Bring Her On

by Chelsea M. Cameron

  Dom’s phone made a sound and he looked at the message.

  “Crap, I have to go. Heath needs me at home. We have a call with our adoption agent tonight for an update and we don’t know if it’s good news or bad news.” I gave him a huge hug and promised I wouldn’t strangle Echo, and then it was just the two of us and her blender.

  “Why are you still here?” I asked with a sigh. The place was cleaned up, but she was taking her sweet time packing up the blender into an enormous duffle bag.

  “Because I wanted to talk to you with everyone gone.”

  “That is shocking information,” I said in a deadpan voice.

  “You can’t say you’re not enjoying this. I see how you get when you think you’re getting to me.”

  I knew I had gotten to her, too. If she said I hadn’t, she was a liar. I kept silent as she slung her bag over her muscled shoulder and walked toward me.

  “I’m here when you’re ready to talk, or not talk.” She pulled something out of her pocket and held it between two fingers.

  “Call me,” she said, and my mouth dropped open. She was literally handing me a business card with her number on it. Who the hell did she think she was?

  Unable to form a response, she just laughed and headed out of the gym.

  “Remember, call me anytime, Kiri. I’ll see you tomorrow in a more professional capacity.”

  I waited to scream until she had definitely left. Then I looked at the ceiling and let the sound rip from my throat.

  I told the cats all about it when I got home. They listened and blinked slowly and then begged for treats, which was typical.

  “Thanks for listening,” I said as I pulled the bag with their treats in it out of the cabinet. I liked to make them work for it, so I put the treats in a few different puzzle toys and set them on the floor. As soon as I did that, the kitties had forgotten about me.

  “Can you believe that? She gave me her card.” I picked it up from the kitchen counter. Of course I’d brought it home with me. Still hadn’t ruled out ripping it up into little pieces and then setting it on fire, but right now, I stared at the card, the black numbers swimming in front of my eyes.

  What did Echo want? Was this all part of some master plan to throw me off my game, which would then throw off my squad? I wouldn’t put it past her. She’d been a schemer when we’d met.

  Echo had been the one to plan each of our rendezvous and think about all the contingencies so we didn’t get caught, and we hadn’t. Echo’s mind worked in mysterious ways, and that was one of the things that had really grabbed me at the beginning. Plus, her body. Let’s be real, I was superficial to the core and hot won out over smart more times than I was willing to admit.

  Echo was hot and smart and mean. Deadly, vicious combination.

  I turned the card over and over in my hands before setting it down, pouring myself a glass of wine, and having a think.

  So far, Echo had been the one with the upper hand. I didn’t know what her plans or motives were, but I definitely needed to start fighting fire with fire.

  It was time to make what was definitely a bad decision.

  Eight

  I didn’t consult any of my friends about the text message I wrote, but I should have. I typed and retyped it at least ten times and made sure it struck the right tone.

  “I can’t hit send. You hit send.” Meatball was in my lap, and I used his paw to hit send on the message. That way, I could say that it wasn’t technically me. Plausible deniability was my friend.

  “What a naughty kitty,” I said to him as he blinked and licked my hand.

  Now we waited for a response. My heart drummed hard as I waited to see the little bubbles that meant she was sending a return message.

  It didn’t take long for those bubbles to pop up, and then there it was.

  Hey Kiri, you thinking about me?

  I gnawed at my bottom lip, deciding how I wanted to play this.

  Maybe. You shouldn’t have given me your number.

  Meatball meowed and pawed at the phone and I moved it out of his reach.

  “No, your part is over,” I said to him. “It’s my turn now.”

  If I hadn’t given you my number, we wouldn’t be talking right now, would we?

  The tone was undeniably flirtatious, and it was my turn to crank things up to eleven.

  What are you doing right now? I asked.

  I sat there, wondering if I was making the right move, but there was no way to know. I was just tired of her having the upper hand all the time. I wanted to be on top. I wanted to be winning.

  Wouldn’t you like to know . . .

  That was the exact response I’d been hoping for. I closed the message and set the phone down. Obviously I wasn’t a total dick, I wasn’t going to take this too far, but silence would give her something to think about.

  Meatball yelled for attention and I rubbed his head.

  “We’re just doing a little sabotage, right? Nothing serious.”

  I could handle this. I could put our past aside for the good of fucking with a rival coach and come out on the other side absolutely fine. I could do this.

  Echo hadn’t texted me again, and that was starting to stress me out. When I woke up on Monday, I checked to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. Nope.

  I sighed and flung off the comforter, angering all of the cats, who jumped to the floor and started screaming about it.

  “Yes, I know, I know.” First thing was bathroom and then the kitchen to feed the beasts and make breakfast for myself. I scrambled some eggs and plopped yogurt with fruit and granola in a bowl to go with the side of a massive cup of coffee drowning in vanilla creamer. The breakfast of champions, I hoped.

  Once I had the caffeine flowing through my veins, it was time to go to the nook that served as my office. I think it was supposed to be a formal dining room, but I didn’t live the kind of lifestyle that required a formal dining room, so I’d filled it with books and an absolutely obnoxious mahogany desk with one of those lamps with a green shade you’d see in a gentleman’s library. It was home to my two massive desktop monitors and my rainbow light-up keyboard. Everything about my office made me happy.

  I kept my phone by me and turned on some music to start the daily task of seeing what emails I had, what I needed to respond to, and what I could put off until later. There were always too many emails and not enough time for them, but I’d been freelancing long enough to have an intense flagging system to put them in different categories.

  I got into my groove, but every now and then a notification would come through my phone and I’d jump as if I’d been pinched on the ass. The cats came and went and played on the floor as I tried to keep my focus while I edited one article, did a proposal for another, and then scheduled some social media posts for a client.

  By lunch I still didn’t have a message from Echo, but I’d gotten through the work I’d needed to get through before the afternoon. I ate a salad standing up at the kitchen counter and then headed outside for a brisk walk. I tried to work out so my body didn’t fuse in a hunched position at my desk, but during competition season that didn’t happen as often as I wanted it to.

  Still nothing from Echo. She’d fallen off the face of the planet, or at least from my phone. Fine, whatever.

  I burned through work in the afternoon and then it was time to get ready to head to the gym. Unfortunately, that also meant I was going to have to see Echo.

  What would she say to me in person? Would she pretend our little convo last night hadn’t happened? Would she be overly flirtatious? Echo was a puzzle I couldn’t solve. I had no idea what she was capable of.

  “I did something last night,” I told Dom, when I walked into his office with a smoothie. I almost always brought him a little something when I needed advice as payment.

  He looked at the smoothie and then at my face. “Oh god, am I going to need to sit down for this? Wait, I’m already sitting down.” He winked as I handed him the smoothie. Banana
strawberry, his favorite.

  I dropped into the chair across from his desk. “So, after you left, Echo was messing with me and gave me her number. I may have used it to text her in a flirtatious manner, but my plan kind of backfired, and now I’m stressing out.”

  I sipped loudly through the straw of my smoothie.

  “K, why?” Dom was used to my shenanigans, but usually I asked for his input before I ignored whatever advice he gave me and forged ahead anyway.

  “Because I was tired of her always having the high ground, I don’t know!” I sat back in the creaky chair and regretted my life choices again. The fact that I was supposed to be a role model for teenagers was a joke that I never stopped laughing about. I faked it as well as I could.

  “Just focus on Nationals. Eyes on the prize. Shoot for the hoop. Go for the goal. Sink the putt.”

  I gave him a look.

  “You know I always reach for sports metaphors in times of crisis.”

  “Am I in crisis? I don’t feel like I’m in crisis.” This was a lie. I always felt like I was in crisis when Echo was anywhere in my vicinity.

  “No, you’re fine. Just don’t do it again. All we have to do is get to Orlando and make it through and hope for the best. Don’t get distracted.”

  He had a good point. I couldn’t afford to be distracted. I had to be the rock for my team. I had to be the adult in the room, the one in charge. I wouldn’t let Echo mess with that, even if it meant I didn’t get to mess with her. The high road, I was taking it.

  “Thanks, Dom. I’m good.” I stood up and tossed the rest of my smoothie in the trash. “I’ve got this.”

  “You do got this,” he said, saluting me with his cup.

  An hour later, my confidence had worn off, so I was back to faking it. Echo hadn’t said a damn thing when she’d walked in with her perfectly primped squad.

  The promised mats were here, and all I wanted to do was drill my team on tumbling, now that we could. Obviously, if someone didn’t have a standing back tuck by now, they weren’t going to be nailing it in two weeks, so the goal right now as just to polish and tighten things up.

  The new mats were gorgeous and big and still thick and had lots of bounce. I didn’t know where Cam had found the money in the budget, but I didn’t care.

  “Okay, individual tumbling, let’s go.” I had each of my tumblers do their respective passes in the routine, stopping and critiquing and talking about technique as we went. Dom still had all his skills in his back pocket, so he was a better one to go to for this, so I let him take the lead sometimes. I could talk about body position until I was blue in the face, but Dom was the only one who actually knew what it was supposed to feel like in your body when you did a layout.

  We worked late, and so did the other squad. I knew they had sleep and homework to do, but I needed to get a certain amount of things accomplished.

  “I know you’re tired, but you’ve got to dig and find it for me. Do one more full out and then I’ll let you go.” The looks I got in response led me to believe some were plotting my murder, but after a few seconds, they got to their feet and went to the opening formation. I held up my phone to tape, doing my best to ignore the volume of the music behind the curtain. I knew theirs as well as ours by now. I think I’d also absorbed their routine by osmosis. I liked it, they were doing a cute 90s theme. I wondered how much of the routine was input from Echo, and how much was a choreographer they’d hired and paid a bunch of money for.

  We didn’t have that kind of money, so Dom and I had done everything ourselves, and I was pretty proud of that. My little Easter egg was hiding Eye of the Tiger in every single one of our routines. This year it was part of our tumbling section.

  The full out went okay, and I was pleased with them for pushing through.

  “Good job everyone, go home, sleep, and then we’ll be here tomorrow. Ice if you need to, and take it as easy as you can.” They all waved and shuffled from the gym.

  “They’re going to sleep good tonight. Good job pushing them. They needed it,” Dom said.

  “Thanks. Sometimes it’s hard to see the line until it’s too late.” I picked up some jewelry that someone had left and put it in my pocket. I’d find out who’s it was tomorrow, or via text message later.

  The other squad started putting everything away, and they looked as worn out as mine was. Dom and I hung around and waited for them to leave.

  “You can go,” he said. “I’ve got the keys.”

  “I know, I know. I just . . .” I trailed off, unable to come up with an excuse for why I needed to stay in the gym right now.

  “Don’t do it, K. Just don’t do it.” He glared at me.

  “What? I’m not doing anything.” I had definitely been watching Echo packing up her bag. No smoothies today.

  “Go home, K,” he said, pushing into my shoulder. He was saying it as a joke, but I could tell he was partially serious.

  “Okay, I’m going.”

  “And no texting,” he added, pointing at me. “I mean it.”

  “Okayyyyy,” I said, but it wasn’t a promise. I would just do my best.

  My best wasn’t good enough when I got a message from Echo.

  Hey Kiri

  She always had to say that. She always did.

  I ignored her and went back to work. I was burning the midnight oil in hopes I could get ahead on work for when I was going to be out in a little over a week and a half. We were hurtling toward Nationals and I was helpless to stop time, the runaway train that it was.

  What do you want?

  My tiredness got the best of me. I shouldn’t have responded, but it happened anyway. This time I didn’t use my cat to send the message. I did that all on my own. All three cats dozed on the thick cream and black patterned rug on the floor of my office.

  Right now? A massage, a glass of red wine, and someone to talk to.

  My blood froze in my veins. Was she fucking with me, or was she being serious? There was no way to tell the tone from the message, so I had to think about a response for a little bit. She sent another message before I could come up with something.

  You still there?

  I exhaled a shaky breath before I wrote back. Yeah.

  Does that scare you, Kiri?

  I could see her face in my mind, but it was the face I’d known when we were both younger and more foolish. The only times I’d ever seen her be vulnerable were those hushed nights on a crappy thin mattress on the college campus that had hosted the cheer camp. I figured she’d just grown out of it, or she was better at hiding it.

  You don’t scare me, I lied.

  I think I do.

  There was a pause as she typed out another message. You scare me.

  I almost dropped my phone. What was happening?

  Has your phone been hacked? I asked.

  I could almost hear her laugh in my mind as she sent me a laughing emoji.

  No, I’m just tired and lonely. It happens sometimes.

  I didn’t know what to do with this version of Echo either, so I decided to wing it. Dom was going to be furious, but he wasn’t in my shoes right now dealing with this.

  You can’t talk with one of your five thousand assistant coaches? I sent.

  It was a little rude, but she’d been rude as hell to me, so it was fair.

  I don’t want to talk to them. I want to talk to you.

  My response was one word: why?

  She typed for a long time and I could tell she was deleting things and then typing again.

  Because sometimes I wonder what would have happened after cheer camp. If we hadn’t gone our separate ways.

  That wasn’t exactly what had happened. We’d promised to keep in touch and I’d sent her messages and emails and she ghosted me. Pissed, I gave up and figured she just wanted a fling. I’d been bitter for a long time about that, but got over it eventually when I went to college and was drowning in beautiful girls who could take my mind off that one-week stand.

  You w
ere the one who stopped talking to me, but whatever.

  I hoped my tone was evident.

  I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t out to my parents then. I didn’t know what to do.

  I did remember her talking briefly about her parents in those quiet moments as the sweat dried on our skin and we talked about the universe and our places in it as only you can do when you’re sixteen. She’d been pretty quiet about her family, though, and I’d been too lust-crazed to ask deeper questions. We also hadn’t had a whole lot of time alone together anyway. Most of our days were taken up with dance practice and stunting and trying to throw new tumbling passes and our bodies were sore and worn out by the time the sun went down and we collapsed into bed.

  I didn’t know that. I thought you just got tired of me and moved on to someone else. I said.

  I didn’t.

  Wow, a lot was happening and it was blowing my mind. I wasn’t sure how many more revelations I could handle in one night. We were both exhausted and I wasn’t in the right space to use my common sense.

  She sent me another message. I mean, eventually I did date someone. Several someones. I’m not a fucking nun.

  There she was. I snorted.

  Some nuns did fuck each other, you know. I said.

  I hoped that startled a laugh out of her.

  You’re still funny.

  Yeah, imagine that.

  There was a pause and I yawned. I needed to wrap this up, but this conversation was so strange, I didn’t know how to follow the normal protocol for ending one. Echo did it for me.

  Thanks for listening, Kiri Kentwood. You’re still good at that too.

  You’re still good at being hot. I replied before I could think better of it.

  She sent the laugh-crying emoji. Thanks for the compliment.

  And?

  And what?

  And you’re supposed to say that I’m still good at being hot. I hadn’t talked with anyone like this in so long, but I fell back into it with Echo with surprising ease.

  You know you’re hot, Kiri. You don’t need me to tell you that.

  She was right, I didn’t, but it was nice to be validated sometimes.