Epilogue
Iris
February of the following year.
This time, during preseason in Florida, I don't go out. I'm so focused that Hades has asked the medical staff if I'm sick.
It seems impossible that almost three months have passed since the night I told Paula I loved her and nearly died of fright. Now I say it every day. Several times. And it comes out like breathing.
Derek Linden pleaded guilty to repeated harassment and document forgery. The judge sentenced him to two years of supervised probation, a permanent restraining order, and mandatory psychological treatment.
He moved to Ohio two weeks after the sentencing.
His lawyer tried to argue he was harmless since he didn't resist arrest and wasn't carrying a weapon.
The prosecutor presented six hundred and twelve photos, a hundred and forty-three blog entries, and the mural on the wall of his Ballard studio.
The judge had no doubts. Neither did I. Sometimes I remember him like a noise that stopped: you know it was there, but you don't hear it anymore.
Wesley tears across the field toward me. He's grown, and his energy wears us all out.
“Iwis! Iwis!” he screams.
I scoop him up, lift him in the air, and take the chance to smell his hair. It still strikes me as the best thing in the world.
“Boss. We've got work now. We play later.”
“Goals!”
“Goals. Exactly.”
I set him down and he sprints back to Tessa.
A few yards away, Paula reads. Hades considers us a “stable couple” and gave her permission to come to preseason in Florida. Deep down, I think she knows Paula keeps me steady. She doesn't want to risk the old Iris coming back.
Mama Celo visited last week. Three days with us in the new house we bought. The whole place smelled like tamales and chile verde. She reorganized the closets and left saying we needed to eat more because we were too skinny.
The whole team came over for lunch one afternoon. She talked for hours with Lucía in Spanish, and even Hades asked for her tamale recipe.
Practice starts. Rondos. Pressing drills. Passing. The Florida sun sticks to the skin. Tina is in great shape. Jamie wins every duel. Jade Herrera and Zoe keep building something between them on the field.
During a water break, I glance toward the sideline. Hades has her tablet open. It's not showing tactical diagrams. It's showing a player profile. Forward. Twenty-six years old. Plays for the last-place team in the league and still finished just one goal behind me.
Mireya Guerrero.
Hades looks at her profile in a strange way.
I already told her she's not coming. It's not that I'm afraid of competition, but Mireya has played at that club her whole life and her mother is the head coach.
No matter how much money they offer, she won't switch.
She told me herself once when we were together with the national team.
***
That night, in the hotel room, I stare at the ceiling.
The same strip of light I stared at last year. The same hum of the AC.
Only this time I'm not alone.
Paula is lying next to me, reading something on her phone. Her bare feet resting against mine under the sheet.
“Hey,” I say.
“Yeah?”
“Remember last year in this same hotel?”
“I remember.”
“Oh man, I hated you. I thought you were the worst.”
“I know.”
“But I used to sleep with the TV on because the quiet scared me. Every morning I'd stick a smile on my face, I needed people around me all the time, and I thought that was it. That Iris Vance's life was loud on the outside and a little empty on the inside, and that's how it was always going to be.”
“And now?” she asks, setting her phone on the nightstand.
“Now I'm in the same hotel, with the same strip of light on the ceiling. And the TV is off. And the smile doesn't fall when I'm alone, because the woman next to me taught me that silence is okay when you have someone who loves you for real… and when you learn to love yourself.”
Paula smiles and opens her arms so I can curl against her chest, and while she combs through my hair with her fingers, I think about the note I still keep.
The one she left me the first night we slept in the same bed.
The one she wrote after getting up and checking everything, then coming back to me.
“Checked the entrances. All clear. P.”
She drifts off. I hold on a little longer because I love watching her rest. She shifts in her sleep. Murmurs something in Spanish, maybe talking to her grandma. Her hand closes over my shirt, three fingers, same as Wesley did in the rocking chair that night.
A year ago I fell asleep alone with the television on and thought there was nothing in the world besides the goals in each game and the parties.
I was wrong.
There's this. Three fingers on my shirt and a note I still keep in the nightstand drawer. A kid who's about to turn three and named a dragon Pola. A grandmother in El Paso who sends me voice notes at dawn like I'm her granddaughter too. A team that loves me.
And a woman sleeping next to me who will someday be an incredible mother to someone who doesn't exist yet but already has a room in our new house.
The television is off.
The silence doesn't scare me.
And the smile stays.