Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
“Fuck’s sake, Hotch,” Rach said, as she cut into her poached eggs the following morning, spreading the orange yolk across her toast. Her soft Welsh accent always strengthened when she was annoyed. “Not this again. That woman is just…”
She bit aggressively into the toast, egg dripping off the side onto her plate.
“You’ve got Matt right here. And he seems…” She paused, chewing, and pushed her glasses back up the bridge of her nose. “Really nice, for a man.”
“That’s a strong compliment,” Georgia pointed out. “Coming from you.”
Rachel swished down her eggs and toast with a swig of still-fizzing electrolytes. “Exactly. So we don’t need to be revisiting bloody lesbians and their mind fucks the day of a match.”
Georgia pushed her eggs into the pool of ketchup on the side of the plate.
“The day,” Rachel continued, “of your first official match as El Jefe.”
Georgia winced. “I’ve told you not to call me that.”
“I’ve changed you in my phone.” Rachel shrugged.
“It’s official now, no going back.” She grinned for a moment then looked down at her plate, mopping up the last of the orange yolk with the crust of her toast. “Seriously though, G. This is a big deal. You’ve worked your arse off for it.
Don’t let old Captain Mixed Signals get in your head now. ”
Georgia sighed and set her fork down, appetite long gone. “We had one coffee.”
Rachel arched a brow. “Which you replayed for me. Word for word. Probably twice.”
Georgia opened her mouth to argue, then closed it again. Fair point.
“Eat, Georgia,” Rachel insisted. She banged the edge of Georgia’s plate with her fork, making it bump and clatter against the worktop. “You look like someone just told you the kickoff’s been moved to ten minutes ago.”
Georgia forced out a strangled laugh. “I feel like it, to be honest. And like I’m suddenly being asked to play league, not union, and I don’t know any of the rules.”
Rachel took another bite of her egg, then swallowed loudly. “Is this about the match? Or about the fact that you’ve gone all shy over Matt, not even forty-eight hours after some very enthusiastic coffee drinking.”
“I haven’t gone all shy!”
She really hadn’t. She’d answered his message right there at the café, while Erin was ‘making use of the facilities’ as she’d put it.
It wasn’t a dick pic, thank fuck. Just a screenshot of his fantasy rugby team - men’s, of course.
The lads at work didn’t know enough about the women’s game to make it a fun challenge, he’d explained.
They didn’t know enough about the men’s, either, judging by their weekly scores.
“No,” Rach said. “But you haven’t been flirting with him, either.”
Georgia groaned. Having Rachel as a flatmate was like living with an MI5-trained interrogation squad. “Can we not?”
Rachel grinned. “Oh, we absolutely can. He’s fit, funny, into you…”
Georgia sighed, but there was a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth as she forced down another mouthful of egg. She’d spent too long orbiting the idea of Erin – sharp-edged, unreachable, never interested in the first place. But Matt was here, and undeniably into her.
That was new. Not the interest: Georgia knew she wasn’t unfanciable, by any standard.
She was just not, apparently, long-term material.
Cheated on twice, ghosted once, a string of flings that always flared hot and burned out faster than they should have.
Too caught up in her rugby, they told her, too focused on the team, her place in the England squad.
It hadn’t bothered her. She was young, she was fun. She was focused. There would be time for serious later.
Now, with the jaws of the dreaded big 3-0 looming, there were twin ticking clocks in her chest. One counted down the days until her body might want something quieter, softer, maybe even a family; the other marking the slow, inevitable fade of her rugby career.
She felt herself straddling the edge between peak performance and the questions that came after: how long could she keep playing?
What came next? Was she meant to be settling down, and with who?
The way she ached after a hard match was starting to echo the ache inside, the one that whispered that time, in both love and sport, wasn’t something you could outrun forever.
So yeah, maybe she was cautious. Maybe she was trying not to sprint off the line before the whistle. But with Matt, she didn’t want to bolt. She wanted to see what could actually happen.
“Judging by what I heard Friday night,” Rachel went on, “super, fucking, up-against-the-door into you.”
Georgia made a face around her mouthful of breakfast. “We weren’t that loud.
Anyway, I’m not discussing this with you,” Georgia warned, picking up her plate and decamping to the sofa.
Rachel followed her the five steps across their wide, open plan living-kitchen-dining room and perched on the arm of the chair next to her.
“He’s fit,” Rachel repeated. “You’re fit. You’d make fit babies.” She sighed dramatically and scratched along her eyebrow. “Or at least fit brunch reservations. So don’t let her fuck it up for you.”
Georgia didn’t argue. She took another bite, scraping the last of the eggs from her plate and, despite herself, felt a little warm at the thought of Matt’s grin.
Yeah.
She liked him. More than she’d expected to.
“Come on,” Georgia said when she’d wiped the last of the orange yolk from her plate with the last remaining crust of bread. “This can wait. We’ve got a game to play.”
***
Rugby had changed since Georgia first started playing.
Back then, even England matches were played to empty stadiums, just a few of the players’ friends and family clumping together in the lower rows of the stands.
They’d tried offering women’s tickets for free to try and persuade fans to stay on after the men’s matches.
It had worked, a little, but only until people decided the crush on public transport had eased and they dribbled out of the stadium well before half time.
Today, the Westcliffe stadium was packed, all four stands sold at more than sixty percent capacity.
She could hear them, the low rumble of chatting, laughter, a few irregular whoops as a Mexican wave worked its way around the ground.
The PA system was pumping out upbeat, girly pop bangers instead of the usual masculine rock that proceeded the men’s games.
Her parents were out there, as always. They’d got their usual seats in the east stand, just four rows back. They’d been there through the transformation too, standing on muddy sidelines in the driving rain. She owed them, and their willingness to drive her to matches and to ferry her to training.
Stood at the head of the snake, just out of sight in the tunnel, Georgia shifted her weight, her studded boots clicking against the concrete.
She half-wished she could be twenty-one again with her entire career laid out in front of her.
All of it professional, with the support, training and resources that were available to the girls now.
A full club salary, international match fees, bonuses for wins and media appearances, product sponsorships.
Sure, they weren’t at the level of the mens’ teams. No-one was driving Porsches or living in mansions.
They didn’t even earn what female footballers earnt – they didn’t have the same draw, the same audience numbers – but even the academy girls could get by.
What kind of player could she have been, if she’d been starting now? If they’d had the same access to psychology and nutrition, advice tailored to women’s physiology, that they had today.
Perhaps Erin would have kept playing.
The announcer started the countdown for the teams. Next to her, Lizzie Currie, the Aegis captain, also bounced on her toes.
Aegis weren’t exactly the easiest team for her first game as captain.
They were known as one of the most tactical teams in the league - precise, careful.
Good under pressure. Great at set plays and difficult to break down.
Georgia had prepped the Westcliffe team to expect a forward heavy game: grinding, physical, hard work. The kind of match they’d struggled in all last season. Just one mistake at the breakdown and they’d lose the ball, leave an overlap for the other team to punch through.
They needed to just tighten things up, reduce the silly mistakes. Play basic rugby, like she’d told the Redford girls. Communicate.
She’d spent the morning with Maggie and the rest of the coaching staff, going over the game plan. Tweaks to their strategy. Reinforcing the ruck. Stopping the overlaps, the breakaway tries that had happened three or four times under Fleur last season.
They’d divided the team and trained in pods to absorb pressure without committing too many bodies. Georgia had run the plays in training. She'd focused on the calls, and gone over and over the tapes of their last Aegis match in between her gym sessions.
The trouble was that no plan ever survived first contact with the enemy.
She’d lain awake, trying to work out how she would translate the theory to the pitch.
Now, standing in the tunnel with her heart thudding in time with the PA countdown, Georgia wasn’t thinking about pod spacing or exit zones.
She was wondering whether her voice would hold steady when she called for the ball.
The fireworks went off on the pitch, filling the tunnel with light. Georgia took a deep breath and moved off, leading the team out in a light jog.
Riley came sprinting past her, swerving out across the pitch, arms out, encouraging the adulation of her fans. Controlling the flanker’s showboating was going to prove another challenge, no doubt.
Georgia scanned the field as the teams set up, catching eyes with the forwards, nodding to the backs.