Chapter 6
Training the next morning goes as well as expected. Everyone is walking on egg shells and it’s clear that there’s an awkward tension in the air. Alex missed shots, Ash missed saves, Kelley missed tackles. Jill isn’t happy with our performance and she makes that clear by keeping us for an extra hour. By the time it’s over, we’re all exhausted.
The bus ride back to the hotel is silent. Ali and I are walking up to our room when I hear my name being called. I turn to find Alex following me, jogging to catch up. “Can I talk to you? Please?” I nod in response. I know I’ll probably be forced to have some awkward conversations with my teammates. I might as well start now. “I’ll be there in a little bit.” I tell Ali before turning and approaching Alex.
“What’s up?” I ask. She sighs. “How’s your leg?” I roll my eyes. “That’s what you want to talk about? My leg? My leg is fine. I have some bruises and a couple cuts that are mostly healed, but it’s fine.” She nods. “Fuck. I’m sorry. About everything. Kelley is my best friend. She didn’t tell me what she did. I still shouldn’t have allowed all of this to happen.” I shrug. “It wasn’t just you. Everyone played a part.” I turn to leave.
“She loves you, you know.” I freeze and turn to face her. “Well I don’t love her anymore. She destroyed that.” She doesn’t respond. I turn and leave, walking into my room. When I check my phone, I have a text from Kelley.
“Can we please talk? I know I don’t deserve anything, but please?” I roll my eyes. She has some nerve. I think back to what Ali said to me last night. I sigh, knowing she was right. I respond. “Fine. Ash and Ali have a date tomorrow night. Come to my room at 6.” I press send before I allow myself to change my mind. I know I have to talk to her at some point. It’s the only way I’m ever gonna be able to move on.
“What are you doing?” I watch as Kelley approaches me, predatorily. “Don’t even think abo-“ She cuts me off with a fist full of flour being thrown onto my face. I freeze, looking at her. She’s smirking, victoriously. “You are gonna regret that.” I wipe my face and grab her shirt before she can run away, taking the bowl of brownie mix and dumping it on her head.
She screams, loudly and I laugh hysterically as she crosses her arms and pouts at me, brownie mix covering her hair and face. “That was way worse than a little flour in the face.” She looks at me. I smirk. “I didn’t realize there were boundaries.” She glares at me. Then I see her eyes light up. She approaches me, once again. She cups her hand and scoops two handfuls of the mix off of her own head. “Kell, do-“
Before I know it, I have sugary batter covering my face and I’m glaring at her. She’s lucky she’s so fucking cute.
That was the first and last time I ever baked anything with Kelley.
“You’ll tell me what happens?” Ali is getting ready for her date with Ashlyn and I’m trying not to get nervous thinking about what Kelley wants to talk about. “Yea. I’ll tell you.” She’s frantically trying to decide between two pairs of skinny jeans. “I like the darker ones.” I offer. She nods. “Me too.”
After she leaves with Ash, who refuses to make eye contact with me, I only have a few minutes before Kelley will be here. I pace, nervously. This is either going to go really well or really bad. I’m afraid to find out which it’s gonna be.
I hear a knock at the door and let her in. “Hey.” She whispers as she’s walking past me into the room. I don’t respond. I motion for her to sit. She complies and looks up at me, but doesn’t say anything. I stand awkwardly for a minute, before sitting on Ali’s bed, facing Kelley.
“So…?” She starts, hoping to get the conversation started. I sigh. “What do you want to talk about?” She’s the one who wanted to talk, not me. She shrugs. “We need to be able to work together. You may hate me, but we have to be able to work around it.” I roll my eyes. “I’ve been nothing but professional.” She nods. “Yea. I guess you’re right.”
We sit in an awkward silence. A part of me wants to ask her what happened. Why she destroyed everything we had built. Another part of me doesn’t care. Doesn’t want to know. But if I don’t ask about it, I’ll always wonder what happened. I sigh.
“Will you tell me what happened? With her. Will you just tell me? Please?” I know it’s not necessarily something she wants to tell me, but the part of me that wants to know is currently outweighing the part of me that doesn’t. She raises her eye brows at me. “Are you sure?” She looks at me. I nod.
She nods back at me. “Okay.” She takes a deep breath before beginning. “You were in LA, filming an interview. I invited Ann over for dinner, like I had done so many times before. She just, she was acting so differently that night.” I look down, picking at my jeans, busying myself. “She flirted, which she’d never done in the past. She kept touching me. I didn’t go along with it, Hope. At first, I pushed her away. I let her know I loved you.”
I shake my head. She continues, “Then we had some beer, we had dinner and we talked. I don’t know how it escalated so quickly. She just, she kissed me and I kissed her back. Then we moved to the bedro-“ I cut her off. I can’t hear about this. “Okay, I don’t need to hear any more.” She nods. I look at her. “Why did you keep doing it? If you knew it was wrong, why did you do it multiple times?” She looks down.
“I..I felt, I don’t know. I felt desirable. I felt wanted. It’s not that you didn’t make me feel that way, it was just different. New.” Tears fill my eyes against my will. I keep my eyes down. “I can’t explain it. She just knew my weaknesses and used them against me. She was the initiator, not me.” I roll my eyes. “So every time you went to ‘hang out’ with her, you were actually…” I trail off. Kelley wipes her face and nods. “Pretty much.” At least she’s being honest.
I nod, in understanding. Neither of us know what else to say. I’m struggling to control the tears that threaten to escape. I glance up to see her sitting with her head in her hands. “Are you with her now?” I need to know if this has turned into a long-term thing. She shakes her head quickly. “I haven’t seen her since that night. She’s tried to contact me, but I’ve ignored her.” I nod, slowly.
“I bought a ring.” I blurt out. Her head snaps up to look at me. “What?” She says, eyes wide. “When I was in New York. The night I caught you, I had a ring. I was..I was gonna ask you to..you know.” She doesn’t respond. She just looks at me with wide eyes, that are quickly filling with tears. I look away. If I keep looking at her, I’m gonna start crying too.
“You..you had a ring?” She furrows her eye brows, tears finally escaping from her eyes. I nod, wiping my hands against my pants. “Yea.” I pause. “I had been thinking about it for months. So when I was there, I decided to buy it. I was ready.” I say, nodding slowly. I hear a sob and glance up. She’s sitting, bent over with her head down, body shaking. Her hands on her knees. “You were really going to propose to me?” She says with a teary smile. Fuck. I feel my own tears make their way down my face.
“I was.” I wipe my face, trying to blink back my tears, unsuccessfully. “I ruined everything, didn’t I?” I hesitate and bite my lips before nodding slowly. She stands and moves to sit next to me. I glance up at her, my body stiffening. “I’m so sorry.” She whispers, bringing a hand to my face, wiping my tears. She brings her other hand to my face, holding it, forcing me to look her in the eyes.
“I’m so, so sorry.” She breathes out, tears running down both of our faces. I look down, shaking off her hands. “I know you are.” I sniffle and wipe my face of the tears. She stands again and crouches in front of me. She looks up at me, sadly. She doesn’t say anything; she just looks at me. I glance down at her and I break. My body starts shaking with sobs. “I hate you.” I rasp out.
She doesn’t respond. She pulls me to my feet and envelops me in a hug. I fight her on it for a couple seconds, then I give in. I allow her to hold me. I put my head on her shoulder and cry. She’s crying too, I can feel my shirt becoming damp from her tears. Neither of us say a word, we just stand, holding each other, one last time. “You have to let me go, Kell.” I whisper.
“I can’t.” She shakes her head. I squeeze her a little tighter. Kelley isn’t the person to purposely hurt anyone and I know that. “You have to. We both have to move on.” I pull back, looking down at her. She looks at me, studying my eyes. She leans up and I meet her half way, kissing her. Lips just brushing over each other, before she deepens it. I cup her face, wiping the tears that were still falling down her face.
We both know this kiss isn’t the start of anything, but the end. It’s a goodbye to our relationship and the start to the rest of our lives. I pull away first and pull her in for another hug. “I’m gonna miss you.” She says. I know what she means. We’ll still see each other every day, but not like this. Not how it used to be. We’re teammates, that’s it. That’s all we can be.
“Me too.” I whisper in response. She pulls back and looks at me. “Maybe one day we can be friends.” She says, softly. I nod in response. “One day.” I whisper. She squeezes my hand and gives me one last glance before leaving.
I don’t move. I watch her as she goes, as she walks away for the last time. I bite my lips and sigh. At one point, I wanted Kelley for the rest of my life. I wanted to marry her, to have children with her. Now, everything she and I built together is gone. I have to start all over again. I have to move on.
When Ali finally got back from dinner, I was already in bed trying to go to sleep. It’s only around 9:30, but our game against Korea Republic is tomorrow and I haven’t been sleeping well lately. “Sorry, I didn’t realize you were going to sleep so early.” She whispers, walking around the room as quietly as she can, getting clothes to change into.
“It’s fine. I’m not gonna get much sleep tonight anyway.” She stops moving and looks at me. “It didn’t go well, did it?” I sigh and sit up in my bed. “Well I got the closure I needed.” She walks over to me and sits at the edge of my bed, next to me. “What happened?”
I look at her. “She told me a little bit about what happened, she told me she was sorry again, we both cried. Then we said goodbye.” She nods, understandingly. “How was dinner?” I ask, changing the subject. She smiles.
“It was actually really nice. We talked about everything. She really does regret how she treated you, she just doesn’t know how to apologize. We talked about our relationship and where to go from here. We both agreed that we need to commit if it’s going to work. So she asked me to be her girlfriend…officially.” I nod. “Well you said ‘yes,’ right?” She smiles. “Yea.” I smile back at her. “That’s great, Al.”