by Tara Wimble
*
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.
So Bella gets it, she really does.
For anything short of Jacque actually cheating on her they were going to tend to gravitate towards her in the end. It wouldn’t have been anything malicious, just sheer force of the way that things are.
But this. This is malicious.
This is what she wanted.
Because Jacque was right in the fury and commotion when Bella first handed her the dissolution of marriage papers, this has been one of the most selfish things she’s ever done. Getting Jacque to agree to marry her was a win/win situation. For her. It was win/win for her.
And Jacque, in agreeing to it, forgot somehow that she had needs as well. Needs past the physical which they both managed to fulfill on multiple occasions with other people.
No, it was when Jacque started remembering her emotional needs, specifically in relation to Bella, that the issue started.
And it was never going to end any other way than this.
It’s Sadie who starts yelling the worst things because out of everyone who's been basically blindsided by this she’s the most emotional. The closest.
They’d become almost like family, like big sister/little sister, and the betrayal on her face was more clear than anyone else’s because she trusted Bella. She trusted her with Jacque’s heart and she trusted her with their friendship. And in one fell swoop, one four word phrase that had been yanked from underneath her.
Sadie’s not sitting anymore. She’s getting closer and closer, louder and louder, and Bella stands firm and can only hope she doesn’t have to get into a physical altercation.
Oliv follows though and even though Bella can see it, in the clenched jaw and the white knuckles, that she’s pissed as well. She’s smart enough to know that nothing good could come out of Sadie attacking her so she steers her back to the chair enduring some mild resistance but ultimately it’s a success.
Niav and Carla don’t say anything but there’s a silent look of disapproval from Carla and there’s not a single trace of Niav’s normally easy and welcoming smile.
Ultimately it’s Robyn who breaks her heart.
She just looks up, after everyone else has sort of quieted down into a low simmering anger, and looks Bella straight into the eyes unflinchingly. “Was it worth it?”
Bella can’t even think of anything but the first answer that comes to her mind, she looks at Jacque and see’s that she’d desperately trying to act like she’s not interested in the answer. Robyn’s staring at her but Bella looks straight into Jacque’s eyes when she answers.
“No.”
And the dam breaks in her chest and tears rush to her eyes. She can’t let them see her cry because it’s pretty clear that most of them at least strongly dislike her now and she needs to leave so they can be there for Jacque like they’re supposed to.
So she rushes off to their room, or it’s probably more like Jacque’s room now, and sits down on the floor next to the bed. She expects to be alone for a long while unless someone comes to shout more but when she looks up, she sees a small break in the storm.
“So this was probably the dumbest way to break the news to all of us. Especially in such a confined space.”
Bella crosses her arms on her knees, mirroring the way Kathryn stands with hers over her chest, expecting nothing but the worst. But Kathryn, the one who knows the most, purses her lips.
"But, that was brave. And I just think you should know that, even if no one else is for a little while, I've got you."
It means a lot. More than Bella can even put into words because she’s in no doubt that her friends on the team have just dwindled to the person standing in her room now.
Her throat is laced with crying sounds so when she laughs it still comes as a sob. “That’s me. Brave little toaster.” Bella sniffs. “Shame I couldn’t have just been brave enough to get on with my life instead of chasing after something like this.”
Kathryn closes the door behind her. The rest of their friends are gathering around Jacque getting the story. Kathryn knows the real one which is why she’s here and not there. “It was stupid but it was what you wanted.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t always get what I want.”
Kathryn shrugs. “I don’t think you do. I think you fight for what you want.” She comes to sit on the bed in front of her. “And the fight is just starting so you have to decide if you’re gonna get back up and go another round, or quit now. Because there’s a team out there that are going to battle you every step for her and you’re in the corner alone.”
Bella’s red eyes look up and Kathryn pauses. “Well, you’ve got me. And a part of her still. Even if you don’t realize it.”
“So you know,”
“About what happened in London.” Kathryn nods. “She told me.”
Bella hides her face again and tries to calm down. The panic comes in bursts of silent sobbing that shudders down her chest. Kathryn does nothing but wait out the storm.
*
She wanders around the empty apartment. Toronto seems a lot colder and a lot lonelier with Jacque having taken refuge with one of their teammates. They’d agreed that it was probably for the best that Bella didn’t know which.
An email was the only absence of darkness keeping Bella from being slowly frozen out by her teammates on the national team. There was no chance of her being able to play for Vancouver while she had a target on her back so she’d reached out through her coaches and they’d struck gold.
Distance from this definitely wasn’t going to be an option. She’d told Jacque, through an email because she wasn’t answering her calls or texts, and Kathryn who had been her only source of contact from the team. But now she’s on the phone with her mother trying to explain exactly just what’s been happening since their disappointment at the World Cup.
That may be an understatement.
Bella slumps against the wall while listening to her mom on the other end of the phone. When the question is asked, after the disbelief and concern, Bella let’s herself slide to the floor. “No, mom. Jacque won’t be coming for Christmas.”
She can’t bring herself to say divorce for some reason.
“I actually,” She struggles to clear her throat and her nose twinges for the first time in years. “I got a job, an offer from a team. Yeah. But, uh, it starts in two weeks so I won’t be coming home either.”
She’s packed most of the stuff she’d brought to Whemb’s place into boxes. Half are going into storage for her to come back to, another few bags are being shipped to her parents and Bella has managed to sort out enough stuff to fit into a suitcase and a duffel bag to take with her for her new season.
She squeezes her eyes shut as her mom sighs on the other end with the disappointment bearing down. “It’s not in Canada. Paris. Paris in France, mom.”
*
She’s spent so much time over the past few years at Whembs’s place in Vancouver she’s almost wondering at what point she has to start listing it as a secondary residence. But Whemb spends most of her time in Portland when she’s not playing for the national team and at some point Jacque might actually look into trying to buy the place off of her outright.
As it stands she’s paying some pretty sweet rent and spends most of her time training, studying to get her next class of coaching license, and ignoring the shit that goes on in her life.
Except for it’s hard to avoid the subject of her divorce among the ever increasing circle of people who actually know about it.
The worst had actually been breaking the news to her parents, especially her mother who was heartbroken and hadn’t quite understood when Jacque tried to explain it away most certainly not using the story they’d told to their friends. Because Bella might want to try to take the fall out of some sort of
misplaced sense of duty but she didn’t actually do anything wrong and there was no way Jacque was going to ruin her in the eyes of her parents.
In the scope of things talking to Allison about it isn’t the end of the world.
It’s still pretty painful though.
“She cheated?” Allison has repeated it a few different times now with varying levels of disbelief. “I can’t even--how did you find out?”
“I caught them, you know, in the act.” Allison’s eyes widen and the shock is apparent on her face even through a computer screen. Jacque finds that using actual events has helped to keep her story straight so as awful as it is personally to dredge it up it helps maintain everything. Plus the pain is real which is a plus.
“When was this?”
“Right before the World Cup?” Jacque thinks back and realizes that, yeah, it was that long ago. “She stopped seeing him--”
“Him.” Allison interjects with a note of question. Jacque nods. “That’s rough, I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.” It’s still a bitter pill to swallow knowing that Bella is straight and at the end of the day she’ll always fundamentally be not enough even if their night together had momentarily proven otherwise. “We tried to work through it but the stress of everything caught up. Bombing out of the Cup like that, we lived apart for months after that, and then it was just over. As much as we both fought to make it last, we just couldn’t.”
The lie feels good, ingrained with enough kernels of truth but from enough from the actual events that she can detach, go through the motions. The less she actually has to relive it the better.
Allison sighs on her end of the call and looks away, guilt covering her face. “You guys were so happy, even in London--fuck--just a couple of months ago.”
“We were trying to be.” It’s the honest truth, they tried so hard and in the end their efforts just fizzled out into nothing. She found out through transfer news of all places that Bella was in Paris playing for PSG. She endured the awful shit people were saying about Bella because this is what they agreed on, Jacque just had to ride it out.
“Jesus, Jacque. I need to process this.” Allison stops herself, flipping her hair over to the other side. Her eyes flick to the bottom corner of her screen and she curses in German under her breath. “I have to go but next time I see you it’s drinks, all you want, on me. Ok?”
Jacque smiles genuinely. “You’ve got a date.”
Allison smiles brightly, waving a little before she hangs up the call and Jacque is alone again with her thoughts.
After a conversation like that, rehashing everything as she seems to be in a constant state of doing, she needs either a good workout or a crazy night.
Choosing the healthier of the two, she laces up her running shoes and goes until she feels like her limbs are about to fall off.
She doesn’t think of Bella once.
*
Paris is a welcome distraction. The divorce drama doesn’t touch her there and being in a city thousands of miles away from the people that might cause it helps as well.
PSG gives her a taste of what it’s like to play professional club soccer for the first time since MagicJack. The team sets her up in a nice apartment about twenty minutes from the practice fields and stadium. Everything is taken care of. The impact of the Olympics hasn’t been understated on her wage either. Bella makes more in a month than she managed after the World Cup and with PSG subsidizing her apartment and car, she has a lot more going into her account than she has in a while.
She’s not the only national team player that they’ve picked up. Bella gets into practice just before Christmas to find that her limited French is the one thing she has in common with Tobin Heath, who PSG have signed for six months, even with the rumbles of a new league being set up in the US.
They probably spend more time figuring out the language off the field than on it with Tobin sticking to just demanding the ball.
Tobin talks about the national team all the time, mostly about how she misses her roommates, Bella can’t ignore the fact that she hasn’t heard from anyone other than Kathryn and Andreoli since arriving.
“So like, was it hard?” Tobin pulls the laces on her boots.
Bella squeezes her water bottle on the back of her neck. It’s a cold winter in Paris and they have their opening game in a week, so they’re fighting to get used to the conditions before they take the field for real. “Was what hard?”
“Playing for Canada?” Tobin asks curiously. “Only because, you played for the US on all the youth levels and that-”
Bella shrugs like it’s not a big deal. “I mean, it’s a lot, lot different y’know? More singing.”
Tobin laughs. “Yeah, we could hear you guys after the ceremonies. Celine Dion, right?”
“But uh, it was just a little adjusting.” Bella smiles through it but hopes that Tobin doesn’t push it further. Not because she doesn’t have an answer, but she can’t rehash her decision to take a chance on playing for Canada and the way that she did it. She can’t think about Jacque.
It is dropped and Bella notices Tobin starts to find other things to bond over that don’t involve national team soccer. Probably because there’s still a little unspoken tension about the Olympics but more because there’s more important things to focus on.
Their first game comes around against Saint-Etienne and Bella is pulling on the number 26 to Tobin’s 27. They’ve taken a chance on this new, unpracticed line up and Bella pulls down the white headband she’s got on while the line ups and the pictures are taken. The French crowd is an impressive one for a women’s game and before Bella knows it, they’re off.
Everything is more technical and, though Bella is good, she pulls through the first match by the sheer determination of her fitness. Tobin fares better, adjusting to the pace and the skills, to put her and Asllani into the dangerous positions that secure them the 2-0 lead.
By the end of it her shirt is soaked through with sweat and the cold seeps in as she mutters in broken French through some post-game interviews. Her first game, her first start and her first goal. Not bad.
Yet she still goes home to an empty apartment, meals for one and her mom’s reminder not to take what teammates are saying about her to heart, with no one to keep her away from her thoughts.
*
Bella doesn’t have to think about it too hard. She loves playing in Paris she absolutely does, the professional environment, her teammates, and the quality of the game. But when she hears rumors that there’s rumblings of a new league starting in the United States she begins to assess her options.
There are so many things she misses and so many regrets that she has and even though she didn’t necessarily come to Paris to run away she still feels like she’s hiding from her problems, avoiding the real challenges she needs to face.
After the official announcement of the NWSL she gets an e-mail from the CSA asking if this is something she’d like to take part in. It doesn’t take more than five minutes after reading the message to decide, she responds immediately and waits.
No sooner has she sent her reply when another message comes in listing the eight cities hosting a team and asking for her top three choices.
It’s a no-brainer.
Chicago. Washington. Kansas City.
So now all she has to do is wait.
Chapter 9
2013
*
SHE’S training with the University of Toronto in January on allocation day. Jacque had wrangled a few hours alongside the Varsity Blues thanks to some contacts she had from back in the day. The girls are mostly star struck that they’ve got an Olympian training with them that the session isn’t as high with intensity as it could be. But it’s more about the distraction really.
Allocation day. It’s been coming for a while and everyone on the national team has been gearing up to find out where they’re going to be placed for the upcoming soccer season. The NWSL, as it’s been named, is hoping to break the curse s
urrounding women’s soccer in the US with the funding of the US, Canadian and Mexican soccer federations.
Jacque is hopeful that it might work out this time.
The list that will tell her where she’s off to for six months is due in a few hours. Jacque has her phone tucked in her gym bag to look at it once she’s finished working out.
The Toronto coach organizes a scrimmage that she sits out of. They’re in the middle of their season and they need to work on a few things. Jacque takes a ball to the side and starts to work on some footwork on her own. It gives her a moment to think about how the last few months, as the media whirlwind has died down, have gone.
Christmas passed without event. Her family said nothing about Bella for the whole two weeks she spent with them. Jacque chose to spend time with her sisters and the younger members of her family to ignore the deep disappointment and somewhat angry feelings that her family held towards Bella. Even though those feelings weren’t directed at her, there was no other outlet close for them to be pushed upon.
She knows that she didn’t do any favours for the ongoing curiosity amongst those outside the initial storm of the divorce. Bella never came home from Paris for Christmas and has almost disappeared from social networking altogether. A feat considering that she was constantly connected during the Olympics. Jacque didn’t reach out, unsure whether or not wishing her a happy Christmas or good game, would be the opposite of Bella leaving the country was trying to do.
Still, it’s hard to ignore the barrage of questions and messages she’s getting about the separation. The divorce is under wraps for now but people aren’t stupid. The media outlets that have been hyping on the promotion of the Canadian soccer team look to them as an interesting story. The bronze couple. And as much as they enjoy their success, Jacque knows, they’d enjoy their fall even more.
She did debate sending Bella a gift for Christmas, a debate that’s passed over into January as it would have been their fifth anniversary this month if they’d still been fake married.
Jacque drops the ball she’s been juggling to the turf. Five years of her life. That’s how long Bella’s been in the forefront of her mind. They made it through three and a half actually married. Then the World Cup. Then the Olympics.
