Bring Her On

by Chelsea M. Cameron

  “You give me too many free drinks,” I said, wiping my mouth to make sure it wasn’t dripping with gravy.

  “You deserve it,” she said, pulling out the chair and sitting down with a grunt. Her curly gray hair was pulled back, and the apron that covered her front was stained, but her hands and fingers were immaculate.

  “How’s it going?” Susie asked. I both loved and hated it when she tried to mother me. I had great parents, but they had retired to Arizona, so I didn’t see them in person often enough. We did text and video chat nearly every day.

  “It’s going,” I said. “Just stressful. The next month is just . . . a lot.” I had so many expectations on my shoulders. Yes, it was my squad that was going out on the floor, but I was on the mat with them every second, and I was the one the parents would come to if they weren’t happy. I’d already dealt with more than a few parents who thought that their precious baby should be front and center when the precious baby couldn’t even land a back handspring on a good day.

  “You’re doing a good thing for those kids. I’ll never forget the good coaches I had when I was younger. They kept me on the right path and helped me learn the skills I needed to become an adult.”

  My face felt hot, and I looked down at my plate. I really needed to learn how to take compliments. “Thank you, that’s really nice to hear.”

  “Anything else going on with you?”

  I shook my head. “Not really. Just focused on Nationals.” I shrugged one shoulder. I knew what she was asking, but I just didn’t have much in my life outside of cheer. I was a little obsessed.

  “Be sure to make room in your life for things other than work.” She glanced up and caught Lou’s eye, who gave her a wink. Susie winked back and beamed. Their love was so pure.

  “I’ll work on that,” I said, and sipped my mimosa. The fizzing champagne tickled my nose and I almost sneezed.

  “Do you want some gossip?” There were two things that Susie was amazing at: cooking, and knowing everyone else’s business. I honestly didn’t know how she knew, unless she had actual spies all around Corsica. She knew more even than Lou.

  “Yes, always. Hit me.” I leaned in and she told me about the latest scandal in town, involving two sisters, one man, and an ill-fated text message that let one sister know that her man was banging the other sister.

  I devoured the juicy details as well as my entire plate of food, and went home full and satisfied.

  The kitties needed some playtime, so I threw toys around and dangled some feathers in front of their faces before I got bored and started surfing the cheer blogs and social media pages.

  I was always looking for new things to try or add to our routines. I couldn’t make too many changes from here on out, but a few tweaks could get us a few more tenths of a point, and that could make the difference between winning and losing.

  My fingers, of their own volition, took me to Echo Rosenthal’s page. She posted regular videos and updates of her squad, and I found myself doing a deep dive and watching everything from the past two years like a weirdo.

  More than an hour later, I had seen all the videos and started glancing through her personal pictures. There weren’t a ton because she taught English at Heartwood High, when she wasn’t coaching, and had probably scrubbed it before she got the job. Too bad I wasn’t a hacker who could find all those old pictures she thought she’d deleted. I still remembered some of those pictures, and I might even have been in some of them. We’d definitely taken more than a few together at camp.

  I didn’t have any of those pictures left after a purge when I’d gotten a new phone. I almost wished that I did.

  Spaghetti jumped on my lap and nudged my phone out of my hand, and I took that as a sign.

  “Okay, fine. I’ll stop looking up the hot mean girl.” I didn’t know two better words to describe Echo. It was a crime that she’d only gotten hotter with age. When I’d first seen her walking through the door with her squad at Championships, I’d almost walked right onto the mat during the tumbling warm-up and caused a collision.

  It had been ten years, but I’d know her anywhere. I’d know her in the pitch dark. Her hair was longer and darker now, shading toward auburn instead of the lighter more ginger shade she’d had when we’d first met. I hated how I knew the exact shade of her hair in the sun.

  She’d also gained even more muscle than she’d had as a base and a tumbler at the age of seventeen. Echo was a fucking anatomy chart, each muscle group on obnoxious display.

  Spaghetti meowed loudly, and I was getting the picture. My kitties were incredibly intuitive and knew when I needed to get out of my own head.

  “Okay, baby, okay.” I gave Spaghetti skritches and then Meatball was waiting and it was a kitty petting line. My phone was still on the floor and it lit up with a message. It was from my mom. I thought about texting her back, but I called her instead.

  “How’s my girl?” That was how she always answered the phone when I called her.

  “I'm good. I miss you.” Part of me considered dropping all my responsibilities and getting on a plane at least once a day. Sometimes you just needed your parents, even if you were fully grown.

  “I miss you too. You need to visit more.”

  I sighed. “I will, as soon as Nationals are over. I’m there. I’ll even brave the heat for you.”

  “It’s dry heat,” she said, and I sighed. We had this argument at least once a week.

  “How’s Dad?”

  “He’s attempting to grow fruit trees.”

  That took me a second to process. Dad was always getting into new hobbies, but this was a first. “Fruit trees?”

  “Yes, he fancies himself the Johnny Appleseed of Phoenix.” That was quite the image, my dad, who could be mistaken for Santa Claus in the off-season, sprinkling seeds in pots and hoping for them to grow.

  “I love it. Everyone needs a hobby. How’s book club?” Half of the reason I called my mom so often was to get updates from her book club, which were BANANAS. Like, Bravo should start following them around with cameras and they’d have the next reality show hit on their hands.

  “Get this, Patty’s husband, the one who travels all the time? Has a secret family.”

  I gasped. “Shut up.”

  She told me the whole sordid tale about Patty’s philandering husband and his other woman and the three children they’d had together. Before the internet, it was a lot easier to hide your second family from your first family, but not so much anymore.

  I didn’t tell Mom about the thing with Echo, but she could tell I was uneasy about something.

  “Talk to me. I can hear it in your voice.” I couldn’t put anything past her.

  “Well, there was a little encounter yesterday. I don’t really want to go into it, but remember Echo?” I told my mom pretty much everything, so she did know about Echo. I mean, not all the dirty details, but she was a smart woman, so she’d probably figured it out.

  “Yes, she’s coaching now, right?”

  “Unfortunately, yes. Anyway, she showed up at the exhibition and I confronted her and it was just . . . weird. Like, I have no idea what the hell she was even doing there, unless it was just to piss me off. Wouldn’t put it past her.”

  That had to be it. What else could be the reason? I couldn’t find one.

  “Maybe she wants to rekindle something,” Mom suggested, and I made a gagging noise.

  “Ew, Mom. No. She was just there to throw me off. To mess with my head. You don’t know this girl.”

  I didn’t really know her either. One week of interaction did not tell you everything about a person. Plus, I didn’t want to know her. Not even a little bit, social media stalking notwithstanding. That was research for my job as a coach.

  “I don’t know, Kiri,” Mom said in a singsong voice. “I think she might be carrying a torch for you.”

  I sputtered.

  “That’s ridiculous. It was ten years ago. I’m sure she’s got some hot wife who sits on
her back while she does push-ups.” The mental image of that made me shudder.

  “Do you know that for sure?” Mom prodded.

  “Look, I said I didn’t want to talk about this, please?”

  “Okay, okay. Oh, your father has come in from tending his fruit. He wants to say hello.”

  I tried not to think about what else “tending his fruit” could mean.

  “Hey KK, how’s life?”

  “Hey Dad. It’s good.”

  We chatted for a little bit longer and he talked my ear off about his new endeavor. I was happy that he was happy, and I hoped his fruit trees didn’t die like the time when he tried to set up an aquarium and ended up accidentally poisoning all his fish within the first week.

  By the time I was done with my parents, the kitties were starving and I got up to feed them and realized that I needed to eat also and made a quick dinner. I needed to start meal prepping again, so I pulled some chicken out of the freezer and went through the pantry to see what I could make with it that would last a few days and would work for lunches.

  I needed Dom to come over again and help me organize. He was an amateur chef and helped me learn how to use things like truffle oil and a microplane. I texted him and asked him what I should do with the chicken and he sent back the link to a recipe for chicken and veggies that you baked on a sheet pan. Thanks to Dom, I actually possessed a sheet pan. Before we met, according to him, I was living like an uncivilized troll. I tried not to be offended about that comment.

  After dinner I was bored, so I started looking for a new ring. I really needed one with a red stone to go with this jumpsuit I’d just gotten and had plans to wear out when I went with my friends for a weekend trip to Portland. Sure, wearing ten finger’s worth of rings was fun in Corsica, but it could be a little excessive for a trip to the grocery store.

  I didn’t find what I was looking for, but I did find myself back on Echo’s page.

  “I think I have a problem,” I said to Meatball, who was sleeping on my feet. She woke up and made that sweet little kitty noise they make when they get surprised.

  “You are so cute, yes you are.” I scratched her head and sighed.

  How could I focus on beating Echo without focusing on Echo? Was there a way to fuel my spite without thinking about her every five seconds? If there was, I was going to find out how to do it. There was nothing that made you get shit done better than petty rage. Let that fuel flow through my veins, baby.

  My next week was Echo-free (at least in person), but the article came out about me and the team. I tried not to cringe at the pictures and the quotes, but Megan hadn’t done me dirty and Camille was pleased with the results. She was sending it out to a bunch of rich alumni in hopes they would write some checks for the program. I was just glad that everyone would probably forget about it in a few days.

  On Saturday, Dom pulled me aside and dropped a bomb.

  “So, there is a situation.” His normally smiling mouth was pulled down, so I knew it was something serious. We pulled ourselves away from the squad to talk at the side of the gym.

  “What’s happening? Is Heath okay?” That was my first thought.

  “Oh, it’s nothing like that. Just that I got the news through the grapevine that a vandal set fire to the Heartwood High School gym last night and it’s pretty much just a pile of ashes right now.”

  My stomach dropped. How terrible. “Oh my god. But no one was there, right?”

  He shook his head. “No, it was empty, but they lost everything and it damaged part of the school before they could put it out. They’re pretty sure it’s arson.” Dom showed me the article in the statewide paper about it.

  “Wow, this is awful.” My heart really went out to them. That was horrible. Corsica was about a half hour away from Heartwood, which wasn’t far enough for comfort.

  “I wonder what the cheerleaders are going to do,” Dom said, scrolling though his phone and typing out a quick message.

  “Shit, I didn’t even think of that.”

  A burst of giggles and laughs distracted me for a second. I glanced back at the squad, which was supposed to be working on the dance, but they were having an impromptu dance-off. I’d yell at them in a second.

  Dom looked up from his phone. “They’ll have to go somewhere. Or maybe this means their season is over? I don’t know how they’re going to practice. There isn’t a space around there that’s big enough.”

  Both Heartwood and Corsica were pretty rural, without even the benefit of a YMCA or other community center with a large gym.

  “Yeah, I don’t know. That sucks.” I spared a tiny bit of sympathy for Echo and then wiped it away. “Okay, that’s enough shenanigans, back to work.” I clapped my hands to get the squad’s attention, but it took me yelling at the top of my lungs. At this rate, I was going to lose my voice before the season was over.

  We got through the rest of the practice with no major falls, just a few tears, and with me laying out the revamped pyramid.

  “Okay, good job everyone. Remember, Saturday is all day. Don’t forget to hydrate, bring snacks, and I swear, if you stay up too late and whine that you’re tired, I’m going to lose it.” There were a few snickers at that, but they were silenced with one glare from me. I had polished that glare over twenty-six years of life. Almost like I was meant to do this job.

  We did our little cheer to end practice and then Camille walked in.

  “Hey, Cam, what’s going on?” She and I were casual friends and hung out sometimes outside of the school, but she was one of those beautiful intimidating women that I always found myself tongue-tied around. To add insult to injury, she was hopelessly heterosexual and married to a man who looked like he’d just stepped off the stage from a fitness competition and owned a local CrossFit gym.

  She sighed and rolled her shoulders and I tried not to stare. I really needed to get myself under control. I’d been lusting all over the place lately.

  My lust completely died when she responded. “So, I don’t know what you’ve heard, but the Heartwood gym burned down and I had an emergency conference call and we’re going to offer ours to their cheerleaders to practice here. It’s going to be a nightmare busing them over, but the decision was taken out of my hands. The principals are cousins.”

  I bit my tongue hard to stop a loud curse from coming out. So hard that I might have drawn blood.

  I had to close my eyes and take a deep breath before I could respond in a voice quivering with repressed rage.

  “They’re going to practice here?”

  “Yes.”

  Four

  “How is that even going to work?” I asked when I finally got my thoughts into some sort of order.

  Cam shrugged one elegant shoulder “I’m not sure. It’s going to be a lot. We’ll have to get extra mats and maybe a curtain to divide the space. It’s my job to figure that out.” She gave me a lukewarm smile that showed how excited she was about the task. “It’s fine. I know I shouldn’t be talking like this. They lost their gym and it’s not their fault. I just don’t like it when my plans are disrupted.”

  If there was one thing to know about Camille, it was that she was addicted to order and spreadsheets and schedules. She ran the department with the passion and care of managing an NBA team, and she had to deal with a lot of people demanding more money for their program, not to mention scandals and overzealous parents and coaches who went too far. It was a job I wouldn’t want, that was for sure. One of her eyes was twitching and she kept tapping one foot. Camille was stressed.

  “We’ll make it work,” I said immediately. “Hey, it’ll be fine.”

  She inhaled through her nose and then exhaled slowly. “I know, you’re right. I should have gone in my office and taken a minute before I talked to you. I don’t want you to think I’m being unprofessional.”

  “I would never think that,” I said, and she smiled and it was like looking into the sun. Why were there so many beautiful women in my path recently? It was beg
inning to wear on me.

  “Thanks. So, now I have to go on TV and do an interview about how we’re taking in the Bulldogs.” She made a face.

  “Oh, yikes. I hope they don’t want to interview me.” The article last week was bad enough. I didn’t want to be on camera if I could avoid it.

  “You might get tapped. Just be prepared.”

  “I’ll make Dom do it.” He was much better for that stuff than I was, and he enjoyed it more.

  “Make Dom do what?” he said, slinging an arm around my shoulder. If he wanted, he could use my head as an armrest, and he did, much to my constant chagrin.

  “A potential TV interview because we’re taking in the Bulldogs and letting them use our gym,” Cam said.

  He nodded as if he wasn’t surprised. “Makes sense. Where else are they going to go? We’ll have to divide the space somehow, but we can make it work. It’ll give us an up-close look at our competition. This could be the best thing to happen to us. They’ll be on our turf.”

  I hadn’t thought about that. I guess he could be right, but all I could think about was that, for the next three weeks, I had to share a gym with Echo. She was going to be in my space, I would hear her voice, and I would see her all the time.

  Cam started typing on her phone, oblivious to me and Dom.

  “This is going to be a nightmare,” I said to Dom.

  “It’ll be fine,” Dom said, squeezing my shoulder.

  It was time to go home, but I didn’t want to be alone at my house.

  “Do you want to come over? I’ll order dinner, my treat.” Heath was away on a quick HR retreat that sounded like the most boring kind of retreat ever, so he had the house to himself.

  “Deal,” he said. “I’ve been eating leftovers because I don’t know how to cook for one.” He’d grown up with eight brothers and sisters, and since he was the second oldest, he’d had to learn how to cook at an early age, and knew how to feed a lot of people from one pot.

  “Awesome,” I said.

  Camille’s phone made a sound and she answered it.

  “Excuse me,” she said to me and Dom, and started walking toward her office, her high heels clicking on the gym floor.