by Tara Wimble
Maybe there are other people in this world who could handle having less than everything with the person that they love but that’s not her, that’s not how she operates. And to know that last night was a flash on the radar, that Bella can’t even stand to be near her, to be touched by her now.
It’s devastating. She feels like she’s going to erupt from the inside out. The beating thump of her heart bangs against her chest and it takes everything she has just to calm down.
So she talks.
She talks to Kathryn because she’s there, because she’s willing to listen, and most importantly, because she knows.
She knows why Jacque was ready to march back into that room and ruin her career, she knows why Bella flinching away did that to her.
But most of all she knows how to nod and listen and let her feel the things she feels. Because Jacque’s spent so much of the last years of her life in a protective shell. A shell where the things she feels and the things she’s supposed to feel have taken a divergent path.
Now though, now is the time to let it all out.
It all ends with her crying on Kathryn’s shoulder in the middle of the hallway. But if she’s being honest with herself it really ended last night in a hotel room in London.
*
Their send off is a symphony. An age of music and rhythm that they march out to. Canada proudly walks behind Whembs. Their flagbearer and their captain holds the spotlight as they hold their own cameras and each other. The stadium that they never got to play in is the one that they walk into for the last goodbye of the Olympics.
Jacque never strays from Kathryn’s side. Their medals are on show and flashed at every opportunity. Smiles are the new uniform. The world surrounds them on all sides and everything seems so insignificant when in the middle of this organized orchestra of celebration.
They dance harder than they should on their dead legs but there’s time for rationality and recovery later. It’s their moment to enjoy the spirit of the games.
And they do.
The ceremonies are a sight to behold and act after act and artist after artist they keep going because there’s nothing, not a damn thing, that could remove them from this cloud.
Flights leave early in the morning the next day and that’s something to think about later, the type of reception they’ll get from the home fans, if anyone’s been watching their historic run.
They haven’t said a word to each other. There’s no plan that’s been thought of or suggestions on what they’ll do upon returning to Toronto. No deals, no ideas, no contact. There’s no path to follow this time and it should terrify her but it doesn’t. She’s reached the end of it all. She flew as close to the sun as she dared and saw the stars that hid behind it’s light.
And this is the fall.
The crowd sings their final farewell, illuminated in light and song, and just like that the games come to a close.
*
Through some twist of fate they’re all separated on the plane journey home to Toronto so much that Jacque almost forgets they’re on the same plane together until they meet the crowds waiting for them in the airport and hears the one phase she wanted to avoid.
“Could we get a picture of the happy couple?”
She doesn’t mean to look over her shoulder to see who the mom with the kids she’s signing for is talking about, but her confusion becomes hilarious when they take her action to mean that she’s joking about her wife. Jacque doesn’t correct them.
Bella is bundled up for their return with only the top zip of their Canadian Olympic jackets open to show off the bronze medal around her neck. “Happy couple? Where?” She grins at the laughing coming from the soccer mom and puts her arm around Jacque’s waist like nothing is wrong. Like no time has passed from the moment that everything started to fuck up again.
Bella embraces her first and Jacque knows that she absolutely cannot wear her heart on her sleeve or in her expression because then it’s over for the both of them. She can’t let show how close she is to breaking off or how close she is to wanting Bella to come closer to her.
Bella’s smile is paper thin and pale. Jacque can see right through it and the script that Bella is following. Smile for the cameras, another photograph, another lie. But this time, now that everything they’re living is in the aftermath of waking up together, smiling like she means it takes more out of her.
“Sure, you want us like this?” Bella pulls up the medal and the little kids squeal as their mom takes the photograph. The noise attracts a few others and suddenly they’ve stepped back and the small crowd that’s greeting them, along with Carla and Kathryn, are all trying to get a glimpse of them hugging and holding their medals.
Smile, Jacque thinks, while it lasts.
*
She flies back to Illinois for the weekend almost directly after arriving back in Toronto, it’s necessary to get away from all of the buzz and the hype for a few days before she has to go back to deal with their newfound fame.
Her nieces and nephews leave fingerprints over her medal and she rubs them off with the barest of smiles on her face. Her family are a loud ball of pride and excitement. Bella is hollow inside.
The door to her old bedroom is closed and though she sits on her floor in the darkness it’s unmistakably the room she left when she was eighteen years old. Nothing has changed.
Just being trapped inside it makes her feel like a hurricane, a force of chaos, that doesn’t belong here anymore.
She presses the medal against the tip of her nose.
She doesn’t belong here anymore.
*
Press started early in the morning with hair and makeup and making everything look perfect. Since then they’ve been ushered from studio to studio interviewing for who even knows what show or station.
There’s so many that everyone just has their stock answers ready and are actively trying to keep their eyes as open as possible and not mess anything up.
The camera is suddenly on Bella again and she swallows the stinging knot in her throat to disguise that she didn’t hear the question. “Uh-”
It’s more the fact that Jacque is literally sitting as close to her as humanly possible. With the rest of the team bunched up on couches, all in red and wearing their bronze medals, the studio crew had purposely pushed them together at the front. Jacque, to steady herself, has her arm over the back of the couch where Bella’s head is. The shot on camera is probably great but Bella feels stiff.
“-what thoughts were going through your head after the goal, we saw- I think half of Canada saw, you girls-” He points between Bella and Jacque and they both feel themselves brace for the ‘couple’ question. “-running towards each other after Carla slots it in the back of the net-”
They got a call from their respective lawyers this morning and they have to slip away at some point during the barrage of interviews that the team has been set up to do this week to finalize their divorce. Yet here they are, fooling everyone that they’re the happy, beaming couple that Canada has come to root for amongst their team of golden girls.
“Yeah, I think it was just- overwhelming. Especially because it was so late on and I think I just ran,” Bella sees the tech guys pulling the stock clip of Bella sprinting to Jacque on the field and being lifted up by her. Her heart stops short at how she seems to cling to Jacque. “-by that point I don’t think I could even feel my legs and y’know, she’s- she’s-”
Jacque sees her struggling in the face of the image. “Strong. Cuddly.” The rest of the team laughs revealing an inside joke that the audience isn’t aware of. Bella eases.
“Exactly and she did all the work I think there,” Bella laughs. “By that point we were exhausted.”
The announcer feeds off their chemistry and continues. “And does it mean more knowing that you did this together- I’ll bet it must be strange to be one of few people who can say they won an Olympic Bronze medal and they’re also married to an Olympic Bronze medalist.”
/> Jacque takes point on this and lets Bella lead their body positioning. Bella hates that they’ve become so jumpy, not to the notice of anyone other than Kathryn, but Jacque won’t push unless she pulls. For the sake of the eyes on them, and to reassure Jacque that her sincere answer hasn’t gone unnoticed, Bella leans a little into Jacque’s side.
“-And it’s definitely a little strange but, we all worked hard and I guess it does mean more knowing that Bella was there with me. It’s a once in a lifetime experience so-”
Sadie sits forward and jumps in. “Best day of your life?”
Jacque doesn’t miss a beat and it makes Bella’s chest clench. “Second.”
The interviewer laughs, picking up on what Jacque meant with a wry grin at Bella. “Good answer there. Alright, when we come back we’ll be reliving that epic semi-final showd-”
The camera crew counts down to a commercial and Bella can see that the lens is still pointed in their direction, and so she places her hand on Jacque’s knee. A silent thank you.
*
They should have expected it with how open they were during the Olympics with public displays of emotion but the calls for couples interviews start to roll in and the CSA, pleased with the publicity, book a whole slew of them.
Somehow winning a bronze medal turned them into Canada’s golden sports couple.
“You guys okay with the jerseys-” Adam is adjusting the lens of his cameras. “-Sam, could you just fix-”
There’s not a lot they can do at this point. The few conversations that they have had, short words and shorter looks, have spelt it out. They’re getting a divorce but the public can’t be privy to that as they have been to the rest of their relationship. This isn’t really about them either. It’s about the team. Any good press for them is press for the team and that’s all that matters. So they keep their heads down and carry on.
Follow the script until the pages run out.
Jacque tilts her head forward so that the stylist can fix the top of her ponytail. Bella pokes her fun while Jacque can’t move to pinch her side. “It’s gonna take a lot more than that.”
Jacque catches Sam’s eye. “Do you hear this? Abuse, I say.”
Sam smiles politely but skitters away once Jacque is fine again. When she’s out of the way, Jacque makes a swipe at Bella’s side while Adam takes a few practice pictures of them standing against a white background.
“You get the message from Anna?” Jacque mutters.
“About the meeting?” Bella grits her teeth and tries to convince everyone it’s a smile. “I did.”
“And?” Jacque responds, still speaking awkwardly through the side of her mouth.
“We should be able to finalize today.” Bella says still through the smile and Jacque forces herself to put one on but it probably comes off as more of a grimace anyway.
This interview isn’t as painful as some of the others have been and the guy conducting the whole thing is incredibly respectful and manages to keep it mostly on soccer despite the fact that the premise of this interview is their relationship.
The one that won’t exist legally in a few hours. It’s funny to think that these pictures may be a strange collector’s item someday.
The cameras stop rolling and as quickly as they were set up they’re on their way to the divorce attorney’s office.
Jacque’s parked in a spot out front but she leaves the engine idling. “So this is it, huh?”
Bella worries a thumb over her knuckles, unable to look Jacque in the eyes. “This is it. Sign on the dotted line.”
“All of the lines are solid, I don’t even think dotted lines exist anymore.” Jacque tries to stave off the panic she feels slowly rising in her chest with a joke but Bella can’t even manage an obligatory laugh.
The only sound left is the one of the still running engine and a persistent beep from her dash now that they’ve both removed their seatbelts.
Bella clears her throat. “We should head in.”
Of course it’s Bella who pushes this forward because it’s always been Bella pushing this forward, hell, she was the one who initiated the process. It’s not fair to put all of the blame on her. Maybe when Blake was in the picture, before they’d mutually taken this place a past they could understand, but now it was on them both.
Jacque wants to still protest, one last gasp to keep them together, to try and work this out without having to end everything but she stops at the defeated look on Bella’s face.
She can’t do it. Can’t push Bella any further than her presence already does. So she nods and cuts off the engine.
Twenty minutes later they walk back out of the office, almost like in a trance.
Papers signed. I’s dotted and t’s crossed.
It’s over.
*
Telling people is a different story.
They only invite over the teammates that are really more like close friends, best friends even, because unlike years ago when they had that first awkward Canadian Thanksgiving with Bella’s mom, there’s no desire to rip off the band-aid.
Besides, once the news is out it’ll trickle, well more like gush, down the information highway and the shock will do all of the work for them.
Telling the media isn’t an option right now, probably won’t be for a long time, but their friends deserve to know the truth.
Or at least the truth that they’ve made up.
Discussing what to tell everyone turned into almost more of a battle than the divorce had been, while the legal mechanics of dissolving their marriage hadn’t been entirely tricky because there was already a clear idea of whose property was whose, deciding how to explain this all away, how to explain this final, but not entirely sudden dissolution to everyone, had turned quite sour.
She’d been insistent on taking the fall for this, after all, even if they were Bella’s friends now most of them had been Jacque’s friends beforehand and they would be much more likely to forgive her on any perceived fuck ups.
It would be a shorter road to smoother sailing, and hell, Bella might even gain some support in the overall process of it all.
But Bella had refused. Outright refused and it’d been one of the worst screaming matches of this whole process because not only did Bella refuse but she actually insisted upon tanking everything they’d built over the past four years for the sake of her pride. For her own sense of guilt.
However, it spoke testament to the balance of their relationship that Bella won. As it seemed like she had been from the start. And so here they were, with basically the same people who’d come to their engagement party, and the notable addition of Kathryn perched on the arm of the couch.
She and Bella are standing facing everyone and it feels more like they’re about to teach a class than announce their sudden divorce.
“Thanks everyone for coming.” Jacque starts and that does nothing to disintegrate the feeling that she’s about to run a seminar and it flashes her back suddenly to the first real time she ever talked to Bella and it’s like a knife right in the chest. But there’s no time, not when everyone is staring at her, to wonder exactly what would have been different about her life if she’d never gone to that course at all.
But they’ve been waiting a while as Bella and Jacque discussed their final story so they’re understandably antsy.
Finally Sadie speaks up. “What the hell is going on?” She looks between Bella and Jacque, seeing the former scuffing her feet on the carpet, refusing to look anyone in the eye. “You two are acting stranger than normal.”
And in this the band-aid needs to be ripped because if they drag this out any longer it’ll only get worse when the axe drops.
So Jacque takes a moment, scans the last time some of the people will ever look at them completely the same for a long time, and let’s it out.
“We got a divorce.”
At first there’s silence so tense that you could hear the sound of a pin drop and then just as quickly it’s a raucous explosion of
sound.
Nobody jumps up to declare this all a joke, probably because of how long they’ve known Jacque, the body language between the two of them, and everything combined. It’s understood to be a serious thing but there’s a clamor for understanding.
There’s an immediate disquiet that settles over the group. It’s the most introspective she’s seen them in a while, probably since right after the semi-final, and she can see people start to run over those events. Sadie’s anger, her lashing out at Jacque. Jacque’s snap reaction and Carla eventually ushering them off into safety. She can see it in their eyes. The questions. How did we miss this? Were we supposed to know?
Mercifully it’s Kathryn who asks the logical follow-up question. It’s merciful because Kathryn knows the truth and in a way she’s just ushering this along but with a friendly voice. Devoid of accusatory tones because nothing that comes out of their mouths could shock her.
And that’s good because Jacque needs Bella to have that level head when she can’t be there for her anymore. She’s going to need it and Kathryn will protect her until she can do it herself again.
Because in a moment they won’t be able to be each other’s lifelines anymore. The script ripped up, pieces of it locked away in the same proverbial box where Jacque’s stored her love for Bella.
Bella clears her throat and steps up, looking Kathryn directly in the eye. Avoiding everything and everyone else but seeing the quiet reassurance in Kathryn’s eyes, urging her on.
“I cheated on her.” She says it with such pain in her voice and even though she knows it’s only the story Bella had made up, her way to finally take the brunt of the pressure for once, she almost believes that she’d cheated for real. Not as an allowance in a stupid agreement but that she’d betrayed her in some real way.
Well, things would have ever had to have been real between them in the first place.
Jacque allows herself one more real moment to look at Bella like she’s allowed herself for the past few years and then puts on her devastated look for everyone else.
And then the real chaos begins.
*
She expected the anger, it’s not like she was naive about that. Long before she came along it was Jacque and all of these people and they went through everything together before she was even a blip on Jacque’s radar.
