Chapter 29
The plane just landed!
I’ll meet you outside the terminal after I grab my bag!
Frankie tapped her fingers against her steering wheel and hummed along to one of the songs on the playlist Jules made for her.
It had become the only thing she listened to whenever she drove and to her surprise, new songs she didn’t know were always popping up which meant Jules had been continuously adding to it.
Her car idled at the edge of the airport pickup area and she glanced at the clock, hoping Sydney would pop her head out of the door any moment before airport security rushed her along for taking up space.
She wasn’t typically the ‘I’ll give you a ride to and from the airport’ kind of person, but she was willing to make an exception.
When Sydney said she had a break in her season while her European teammates went off to international camps and wanted to spend her time in Halifax, Frankie was thrilled.
So now she was here, waiting to pick up her best friend after close to eight months without seeing each other.
So much had happened in that amount of time and a person could only convey so much over FaceTime and text.
But Sydney knew the basics. She knew who Jules was, knew how Frankie felt about her, but she didn’t know that things had progressed… a lot.
And when it came to work, well, Frankie had been apprehensive about sharing the extent of criticism she’d been facing. Sharing it with Jules was hard enough but Jules was there to watch it happen. Admitting it to Sydney would mean truly admitting to herself that affected her as much as it did.
The way her own players spoke about her made Frankie feel a weakness she didnt want to acknowledge.
She couldn’t be weak, not in the world she was in, not when her job was what it was.
Showing weakness, even hinting at it, gave people even more of a reason to dig their claws into her and the work she cared so much about.
A knock on her passenger side window startled her and Sydney waved. Frankie smiled and hopped out of the car. Sydney dramatically flung herself into Frankie’s arms and she stumbled back with an oomph, hugging her best friend in return.
“Oh dear friend,” Sydney wailed. “It has been far too long since we last met like this.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Frankie said with a laugh, patting Sydney on the back. “I missed you too, buddy.”
The drive back to town from the airport was quick and within thirty five minutes, Frankie was tapping her key fob on the pad outside her door and leading Sydney inside.
“Wooooow. Nice digs, Frank.”
“Please don’t call me Frank.”
Sydney spun around and put her hands on her hips.
Her brown hair spilled from the low bun at the base of her head and her toque sat crooked.
She looked like the quintessential queer female hockey player, right down to the pair of Nike dunks on her feet which wasn’t exactly the appropriate choice of footwear for winter in Sweden or Halifax.
“I’ve been calling you Frank for years.”
“And I’ve been asking you not to call me Frank for years.”
Sydney waved her off and tugged the hat off her head. She walked to the large windows and then crossed her arms and admired the view, which to Frankie was the best feature of the whole condo. She’d never had a waterfront view before and it wasn’t lost on her how lucky she was to enjoy one now.
“Nice, right?” She joined Sydney by the window and looked down at a large cargo ship cruising along the water. “Prime real estate.”
“I live in a flat above a corner store with one of my teammates,” Sydney said, bumping her shoulder against Frankie’s. “Anything is fancier than that.”
“Yeah, well, there are pros and cons to living in a place like this.”
The pros? The view, the accessibility to everywhere in town, including the rinks, and then of course there was Jules. Had it not been for them living in the same building, their relationship likely wouldn’t be what it was and that made the place perfect.
The con? Her next door neighbour was Cameron Clarke and it meant they never did more than sleep when Jules stayed at her place. They didn’t dare risk him overhearing anything intimate between them because that would definitely complicate things even more.
“Jules…her uh…her brother lives next door.”
Sydney scoffed and turned around to stare at Frankie, mouth agape and eyes wide. “So you’re telling me that the captain of your team and the brother of the girl you’re…dating…shares a wall with you? Yikes.”
The emphasis on the word dating didn’t sit well with Frankie. Not because she didn’t want to be dating Jules, but because they hadn't given a name to what they were. They were undefined despite the way her heart felt.
Frankie considered Jules to be more than just someone she was dating. Jules was her…Jules. Jules was the first person she thought of when she woke up and the last person she saw before falling asleep at night.
She wanted Jules to be her girlfriend, and while the thought had already crossed her mind once or twice, she knew it now for certain. Ever since they’d met in the gym that day, it had only been Jules.
But then there was the whole Cameron situation and Frankie was so unsure of how it was going to play out, so worried that she’d be the one to cause a rift in the biggest and most important relationship in Jules’ life.
Knowing the past, the way her previous partner resented the relationship Jules had with her brother, Frankie wouldn’t forgive herself if she came between them in a negative way.
It all felt so much harder to navigate now that things were so real.
“Ha, yeah…not exactly an ideal set up but it is what it is.”
The following day Frankie brought Sydney to the practice rink and gave her the tour. Despite Sydney’s best efforts, some of which included bribing Frankie with Swedish candy, Sydney was not allowed to borrow a pair of skates and join the guys for a scrimmage.
“Syd, there’s a game in two days,” Frankie said when they were in her office so she could gather notes and load up plays on her iPad.
“You really shouldn’t even be here watching practice today but Neil told me it was okay since you’re a professional hockey player too and you came all this way for a visit. ”
So Sydney stood off to the side of the rink, watching with intense curiosity and Frankie knew she was studying her, knew she was keeping track of the way players reacted to her coaching calls, paying close attention to the guys who listened and who questioned her decisions and talked back.
Frankie wasn’t naive to the fact that some of the other coaches gave a few players a pass but the conversation she’d overheard a few weeks earlier had seemingly made its way to on ice performances. Frankie knew Sydney saw it when Cameron shoved one of his teammates.
It would’ve been okay, something easy enough to shrug off as a slight disagreement about a play or a missed pass, but the little shove from Cam grew into a full on brawl between him and one of the three players who seemed to have an issue with Frankie as their coach.
They wrestled against the glass, shouting at one another, and it took four other players and the goalie coach to pull them apart.
They were supposed to be a team and right now, they were so far from it.
From across the rink, Frankie met Sydney’s eyes and she no longer saw the point in keeping the issue to herself, because it had grown into more than she could manage on her own.
“Why are men such fucking dicks?” Sydney stretched her legs out and propped her feet up on Frankie’s coffee table.
She brought a slice of pizza to her mouth and took a big bite, speaking as she chewed.
“You’re a woman, who cares? They wouldn’t have hired you if you weren’t good so like… what’s the big deal?”
Frankie heaved a sigh as she tossed pizza crust into the box on and fell back against the couch cushions. She rubbed her temples to ease the tension of a brewing headache.
She didn’t have any answers and all she could do was show up and do her job to the best of her abilities. She didn’t even know what was said that made Cam react the way he did but it definitely wasn’t a compliment to her.
“And Jules knows about this?” Sydney raised an eyebrow and took a swig from a bottle of beer. “What does she think?”
“Jules wants me to go to our head coach and tell him what’s going on. I’m sure he’s got some ideas after the show those guys put on today but I refuse to go crying to the person that's basically my boss because I’m a girl and a boy hurt my feelings.”
That wasn’t the case, Frankie knew that, but simplifying it made it easy to rationalize. She was a coach and the athletes she worked with were supposed to respect her. How was she meant to coach them if they didn’t?
At the same time, the team’s power play had improved and unless the problems behind the scenes impacted that, it wasn’t worth the effort or the headache she got from thinking about it.
“Well, shit. I guess everything isn’t all sunshine and roses in the big leagues, eh?”
“You’re telling me,”
“But you love it? Despite all the bullshit?”
Frankie gave it some thought, but it didn’t take much deliberating.
She’d spent her entire career working towards where she was now, even if the path didn’t look the way she once thought it would.
So, yeah, she still loved it despite the bullshit but if she had it her way, things would be a lot easier.
If only life was as smooth as a freshly flooded sheet of ice.
“The only thing I’d rather be doing is actually playing hockey but we both know my leg is fucked so that'll never happen again.”
“Then there you go.” Sydney tossed a pillow at her head and grinned. “I’m proud of you, Frank. We’ve come a long way.”
Rolling her eyes, Frankie caught the pillow and threw it back. “Don’t call me Frank!”
“I’ll call you whatever I want considering I crossed an entire ocean to be here right now. Don’t be ungrateful.”
“Me? Ungrateful? You get a free ticket to the most popular event in town while you're here. You better start calling me coach.”
Sydney batted her eyelashes dramatically and scooted closer to Frankie on the couch. “Does Jules call you coach?”
“Ew.” She shoved Sydney away but they broke into a fit of laughter and it brought Frankie back to the room they shared in college, when life was easy and all they had to worry about was keeping their grades up, playing good hockey, and impressing girls at parties.
But Frankie had impressed the only girl that mattered and as if she’d known Frankie was thinking about her, her phone buzzed in her back pocket.
“Is it your girllllllllfriend?”
She blushed and pushed Sydney away again then pulled her phone out and smiled to herself at the message on her lock screen.
Jules – 6:15PM
Can I see you tonight?
Frankie always wanted to see Jules, that was never a question, but she hadn’t seen Sydney in nearly a year, and getting time to hang out with her best friend was something she wanted and needed to cherish.
But an idea popped into her head that she didn’t question and she fixed her eyes on Sydney.
Her best friend and the woman she was dating…the two people who meant more to her than anyone else – she wanted them to be friends.
The thought of it filled her with warmth and having them both in her life, having them both at the game, was something she hadn’t allowed herself to consider as a possibility until now.
She wanted Sydney to know why Jules had captured her heart, and she wanted Jules to know why Sydney was such a good friend, why they’d stayed close despite their distance.
Most of all, she wanted to look into the stands and see people there to support her. It had been a long, long time she actually got to do that.
"Do you want to grab a drink and meet Jules tonight?"