Chapter 13 #3
Only their cars remained in the car park. They both instinctively paused when they reached the midpoint between them.
“I was–”
“Would you–” They both started, before laughing.
“You first,” Keira said.
“Would you like to come back to mine for a coffee? Or some food?”
Keira’s face broke out into a grin.
“Can’t get enough of me, hey?” she asked, trying to hide how glad she was Amelia asked. Amelia blushed shyly. “Yes, I’d love to. I’ll follow you?” she said, gesturing towards her car.
“I’ll text you my address as well, just in case,” Amelia said, before stepping forward and kissing Keira gently on the cheek.
Keira quickly messaged her dad to say she was finally going out and doing a ‘club crawl’ as he’d told her. She might be back late, so she’d see him in the morning.
Amelia
Amelia unlocked her front door while Keira waited behind her.
She kicked herself for not tidying up before the game today.
She hadn’t exactly expected to bring anyone over.
Stepping inside, she flicked on the hallway light and put the keys on a hook near the door.
She kicked her shoes off like she normally did, but carefully placed them in the black metal shoe rack rather than just leave them scattered on the floor like she normally might.
Keira removed her shoes before she walked into the living room.
“Nice place,” Keira said, tone approving.
“Yeah, I like it. I’m sorry it’s such a mess right now.” Amelia apologised, as heat filled her cheeks.
“You call this a mess?” Keira asked. Amelia looked around, taking in the space in front of her.
Her cream-coloured sofas set off the dark brown of the wooden furniture.
Amelia turned on the small electric fireplace was set in the longest wall.
A television was mounted above it. The windows had rich green curtains and a green carpet matched it on the floor.
When decorating, she had deliberately created an antithesis to the hospitals where she spent so much time; she’d wanted warm, soft, and cosy, not sharp, clinical lines.
The hallway mirror had a wooden frame, the light switches were bronze plated, and the light fittings were gold.
A painting of a vase of roses hung in one of the alcoves.
Keira walked over to the few picture frames on the mantle. Picking one up, she asked, “Is this your family?”
Amelia sighed. It was an old family photo from a rare trip to the beach, when she and her sister were tweenagers.
“Yeah. That’s them.”
“You and your sister were cute kids,” Keira stated softly.
“Yeah, we were,” Amelia replied, then she left the room towards the kitchen. “Wine?” she shouted.
“What, on a school night?” Keira said with mock shock.
“Like that’s the worst thing we’ve done today.” Amelia scoffed, and then immediately winced, regretting how her words sounded.
“Ouch.”
“That’s not what I meant.” She quickly returned to the living room, carrying two small glasses of red wine. “I just meant, of the two, I think our… earlier activities, would be more scandalous than a small glass of wine. Especially after losing that game.”
“I am sorry about that.”
Amelia waved off her words, then sat down at one end of the large three-seater sofa, with her back to the armrest and her legs stretched out.
“It wasn’t just you. None of us were playing well. None of us were working as a team.”
Keira sat at the other end of the sofa, sipping her wine before carefully placing it on a coaster.
“I’m sorry things are rough with your parents,” Keira said softly.
Amelia sighed.
“They just…have high expectations.”
Keira slid further towards Amelia on the couch, picking up her socked feet as she did so and resting them on her lap. Amelia froze at the intimate nature of the action, unsure how to react. If Keira noticed, she didn’t let on. Instead, she started massaging Amelia’s feet.
“Oh, my god, that is heavenly.” Amelia rested her head back on the arm of the sofa.
“I figured between basketball and being on your feet all day, you might need it.” Keira laughed, applying particular pressure to the arch of Amelia’s foot.
“Mm-hmm.” Amelia groaned as the tension in her feet eased. She could get used to this.
“So, it’s your family’s fault you’re pathologically perfectionist?” Keira continued.
“Ha, yeah, you could say that. My parents are both doctors, pressured myself and my sister to follow in their footsteps; anything less than the top grade was never enough. You get the gist.”
“So, your sister’s a doctor, too?”
“No,” Amelia said bluntly. Tightness filled her chest as she thought about her sister. The tightness quickly changed into a sharp pain, and a rogue tear escaped.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.” Keira stopped her ministrations and placed a comforting hand on Amelia’s lower leg. Amelia sniffed and wiped away the salty tear.
“Sorry, I just don’t usually talk about it. I don’t even know why I’m talking to you about it. You’re just… easy to talk to.” Amelia admitted, her cheeks burning.
Keira comfortingly squeezed her leg, but didn’t say anything else.
“My older sister, Clara, did not cope well with the pressure my parents put on us, and to be honest, I’ve never forgiven them for that.
It makes me so angry that my parents were able to drive that wedge between us.
They would always hold me up on a pedestal to compare her to, and she resented me for it. ”
She sighed. Memories of her and her sister as teenagers, before she started her high school exams, before her grades started slipping, filled her mind.
She would tell their parents she was taking Amelia to the library, when instead they’d ride their bikes to the local reservoir and skip stones or build forts.
Whenever anyone had a problem with shy Amelia in school, Clara stepped in, and that problem soon went away.
But when Amelia, only one academic year behind, started getting better exam grades, something shifted.
Her sister didn’t take her out anymore. She barely left her room, other than when she snuck out the window.
A loud rumble brought Amelia back from her reverie, and she realised it was her own stomach.
“Hungry, are we?” Keira laughed, giving Amelia’s leg another squeeze.
“Starving.”
“Worked up an appetite today, huh?” Keira said with a wink. Amelia blushed, laughing.
“How about ordering a pizza?” she suggested, phone in hand, already navigating to the takeaway website.
Keira’s face prickled red.
“I—er…” Keira stopped speaking. Her shoulders rounded, and she seemed smaller, like she was retreating inside herself.
“It’s my treat,” Amelia said jovially, pretending she hadn’t seen Keira’s discomfort.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. I’ve been craving another pizza since our away game, but it always feels so sad to order it on your own. I’m grateful for the opportunity.” She laughed. Keira visibly relaxed as the smile returned to her face.
“What do you fancy?” Amelia asked.
“You.” Keira’s eyes blazed with desire.
The effect on Amelia was immediate. Her centre roared awake once more. But then her stomach rumbled again, making them both laugh, and the moment passed.
“Pepperoni and mushroom, please. With a stuffed crust if they do it,” Keira said, returning to massaging Amelia’s feet.
Amelia typed in the order and added a Hawaiian pizza for herself.
“Pineapple on pizza? That’s it. We can’t be friends anymore,” Keira said, jokingly pushing Amelia’s feet off her lap. Amelia laughed and defiantly returned her feet to where they had been resting.
“I’m sure you’ll get over it,” she said.
Keira playfully scowled, seemingly unable to stop a smirk appearing on her face as she returned to rubbing Amelia’s feet.
Amelia leant back on the arm of the sofa, wine in hand, and observed the beautiful woman sat opposite her.
Her eyes danced in the firelight, making Amelia’s heart flutter in a way about so much more than sex.
She couldn’t remember when she’d last had a woman over, never mind one that asked about her life and her family, massaged her feet, and happily sat in comfortable silence.
The atmosphere between them tasted like spicy honey — sweetness with an undercurrent of lust refusing to be extinguished.
Amelia put her wine down and closed her eyes, revelling in the sensation of human contact.
She jerked awake a short time later when the doorbell rang.
“I’ll get it.” Keira gently removed Amelia’s feet from her lap and stood. Amelia didn’t remember drifting off, and had no idea how long she’d been asleep for. She hoped she hadn’t snored.
The smell of pizza dough, tomato, and melted cheese wafted into the room, and Amelia’s stomach rumbled once more.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been this hungry.
She was normally so exhausted she felt more sick than hungry, and often had to force herself to eat.
But she rubbed her hands together as Keira put the pizza boxes down on the table.
Amelia opened hers. The lid was damp with grease from the cheese.
The cheese clung to the base with its delicious, stretchy strings.
She ran her finger through the threads, snapping them, and piled them on top of her slice.
Opening her mouth, she took a giant bite.
She hadn’t realised how truly hungry she was until that first blob of cheese hit her tongue.
She devoured three slices in quick succession.
She only realised Keira was watching her after she’d licked some rogue pizza sauce off her fingers. Amelia’s face tinged red.
“Sorry. I was hungry.”
“Clearly,” Keira laughed. “But don’t be sorry. I’m glad you’re enjoying it.”
“How’s yours?” Amelia picked up another slice.
“So good,” Keira mumbled from behind her hand, having already taken her next bite.
“What’s your favourite takeaway, given the choice?”
“Hmmm…when I was in America, we ate a lot of Korean food. There was a place right by our apartment. We’d walk past it after training and not be able to resist the smell.”
A pang twisted her insides. We? Who was we? A live-in girlfriend? It made no sense for Amelia to be a little jealous of a potentially fictitious girlfriend eight hours away. All they’d done is slept together once.
But then again, very little of this made sense. She couldn’t explain the hold Keira had over her. How could she immediately miss Keira’s touch when she got up to answer the door?
“Earth to Amelia?” Keira interrupted her thoughts.
“Sorry,” Amelia blushed again.
“Where’d you go?”
“Oh, I was just thinking… about what it would be like to live abroad,” she sidestepped. “I’ve never done it.”
“It’s pretty cool. I was lucky. Sonia was a relative local by the time I arrived, so she showed me around and helped me get a real feel for the place quite early on. She's the one who introduced me to Korean food. It became easy to immerse myself. It really felt like home, for a while.”
Sonia. Of course, it was Sonia.
“For a while?” Amelia asked, trying to stop getting distracted.
“Yeah. I mean, it felt less like home once college was done and I wasn’t getting any interest from the WNBA.
It would seem that sense of home was contingent on being successful, and once I graduated, I wasn’t.
I was just average, working a regular, low-paying job.
I floated around for a few years, and then my Dad was ill, so it made sense to come home.
Where I’m still average, but at least my family’s here. ” Keira laughed.
“Don’t do that.” Amelia lowered the slice of pizza that had been halfway to her mouth.
“Do what?” Keira asked, a crease forming in her brow.
“Don’t put yourself down like that. Saying you’re just ‘average’. You’re amazing,” she said softly.
Keira blushed, then, as if distracting herself, she took an extra large bite of pizza.
Amelia sat in silence and waited.
“We’ll see how this season goes before I agree with that,” Keira finally mumbled.
“Is that all you think you’re good for? Basketball?”
Keira shrugged and leant forward, closing her pizza box with two slices left in it.
“You’re good for more than basketball, Keira.
” Amelia took her hand and waited for her gaze to meet her own.
“You’re kind and compassionate and funny, and I can think of a few other …
talents… you have that I’ve recently experienced.
” Amelia tried to lighten the mood, but her cheeks heated as she spoke, and Keira’s eyes darkened.
“Wanna take this upstairs, so I can continue to show you how talented I am?” Keira asked teasingly. Amelia didn’t reply. She simply stood up, helped Keira to her feet, and led her by the hand towards the door.