by Tara Wimble
Bella takes pity on her, if only so she doesn’t have to see her fall down the stairs in front of her family, and goes to escort her the rest of the way to the dining room.
“You look like hell.” Bella mumbles under her breath.
“Hmm.” Jacque grunts out and that’s the only thing she really says until about a half hour later once she’s had her fill of breakfast and coffee.
It’s amazing what food does for a person’s mood. No sooner is Jacque finished then is she up and helping her dad clear everything away. Bella is told to stay where she is and to just enjoy her time here.
The rumblings of the next two days begin quickly after they’re all dressed and ready.
Most of Jacque’s family arrived yesterday, before their late arrival, but are choosing to stay in hotels or where they’re already sleeping due to them being children. This means that in between Jacque’s mom bustling around and beginning to prepare decorations, presents and food for the Christmas dinner tomorrow, Bella is introduced to the wider family one by one.
Jacque sticks by her side for most of it, rolling her eyes at overly-appreciative uncles who have already started drinking and nieces and nephews who ask more about presents than being Jacque’s ‘pretty lady’. It’s charming.
But by the end of it she’s grateful when Jacque’s sister, Antonella, drags her away from the never ending line of relatives and into the living room. It’s instantly calming. The room is dressed out in red and gold trimmings. The tree takes up the most attention, standing tall and housing a small number of presents. The ones she brought are sitting just on the edge of the base of it, ready for tomorrow morning.
The hours turn into a countdown until Christmas. A hazy, snow filled, countdown. Bella finds herself trying to spot Jacque alone and it becomes harder and harder as it becomes more acceptable to be drinking and with Jacque entertaining the nephews that she hardly gets to see. It’s cute to watch every time as she’s caught in a small chase with the most persistent ones who appear to hinder any attempt she makes to escape.
“I’d offer you a drink but it seems you’re already eying up a tall glass of sweet Canadian-” Bella shakes out of her stupor to spot a grinning Liresch standing next to her. “Joe. Jacque’s brother.”
Bella switches her glass to her left hand, intending to shake his hand but he pulls her in for a hug instead. Joe was the only member of the Liresch family not to come to the wedding last year. He’d called to apologise and sent them a pretty awesome wedding gift. Well, Jacque had said it was awesome. Bella still doesn’t know what it is. “It’s nice to finally meet you.”
“Likewise.” He beams at her. “Jacque couldn’t say enough about you when I called the other week. Said that you were both settling back after a busy few months of training.”
She nods. “First camp call up. Well, for me. Jacque’s an old pro.”
“Not too old.” Joe winks at her. “She mentioned that. Must be strange playing for a different country.”
Bella is smarter now when it comes to these questions. Being blindsided by FIFA would do that to anybody. “Not as much as you’d think. Plus, she makes everything easier.”
“Even family holidays?”
“I’ll tell you when we leave.” She jokes with him. He’s nice to look at even if the conversation fizzles after a few moments. By then Jacque has managed to escape her tiny captors to reach her and Joe politely takes his leave.
“Charming guy that brother of yours.” Bella nudges Jacque as she sidles up close enough to her side to be heard in the bustle of the room.
Jacque sways a little bit indicating the woes of the night before hadn’t impacted her enjoyment of the night to come. “Hey now, I’m watching you. One Liresch per person. That’s the rule.”
“What? So you’re the only one who can look forward to a second Canadian wife?” Bella teases. “Where’s my second?”
Jacque teasingly throws an arm over Bella’s shoulder, pulling her in close. “Nope. All mine.”
“Rude.”
“Don’t move though.” Jacque asks. “One of the kids stepped on my foot and I need you to support me in this troubling and painful time.”
“Oh nice, already using the kids as an excuse.” Bella glances down at the almost empty glass in Jacque’s hand. “Have you had more than one yet?”
Jacque shakes her head. “Recovering still and everyone keeps stopping me to tell me how attractive you are. Like I’m blind or something.” She winks at her and Bella can’t help but laugh at the exaggerated charm she emits.
“So I’m the hot, young wife?” Bella jokes. “Good stuff.”
“Woah, easy on the old implications.” Jacque hushes her. “The minute you say that, everyone is gonna swoop in and start pointing at all the cute children running around and then you won’t ever escape the ticking countdown until-” She waves implying something that Bella doesn’t catch onto.
“Until?” Bella looks at the kids playing in the room and smiles a little bit.
“Young, hot but apparently not that quick.” Jacque snaps her fingers in front of her eyes. “The kid talk.”
“Kid talk?”
“Kid talk.”
Then it dawns on her. “Oh no.”
“Oh yes.”
“Oh man.” Bella takes that as a cue to down the rest of her drink. “Let’s move out before we trip into that.”
Jacque steers them out of sight quickly and towards the kitchen-
-Where they accidentally trip into another trap altogether. With all the subtlety of a car crash, Joe stops them from walking through the doorway into the kitchen with a glimmer of mischief in his eyes. Jacque slaps out at his shoulder but he doesn’t budge and it’s only when Bella goes to roll her eyes at their strange sibling fighting does she see what they’ve walked into.
Or more accurately, under.
Mistletoe. And it’s like every holiday cliché is rearing its ugly head all at once.
“If you’re not gonna move then you can get us drinks you ass-” Jacque finally pays attention to Joe’s continuous glancing up over their heads and it stops her sentence cold. “Oh.”
“Sneaky.” Bella nervously laughs out. The others in the kitchen, holding their drinks, have paused their own conversations to smile over at them. Oh what they must think. Young love. Happiness. Probably a far cry from the churning in Bella’s stomach at being caught off guard like this.
Then again, the family isn’t expected as much of a show as the team got back in Cyprus, so it’s easier to wait until Jacque has teased her brother’s scheming enough for her to stand on her tiptoes and press their lips together.
Whatever Jacque was drinking, it was sweet and warm, and not unpleasant when she kisses her. The coos are heard and her brother is heard to step away from them while Bella counts in her head for believability. Jacque’s hand just brushes against her waist to steady her.
When Bella pulls back from the chaste kiss, cheeks hot from the alcohol, to see a vivid exhaustion on Jacque’s face. The mistletoes’ purpose has been fulfilled and Bella knows where to avoid standing in the future.
“You alright?” She asks.
Jacque forces a smile. “Really tired, if I’m honest.” They’ve been running around all day trying to help with making dinner and keeping Jacque’s assorted nieces and nephews busy. “I might go to bed.”
There’s something in her voice that tells Bella that she wants to go alone for now. A polite press for her to stay and enjoy the rest of the evening with her family. Something that Bella isn’t reluctant to do now that she’s gotten to know Jacque’s sisters better.
Jacque leaves her with a hug and kisses her parents and several nephews good night before disappearing towards their shared bedroom.
Once Jacque goes to bed everything starts to wind down just a little bit, the kids are put to bed as well without their favorite aunt to keep them occupied and what was a lively affair turns into a more mellow evening.
It’s Christmas
in the morning and there’s a real sense of family and togetherness underlying the drinking and the conversation.
Bella finds that after a few drinks it doesn’t wear on her as much as it did upon arrival yesterday.
She somehow gets dragged into a serious conversation with Antonella about children, and it seems so fortuitous that Jacque had warned her of the possibility because honestly she never would have even thought about it. Though it makes sense, she imagines in a way, that people would think of them that way.
It makes her think of Jacque who’d looked so strange when she went up to bed. And it makes her think of Jacque in a different light, just as seeing her with kids had done.
The longer the conversation with Antonella goes the more that Bella can see it. Jacque with children, a couple of curly haired kids running around kicking miniature soccer balls and causing havoc.
She wants that for Jacque someday after everything.
But for now she just fakes it until she makes it and it’s a skill that she never knew she’d excelled at until this all started. She talks about how she and Jacque want to wait until after their respective playing careers are through and she laughs when Antonella, and then Joe who joins in, tries to push that date up even further.
It ends up being less of an awkward conversation and more of a fun one. It’s almost a shame when the yawns start to overtake any words she can manage to speak and it’s time, a few hours after Jacque retired to bed, for Bella to join as well.
Hopefully in a less blundering way than Jacque had managed last night.
Bella quietly sneaks into their room. The lights are off apart from the one in the bathroom and it gives her just enough of a glow for her to get undressed and slip on a shirt to sleep in. She can see the outline of Jacque’s body on the left side of the bed, leaving the right for her, and Bella makes her way over taking down her hair.
It’s a relief to see that Jacque hasn’t taken to the floor like the night before. Bella’s aware they aren’t a real couple but they’d shared a bed more than once and it wasn’t like they were completely incompatible cuddlers. They even were compatible as far as who took what side.
So she chalks the bumbling of last night up to alcohol and lays down on her side of the bed after pulling the covers back. Her knees just bump against Jacque’s back and Bella scrunches her eyes together hoping, to no avail, that she hadn’t woken Jacque up.
“Just get in.” A tired moan mumbles against the pillow. “Thunder foot.”
Bella snickers, making more noise than she intended to and settles into bed. The covers are warm and she’ll think of them in the morning when the snow has frozen over making it impossible to walk outside and all too tempting for those wanting to throw snowballs.
“Sorry.” Bella whispers. She rubs her knuckles against Jacque’s back apologetically. “Go back to sleep.”
It might be the alcohol or just the warm fuzzy feelings she has after spending all day with Jacque’s family but she shuffles towards the middle of the bed and for a second it seems like Jacque is about to turn on her back to bring her in closer.
In the end it’s a trick of the dark and she can almost hear Jacque slip back into an easy slumber once more. By the time Bella follows her, the clock has passed midnight and Christmas has been welcomed into the Liresch household.
*
Somehow in the night they’d shifted and Jacque wakes up with a face full of blonde hair and her arm is long since asleep from Bella crushing it in the night.
But Bella is still dead asleep and as a function of going to bed hours before, even with the slight hiccup when Bella tried to sneak into bed, Jacque is wide awake.
She has a couple of options. She can either try to extricate herself from Bella’s embrace and start the day, it’s Christmas morning after all and if she doesn’t do it now the young ones will get their way soon enough anyway. Or she could just wait. Wait and enjoy this moment.
It isn’t often that she gets a chance to look at Bella, really look at her. She sees her all of the time. In the apartment, going around Toronto, in camp but she never just looks.
Bella’s beautiful but she already knew that. Is so aware of that and it’s why she’s in the trouble she’s in at all. But it’s not just her looks, no, it’s everything about her. It’s the way she bonded with Jacque’s family when she didn’t really have to. The way she remembers Jacque’s favorite pizza topping and always brings her one when she’s having a bad day, even when Jacque is pretending to go gluten-free that week. Or how she indulges Jacque’s reality TV secret and has yet to follow through on the promise to expose her to Sadie.
It’s not the normal things that someone would point out. But it’s the little things that make Bella herself and make Jacque a fucking idiot for being so in love with her.
And it’s really just dumb. She should know how to stop, learn a way because if she hasn’t already it’s only going to get worse.
Yet there’s hope. The most dangerous feeling of all.
Hope in Bella’s interaction with her family, hope in the way they’ve grown closer this year, even through the endless stream of dates. And any hope at all is what keeps the fire burning in her heart.
Against all sense of logic.
It’s Christmas morning so she’ll allow herself one gift, one moment that’s purely for herself.
So she doesn’t move, doesn’t want to risk waking Bella up at all, and just stays in her place.
When she feels Bella start to stir fifteen minutes later she presses her eyes closed and let’s Bella think that she’s ‘waking an old woman’, Bella’s words not hers, from sleep when she does.
The teasing is worth the extra time.
*
2009 has been good to her. It’s brought her a lot of amazing things. Success and competition and fun and family. It’s also brought her a hope that she’s not too sure she should put her faith in just yet but it keeps her going when the trials of getting up at too-early in the morning to train or to commute to work get her down.
It’s going to be hard to say goodbye to 2009 but standing in a room full of rowdy teammates and loud music watching the seconds countdown to 2010, she looks forward to the future.
She can barely hear Bella over the screaming of those counting down the seconds but there’s a hand on her wrist and Bella is grinning cheekily as she manages to make out her saying ‘one for the New Year then?’
And this time it feels real to smile in surprise when Bella kisses her, all in the name of the new year and to better days.
Everything explodes into fireworks.
Things can only get better from here.
Chapter 5
2010
*
IT only makes sense after the successful run they’ve had on the national team to actually start to play club soccer on some level again. They float the idea of maybe trying for the WPS to each other but there’s just too many issues in the way, not the least being Bella’s pending full citizenship.
It’s going through fairly fast because she’s been continuously residing in Canada for almost two years, the trip to Cyprus this year and last notwithstanding.
So when they get an offer from the Vancouver Whitecaps in the W-league, they make a few calls, buy a couple of plane tickets and head out for their summer adventure.
It’s exciting because neither of them has played club in forever so their expectations are left wide open for interpretation.
*
Bella sprints backwards before jumping into the air. The ball crashes against her forehead clearly and she flicks it over the head of the defender behind her. Her teammate yells safety and takes off sprinting towards the goal. Bella has a second to get her feet back on the ground before she’s trailing after her.
They’re sitting comfortably at the top of the table and playing against a flailing Colorado side who fails to stop Robinson’s quick pass to Buckland who sees it easily into the back of the net.
Playing for the White
caps is nothing like playing for MagicJack. The W-league is a far cry from the pros but here Bella finds herself actually having fun playing for the first time since college, since the u-21s. She plays like she’s got nothing to lose.
It’s not long before they’re in possession again and her hard work off the last goal is repaid when Kathryn slots a low ball through two defenders and straight to Bella’s feet. She’s not as quick as she wants to be, and she doesn’t have the space to dribble around the rushing keeper, but there hasn’t been a player so far that’s been able to compete with her strength behind the ball.
Her shot rams through the keeper’s safe hands and swishes against the back of the neck.
3-0 to Vancouver.
Bella points upwards quickly before she’s suddenly swamped with Kathryn jumping on her side. Her teammates are pretty great, especially those that she’s living with.
Whemb had been the one to offer them a short term rent on her apartment in Vancouver, after hearing about them being signed for the Whitecaps, it all worked out since she was still playing in the WPS. It’d been an easy decision to accept the offer, rather than searching for a place on short notice, even when things got a little more complicated when they’d been told about their third roommate.
“I’m a great roommate.” Kathryn had given them a general disclaimer. “And I know you guys are still riding the high of married life, so like, you won’t even know I’m here.”
It had meant though, that Bella was forced to keep up further appearances by sharing a room with Jacque. The third guest room was adjoined to the master via a small bathroom, while Kathryn moved into the second guest room that Whemb had been using as a storage room.
All things considered the apartment was big enough to manage the three of them. Especially with the amount of clothes between them and Kathryn’s penchant to spread out in a nesting habit. Jacque had been the one left to do most of the heavy lifting with Bella ran around trying to figure out what things of Whemb’s that they had to make sure not to lose or break.
The place is nice and the distance from their practices and anything they might need is short and sweet. Kathryn is the only one with a car as well, with Bella choosing to leave hers in Toronto, so they get used to the public transport pretty fast. Plus there’s a sweet bakery just on their route to practice that Bella just can’t get enough of.
