“For God’s sake, will you stop that?”
“Don’t be an ass.”
“I’m not an ass.”
“Prove it.”
Kelley lets out a huff of breath, narrowing her eyes at where Emily sits across from her, legs crossed at the ankles, toes tapping on the tile of the airport terminal. Emily just smirks back, her mouth curling up at one end.
“You have a problem?” She knows that Kelley has a problem and she also, clearly, doesn’t give a shit.
Kelley lets out another loud breath and slumps further into her chair, raising her book higher to try to block Emily out of her eyesight. A minute later, she drops the book into her lap.
“Emily.” The tapping stops, and Emily smiles innocently in response.
“Yes?” She grins full-stop, and for a second Kelley is forced to suck in a breath because God the girl can charm her way out of anything.
“You’re the worst.” She only grins wider, as if she’s perfectly aware, and Kelley shakes her head in annoyance. She checks her phone for the time and groans — they still have thirty minutes left until boarding. “Why did we have to get here so early?”
Emily shrugs, reaching into a bag filled with chocolate acai berries and popping one into her mouth.
“My mom says you should get to the airport an hour in advance,” she says, glancing at her phone and then up at Kelley. “Better safe than sorry, right?”
“I’m gonna finish this book before we even get on the plane,” Kelley said mournfully, looking down at her copy of “Girl On The Train,” which was bookmarked with only 30 pages left.
“Well it’s not my fault you’re so smart.” She looks up just in time to catch Emily’s wink, and quickly averts her eyes. She glances back, and Emily is back to looking at her phone, and her lips begin to curl as she watches the way the younger girl’s brow furrows. After a second, she turns back to her book, sinking into a comfortable silence.
A few minutes later, the tapping starts again. Kelley glances up, and Emily glances up too. Their eyes meet, but Kelley just grins, rolling her eyes, and Emily lets that smirk crawl across her face again, overly smug and way too pleased with herself.
Half an hour later, she’s fallen asleep on Kelley’s shoulder. It’s seriously uncomfortable, because her chin is digging in a little sharply, but Kelley doesn’t want to move because honestly she hasn’t seen Emily sleep in far too long. Of course that doesn’t mean much because they've only been in Georgia together for a week, but it's it's strange, she thinks, to see someone awake for as long as she has been.
She hadn't really questioned it when Emily asked her if she wanted to come home with her — well, actually, she'd made multiple sex jokes, complete with a waggle of her eyebrows and a few winks. It was a good call, because they trained well together and honestly the idea of spending even a week without a training partner sounded like a death sentence right before a call up.
Georgia with Emily felt like a break from reality. They trained together every morning, a three-hour sweat session that typically ended in one-on-ones that left her breathless.
(especially the one that ended with Emily slide-tackling her carelessly, sending them both tumbling to the ground, legs tangled, with Kelley ending up on top of Emily, a hand on either side of her head and nose brushing her jawbone)
Afterwards they wandered, sometimes through Marietta, sometimes driving into Atlanta to try new coffee shops and new types of food. They quickly learned that Kelley hated Ethiopian food and Emily loved Indian food, although not enough to outweigh the massive amount of food poisoning she experienced three hours after dinner. Kelley also learned that she didn't mind spending an entire evening with Emily curled on the couch next to her, watching Netflix while the younger girl slumped further and further into her side.
There were a lot of things she didn't mind, in fact, about spending a week with Emily. Like waking up to her friend clambering into her bed, coffee in hand, asking if they could skip training today. (They didn't.) Or tossing her into a pool, fully clothed, because she loudly questioned Kelley's upper body strength at a party. ("My honor was at stake," Kelley explained as she reached out a hand to pull Emily out of the pool. Emily, of course, nodded understandingly and then tugged her into the water with her.) Or shoving a full cone of ice cream into her face and then sprinting away, ignoring every single stare and glare coming from the parents at the mom and pop ice cream store they frequented every evening. (Emily got her back the next day, but Kelley ducked and ended up with chocolate smeared in her hair.)
It was strange, but she almost dreaded going back to camp. Partially it was because she didn't want this surreal break, this strange little vacation, to end. Mostly it was because she felt that some part of the way she and Emily had existed for the last week could only exist when they were like this — separate from the real world — and she wasn't sure she was ready to relinquish that part of that quite yet.
So for now, she let Emily sleep.
They touch down and Emily sits up, ramrod straight, glancing over at Kelley sheepishly.
"We here?" she asks, and for a second Kelley feels like she actually might have the upper hand, and she can't help but grin.
"Yes we are, sleeping beauty." Without even thinking first, she reaches out to tuck a few stray hairs behind Emily's ear, and then she's the one glancing away, embarrassed. "Ready to go?"
"Born ready." Kelley can feel Emily's eyes on her, but she refuses to meet her gaze as they stand, stretching out their legs and readying themselves to greet the rest of their team.
Kelley can't keep the smile off her face when she sees Ashlyn waiting by the Starbucks they've all been told to meet at. The keeper flies to her feet, barely able to catch Kelley as she leaps into her arms, and then they're laughing and shoving at each other. Ashlyn aims a quick "hey" at Emily, who announces she's going to grab a latte before sidling off.
"So." Ashlyn raises an eyebrow, her eyes darting towards Emily's retreating figure. "Anything you want to tell me?"
"I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about." She turns her eyes to where her fingers are fiddling with the handle of her carry on, picking at a stray string. Ashlyn nudges her with her foot, then with her elbow, then lets out an exasperated sigh.
"Are you kidding me?" Kelley looks up at her, then shrugs. "So all those candlelit dinners and coffee dates and Netflix and chill sessions you were snapchatting me were just, what? Team bonding?"
"We hung out for a week." She coughs lightly, trying to make her tone firm enough to drop the conversation. "That's it."
"Right." Ashlyn's voice is skeptical, but she pivots the conversation, and Kelley thinks it's dropped.
Then Emily returns with two coffees in hand, pressing a soy vanilla latte wordlessly into Kelley's hand, and she doesn't even have to look at Ashlyn to know that she's barely keeping a smirk off of her face. When she finally glances towards her friend, Ashlyn mouths "right" at her again, and Kelley rolls her eyes, taking a sip of the drink — which is her favorite, not that she would ever admit it.
It's four hours later and they're all in the lobby, milling about and catching up, when Dawn enters with the room keys and Emily is dancing over to her, holding two keys aloft.
"Guess who you're stuck with." Her eyes sparkle as she grins, extending one of the cards and then pulling it away from Kelley as she reaches to take it.
"Dear God, save me." Kelley groans, but she can't keep the smile off her face as she swivels towards the rest of their team. "Will anyone please trade with me? I'll buy you dinner, I'll give you a back massage, I'll—"
She's cut off as Emily grabs her from behind, pressing her palm against Kelley's mouth and wrapping her other arm around her waist, and Kelley devolves into laughter as the rest of the team watches. Becky turns to Abby, clapping a hand onto her shoulder.
"Welcome to the insanity, kid." She glances back at Kelley, raising an eyebrow, and she flushes without being able to help it.
They're next to each other at dinner, elbows brushing slightly, Carli on her other side, when Morgan finally prods the elephant in the room.
"How are you guys doing without Hope here?" Her voice is soft, low, but the question still attracts the attention of most of the team. Kelley can feel Carli glancing at her, but the first place she looks is Emily. The younger girl's eyes are fixed on her food, knuckles suddenly white where she grips at her fork, jaw clenched slightly.
"It sucks." Carli's voice is blunt, and Kelley knows she has to say something, but she's unsure what. She knows what most of the younger girls speculate at, and she knows what most of the older girls know, but what's most important to her is what the new girls think about Hope, not about her relationship with Hope.
"Yeah it's kind of the worst." Kelley shrugs noncommittally. "I miss her. It's worse knowing she should be here, that there's no real reason for her to not be her. It's not like I don't have faith in Ashlyn or Lys — or you, Jane — but I just think she should be here."
The table nods in agreement, new players watching the regulars carefully and modeling their responses accordingly, and Becky begins a low muttering about the USSF. Kelley drowns the conversation out, turning her head to watch Emily from the corner of her eye.
"Hey." She nudges her lightly with one elbow. "What did that salmon ever do to you?"
Emily is stabbing at her dinner rather ferociously. She glances at Kelley, then looks back down at her plate, setting her fork down.
"Nothing." Kelley nudges her again in the ribs, and Emily flinches away, smiling slightly, so she pokes her again, a little harder. "Stop it."
"Make me." Emily's eyes flash with the challenge, and the next moment Kelley is on the floor, feet in the air, looking up at the younger defender with her mouth in an overly-shocked "o" shape. But Emily is laughing again, so Kelley keeps her retaliation contained to a single glare as she climbs to her feet, sitting back down and letting her right arm rest on the back of Emily's chair.
It isn't until they're walking down the hall, keys in hand, that Kelley realizes she's nervous to room with Emily. Nervous to be alone with her again, to exist in some semblance of privacy. It took having Ashlyn point it out, and then catching looks from Becky and Tobin, for her to realize that something with them is off. Well, not off, but different, remarkably different.
The door falls shut with a clang and Kelley stands awkwardly for a second, pressing her palms together and staring at Emily, who is utterly absorbed in her phone. Her eyes trace the curve of her jaw, the way her hair is falling sloppily, and suddenly she needs to get out, to go somewhere.
"I'm gonna shower," she blurts out, and she realizes too late that her voice is way too loud, and Emily levels a long, uncomfortable look at her before looking back at her phone.
"Cool." She sounds noncommittal, or more she sounds like she's trying to sound noncommittal. Or maybe Kelley is just going insane and ready too much into everything. "Have fun."
Kelley stands under the stream for almost twenty minutes, shampooing her hair and then thinking aimlessly long enough that she forgets whether or not she shampooed and just does it again. She's not sure what exactly she's thinking about, but most of it is focused on the way Emily looks at her and the way she looks at Emily and the way other people look at her when she looks at Emily and she's trying to figure out if she's been an idiot for not seeing this now or if she's currently being an idiot by thinking the type of thoughts that typically ruin friendships.
She finally emerges from the bathroom with sopping wet hair, wearing a Stanford t-shirt and a baggy pair of grey sweatpants which, she realizes, actually belong to Emily. After looking down at herself, she knows that she either has to wear these out into the room — greeting a fair amount of teasing from Emily — or go out without pants at all, and she's honestly unsure for a moment which is worst.
(okay, she knows which is worst, but still.)
But when she walks out into the room, Emily doesn't even look up. She's laying across her bed in a sports bra and black Stanford sweats — which are Kelley's, of course — and she has her nose stuck in Kelley's book. Kelley stops, looking at her hard, before she averts her eyes, tries to turn around to go back into the bathroom, and then turns back around and decides to just get in bed. She's unsure of whether the smile coloring Emily's face comes from the book or from watching her out of the corner of her mouth, and she doesn't want to find out.
Fuck.
"This is good." Emily looks up as Kelley sits down, tossing the book aside. "Want to watch TV or something?"
"Already tired out from reading for five minutes?" Kelley teases, reaching for the remote and flipping on the flatscreen.
"Hey, we can't all go to Stanford." She watches the channels flicker by, then groans in protest as Kelley settles on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. "Come on, Kell. Don't do this, you know how much I hate this movie."
"Sorry, I have the remote." Kelley holds it aloft, as if she needs proof. Emily glares in response.
"Change it." She swings her legs over the side of the bed, arms folded, but Kelley just smirks, leaning back and pretending to be engrossed in the movie. "I swear to God, Kell, change it right now—"
"Make me." Kelley can hear the intake of breath, the split second between the challenge leaving her lips and Emily standing. There's a split second when she looks up, surprised, and then Emily is on her bed and her hands are gripping Kelley's biceps, pushing her further into the bed, and she's slinging one leg over Kelley's hips and she can't goddamn breathe.
"Okay." And then she's leaning down, and she smells like vanilla perfume and tastes like strawberry chapstick and her lips are soft even when her kiss isn't gentle. It takes several seconds for Kelley to even acknowledge the fact that Emily is kissing her, and another second to kiss her back. Emily kisses the same way she smiles — confident, brazen, somehow flirtatious even though she's barely parting her lips.
There's another second before Kelley realizes that Emily has let go of one of her arms, and then the remote is being pulled from her hand and Emily is sitting up, a smug smile spreading across her face.
"Thanks." She rolls off Kelley, who remains flat on her back, eyes comically wide as Emily turns towards the TV and changes the channel. She's out of breath, panting, and without thinking she lifts one hand to press her fingers against her mouth in perhaps the most cheesy motion of her life.
"What the—" Her voice trails off, and Emily shoots an amused look over her shoulder.
"Oh, don't act like you haven't wanted to do that for the last week." She tosses her hair as she turns back to the TV. "I was waiting on you but you were taking too long. Couldn't stand not kissing you anymore."
It's bold and honest and matter of fact and it's just so damn Emily that Kelley can't keep herself from smiling, or from sitting up, a fresh challenge on her lips.
"Give me the remote back." She knows that Emily is smiling before she even turns to face her.
"Make me."
Kelley flips them with ease, pressing Emily down and sliding a knee between her thighs, grabbing both of Emily's wrists and pinning them above her head effortlessly. She grins down, and finally, finally she knows she's knocked the younger girl back on her heels. She drops her mouth to Emily's jaw, pressing a lazy, open mouth kiss to her skin and relishing in the slight "oh" she feels her breathe out at the contact.
"Oh, you have no idea what you're getting yourself into." Emily turns her head, closes the distance, and mumbles a comeback into her lips, but Kelley is far past the point of giving a damn what she has to say.
The TV remains ignored for the rest of the night.