Chapter 5
Chapter Five
The morning light filtering under the chintzy curtains made Georgia regret every mouthful of gin from the night before. Even the dimness of the room was far too bright, and she rolled over, burying her face into the thin pillow.
Her hair was still stiff with the spray the hairdresser had applied to keep her curls in place, pulling and pinching in unexpected places on her scalp. Her mouth was dry, her limbs heavy, and when she shifted, a dull throb echoed in her skull.
She was almost naked, the cool sheets resting directly against the bare skin of her back and her legs. Only her knickers were still in place. She hadn’t stopped to change into her roommate-appropriate pyjamas, and she hadn’t even thrown on a T-shirt to cover her breasts as she slept.
She was in her own single bed, at least, so she hadn’t done anything too stupid.
Then, with a rush, it came back. Matt, the way he kissed her, and his maddening restraint. She hadn’t managed to do anything stupid, but not for lack of trying. And that cringey demand that he owed her one – Georgia’s face flushed at the memory.
She lifted her hands over her head and pulled the corners of the pillow up around her ears. It smelt musty, dusty, overlaid with a hint of fabric conditioner. She rolled over again, flinging a hand over her eyes.
Kill me.
The alcohol may have stopped her spiralling last night, but in its departing wake the thoughts had come back with a vengeance. Her mind kept replaying the feel of Matt’s lips on hers, the press of his body, his laugh against her mouth. He’d looked at her like she’d given him a long-awaited yes.
Georgia rubbed her eyes as the doubts slid in, sly and insistent, and her stomach roiled. It had only been borrowed romance. Tam and Ollie’s fairytale lending a little magic to her evening. A fluke of too much prosecco and old feelings catching fire.
These things could sour so easily. She’d let her imagination run wild, get way out ahead of herself. Imagining a fucking wedding, for God’s sake.
What was wrong with her?
Just because her biological clock had chosen this weekend to start ticking, didn't mean she'd forgotten that her career was time-limited too. It was no excuse to jump in feet first, eyes closed.
Matt had been up early yesterday, matching her pace for pace in their run.
She couldn’t face him. And she really didn’t want to face Erin.
She’d called her a sanctimonious prick. It had felt good in that second, when she hadn’t had to face the prospect of sharing a room with her.
Now, her steady breaths were clearly audible from across the other side of the bedroom.
Georgia decided it would be better if she left today without disturbing anyone.
She could text Tam from the car, claim she’d been called back to Westcliffe earlier for Sunday training, an extra forwards session. She would miss the planned lunchtime barbecue, but she’d also miss the awkwardness of facing the consequences of her drunken, foolish behaviour.
And she’d miss having to deal with Erin at all.
Erin, who was just an arm’s length away, curled up in the duvet on the other bed. Georgia risked a sideways glance, trying not to move too much, to wake her. Erin was on her side, facing the wall.
Erin had been cold and spiky, even by her own younger-self standards. Surely, she wasn’t still holding Georgia’s teenage competition for that starting shirt against her, all these years later.
Even through the hangover, Georgia knew that wasn’t true.
It was the other thing, the moment that had happened after their final game, alone in the locker room. Georgia swallowed against the dryness in her throat, fuzzy fur coating her teeth, the memory creeping in despite her best efforts to shove it back down.
Erin shifted, sighing, as if she couldn’t allow herself to relax, even in her sleep. Georgia watched her for a moment, her eyes scrunched up against the light. Georgia didn’t remember if she was already asleep as she’d stumbled in, or if Erin had come back after Georgia had passed out.
She should leave, let Erin sleep.
Avoid Matt.
Georgia slipped out from under the covers, grabbing the hoodie and joggers from the top of her bag.
She hadn’t plugged her phone in, so it was dangerously low on battery.
She swept everything else from the pile on the floor into the open zip of her duffel – dress, laddered tights, her Doc Martins – and tiptoed towards the door, cringing at every creak of the floorboards.
She would dress in the bathroom, wrangle her hair into something presentable.
Just as she reached the door, Georgia risked one last look back. Erin hadn’t moved, but Georgia couldn’t shake the feeling that she was awake and aware in the quiet, guarded way she always was.
With a breath, Georgia turned the handle and stepped out, letting the door click shut behind her.
The grounds of the venue were empty, as they had been the day before. The morning was bright but cold, and her hoodie was too thin to keep her warm, her breath puffing out in front of her. The weather was changing quickly, the heat of the summer leaching away into the autumn.
She crunched up the drive towards the car park, her black Audi shining in the weak sun like a mirage. She put her duffle bag in the boot and pulled her Westcliffe training coat out from the back seat. She was about to put it on when a shout from the guest house stopped her.
“Hey!”
Georgia lowered the hatch of the car boot and turned to face Erin. Unlike Georgia, Erin wasn’t squinting against a hangover, and she’d taken off her makeup the night before. There was no smudged eye liner, no crazy spikes of hair.
She looked great. It really wasn’t fair.
“Morning.” Georgia fought to keep her voice level and her face as neutral as possible.
She hadn’t forgotten the last thing Erin had said and the way she’d sneered as Georgia leant against the bar.
She hadn’t forgotten her own response, either.
The way she’d reached immediately for the nuclear button without thinking.
That hurt was still fresh despite the intervening years.
Georgia fought to keep her eyes on Erin’s face, to stop her gaze drifting to the visibly pebbled nipples under Erin's thin sleep shirt.
Erin's feet had been pushed into big Chelsea boots without socks and her long, tanned legs were bare right up to the hem of her pink and red heart-patterned shorts.
Georgia swallowed roughly. This was not the time to be distracted by boobs, by the muscled length of a pretty girl’s thighs.
Firstly, she was incredibly hungover. Secondly, she had spent the night kissing Matt Mitchell.
And thirdly, and not at all unimportantly, said pretty girl did not like her.
She had not liked her since they were teenagers and Georgia had combined an awkward coming out with a confession of fervent infatuation.
“I’m sorry.” Erin pulled Georgia from her thoughts, arms crossing defensively against the cold. “For what I said to you last night.”
Georgia blinked. Of all the things she’d expected Erin to run after her to say, that wasn’t it.
“I’d say it was okay,” Georgia started, “but… that wasn’t cool.”
“I know, I know.” Erin at least had the good grace to look embarrassed.
“Not cool of me. It’s just, I had a breakup recently.
” She laughed at herself. “Well, I say recently.
Eighteen months ago. She was cheating on me, in my own bed.
And then last night I was drunk, and you and Matt were getting friendly, and I thought ‘here we go again'.”
Georgia took two pieces of information from Erin’s confession - firstly that her fantasy of revenge fucking on Erin’s sheets was suddenly much less sexy than it had been the night before.
“Yeah, that sucks,” Georgia said. It did suck. It always sucked. It made you feel crazy, paranoid, searching for proof, reading into tiny hints. Georgia had been there.
Secondly, and more perhaps importantly - though she didn’t want to think too closely about why it was more important – she’d said, “she was cheating”, and that’s where Georgia got stuck. Those three words blew apart everything Georgia thought she knew about Erin.
Erin was queer.
It made sense of the way she’d leant into the photographer last night. The suit she’d worn made sense. The knowing look in Tam’s eye as she’d teased Georgia made sense. It threw their history into a totally different light.
“Real shitty behaviour,” Erin agreed, shrugging. “Doesn’t excuse me being a shit in return though, does it?”
“No, but, well -”
Erin interrupted her. “And it makes this next bit even more awkward.”
What could be more awkward than this conversation?
Georgia’s stomach did a sick little tumble. She couldn’t look at Erin. Not when all she could see was the twisted face of teenage disgust as Georgia blurted out a confession she shouldn’t.
She’d carried that rejection, the feelings it had churned up, around like a scar.
All these years, she’d let it shape her, and now Erin was going make a joke of it. You know how I said you were wrong and unnatural? Well, turns out me too!
No, she wouldn’t say that. Tam said Erin had a heart of gold, and Georgia generally trusted Tam’s judgement.
“Because, I wanted to ask…”
Maybe Erin was going to ask her for an autograph or tickets to a game.
A favour she thought a professional rugby player could give a grassroots coach.
Maybe she'd ask to be set up with fucking Riley Carter - the team’s flanker, show off, social media star and all-around womanizer.
Georgia grit her teeth. Yeah, that would be the worst.
Erin scuffed the gravel with the toe of her boot, raking a dark dirt path in the neat stones. “…if you’d come down the club and see my girls sometime, maybe give them a talk, you know?”
Georgia blinked again. Somehow, that request hadn’t occurred to her as an option. It was much, much better than being asked for Riley’s number.
Erin mistook her silence for hesitation, and ploughed on, words tumbling out faster than Georgia could make out.
“The girls are so good, and they work so hard, but the club still puts more resources into the boys, you know? Into the men. We don’t even have an adult women’s team - not that I haven’t tried - and it’s almost impossible to get the level of sponsorship that the guys do.
” Her frustration at the inequity shone clearly in her face.
Georgia remembered that look well. Erin's drive and frustration had propelled them to victory before, when they were teenagers, and Georgia didn’t doubt it would do so now.
“We take their old tackle pads, their old cones, take the soggiest, boggiest pitch every week. We have to share locker rooms with the opposing team because the boys are in the others. And if we have a female ref, well, she has to be in with us too.”
Erin paused for breath, and Georgia took her chance.
“Woah,” she said into the space, holding her hands up. “Yes, sure. Of course.”
Erin had obviously been preparing the speech in her head, imagining how hard she’d have to work to convince Georgia. “I just think it’d be great for them to meet someone who started where they’re starting, and who’s made it all the way…”
“All the way to the F-B-I,” Georgia said, in her best Hannibal Lecter impersonation.
Erin’s earnest expression broke into confusion. “You sure?”
“Really sure.”
Erin looked at her, at the car keys in her hand. “You running away?”
Georgia shook her head. “I have training.”
“Sure you do.” There was no malice there, no sharpness. Erin squinted like she was trying to figure out Georgia all over again.
“I just…” Georgia forced a shrug. The movement made her head jar and she winced. “I just I didn’t want to make it harder than it had to be…”
Erin exhaled sharply. “Yeah, that sounds like you.”
It wasn’t an insult. It lacked any bite in tone or any hint of disappointment. But it wasn’t not an insult either.
Georgia put her hands to her face and rubbed at her eyes until colour bloomed behind them. There was still a thorn in Erin’s side. Even after apologising, she couldn’t stop herself needling Georgia.
Georgia knew exactly what it was. The turn of phrase pricked at an old wound she didn’t need to reopen.
“When do your girls train?” she asked, bringing them back to their one safe topic.
“Tuesdays and Thursdays."
Georgia nodded.
“Saturdays, most weeks.” Erin was cold, hugging her arms ever closer around herself.
She’d obviously run after Georgia as she heard her leave.
She hadn’t wasted time getting properly dressed, or grab any kind of clothing.
Perhaps she’d lain there, working up the courage to apologise, to ask for a favour.
Perhaps she’d been awake the whole time, waiting for her moment, aware as Georgia crept from the room, tits out and hair messed.
Georgia sighed, making her decision.
“Here,” she said, holding out her training coat. It was in the club's black and blue, the Westcliffe crest on the left breast. “It’s freezing to be out here in just that.”
Erin didn’t move to take it.
Georgia shook it at her, impatient. “Here,” she said. “Before you freeze to death.”
“Thanks.” Erin reached for it, her fingers brushing Georgia’s.
Heat shot up Georgia’s arm. A stupid, involuntary flush that had nothing to do with the cold.
She tried to ignore it and focus on the practical motion of closing the car boot, but Erin’s fingers lingered.
They stood for a moment, Erin sliding the coat around her shoulders, both working out what to say next.
“So,” Georgia started. “Shall I take your number then? Let you know which session I can make?”
Erin nodded. “Sure, great. Want me to punch it in?”
Georgia handed over her phone for Erin to type her number in and watched in silence for a moment. It suddenly buzzed in Erin’s hand, the chime of a message notification breaking the quiet between them.
Erin’s face twitched with disgust before smoothing.
“I’ll just call myself,” she said, “so I have your's too.”
She handed back the phone already locked, and Georgia saw the message preview was visible on the screen.
Unknown number
So, when shall I pay that debt?
Unknown number, but not an unknown sender.
Georgia shoved the phone deep into her tracksuit pocket. So much for rejection in the cold light of day.
Still, she could make her escape before the morning could get any more awkward.
“Alright, then,” she said to Erin. “I should go and see Tam, say my goodbyes. Text you soon.” Georgia turned on her heel and, as she'd done back when she was fifteen, practically ran away.