Chapter 16
16
Two weeks. That was the amount of time Jade went without even attempting to speak a word to Franny. Seven practices, one car wash, and a team dinner. Two fucking weeks.
It wasn’t like the time before either. Where Jade had practically turned her nose up trying to avoid her. This time, she acted as if Franny wasn’t there at all—like she was a ghost that Jade could see right through. More than once, Franny had been forced to pinch herself to make sure she was still flesh and bone.
Landry hadn’t bestowed any type of coaching title on Franny yet. And while she hadn’t expected it so soon, it did frustrate her. Especially because Jade seemed to be thriving. She rarely left Landry’s side, walking along the field with her shoulders back and her head high like she was preparing for the power she just knew she was about to gain.
To her credit, Franny was gaining a certain amount of respect herself. Carr had started consulting her on the team’s offense. Asking her opinion on which kids she thought should start and what tactics she thought might benefit them most.
Franny found the man a little less than inspiring. While it was clear that he cared, Carr wasn’t as enthusiastic as he should have been. He didn’t push the players the way they needed to be pushed. In turn, the boys respected him a little less. They’d started coming to her more and more for correction and advice. She was starting to feel like a real coach again, and it felt incredible. So much so that she had no qualms about whatever this little unpaid internship of hers was.
July was nearly over, and school would be starting up soon. Not long after, they would have their first game. Franny knew that everything would come to a head then. But the buildup was starting to make her itch with anticipation. Landry had begun to hunker down more and more, keeping them later for practices and demanding they came earlier. Jade was right there with him—the first to show up and the last to leave. Every time she stepped foot on that field, she was serious about it.
Franny had no choice but to respect it. She was incredible to watch in action, that woman. She provided a strong, steady presence for the players. Landry had started to lean on her more and more. Franny had even seen her holding Landry’s playbook a few times.
She figured if, after the first game of the season, Landry didn’t let everyone know that Jade Dunn would become Greenbelt Senior High’s new varsity football coach, then he wasn’t leaving.
Even the other coaches could see that there was no other competitor on her level.
Franny just didn’t understand why Jade couldn’t see it herself. She kept telling herself that it didn’t matter, ultimately, what Jade thought or felt. The woman was hell-bent on pretending that Franny didn’t exist, so why should Franny spend any of her brain space focused on her?
It was easier said than done.
These days, it felt like she spent a great deal of time thinking about Jade. The more the other woman ignored her, the more intense her longing became. She replayed her memories of their time in the club bathroom on a loop. And more than that, she fantasized about scenarios they hadn’t been in. Not just sexual ones either. Things like cooking dinner together and going to the grocery store. She tried her hardest to keep the images at bay, but every now and again one slipped through and made her stomach roil.
She fought the urge to just walk up to Jade every time she saw her. Her time in the shower was spent creating scenarios in her head in which she had her chance to speak her mind. Franny imagined herself stopping Jade in her tracks, shaking her, forcing her to listen and understand as she relayed her feelings.
To her, it seemed so clear what those feelings were now. After months and months of trying to figure them out, all it had taken was one earth-shattering orgasm to put things into perspective.
Somewhere, somehow, among all the barbs and sneers, she’d managed to fall for Jade Dunn. The other woman was strong and competent, driven and focused. The shell she kept around her was hard as granite, but it had plenty of cracks. Franny saw it every time her gaze softened when one of the boys talked to her. She saw it in the way she’d lovingly joked with her friend at Minnie’s.
There was passion in that woman that had been locked away and was yearning to be free. The way her hands knew exactly how to caress and squeeze and flat-out please Franny’s body proved that. And Franny had wanted nothing more than to hand her own heart right over for the taking.
Now Franny stood next to Coach Carr, her arms crossed over her chest like she was trying to keep her heart stuffed inside. It was in the eighties today, but goose bumps raised along her skin. She’d caught a chill weeks ago and hadn’t been able to get rid of it since, no matter how high she cranked up her heated blanket.
A few yards away, Jade and Landry were huddled over his big blue playbook. In front of them all, the players were just finishing up their drills. They’d been at it for almost three hours, and some of the earlier parents had started to arrive for pickup. Once the last whistle was blown, half the boys threw themselves onto the ground on their backs, sweating and panting.
Franny moved onto the field to check on them. Making sure their skin, even if tired, wasn’t sallow or sunken. They all looked thoroughly exhausted but pleased with themselves. That seemed to be a running theme of everyone on the team—coaches and players alike. Spirits were high, and it was impossible not to feel the difference in the air. Everyone—including her—was determined to win. Not just the season opening game but the season itself. Greenbelt was going all out for the victory. Their victory as a collective, yes, but also the small victories everyone had to reach out and grab for themselves.
She thought about Alonzo, crying on the sidelines as he struggled with the way his team and his personal life would sometimes butt heads. A kid with parents forced to work too hard. A family dealing with the aftermath of a terrifying health scare for one of its members. How afraid he must have been; how hopeful he always seemed to remain above it all. A win would help show Alonzo that everything he fought for could be achievable, that he could accomplish great things. There were countless stories like his on their team, and each one of them was just as deserving as the next of a happy ending.
After helping guide the boys off the field toward their water bottles and encouraging them to hydrate for the hundredth time that day, she spared another glance at Jade. This time, she was talking to a parent. A father in a pair of shin-length denim shorts with a Bluetooth the size of her cell phone in his ear. Jade’s face was impassive, but her body was full of nervous energy as she talked. Franny noticed the way her clothes shifted as she moved, the way her side profile transformed with every word.
She thought of the Jade from two weeks ago, the one whose dark eyes glinted as they delighted in Franny’s humiliation. Every ounce of that woman seemed to have disappeared as she spoke to the man. Jade may have been cruel then, sure, but she’d been confident too. This version of her had her shoulders drawn inward. From the side, her face looked like she was trying her hardest not to let any hint of sourness show. The man spoke with his hands, making himself look bigger, as if he were trying to scare off a bear. Jade looked like she was staring one down.
Even if it didn’t seem like Jade was in immediate danger, it was clear that the man was being unkind to her. Franny thought about going over to have her back, to say something in her defense. But she paused, unsure if Jade would have done the same for her. It made her feel awful to even think such a thing, but maybe Jade was right.
Maybe she did need to be more brutal if she wanted to get her hands on her own little victory.
Maybe Jade was wrong, and all Franny really wanted was a bit of payback for her own pain and suffering.
Or maybe… maybe Franny was just too wounded and sad to do anything but turn away.
“You were right,” Franny said.
She and the old gals took up two tables at the little food court in the bowling alley, and Franny had just bowled a strong 120, so she was celebrating her success with a bacon double cheeseburger. “I do like her.”
Beside her, picking at a veggie burger, Charlie’s eyes went sparkly. “The girl you work with?”
Franny nodded. “Yeah, I…” She trailed off. The truth was that even through her pain, she couldn’t stop thinking about Jade. All she could see were possibilities. Lives they could have with each other if things were different. But she wasn’t ready to say all that yet. Saying it out loud would cement it in her head, and she needed this to be a safe delusion right now. So she cleared her throat and just said, “I really, really like her is all.”
The women seemed to catch her drift, nodding.
“I hate to say ‘I told you so,’ but there’s just something about working with somebody that helps you get to the nitty-gritty.” Stella seemed completely ecstatic to have been right.
Barb grunted, just as unconvinced as she had been when they’d discussed this previously. “That nitty-gritty don’t lead to nothing good. Trust me.”
“Um…” Franny eyed the older woman. “Is there a story here I’m missing? Because it already sounds like one I want to hear.”
“Oh boy, is there.” Stella chuckled around her straw.
“Hush, you,” Barb softly scolded her wife before pointing a finger at Franny, all businesslike. “I’m telling you, nothing good comes from shitting where you eat. That’s how I ended up miserable and married to some man for fifteen years.”
“I think that might have just been a delayed lesbian awakening, honey,” Charlie said with a giggle.
“Well, that too,” Barb agreed, sitting back and crossing her arms over her chest. “When I was twenty, I was the only woman welder at a factory in Georgia. There was one guy in the whole place who was decent to me. It started out innocent, we’d eat our lunches together, then we started getting together outside of work. When he asked me to be his damn girlfriend, I figured it made sense because I damn near already was. He was a miserable sod. I worked with him for over a decade and went home with him every day. It was awful. I was already miserable, and I could never get a break from it either. I think it ends up like that more times than not.”
Janet sighed. “I’m not discounting Barb’s experience, but for a different perspective, my Connie and I worked at the bank right there next to each other for three years after we got together. We moved in quick, you know how it goes, but I loved being able to spend all my time with her. When she got hired on somewhere else, I missed her every day.”
“My experience is tainted because I did it with somebody I didn’t love,” Barb said. “But I do think you should consider how messy it can get if the shit hits the fan.”
“You sure are cursing a lot tonight,” Stella scolded her wife jokingly.
“Trust me, I’ve thought about it.” Franny groaned. “I can hardly think about anything else these days.”
Barb nodded. “That’s all I’m saying. Don’t jump into something fool-headed and forget yourself.”
“So tell us how it all happened, then!” Janet clapped excitedly. “Are you going to bring her to bowling?”
“Oh, we aren’t together,” Franny said. She took a sip of her Sprite. “Actually, she still kind of hates me.”
Charlie shook her head. “I don’t understand you young people at all. She hates you. You love her. How in the hell is that supposed to work out?”
“Well, she doesn’t actually hate me. She’s just trying to convince herself that she does. I think she likes me too. In fact, I know she does.”
Five pairs of eyes squinted in her direction, and Franny purposely kept hers on her food.
“You slept with her, didn’t you?” Carmella choked the words out between chuckles.
Franny groaned, leaning in to knock her forehead against the table a few times. It was gross and sticky, but it felt almost deserved. “Yes.”
“They refuse to learn,” Barb tossed in with her grumbly voice.
“Ohhh,” Stella admonished her wife. “Don’t you remember being all young and horny?”
“I sure do,” Carmella said. “As far as sex mistakes go, this one feels pretty mild compared to the ones I’ve got under my belt.”
“Oh, girl.” Charlie snorted. “I’ve got stories for days if we want to talk about sex regrets. One time in ’87, I took a bus all the way to Topeka, Kansas, to go to a lesbian orgy in a converted barn house, and I ended up sleeping with a butcher’s wife in the back of his shop instead.”
“Here we go.” Barb sighed.
Franny’s brows furrowed. “How in the hell did you manage that?”
Charlie got a faraway look in her eyes as she recalled the tale. “Well, I figured I shouldn’t show up to the party empty-handed, so I stopped at the butcher’s to see if I could get some salami or something. The gorgeous butch woman working the counter had the most muscular forearms and she was tearing into some hunk of meat or other with a big knife, and I just about fell in love right there. It all happened so quick after that, I don’t know quite how. But the next thing I know, her old man was chasing me down the street with the cleaver.”
The group was silent as they tried to process the wild-ass story they’d just heard.
“Did you ever make it to the party?” Janet finally asked.
“Oh yes.” The dreamy look was back in Charlie’s eyes. “I ended up getting passed around like a pack of cigarettes. It was incredible.”
“You… might have me beat there.” Franny laughed. “But I’ve made plenty of bad sex decisions in my time, trust me. Just none that felt this bad.”
“Well, how good was the sex?” Janet asked.
Franny’s eyes went wide. “You’d have thought she’d pulled some acrobatic shit with the way I acted. I’ve never felt anything like it.”
“Now look at you.” Janet laughed along with the other ladies. “Crying over a few fingers.”
“Allll the fingers.” Franny groaned again.
“Oh yeah, that’ll definitely do it.” Charlie laughed even louder. “So, what are you going to do?”
“I mean… I was hoping y’all could help me figure it out.”
The table went completely silent for a few moments, and Franny began to lose hope.
“Do you want this girl, Francesca?” Carmella asked.
She nodded.
“And do you think she wants you back?”
That gave her pause. She did, she really, genuinely did believe so. But there was still doubt inside her. A small feeling that maybe whatever she thought Jade felt for her was all in her head. The last thing she wanted was to be wrong and end up looking like a creep.
Still, her gut didn’t feel like it was lying to her. She closed her eyes for a second, picturing Jade’s face. A floating head, almost comical, appeared in her mind. This wasn’t daydreaming; it wasn’t her imagination running away with her. She was replaying the mental snapshots she’d taken of every face Jade had ever made at her. Not a single one registered as full of hatred or disinterest. The last thing she saw before she shook her head to clear the picture was the way Jade had looked at her before she walked out of the bathroom at the club. Soft, longing, regretful.
That was what she’d cling to.
“Yes,” Franny finally answered. “I think she does.”
“Well then, in my eyes, there’s only one way to play it. You’ve just got to tell her,” Carmella said.
“What?” Franny’s voice was much louder than she meant for it to be.
“Love isn’t a game, girlie.” From the murmurs that sounded around the table, the rest of the ladies agreed with Carmella’s statement. “You can’t win at it. There’s nothing you can do to make someone give in to it if they don’t want to. All you can do is sit down with the girl, tell her how you feel, and hope like hell that she’s ready to jump in with you.”
“That’s…” It sounded so obvious. “There’s no way that’s going to work.”
“You’ll never know if you don’t try,” Charlie said with a shrug. “Besides, Carmella is right. The girl either loves you or she doesn’t. But it’s better to find out than spend the rest of your life wondering about it. Trust me.”
Franny didn’t have much to say to that, so she said nothing. And after a while, the conversation at the table resumed, switching to something else. Franny stayed silent. Her mind was whirring. Suddenly, those in-shower thought experiments she’d done had been rendered useless. The entire script had flipped, and she had to come up with something else.
It scared her shitless, the thought that she’d just go up to Jade and, instead of confronting her about her avoidance, confess her feelings. Could she handle another rejection? Could she handle a life spent not knowing?
Her burger became unappetizing as her stomach started doing flips. The old gals were right. Totally and completely. Whether she wanted to admit it or not, whatever game she and Jade had been playing with each other needed to come to an end. For both of their sakes. Franny just hadn’t expected that she’d be the one throwing in the towel with so much time left on the clock.