Sugar & Ice

by Brooklyn Wallace

  “Correct me if I’m wrong, Jay, but I thought you hated your old teammates,” she said bluntly.

  I balked. “I don’t hate them! Hate is . . . a really, really strong word.”

  “Oh, sorry. I thought you strongly disliked those people who painted you as some spoiled, self-centered hack to whatever tabloid would listen for petty revenge and made you so anxious you couldn’t go outside for months?”

  I flinched back against the couch cushions . Olivia looked sympathetic but challenging, daring me to deny any part of it.

  I couldn’t, so I said nothing.

  She sighed and regarded me with something akin to pity. That only made me curl up farther into the cushions. There was nothing I wanted more in the world than to not be talking about this.

  “Jackie,” Olivia started, like she was talking to an easily spooked animal, “those women put you through hell without so much as a ‘sorry.’ Felicity broke your heart. You clearly don’t want to do this, so why do you feel like you owe them anything? You can’t keep punishing yourself for something you never were.”

  My throat clenched around words that weren’t there. I could only stare at her hopelessly.

  She frowned and searched my face, looking for something. Then she was suddenly up on her feet.

  “All right, that’s it. We’re rebirthing you.”

  That sprang me out of my paralysis. “We’re whating me?”

  “Rebirthing! It’s this thing I learned in a spiritual awakening class I accidentally walked into thinking it was yoga and was too fascinated to leave.” She walked over to the couch and started grabbing cushions and throwing them to the floor.

  I leaned away from her distrustfully. “Does this involve, like . . . actual vaginal canals, or—”

  “God, no, shut up. Rebirthing is where you purge all the anxieties and bad vibes of your past and allow yourself to be born anew. Basically, you cocoon yourself and express all the bad that’s holding you back, then become reborn. Think of it as a kind of therapy.”

  She left me to contemplate what the fuck she was getting at as she padded down the hall. When she came back, she was holding an armful of blankets she’d swiped from my bed.

  “No,” I said.

  “Come on, Jackie! What could it hurt?”

  “My dignity, for one.” I eyed the mess of blankets and cushions on the floor. “My lungs, probably, for another.”

  “It’ll be harmless—and, more importantly, cathartic.”

  I watched her rearrange the cushions and blankets into a makeshift cocoon with growing dread.

  “Olivia, you went to one class. Do you have the—the credentials to rebirth me?”

  “It’s not that big a deal.” She beckoned me over. “Come here.”

  I contemplated bolting and locking myself in my room, but I got up and went over anyway. Since Olivia had announced her engagement, it’d been harder and harder to tell her no.

  I followed her instructions to lie straight across the cushions. She warned me not to move too much as she started draping me in layers of comforters and pillows. A purple blanket from who knew where obscured my vision.

  “How do you feel? Warm? Safe?” She asked.

  “Like I’m ninety percent sure we haven’t washed this comforter in months. And kind of hot.”

  “That’s normal. Okay, now I want you to envision that you are back in the womb.”

  “I’m out.”

  “No! Hear me out! Like I said, picture you’re in the womb. It’s dark, warm—or hot—and you haven’t been born yet. You are at a crossroads between your old life and your new one.” A light pressure pressed against the couch cushion above my abdomen. “The only way you can cross over into your new life is float to the top. The only way to float is if you drop the load that’s weighing you down.”

  That wasn’t how childbirth worked, but I knew better than to tell her that.

  “How do I drop the load?” I asked.

  “Purge those bad feelings from your previous existence. Let them all out, then let them go.”

  My breath came back warm under the canopy of blankets. It was actually a little nice under here. Safe, like Olivia said. I could catch a skinny brown forearm in my peripheral if I turned my head just right.

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Don’t overthink it. Just think of all that bad shit that’s still weighing on you and scream them into the void.”

  “I’m upset that my best friend is going to kill me and it won’t even be in a cool way,” I shouted into the void.

  A hand smacked against the top of my head, the only part not covered in mountains of pseudo-womb walls.

  “Be serious. It might help if you close your eyes. Come on, try it. The worst that can happen is that you’re rebirthed and have to be a Gemini.”

  I suppressed a sigh. Despite how pushy she was being, I knew Olivia was only trying to help. Yes, that help was currently in the form of making me take part in some ridiculous labor theater, but still.

  I closed my eyes and wracked my brain for something to say to appease her.

  “I’m still upset about how the girls treated me back then,” I whispered into the darkness. Even saying it out loud made me feel guilty, but I thought back to what Gwen had told me in the pool. When she had told me I didn’t have to do anything I didn’t want to, especially not for anyone else else. At the time, she’d made it seem so easy, too easy. I wasn’t like her, not strong and confident and sure. Now I thought—hoped—that maybe I could be.

  I waited for Olivia to say something, but she stayed silent. The only thing I could hear under my layers was Ina Garten and the sound of my own breathing.

  The silence continued to stretch on. I cleared my throat and spoke again.

  “Felicity was a piece of shit.”

  That was the first time I had ever said it out loud.

  “I—I loved her. I really did. It was nothing something casual for me, and I feel stupid because it still stings knowing I didn’t mean shit to her. For a while I thought I must have meant something for her to tell the team and the press and anyone who would fucking listen that they were never good enough to play with me. The more I thought about it, the more fucked up it gets. She didn’t give a shit about me, but she punished me all the same.”

  As I talked the things I wanted to get out came out easier and easier. Like this, covered from head to toe with my eyes closed, I felt alone. But with the warmth swaddled around me and the pressure of Olivia’s hand still on my head, I felt anything but.

  “And Gwen’s not like that. I hate that I told her she was. I’m stupid, and I miss her like crazy.”

  “They lost their championship because of me. I lost my love of basketball because of them.”

  “I hate that I fucked up my knee and ruined everything I worked for. I don’t know where to go from here.”

  “I don’t want to do that stupid fucking charity bout. I don’t want to see them again. I want to move on.”

  The sound of my own breathing was amplified in my ears, but at the same time, I felt calmer. No, not just calm—I wanted to laugh.

  Fuck it all, for once Olivia’s New Age-y bullshit had actually worked.

  Her voice drifted into the darkness after a stretch of silence. “Is that everything? What else from your previous existence is burdening you so?”

  “My best friend is getting married.”

  A blaring commercial for a floor cleaner punctuated the end of another Barefoot Contessa episode, but neither of us moved. The weight of Olivia’s hand was still on the top of my head, but she remained silent. I inhaled a warm breath and continued. “And I’m so happy for her, I really am. She deserves a fairy tale wedding and a fairy tale life and all the good things life can give. But she’s gonna move out and move out of my life, and then where will I be?”

  “You know I’m always going to be your best friend, right?” she asked quietly.

  “Yeah, I know . . . but you’re gonna leave. You�
��re not gonna be here anymore.”

  “But I’m hardly ever here now, Jay,” she joked sadly.

  “I know! I know that. That doesn’t mean it won’t still be different.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, we don’t have enough money for our own place yet, so I’ll still be here.”

  I laughed. “That actually makes me feel worse. You guys should be able to live together at least in marriage.”

  “What can I say? The economy.” Another swinging forearm. “Point is, you ain’t getting rid of me, Dunn. You’re locked into this friendship for life.”

  She lifted her hand from the top of me head. I felt a pang of loss at the stopped contact, but dismissed the thought as silly.

  “Okay, is that everything? Ready to be reborn a new woman?”

  “I think so, yeah.”

  “Okay. Push.”

  It was too much to ask for me to not feel silly wiggling out of the cushion-womb, but I did it with gusto. The cool air and Olivia’s upside-down smile were the first things to greet me as I wiggled out with my arms at my sides. With everything but my feet free, I raised my arms in triumph.

  “Not to brag, but I have totally crushed the miracle of birth twice in one lifetime.”

  She swatted at my hands and smiled.

  “Okay, champ, how do you feel?”

  Silly. Stupid. Relieved.

  Like maybe everything was going to be okay, for real this time.

  “Good. I mean, I’m in the same place I started, but at least it doesn’t feel like there’s a stadium on my chest anymore.”

  “You know you don’t have to stay in the same place you are now, right? You can tell Lorne you don’t want to do the game. You can call Gwen, too.”

  I twisted my eyes shut again. “She doesn’t want to talk to me.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Yes I do. She’s the most stubborn woman I’ve ever met.”

  “And yet you’re still sulking around the house like they discontinued Cherry Sprite because you’re not together anymore.”

  “Oh, she made it very clear we weren’t together in the first place,” I grumbled bitterly.

  Even upside-down, Olivia’s expression was withering. “That’s bullshit and you know it.”

  “Even if I were to concede that, she still wouldn’t want to talk to me. Not without a bit of groveling and a lot of bribery, at least.”

  “She sounds powerful. And like a bitch.”

  The corners of my mouth twitched up. “Yeah, she is a powerful bitch.”

  “The way you say that with that stupid smile on your face tells me she might be worth a little groveling.”

  I huffed and opened my eyes. Olivia stared down at me with a smugly knowing smile. The urge to roll my eyes won out over my affection. Why did my best friend have to know everything?

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  “I know I am,” she said, predictably. She freed me from the rest of the not-womb and got up. As she disappeared down the hall, she tittered, “Phones work both ways, remember?”

  I waited until I heard her bedroom door shut before I got up and went to my own. I locked the door and pulled out my laptop. I had been avoiding it for a while now, but the only way I was going to get passed this was to know what it was I was up against. My stomach twisted into a sick knot as a I opened up Google and typed Jacklyn Dunn.

  Nine new links. Nine new articles.

  Taking a deep breath, I clicked on the first

  Former WNBA Star Gets Cozy with Curvy Cutie

  Former San Francisco Sonic point guard Jacklyn Dunn was spotted outside a downtown ’Frisco bar with a Democratic campaign manager Gwendolyn Crawford last Friday night.

  Sonics fans remember Jackie Dunn as the firebrand rookie out of Saint Mary’s who helped lead the 2015 Sonics to their third championship win since the team’s founding in 1989.

  Comments (17)

  I sat back in my chair and stared at the screen. I had expected it to be . . . meaner. More visceral, preying on the morbid curiosities and schadenfreude of the average bitter sports fan. Really, it only read like a fluff piece in grocery store gossip rag.

  And that was exactly what it was. A fluff piece. Something to fill out the pages in between trading news within the NBA and NFL. Never had I been more grateful for America’s relative lack of interest in women’s sports.

  That didn’t mean there wouldn’t be an impact. Whether the response was positive or negative, I really couldn’t say; I’d thankfully grown out of the habit of scouring comments sections. Despite being out of the league for nearly four years now, I knew ball fans didn’t change.

  The world of sports was always slower to change, what with sports fans’ propensity for ignorance and call-out culture. Taking a deep breath, I went in search for more articles. I breezed through headlines that were as monotonous as they were innocuous, scanning for my name and coming up short more often than not.

  Crawford, Osten Go Head to Head in Latest Town Hall Debate

  It’s All About Taxes in the Latest Campaign for the 35th District Seat

  Local Business Owner Turned Politician Holds His Own in Second Debate for California’s 35th District

  I pickled one at random. With a shaky breath, I one at random and scanned the article for my name.

  Osten was apparently referring to Crawford’s ex-wife and current campaign manager, Gwendolyn Crawford, who reportedly has a relationship with Jacklyn Dunn, a former point guard for the San Francisco Sonics. The Crawfords’ divorce was first reported back in . . .

  I went back into Google and searched for more headlines. I needed to make sure. Sure of what, I didn’t really know, but it felt like I was on the edge of . . . something.

  A link to Deidre’s Twitter account came up second in the search. My gut twisted and my skin burned in a hot flash. I took stock of what I was feeling: embarrassment, shame, but anger, too, just under the surface. I forced myself to click on the link. The tweet was simple: a link to an article on the debate from The Daily Conservative and a shifty eyes emoji. Subtle, bitchy, and devastating. Thirty retweets, one hundred thirty-five likes.

  Unable to resist, I scrolled through the comments. I’d gone this far—why not take it all the way and violate the one rule I’d managed to follow that kept me relatively in the dark about the public’s burning Where in the World is Jacklyn Dunn? game.

  @trakstarzz LMAOOOOOO

  @Cash__Ramos88 u childish for this LOL

  @BrandynnnnKnight ayyyy jackie d!

  There were few comments, most of them either laughing at me or fangirls trying to catch Deidre’s attention. I settled on the meanest one I could find, one that happily stated I was irrelevant, that I had been overhyped my whole career and that the only thing I had achieved was being one of the prettier dykes in the league.

  I waited for the flare of embarrassment and shame. I waited for my chest to seize and my leg to start throbbing. None of it came. Besides the vaguely queasy-annoyed feeling of someone talking shit about me somewhere I couldn’t see, I was fine. Me. Fine. The fact itself was so absurd I laughed out loud, amused and relieved.

  How freeing it was to be irrelevant.

  I scrolled down the last of the few comments, resigned yet determined to push through, fueled by the need to know for sure what was out there.

  @TiffanyBills97 Good on her for being public with her gf. Y’all childish if it bothers you. It’s fucking 2018.

  It was short, only one of maybe three or four tweets that were undeniably in my favor, but it still made me smile. That was the one I focused on as I exited the window and turned off the laptop. I tucked it back under my bed and laid down on the floor to take stock of my feelings once again.

  Annoyance (Deidre was talking shit, after all).

  Anxiety (I went looking for trouble this time. It didn’t just find me).

  Sadness (Gwen was still gone, and that was still my fault).

  Relief.

  There was
no shortage of emotions to fixate on and agonize over. I would be lying if I said Deidre’s tweet and the laughing comments under it didn’t bother me, but that feeling didn’t seem insurmountable. I didn’t feel like it was going to rip me apart, which was a big deal. For me, anyway.

  It was going to be okay.

  I was going to be okay.

  Fourteen

  Gwen

  Despite having what Dick had said to me still ringing in my ears, a week later, work was relatively normal. Mostly because Dick had stopped showing up to meetings. Jane acted as his surrogate, sitting in and occasionally giving advice. She was knowledgeable and helpful, her sweet Southern charm belying her cutthroat tactics.

  I was less than helpful. I tried to focus on the task at hand, going over projected exit poll numbers in preparation for election night, but the words on the page all swam before my eyes. Every now and then I’d hear my name and do my best to answer, but there was no mistaking I was out of it. Jeffrey kept shooting me concerned looks from across the table, but I avoided catching his eye as best I could.

  The moment the meeting was over, I beelined for the coffee maker. Voting day was tomorrow, and everyone was on edge. I prided myself on being calm under pressure, but I felt as if I was about to fray apart at the seams. Sleep had eluded me since—Jackie. Since our falling out. Since I said a bunch of shit I didn’t mean and since I realized I wasn’t too prideful, but too cowardly to mend that bridge. I kept telling myself it could wait until after the election, that if she really cared, she’d come after me, but who the hell was I posturing for now?

  A heavy presence settled over me. I didn’t have to turn around to know who it was.

  “We’re up nine points in the latest polls. Not too shabby, huh?” Jeffrey said with a levity in his voice too cheerful to be authentic.

  I took a sip of my coffee and turned to face him. “Not too shabby at all.”

  He stepped around me to grab one of the coffee cups and headed toward the water cooler. Jeffrey didn’t drink coffee—something about it causing incontinence in men over thirty. I used to joke that that more than the lesbian thing was why we got a divorce. I followed him over and leaned against the wall, eyes on the thin curl of steam rising from my cup.