Training Ground

by Kate Christie

  He looked down, toying with his fork. “I’m not going to force the issue, Emma. I only wanted you to know that I’m ready to listen to whatever you might want to tell me.”

  She couldn’t stop the words that came out: “Really? Because the last time we talked about Jamie, you didn’t exactly listen. In fact, you’ve been pretty emphatic right from the start that I shouldn’t get too close to her.”

  His eyes were unreadable. “Is that what this is about, then? You and Jamie?”

  The way he said it, she knew he thought she was trying to tell him they were together. She started to deny it, but then she realized that even if it wasn’t Jamie, it would be someone else—Tori or another girl from training camp or UNC. Given the world she occupied, it seemed inevitable that at some point in the future she was going to develop feelings for a girl who liked her back. Even if Jamie didn’t.

  “Would that be so bad?” she said instead, hating the way her voice trailed off at the end.

  He shook his head, and his voice was tired when he spoke. “I don’t know, Emma. I want you to be happy, I do, but there’s so much you don’t understand yet about the world. I can’t help but worry about you getting involved with someone like her.”

  “Someone like her?” she repeated, her fork clattering against her plate. “You don’t even know her. Jamie is one of the strongest, bravest people I know. And her family? They actually enjoy being around each other. Imagine that.”

  He leaned away from the table. “You know, I’ve about had it with that kind of talk from you. I’ve been hanging in here trying to earn back your trust, but nothing I do is good enough. So you tell me, Emma. What can I do to help us move forward? Because truthfully, I’m running out of ideas.”

  She blinked at him, and then she looked away, feeling her cheeks flush at the glances their raised voices had drawn from nearby tables. “I don’t know,” she admitted, wringing her napkin with both hands now.

  “Your mother and brother have forgiven me. Why can’t you?”

  Her anger rekindled almost immediately. “Seriously? Ty only forgives you because he has no idea what you did.”

  His eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t pretend you don’t know.” She glared at him across the table. Was he going to make her spell it out?

  He gazed back at her, arms folded across his chest.

  As the silence lengthened, she felt her pulse begin to race with the same breathless rage that had sent her careening up the Berkeley High stadium stairs to confront the dipshit boys heckling Jamie. As it turned out, her father wasn’t all that different from those boys. Her anger wasn’t all that different, either, as she finally flung the long-dormant words at him: “I know you cheated on Mom.”

  He flinched and pushed his chair back from the table, and she knew: He was going to walk away. Once again, he was going to leave when things got tough. But before he could, she threw her napkin into her half-eaten meal, eyes blurring as she rose and tugged on her jacket. He didn’t make any move to stop her, only watched in silence as she slipped her purse over her shoulder and started toward the exit.

  But as she walked away, she realized she couldn’t do it. Leaving definitely was not her style. It wasn’t even that satisfactory. Halfway to the door, she turned around and went back, glaring down at her father. “Are you really not going to say anything to me?”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “Gee, I don’t know, Dad. Maybe start with ‘I’m sorry’?”

  “God damn it, Emma!” He stood up so quickly that his chair screeched and nearby diners turned to stare again. “I have said I’m sorry until I’m blue in the face. You either decide to forgive me or you don’t. That part’s up to you.”

  “Are you serious right now? You didn’t have any idea that I knew about that woman.”

  “I had a pretty good idea.” He dropped his napkin onto the table. “You’re not exactly subtle.”

  “You knew I knew, and yet you still had the nerve to tell me that Jamie isn’t good enough for me?” She shook her head. “She has more character in her elbow than you have in your entire body.”

  “That is enough,” he ground out. “You may think you’re all grown up, but you’re still a child and I’m still your father. You will treat me with respect as long as you live in my house.”

  She stared at him, her own anger fading as quickly as it had come. “You don’t get it, do you? I’m not a child anymore, something you would know if you were ever home long enough. But don’t worry, I won’t be living in your house much longer. In fact, I think I’ll be staying at Dani’s tonight,” she added, and turned away once again.

  “Emma, come back here.”

  But this time, she didn’t go back. Outside she headed toward Aurora Avenue, phone cradled to her cheek. “Please call me when you get this,” she said into Dani’s voicemail. “I got in a huge fight with my dad and I need a place to crash tonight.”

  As the wind gusted, she pulled a knit hat from her purse and huddled deeper into her down jacket. The sun had set an hour earlier and even though the sky was overcast, the temperature was dropping fast. If Dani couldn’t come get her, she was going to have to call a cab.

  God, how had things gotten so fucked up? It was such a cliché. He was such a cliché. What was it about men her father’s age that made them go looking for younger women? She would have sworn he wasn’t capable of such a thing. But then she heard her mother crying one night after he moved out, and while it was completely unintentional, she ended up overhearing her on the phone with her sister. She hadn’t wanted to believe it, so she’d gone to the hospital a couple of days later and tracked down the nurse in question, one of her mother’s supposed friends. The way the other woman reacted to seeing her was proof enough. They hadn’t even spoken. Emma had simply turned and walked out—sort of like she’d done tonight. But how could she stay? And how was she supposed to forgive him?

  Before the surgical patent, before the years of incessant travel, he’d been so different. His favorite thing to do, he told anyone who would listen back then, was go hiking and camping with his wife and kids. Once when they were on a trail in North Cascades National Park, a black bear had stalked them. Eventually the bear had charged, and their mother covered Emma and her brother with her body while their father stood tall and strong, screaming at the bear to get the hell away from his family. Emma couldn’t see him from the ground but she could feel his ferocity, and so had the bear, apparently. It had veered off and ambled away, leaving them untouched.

  That was how she’d always thought of him, first as her hero, and then as a hero to the hundreds of families whose children he treated successfully. Maybe that was why she was struggling to forgive him now. She’d looked up to him for so long that she wasn’t sure how to accept that he wasn’t heroic after all, but just a man who, like other men, was sometimes fallible.

  He was right about one thing, though. Her mother had forgiven him. So why couldn’t she?

  Her phone buzzed. It wasn’t Dani, unfortunately. She hesitated before answering. “Hi, Mom.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “What happened?”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “Not a lot. Except that you’re going to Dani’s tonight?”

  “I need some space. I can’t be around him right now.”

  “Honey, don’t stay away. Please come home. You don’t even have to talk to each other.”

  She sighed, shivering as the winter wind gusted again. “I don’t know…”

  Her mom played her trump card: “Please? I only have you for a few more months, and half of that you’re going to be traveling for soccer.”

  It may have been a low blow, but what she said was perfectly true. Besides, Emma still hadn’t heard from Dani, and she didn’t feel like calling Sian. They were more of the fair weather type of friends.

  “Fine,” she said reluctantly. So much for sta
ying strong in the face of what someone else wanted.

  A little while later her mom pulled the Volvo up at the gas station on Taylor Avenue, and Emma slipped into the backseat beside her brother.

  “I thought you were with Dad?” he asked.

  “Gatorade run,” she said, and held up her convenience store purchase for proof.

  “Whatever, freak.”

  “I’m the freak? Maybe you should look in the mirror, zit boy.”

  “Children,” her mother said, eyes on Emma in the rearview mirror.

  Emma nodded once at her mom—I’m okay—and the car pulled out into Seattle traffic. She stared at the back of her father’s head as they poked along Mercer. He was looking out the window toward the city skyline, his shoulders slumped, defeated almost. Was that because of her? Did she really have the power to affect him that deeply? Before tonight she would have said no, but now she wasn’t sure. He seemed so full of regret, questioning the path that had led him to this moment as if he couldn’t quite believe that he wasn’t the hero anymore, either.

  She remembered what her mother had said on the phone that night more than a year before: “He says it’s over. He says she was the only one, but how can I believe him? Now that he lied, how do I know if I can ever trust him again?”

  And yet, she had obviously decided to trust him and move past his indiscretion, as Emma had heard people refer to extra-marital affairs. But how did someone do that? How did you wake up one morning and decide that the past didn’t matter, that only the present and future were important? Maybe her mother wasn’t prepared to live without her father and that’s why she had chosen to believe him, why she had re-committed herself and trusted him when he said he was doing the same. They had been together for more than twenty years. Maybe the combined weight of those years meant more than the few months he had spent with someone else.

  Personally, Emma couldn’t imagine forgiving someone who had betrayed her. But she knew she couldn’t fully understand something as complicated as her parents’ marriage. Which was fine. Soon she would be far away from this rain-soaked city, far from the house her mother and father had paid for with their work for other people’s children. Soon she would be playing soccer for one of the best-known collegiate programs in the nation, not to mention the under-19s. Her father was right about one thing—she was on the cusp of starting the rest of her life. And, god damn it, it was going to be freaking awesome.

  Her phone buzzed. Jamie had sent her a funny text, a hang loose sign drawn in exes, stars, and number signs. Apparently she had survived her skate park adventure unscathed. Emma sighed in relief and texted back, “Goofball.”

  She was tempted to text more, but she didn’t want to taint Jamie’s birthday with her family drama. Instead she put her phone away and slid lower in her seat, watching the other cars race past on the freeway as the brightly lit city faded away behind them.

  Chapter Six

  ONE WEEKNIGHT in early March, Jamie lay on her bed, staring at her phone’s small, glowing screen. The text had arrived fifteen minutes earlier, which meant she was well outside the window of a “quick” reply. She could blame it on practice, but in truth she’d been home from practice for a while. Dinner, too, was long since history. There were always the old standbys—dead phone or parental intervention—but one, she didn’t want to lie, and two, she didn’t want it to seem like she’d gotten into trouble when, except for the occasional escapade with Blair, she was an honors student and practically straight edge.

  And yet, she wasn’t sure how to handle this development. She wished she could call Shoshanna, but the therapist’s cell was for texts and emergency calls only. Besides, she had an appointment set for the following afternoon and this wasn’t exactly an issue that couldn’t wait.

  She clicked on Emma’s name and texted, “Call me when you get a chance?” Then she reached for her history textbook and began copying dates and events into her notebook. They had a test next week, and she might as well get some studying done while she waited to hear from Emma.

  As time passed and her phone remained silent, focusing became increasingly difficult. Emma rarely took this long to respond. Was she out with the new guy? She’d been single for so long that it was still strange to picture her dating someone. And yet Jamie hadn’t really been that surprised the previous month when, midway through training camp in LA, she’d logged into her email to find a note from Emma that described club soccer, family life, and school in great detail, and then mentioned in an offhand aside at the very end that she had gone out on a date with the highly persistent Justin Tate, captain of the Shorecrest High boys’ soccer team.

  Seated at the computer in the hotel conference room, Jamie had closed her email and done a quick web search, clicking on a link to a Seattle newspaper article about the previous year’s prep season. There he was in a photo with his coach. Justin was a “scoring machine,” according to the article, and had set a school record as a junior to prove it. He was good-looking, she had to admit—if you liked the clean-cut jock type. Honestly, she wasn’t a fan. They were too often the ones who made cracks about female bodies and their own studly powers over said bodies.

  Maybe this Justin guy was different, though. Emma wouldn’t go out with a total dick, would she?

  “Whatcha doing?” a voice had drawled from her right elbow.

  She’d been so caught up in cyber-stalking Justin Tate that she hadn’t noticed two girls enter the hotel conference room.

  “Cute, but I wouldn’t have thought he’d be your type,” the smaller of the two commented, squinting at Justin’s photo.

  “He’s not, jackass,” Jamie had said, and closed the browser window.

  At first glance, Brittany Crawford and Angela Wang were opposites in every way. Where Britt was tall, blonde, and hailed from the Southwest, Angie was short, Asian, and a diehard Jersey girl. But at their first training camp the previous year, the keeper and midfielder had apparently bonded over rap music, wallet chains, and, of course, their mutual interest in kissing girls. The moment Jamie set foot in the hotel in February, they had adopted her as the third member of their self-proclaimed under-16 bro band.

  With Britt and Angie at her side, her first camp had flown by, a blur of the double training sessions, team meetings, bonding exercises, and study breaks that Emma had told her about. Training camp participants were closely monitored with a nightly curfew and random bed-checks, but none of the other girls seemed to even consider testing the limits. They were all there for the same reason: to learn from the best, make a good impression on federation staff, and earn a call-back next time around. The under-16 girls’ program was still relatively new, and everyone in the pool understood that this team was a stepping stone to further federation involvement. Not to mention a badge of honor that could only help in the college recruitment department.

  When her phone finally buzzed, Emma’s name flashing across the screen, Jamie set her history textbook aside and grabbed it.

  “Sorry, hanging with the family,” Emma had texted. “Call you on the land line?”

  “OK,” she replied, and went to look for the upstairs receiver. As she returned to her room and settled back on her bed, her stomach rumbled uneasily. Would Emma even want to talk about this kind of thing?

  The receiver pealed. Too late to back out now.

  “What’s up?” Emma asked.

  “Not much. Sorry to bug you.”

  “No worries. I was only too happy to escape the love fest. My parents are acting like they’re abandoning us in a couple of weeks, my dad especially. You’d think they’d never gone on vacation without us.”

  “Didn’t you say they haven’t been to Hawaii since their honeymoon?”

  “Yeah, but they’ve been to Europe a bunch. Usually my dad has a conference and they bundle it all together, but this time my mom invoked the ‘no work allowed’ rule.”

  “That’s cool. My parents only ever do date night or an occasional weekend away in wine country. Even
that they haven’t done in a while.” She stopped as she realized how long it had been: nearly a year. Did they think something would happen if they left her for even a few days? Clearly they needed to have a chat. She was doing much better now. Although not well enough to deal with the text she’d received tonight, apparently.

  “What’s on your mind?” Emma asked. “Because I’m pretty sure you didn’t ask me to call so we could talk about our parents’ vacation habits.”

  “Psychic as ever, I see.” She hesitated. “Do you remember Amanda?”

  “The girl from the Gay-Straight Alliance you thought had a crush on you?”

  “That’s the one.” She paused again. Why did it suddenly feel weird to talk about this with Emma? They were friends, and Emma had said numerous times that she didn’t mind talking about Jamie’s until now mostly theoretical love life.

  “So?” Emma prodded. “Did you finally make a move?”

  “No, but she did.” Quickly she described the message she’d received asking if she wanted to go out the following night, just the two of them minus the usual GSA hordes.

  “That’s good, isn’t it? You said you liked her.”

  “I know.” Jamie slumped back against her husband pillow, which Meg had taken to calling her “wife” pillow ever since Gavin Newsom, mayor of San Francisco, had declared gay marriage legal a few days before Valentine’s Day. “But what if we start hanging out and she kisses me, and I totally freak out?”

  Emma was quiet for a moment. “Do you really think that could happen?”

  “The kissing, or the freaking out?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah.” Jamie pinched the bridge of her nose between her forefinger and thumb, and then stopped when she realized that was her mother’s habit. “I’m not sure. I think it’s not impossible.”

  “Look, I know you said you haven’t had a boyfriend or a girlfriend before. Don’t get mad, but—”