Training Ground

by Kate Christie

  The weekend arrived and so did her parents, and Seattle receded further until it seemed like an episode completely removed from normal time and space. In a way, maybe it was. Her parents tried to talk to her about Emma and the memorial service, but she dodged their questions, telling them she needed to stay focused on soccer for now. And she did. But it was easier said than done, especially at night in the darkened hotel room she shared with three other girls, none of whom seemed to have any problem whatsoever falling asleep after a long day of soccer.

  On the field she channeled her frustration into the game, and it seemed to work—except for the yellow card she received near the end of one match for talking back to the referee. Pete benched her for the last ten minutes, and she sat on the grass glaring at the field while Shoshanna’s voice droned in the back of her head. And she knew her inner therapist was right, fully recognized that while anger might seem easier to process than hurt, at some point she would need to stop fuming and deal. Just, not yet.

  When her team won the final match on Sunday morning, her first thought was to text Emma, which only pissed her off more. After a brief celebration with her teammates and their families, they started the long drive back to California. She alternately slept in the back seat and stared out the window at the passing scenery, trying not to think about her silent phone. Without soccer to throw herself into, it was harder to avoid the hurt lurking beneath the surface. Her parents weren’t helping, either. They kept asking about her time in Seattle, trying to draw her into conversation, but when she still only replied in monosyllables and the occasional short sentence, they finally stopped pushing.

  When they got home late that night, she helped her parents unload the car, and it was almost like she’d never been away at all. Except that instead of texting Emma to let her know she was home, she set about unpacking sweaty soccer gear and getting her school stuff ready for the next morning. It was after eleven when she heard it: her phone’s text alert. She tried not to, but she couldn’t help it—she dropped the shin guard she was holding and practically leapt across her bedroom to the dresser where her phone was recharging.

  “Are you home?” Amanda had written.

  Amanda. Jamie’s shoulders fell. To be honest, she’d all but forgotten about her. She stared at the message, and then the text notification went off again, startling her so much that she actually jumped a little, her eyes widening as Emma’s name flashed across the small screen. Finally. Only now that Emma had reached out to her, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know what the message said. What if Emma told her to stop calling and texting? What if she never wanted to hear from her again?

  She paced the room a couple of times before stopping near the dresser. This was ridiculous. She was being a chicken. She had survived worse things than a potential brush-off from Emma Blakeley. She sat down on the edge of her bed, took a deep breath, and opened the message.

  “I’m sorry.”

  She was sorry? For what, exactly? For generally being a dick, or for specifically freaking out and vanishing off the face of the earth? Jamie shook her head, glaring at the glowing words. What the hell was wrong with her? You couldn’t kiss someone and then not to talk to them for four effing days and then text a cryptic, two-word apology. It wasn’t okay, not any of it.

  Her fingers hovered over the keys as her mind cycled through potential responses: “Go to hell.” Okay, maybe a tad too harsh. “I don’t care.” Obviously untrue. “Are you fucking kidding me?” Better, but too similar to her last message, which stared out at her above the majorly belated apology: “Seriously, Emma?”

  She thought about how it had felt to wait all weekend to receive even those two measly words from Emma. Well, now it was her turn to wait.

  As the phone shut down, Jamie considered smoking up and crashing into a dreamless sleep. The idea was tempting, but she had come so far from her toke-and-sleep days and didn’t want to slide backwards now. Instead, she headed down the hall and knocked on her sister’s door.

  “Come in,” Meg called.

  Walking into Meg’s room always felt like entering a different world. Whereas her own room was decorated with posters that featured female athletes in beautiful outdoor locations accompanied by captions like, “The task ahead of you is never greater than the strength within you,” each of her sister’s bedroom walls was painted a different primary color barely visible beneath the multitude of band posters.

  Meg was seated at her desk, laptop open in front of her. When she saw Jamie in the doorway, she turned sideways in her chair. “What up, little chick?”

  Jamie ignored the old nickname that used to drive her crazy. It absolutely didn’t remind her of homo- and transphobic Justin Tate. “Are you busy?”

  “Working on physics homework I left for the last minute. But by all means, distract me if you so choose.” And she waved at the bed.

  Jamie dropped onto her sister’s bed and leaned against the headboard, hugging her knees to her chest. “Emma and I held hands all week and she kissed me at the train station and now we’re apparently not talking.”

  Meg stared at her. “Holy hell, James. I thought you were going to a funeral, not guest-starring on The L Word.”

  “I know.” Jamie groaned, hiding her face against the top of her knees. Then she grimaced. She’d forgotten about the already purpling bruise on her right kneecap, a memento from that morning’s game.

  “So I guess this means you’re breaking up with Amanda,” Meg commented.

  “Dude, I’ve never broken up with anyone before. How does it even work?”

  Her sister looked at the ceiling briefly before glancing back at her. “Well, typically you would figure out what you want to say ahead of time, and then you would meet her someplace neutral and have the conversation.”

  “So you’re saying I can’t text her?” Jamie asked, even though she was pretty sure she already knew the answer.

  “Um, you can if you want to be a TOTAL DICK. Jesus, Jamie. Now start at the beginning. What the hell happened up there?”

  It took a while to summarize the past ten days. Meg listened quietly to her less-than-linear recap, making sympathetic comments here and there and doing a generally good job of not rolling her eyes. Only at the end did she finally lose it.

  “She kisses you and takes off?” she sputtered. “What the fuck? Who does that?”

  “I know, right? I called and texted a couple of times, but she’s been doing the radio silence thing since I left. At least, up until about fifteen minutes ago.”

  “What happened fifteen minutes ago?”

  “She sent me a text that says, ‘I’m sorry.’”

  “That’s it?” Meg snorted. “Speaking of being a total dick…”

  Jamie squinted at her sister. Hearing Meg call Emma names didn’t feel the same as thinking them herself. “I don’t know that she’s being a total dick. Her dad did just die.”

  “That doesn’t mean she gets to screw with your head.”

  “Yeah, but this whole thing is partially my fault, too.”

  “What? How?”

  Jamie hesitated. “I might have told her on the phone that I loved her.” She winced pre-emptively, waiting for her sister’s reaction.

  Meg frowned. “Before or after the kiss?”

  “Before. The night her dad died, actually.”

  “As in love, love?”

  “I don’t know. We didn’t talk about it.” She paused. “Though she did kind of say it back.”

  Meg came over to the bed and sat down next to her. “Wow. Okay. That changes things.”

  They were both quiet. Then Jamie said, “She’s so messed up about her dad. I wanted to take all of the hurt away, you know? But I think maybe I made things worse.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “No, I did. I mean, I got in a fight with her ex at her dad’s funeral. Who does that?”

  “Someone on The L Word?”

  “That was rhetorical, you ass.”

  “Right. Sorr
y. Anyway, that sounded more like his deal than yours.”

  “Maybe. She did defend me against him. She was pretty fierce, to be honest.” Not as fierce as Justin, but still, Jamie had appreciated Emma’s protectiveness even if it had only ended up antagonizing the future frat boy further.

  “I could see that.” Meg took a breath. “As your big sister, can I just say that it sucks that you have to be collateral damage in her existential crisis?”

  Jamie rested her chin on her uninjured knee. “I know. And I know what I would say if you told me a guy was acting like this, but this is different. Emma is different. She’s been so good to me. She genuinely cares about me, Meg.”

  “In what capacity, though?”

  Jamie hugged her legs tighter. “I don’t know. I’m not even sure she knows.”

  “And is that good enough for you?”

  “Of course not. But no one forced me to figure myself out. I don’t want to be the one who tries to force her.”

  “But—”

  Jamie held up a hand. “Emma is going through the worst period of her entire life. I can’t begin to know what it feels like to be her right now. Can you?”

  Meg shook her head reluctantly. “No. But if she hurts you…”

  “She already has and she’s probably going to again. Not because she wants to but because she leaves for UNC in a few months. And you know what? Even knowing that, I still wouldn’t trade our friendship. Not for anything.”

  As she said it, she realized she was revealing a truth she hadn’t recognized herself until that very moment. This was why she had come to talk to her sister. At some level, she’d known it would help her figure out what was going on inside her own head.

  “Maybe I should go see Shoshanna,” Meg said, slipping her arm around Jamie’s shoulders. “Because damn, girl, you seem like you have your shit together these days.”

  “It’s mostly an act. Which isn’t to say that Shoshanna isn’t awesome.”

  A little while later, Jamie got ready for bed, pausing in her parents’ doorway to say goodnight.

  “Everything okay with you, honey?” her mother asked from where she sat in bed beside Jamie’s dad, a library book open on her lap. She adored historical mysteries, and this week’s cover featured yet another queen (or was it a princess this time?) in rich reds and golds, her clothes and jewelry painted in vivid detail.

  “Not exactly,” Jamie admitted. “But I talked to Meg and it will be, I think.”

  Her dad smiled at her over the top of his laptop. “Good. Don’t forget you see Shoshanna on Wednesday this week instead of Friday.”

  “I won’t. Goodnight. Love you guys.”

  “Love you,” they said in unison.

  In her room, Jamie grabbed her phone and crawled into bed, yawning as she waited for the screen to flicker back to life. While brushing her teeth, she’d decided it would be petty to punish Emma for the days upon days of silence. Besides, she wasn’t sure she could get to sleep knowing that Emma might be lying awake waiting for her reply.

  “Okay,” she typed. “But what does that actually mean?”

  Emma answered right away. “It means I’m an asshole.”

  “No argument here.” She almost sent an emoji to soften it. Almost. “What are you sorry for?”

  “For kissing you like that. Given your history and all.”

  Her history? Oh. Oh. “I was fine with the kiss,” she typed, briefly reflecting on the severity of that understatement. “It was the running away that was less fine. And being blown off. That wasn’t so great either.”

  “I know. I freaked out. I’m really sorry.”

  “So you’ve said.”

  There was a pause before Emma’s next text arrived: “I miss you.”

  What was she supposed to say to that? Despite what she’d told her sister about giving Emma time to process, she wasn’t sure she could—or even should—if Emma was going to say things like that. Besides, it had been four days. That was enough time, wasn’t it?

  “Why did you kiss me?” she typed, and then let her finger hover over the send button for a good thirty seconds before launching the message out into the cellular universe.

  Radio silence, more than a half minute’s worth, ensued. She waited, trying to ignore the pessimistic little voice at the back of her head. Emma was most certainly not going to disappear on her again so soon. She had started this conversation. She wouldn’t skip out in the middle.

  Her phone vibrated at last. “Because I’d been wanting to for a while.”

  Jamie’s heart rate speeded up. So she hadn’t been misreading the signals. “So had I,” she typed, but then deleted the admission and wrote, “Why did you freak out?”

  The answer came faster this time. “Because I was scared of hurting you. I don’t want to lose you.”

  “I don’t want to lose you either…” Delete. She tried again. “I’m scared too…” Delete, delete. Finally, she settled on a different kind of truth: “I don’t think we get to keep each other, though. Do you?”

  Her reply took a while again. “No. I guess not.”

  Jamie read the words over again, her throat tightening. She could almost see Emma in her bedroom with the wide windows overlooking the Sound, could practically feel the firmness of the mattress and the smooth wood of her headboard and the warmth of Emma’s body pressed against hers. But even though she knew exactly what it felt like to be there with her, even though they had slept night after night with their arms around each other in the dark, Emma wasn’t hers. Probably she never would be.

  Another message arrived: “I have to go. My mom is being a hard-ass about school tomorrow. She says hi, by the way, and congrats on winning.”

  “How did she know?”

  “We kept track online.”

  Knowing that Emma and her mom and probably Ty, too, had been following her team’s progress all weekend made Jamie’s throat tighten even more.

  “Thanks,” she replied lamely. “Tell her hi back. Ty too. Talk to you soon?”

  “I hope so. And Jamie, just because we don’t get to keep each other doesn’t mean I don’t wish we could.”

  It took her a second to translate the double negatives. When she did, her eyes blurred and she bit her lip hard. Damn it.

  “Same here,” she finally admitted. “Sweet dreams.”

  “Sweet dreams to you too. Miss you.”

  “Miss you too.” I love you. She didn’t write it, though. Neither, she noticed, did Emma.

  She turned her phone off and lay back in her bed, the soft murmur of her parents’ voices audible from down the hall. Emma had feelings for her and didn’t want to lose her, either. Jamie knew this realization should have had her floating on a haze of happiness, but she couldn’t shake the not-so-niggling feeling that all was not rainbows and sunshine. Because if Emma had wanted to kiss her for a while, why hadn’t she done it sooner? Was it Jamie’s “history” that had stopped her? Could she not stand the idea of being with someone who was damaged?

  A thud from her sister’s room distracted her. Jamie had apparently inherited all of the athletic genes their parents had to offer because Meg was a klutz, always dropping her music cases and tripping over assorted furniture. Maybe they got along so well because they were opposites, or maybe she’d just gotten lucky when it came to the family she’d been born into.

  Luckier than Emma, that was for sure. Even though the world believed David Blakeley had been a great man, Jamie would never see him that way. It wasn’t that he had looked at her the one time they’d met as if he didn’t want her anywhere near his daughter. It was more that he had made his daughter feel like he didn’t want to be anywhere near her. Great that he’d saved the lives of hundreds if not thousands of children. Fantastic that he’d donated time and money to deserving causes around his community. Awesome that his politics were progressive and enlightened. None of that altered the fact that he’d allowed his own children to think that they weren’t good enough. He’d made them que
stion his love for them, and she didn’t think she would ever forgive him for that.

  Not that he had cared what she thought. If anyone had been happy that she and Emma were headed in different directions, it would have been Emma’s father. She had no doubt about that.

  Tiny glowing words appeared against her closed eyelids: I don’t want to lose you. And she had responded by telling Emma that they didn’t get to keep each other. God, she was such an idiot. Emma had answered her questions bravely and honestly. Why couldn’t she have been brave, too?

  Except she knew why. The last few days of not knowing if Emma would ever talk to her again had been awful. As in, legitimately distressing. She would rather live in the same old limbo than risk freaking Emma out again. At least this way they could stay friends. Couldn’t they?

  #

  “It looks like we have a new face.” Mr. Eckhart, Shorecrest’s journalism teacher, smiled encouragingly at Emma. “It’s been a while, so why don’t we all introduce ourselves? Please say your name, why you’re here, and an interesting fact people may or may not know about you. Preferred gender pronouns are helpful, and of course, if you’d like, you can share how you identify. But there’s no pressure to do so.”

  Emma sat at a desk at the fringe of the circle in the Graphic Arts classroom watching as each of the twenty or so members of her high school’s Gay-Straight Alliance introduced themselves. She recognized many of them but not all. In a school of eighteen hundred, there were bound to be people she didn’t know. Most offered a silly fact that made everyone laugh, many willingly shared how they identified—what was pan, she wondered after the third person invoked it—and everyone said which gender pronouns they preferred.