified she might have to do. She dumps in packet after packet of sugar, refusing eye contact.
“You’d have gotten a degree anyway,” she says. “School will still be here after the Olympics.”
“Yeah, but you know what I mean,” Riley says. “One that- if I ended up not playing, not leaving here- you know. If I didn’t make the Olympics.”
The coffee is too hot, but Willa sips it anyway.
“The only way you’ll end up not playing,” she says slowly, “is if you decide not to do the draft.”
Willa waits for the backlash, letting the mug warm her hands, and not quite looking back at Riley until the suspense forces her to. Riley’s biting her lips, guilty already, and it’s coming for sure.
“What if I didn’t?” She says, “I don’t have to. You showed me that. It’s not the only choice I have.”
It hits her so hard that Willa almost drops her coffee. In no uncertain terms, if Riley chooses not to do the draft, it will be completely, entirely her fault. She is, in this moment, with Riley in her shirt, in her apartment, in her heart, more than capable of ruining Riley’s future. Or letting her ruin it.
“Don’t you dare.” Willa puts the coffee down out of fear she might just drop it eventually, and Riley uncrosses her arms, shifting her weight onto one hip; Willa, finally, isn’t thinking about her legs.
“I refuse to be the reason that you give up on your dream,” Willa continues, “that’s bullshit, that’s- it would kill me.”
“I’m not giving up! I’m just saying- maybe now I have a different dream,” Riley says, almost like she believes it. Willa grips Riley’s hands in hers so tightly that for a moment she worries she might be causing pain. She realizes eventually that the look on Riley’s face has nothing to do with their hands.
“How long have you been playing soccer?” she asks, and Riley looks down.
“I- since I was seven,” she answers.
“And how long have we known each other?”
“That’s not the point!” Riley insists.
“That’s the whole point!”
Riley takes her hand back and turns away, but Willa rounds the island to make eye contact again, desperate.
“Listen to me,” Willa says, “if you didn’t know I was right you wouldn’t even bother fighting me about it, so listen to me. I know that soccer’s your first love, alright? I know, because it’s how I am, how I was, and I fucked up. I made a mistake,” she says, and as she does she realizes it’s the first time she’s ever admitted it out loud, really. That makes her repeat herself, half to make it sink into Riley’s head and half to get it to sink into her own.
“A really bad mistake, and I made it because I was afraid. And I’m happy now,” Willa assures her, “and I’m fine, but that doesn’t mean I’m gonna let you make that same mistake. To settle. You’re better than that. Don’t settle for me and a desk job when you could have the world.”
Riley gapes, opening and closing her mouth like a fish for almost a full thirty seconds before she asks quietly, “are you dumping me?”
It’s not a question Willa had considered, but as soon as Riley says it she understands that’s what she’s doing, what she needs to do. Not what she wants to do- the thought of being without Riley makes her ache like the idea of being back on the field makes her ache- but the responsible thing to do. Willa takes Riley’s face in her hands suddenly and kisses her. She’s trying not to assume that it’s the last time. Riley doesn’t kiss her back.
“If that’s what it takes,” she murmurs. Riley takes a step back, just enough that Willa’s left empty-handed and far enough away to see the pain and confusion and disappointment all over Riley’s face. It hurts more than she thought it would.
“You value my spot on a low-paying-at-best league team more than our relationship,” she realizes out loud.
“Not- no,” Willa corrects her, “I’m putting you first. It’s more important to me that you’re able to live your dream than it is for you to be here with me. I’m being selfless. It’s not easy, alright?”
Riley doesn’t look convinced, so Willa continues, “because I wanna be selfish and say, yeah, stay here with me and live in my shitty loft apartment while I finish getting this degree that I’m only getting to put off the inevitable moment where I’ll have to accept that I have to get a job and join the real world. But I know that’s not the right thing to do. The right thing to do is to let you go. So go. Go home. Go to national team camp. Go to the Olympics. Go to the draft.”
***
Riley gets halfway back to campus before the crying starts. She spends the second half of the walk swiping angrily at the betraying tears. She’s still wearing Willa’s t-shirt under her coat and over her jeans, and she’s not sure where her shirt is from last night but she’s not going to go back or text to ask for it back, even if it was one of her favorites. Maybe Willa will see it and feel guilty and miss her. Maybe she’ll get a call in a few hours with an apology.
Riley knows better than to hope for that.
Brianna’s studying when she comes in, a pen cap in her mouth and Beyonce blaring which for once Riley is grateful for. It means she can flop onto her bed and cry quietly for a minute before her roommate even notices.
“Hey,” Brianna says when she finally gets it. Riley sniffs as softly as she can but doesn’t answer. She can hear Courtney roll back from the desk.
“Hey, Riles,” she persists, “you okay?”
Riley takes a deep breath to answer but what comes out instead is a sob, and she curls up into herself, embarrassed. Courtney clambers onto her bed and sits to one side of her, careful as always not to overwhelm her physically, even if that’s something she’s prone to.
“Did she dump you?” she asks, and the frankness of it would have made Riley laugh in another life. Instead she nods, wiping at her eyes again. She keeps remembering the pressure of Willa’s hands on hers. What doesn’t add up is the kiss- like Willa really didn’t want to dump her after all. It just feels like a convenient way to get rid of her without saying the truth. Riley assumes that the truth is Willa doesn’t feel the way she said she felt- doesn’t love her, and panicked when she thought too hard about what it meant.
Part of her knows that’s ridiculous. That’s not the part that’s taking over.
“Tell me where she lives,” Brianna says, nudging her foot. “I’ll call Quentin and we’ll beat her up.”
“It’s not worth it,” Riley tells her. She keeps feeling the kiss, keeps seeing the look on Willa’s face she still can’t name, and forces herself to think of the only other thing she can wrap her brain around.
Willa wants her to take the draft, get shuttled off to New York or Boston and leave her behind. Riley is tempted to do the opposite and stay in the state just to spite her, to prove that it wasn’t just the thought of having Willa around that made the idea of staying bearable, but it is, and it was.
And Willa was right. Leaving is the right thing to do. Spending her summer in residence with the national team, participating in the draft, that’s what she needs to do, and what she wants to do. The idea of training with the national team makes her stomach churn with excitement even with tears still drying on her face. It’s part of a dream she’s had since she started to play. Quentin grew up with his sights set on the national team, and she didn’t have that until she was sixteen and the League burst onto the scene and suddenly she could have her dream, too. Suddenly her dream was in reach, like Quentin’s, and she’s just about given it away twice. Willa has been the only one there to stop her, and she owes that, but she doesn’t owe forgiveness for making her hurt like this.
And she doesn’t wan
t anyone to go back and find out whether or not it was just an excuse to get rid of her.
“Can you at least, like...try to explain what’s going on?” Courtney asks, patting her awkwardly. Riley rolls onto her back and wipes her eyes.
“It’s complicated.”
Everything is complicated, she realizes then. And it’s always been complicated, and it was stupid of her to think that choosing a side arbitrarily and making plans would make anything any less complicated. She loves Willa but she can’t base her life around it, and she had been stupid to pretend like the choice she was making was ever anything other than the choice whether or not to leave Willa behind. All of this comes to her as she stares up at her ceiling, Court twisting impatiently next to her waiting for some more drama to unfold.
“That is so typical of you,” she sighs, “what was it? Did she cheat on you or something?”
“No,” Riley snaps, offended on Willa’s behalf.
“Did you cheat on her?”
“No, Court, it’s not that scandalous, okay? It’s complicated life stuff. And she didn’t mean to hurt me,” she realizes out loud.
“She made you cry and I want to punch her,” Brianna insists.
“I appreciate it,” Riley says, and she does, even if- especially if- her roommate can’t possibly get it, “but I’m pretty sure Willa could flatten you if she wanted to.”
She wouldn’t want to, though. Riley’s pretty sure Willa would just sit there and take it. That makes her want to cry again so she pushes the thought away and sits up, shuffling across the room to her gym bag.
“Where are you going?” Courtney asks, leaning back.
“I have training to do,” Riley says, and that surge of determination lasts all the way out the door.
***
Willa does not expect to run into Riley three hours after the breakup.
She feels like a zombie, so she’s not expecting much of anything. She hasn’t cried but she can feel it coming around like thunderclouds rolling in. She brings her Kinesiology book with her but spends the first half of her shift reading the same page listlessly, letting her highlighter dry out and trying to convince herself she hasn’t fucked up. Over a stick of gum she mulls over her future and tries to remember how she felt about it before Riley had come into her life. She remembers, vaguely, having some semblance of determination, having something to look forward to, but she can’t pick it out anymore.
Imagining her future isn’t dismal or exciting anymore, it just is. A masters’ in Sport Psychology. A job as a trainer or something, for a college team because she can’t imagine applying to work for the League to see the future she might have had. Living in a college town her whole life, getting a house with a yard eventually, and a dog or two. Nothing exciting or particularly fulfilling about it.
Not without Riley.
She goes through the conversation again and again and tries to figure out if there was any other way, but she keeps getting stuck. She's still stuck when, halfway through her shift, Riley breezes by.
She hesitates, making eye contact for half a second, and Willa's heart jumps into her throat. In that moment she can think of a hundred things to say but not a single one of them makes it past her lips, and Riley leaves without looking back.
Willa barely makes it through the rest of her shift without crying. The second she's inside her car the floodgates open and she sits in the parking lot rummaging for napkins in her car doors for twenty minutes.
"Idiot," she tells herself.
Idiot. Letting go of a girl like that makes her an idiot. And she still doesn't regret it as much as she should. If Riley's training that means she's going to the residential camp with the national team, and that means she's got a chance at Olympics, a chance at a future. And that means that losing her is worth it.
Eventually Willa will even convince herself that's the truth.
***
It’s a week before Willa talks to her again.
It starts with a text, asking her if she wants to come and watch a season premiere of a show they both follow, because Willa knows that she likes it, they both watched it together. There’s a heavy undercurrent of ‘we can still be friends’ even in a few characters like that, and Riley’s first reaction is to click the lock on her phone and try to forget about it. She knows, though, that Willa will see that she’s read the text. It was stupid of her not to turn off read receipts, but here she is, waiting to try and answer her ex-girlfriend about whether or not she wants to come over.
She still can’t get past the word ‘ex-girlfriend’. The idea that she has an ex-girlfriend is just as baffling as the idea that she had ever kissed Willa, much less gotten naked and done other things with her. And it’s only been a week or so since the last time they did either of those things. A week is long enough for her to feel like it happened to someone else.
Riley tells herself that this time around she just won’t feel it anymore. They’ve had their run and she won’t feel it, won’t be attracted to Willa or sad that they broke up; they’re adults and they can handle it. That’s why Willa asked her over in the first place. She knows that without having to ask. She says sure and the second Willa opens the door to her apartment she regrets it. Willa smells warm. Riley can’t believe she’s picking that out, can’t believe that’s the word she’s choosing for it, but that’s what it is. It’s May but still gusty outside this time of night and Willa looks so comfortable that Riley’s wanting to wrap herself up in Willa before she can think to tell herself to stop it.
The rest of the night is just as bad. At first when they sit on the couch they sit far enough away that it’s awkward, and Riley notices and scoots a little closer to make it less conspicuous, then realizes that doing that is conspicuous in and of itself when Willa looks at her funny. Now they’re too close and she doesn’t know how to fit it, so she just deals with it, with being able to almost feel the heat of Willa’s leg and arm right by her own, with remembering Willa hovering over her on this same couch, the night of the Kappa party.
She doesn’t actually end up watching any of the show, and they finally gravitate towards each other as the digital clock on the table beeps loudly and shows 12:00.
“I’m proud of you, Rilo” Willa whispers as she brushes a strand of loose hair tickling Riley’s nose and kisses her on the forehead with a smile.
The Things She Kept Page 8
