Hard to Beat

Chapter 12

Chapter Twelve

The café Erin had suggested was tucked away down one of the side roads in Redford.

It was in an old, converted carriage house, and the owners had left the walls bare of plaster, relying on the aged red bricks for warmth and cosiness.

The tables and chairs were mismatched, a combination of old kitchen furniture and school cast-offs, and it gave the place a deliberately unplanned atmosphere.

The café was busy, groups of women laughing, chatting amongst themselves, rocking pushchairs backwards and forwards with one hand, with a distracted foot.

There were several families, kids tucking into child-sized portions of bacon sandwiches, and dads with huge fry ups.

There was a young couple clearly on a first date: she was laughing daintily at whatever he said, while he tucked into a stack of pancakes larger than her handbag.

Georgia found a table for two next to the large, arched windows, and watched the crowd while she waited for Erin. The session with the Redford girls had gone well.

Really well, if she was any judge.

They’d listened to her, followed her instructions carefully, and the difference in their precision and communication was obvious.

If they kept calling like that in actual games, Georgia didn’t doubt they’d be hard to beat.

Communication, like Maggie had told her, was the hill teams thrived or died on.

It was what had gone wrong last season for Westcliffe.

It would be something she’d have to fix this season, and work on through the early games.

But Westcliffe wasn’t a group of schoolgirls, eager to soak up her advice without question.

They were professionals with ingrained habits and egos of their own.

Georgia thought it had gone well with Erin, too, though that was harder to judge. There’d been no snarky comments or backhanded compliments. They’d worked well together, with Georgia laying out the drills one by one, and Erin keeping the individual personalities in check.

Georgia jolted out of her memory as Erin herself crossed the café.

Her hair had come slightly loose from its short ponytail, strands curling gently around her face, softening her otherwise frankly quite formidable expression.

She put the tray down on the table, passing the coffee across.

There was also one enormous slice of cake.

“Carrot cake!” said Georgia. “My favourite.”

“The cake here is always great,” Erin agreed.

“Properly indulgent.” She picked up the forks from the tray and handed one across to Georgia.

Then she blinked, and a burst of nervousness crossed her face.

“I only bought one because I’m conscious you have a game tomorrow and are probably on a strict nutrition programme, but I can always get another? ”

Georgia shook her head. “I am always on a nutrition programme,” she confessed. “But, you know, we’re in our pre-game carb-loading era today. Pancakes for breakfast, then it’ll be pasta for lunch and probably chicken and rice for dinner.”

Erin grinned, digging a forkful out of one end of the rectangular slice. “Well.” She inspected the sponge mix, holding it up to the light. “This definitely counts as vegetables.”

Georgia laughed. “That’s what I’ll tell the team nutritionist, anyway.”

“I’m sure she’ll agree with me,” Erin said, taking another forkful. “But I guess that’s why you pros look and play as good as you do.”

Georgia broke off a corner of cake with her own fork, watching the cream cheese icing ooze as she pressed. She felt it before she saw it, that prickling sensation down along the exposed skin of her arms. She looked up from the cake, just a quick flick of her eyes.

Erin was watching her, her own fork dangling in mid-air. Her gaze wasn’t on the cake. It wasn’t even on Georgia’s face - it lingered on her mouth.

Heat flared low in Georgia’s belly. She knew what desire looked like, knew what it felt like to be looked at with interest. But this was Erin, so she must be wrong.

Georgia shifted in her seat, suddenly aware of the way the collar of her quarter-zip fleece clung to her neck. She didn’t know what to do with this.

She’d imagined it, way back when. God, how’d she’d imagined it.

It had been her favourite daydream, her night-time comfort.

She’d played it out in her head so many times.

How Erin would look at her, how her mouth would crease into the barest hint of a smile.

How her eyes would soften as she leaned in, and the smell of her shampoo - fresh and floral - would engulf them, and Georgia would back up against the wall, against the locker door, against the wall of the clubhouse, against the cushions on the rugby posts.

Georgia swallowed the cake, her throat suddenly dry. She felt exposed under that gaze, as though Erin might somehow be able to see directly into those memories and take offence.

Outside, a car honked. A kettle hissed behind the counter. The young couple on the date scraped their chairs back, getting ready to leave. But for Georgia, the world had narrowed to a single, razor-fine point of tension.

There must be something she could ask, some way she could break the tension that had sprung up between them. “Didn't you want to keep playing yourself?”

Erin shrugged. She picked up her coffee and sighed before taking a sip. “I did, for a while. Uni, county, even had a trial for England under 21s. Then I took a heavy tackle, did my knee.” She rubbed her leg unconsciously, reliving the old injury.

Georgia watched her. The light from the window highlighted the different browns in her hair, the way it faded to almost copper in places. It caught Georgia off guard, how much she wanted to reach out, to brush the loose strands back from her face. “That must have been hard.”

Erin gave a wry smile. “Yeah. But it wasn’t the injury that stopped me playing - bones heal after all. I lost my confidence and started to flinch. I panicked when someone ran at me.”

Georgia had seen it before. Cricketers called it the yips.

Gymnasts called the loss of confidence the twisties - a sudden inability to tell which way up in the air you were, how quickly you had to rotate to land properly.

Georgia had seen hookers suddenly unable to throw a straight line out, usually reliable kickers struggle with even the simplest conversions.

“When I couldn’t play anymore, I gave up altogether. Didn’t watch it, and I didn’t stay in touch with any of the girls.”

Erin’s voice was steady, as though she’d rehearsed this story a hundred times and was only now letting it out. She was vulnerable in a way Georgia had never seen her.

Georgia’s chest tightened in sympathy. “How did you end up back with Redford?”

Erin shrugged. “I got a job. In Westcliffe, actually.”

“That’s quite a commute,” Georgia said. Matt had complained about traffic on his way up last night, and Westcliffe town centre was notorious for roadworks and delays.

“Ah,” Erin dismissed her with a wave of her hand.

“Forty-five minutes isn't too bad. I listen to audiobooks, the radio. Gives me time to switch off.” She took another sip of her coffee.

“But, yeah. I was here, I was lonely, and then I bumped into Tam in the supermarket, and she basically forced me into helping.”

“She’s like that.” Georgia let herself smile fully at the thought of Tam’s irrepressible talent for adopting people, whether they wanted to be or not. “I think she was a sheepdog in a past life: always herding up the strays.”

That sounded harsher than she was intending. Georgia glanced up, waiting for the snarky rejoinder, the cutting wit Erin was so good at. Instead, Erin returned her grin.

“Wow,” she said, over-emphasising the o. “And here I was, congratulating myself for thinking we were getting on.”

Georgia put her latte down on the table. She shifted in her seat. “I didn’t mean…”

“I’m teasing,” Erin reassured her. “When Tam asked, I was all set to say no. Say I was too busy. But then, on my drive to work the next morning, I realised I’d rather be involved somehow, on the outside looking in than pretending it never meant anything.”

Georgia nodded slowly. She understood that better than she wanted to admit.

Erin set her fork down on the plate with an audible click. “I can see why they've made you captain. You were good with them, a real leader.”

“They’re just keen.” Georgia brushed off the compliment. “They’d listen to anyone with a whistle and clean boots.”

“No,” Erin replied, her voice quiet but firm. That tone had always carried weight with Georgia. It inspired confidence, built belief. It almost hurt to know it still worked on her. “They listened to you.”

Georgia didn’t know what to say to that, so she cradled the glass mug of her latte, letting the heat bleed out into her palms, and looked away for a moment. Outside the window, a boy on a bike skidded past, followed closely by his friends, calling to each other and laughing.

“I used to look up to you like that,” she said without thinking, then immediately regretted it.

She hadn’t meant to go there so soon, if at all.

On the short drive over from the clubhouse after the session she’d told herself, convinced herself, that they could have an easy coffee.

Catch up, talk rugby. Skim over their history, pretend to be old friends.

Erin blinked, startled, but didn’t look away. “You know… That night, in the clubhouse…”

Georgia picked up the long spoon from the saucer and stirred her coffee even though there was nothing in it to stir. Her pulse thrummed in her ears. “We don’t have to—”

“We do.” Erin was firm again. “I knew you liked me.”

Georgia froze, spoon stopped against the glass wall of the mug. “You did?”

“You weren’t exactly subtle,” Erin said. She sounded almost fond, like it was some treasured memory. “And, for what it’s worth, I found it very cute.”

Georgia gave a short, incredulous laugh. That did not tally with her memory, at all. “Cute,” she echoed. “Yeah right.”

Erin winced. “Okay, maybe not the word you were expecting. But I mean, God, Georgia. I didn’t hate it.

Having you, this incredible rugby player, who everyone knew was going all the way, hanging on my every word.

Looking at me like that whenever I ran a drill, whenever I called the next play.

I didn’t laugh about it behind your back.

I thought about it, more than I should have. ”

“You didn’t seem like you thought about it,” Georgia said, the bitterness slipping through before she could catch it.

“I know,” Erin fiddled with the napkin in front of her, folding it along the diagonal, smoothing the creases with her fingertips. “I was awful to you. You were brave, and I was terrified. Of myself, mostly. Of what my life was going to be like if I admitted it. And I made that your problem.”

Georgia stared down at the dregs of her coffee. “I thought I’d imagined it between us. That I’d made it up, projected my own feelings, misread everything.”

“You didn’t.” Erin’s voice was soft now.

She unfolded the napkin again, pressed the curling corners down into the tabletop.

“I panicked. I was going to uni, Mum and Dad were moving. I thought I’d never see you again.

That with a fresh start, I’d be normal. The world was a different place then.

And I knew what it was going to go down like at home. ”

There was no defensiveness, no excuses. Just the truth, as Erin had seen it then. Georgia hadn’t, in all the intervening years, thought that fear had driven that moment between them.

She had always taken the rejection at face value. She'd always accepted that Erin wasn’t queer, just as she’d spat at her. Georgia had believed for a long time that she was made wrong, had something twisted inside her. It had been a wound, festering.

It hadn’t occurred to her that it might be festering inside Erin, too.

Erin looked up from the napkin. “I didn’t allow myself to think about girls at all, let alone you.”

Georgia looked up, met her eyes. “You made me feel like I was stupid.”

It had taken years for Georgia to come out to anyone again. It had taken the atmosphere at Westcliffe, and Rachel’s unwavering friendship, for Georgia to feel comfortable enough to own her bisexuality openly.

“And I’ve regretted it ever since.” Erin’s voice was choked.

Another couple sat down at the table beside them, chatting brightly over their tray of coffee and cake. The cutlery clattered as they set the table, and the scrape of their chairs broke the tension between Erin and Georgia.

Georgia swirled the dark remnants of her coffee in the mug. “I used to think I hated you for it.” Her voice stayed steady, despite the way her heart was rattling in her chest.

Erin’s eyes dropped. She reached for her cup, then set it back down without drinking. “Didn’t you?”

Georgia hesitated. “I suppose that I…”

Had she hated Erin?

She’d been hurt, for sure. She’d retreated, closed and bolted the closet door. But had she hated Erin for her rejection?

Hated herself, more like.

“Because,” Erin said, “I really always regretted the idea that you might.”

She leant across the table, her hand reaching for Georgia. Just then, right before their fingers touched, Georgia’s phone buzzed on the table, lighting up with a message from Matt.

Thanks for last night, said the preview. Almost immediately another message came through, the preview notification folding into a tiny camera icon.

Oh god.

He better not be sending her dick pics while Erin was there, right opposite her, open and vulnerable. Heat raced up the sides of her neck, spreading across her cheeks. Even her ears were burning with potential deadly embarrassment.

She pulled the phone off the table into her lap, shoving it into the pockets of her tracksuit bottoms. This was the second time in as many weeks that Matt had timed his texts to most precisely interrupt her conversations with Erin.

“Well, then.” Erin sat back in her seat, crossed her arms across her chest. The openness, the confessional atmosphere had evaporated.

“Erin…”

Erin’s eyes flicked up. They were dark now, their expression closed.

“You’ve got a game tomorrow,” she said. “You probably need to get home.”

“Yeah.” Georgia deflated. The agreement felt like a lost opportunity. They’d been on the edge of something, about to finally close a decade old wound. “Got about three bowls of pasta waiting for me.”

Erin gave her a tight smile and stood, wiping her hands on her trousers. “Thank you again. Today meant a lot to the girls.”

“Yeah.” That was all Georgia could manage: vague, bland agreement.

She didn’t hear a single word of her podcast the whole way home.