Chapter Eighteen #2
Georgia turned her head, shocked.
“Too loud,” Erin continued, “too silly. Having to pretend I wasn’t serious about rugby, that it didn’t mean more to me than anything else.”
“And now?”
Erin smiled faintly and let out her breath in a long sigh. “Now it’s just a hobby.”
Georgia’s heart ached at the sadness in her tone. Everyone knew that Erin was serious about rugby and that she had serious ambitions. What it had been like to have your dreams crash and burn, Georgia couldn’t imagine.
“To be fair,” she said lightly, “you were never very good at pretending.”
“That is categorically false,” Erin said with mock outrage, setting her tea down on the table in front of them.
She dropped her voice so only Georgia could hear her.
“I spent at least three years pretending to be as straight as everyone else. And that I didn’t want to kiss you every time you argued with me at training. ”
Georgia choked on her tea.
“What?” She wiped the back of her hand across her chin, catching the tea she’d spluttered out. “Excuse me?”
Erin shrugged, eyes still fixed on the girls filming a video on the other side of the room. “You were full of opinions, all of which were annoyingly right. I found it distressingly attractive.”
Georgia blinked. “What was I even arguing about?”
That was not what she wanted to ask. It wasn't what she needed to ask, but it was the thing her brain snagged on in its panic, where it got stuck.
“Usually that I was wrong, that the coach was wrong. That you’d heard a Johnny Wilkinson interview on the radio, and he’d absolutely insisted young players should do x, y and z.”
Georgia remembered that. She groaned with embarrassment. “Jesus Christ, sorry.”
A smile tugged at the corner of Erin's mouth. “You were relentless.”
Georgia twisted on the radiator to look at Erin. She was going to regret this. Her heart beat erratically, skipping a beat as she took a breath.
“If I was so… distressingly attractive,” she said quietly, “how come you turned me down?”
“I told you,” Erin said, her voice soft too. “I was terrified. You weren’t.”
Georgia leaned back against the wall. “I was seventeen. I didn’t know I should be terrified.” She paused. She couldn’t help herself. “So, if I argued with you these days?”
Erin tilted her head. “You might get kissed for it.”
Jesus Christ on a bike. This time, Georgia really choked on the hot tea, turning away to cough out her surprise. If Georgia thought her heart was erratic before, now she basically needed a defibrillator.
Erin thumped her on the back. “You okay there?”
She didn’t sound the least bit sorry. Georgia coughed weakly and nodded. From outside, the ref’s whistle blew to start the second half. Georgia followed Erin out of the clubhouse and down to the pitch, heart still hammering.
Had she imagined it?
Except – no. Erin had definitely said it.
Cool as anything, head tilted, eyes sharp like she knew exactly what she was doing. Georgia’s chest ached with the pressure of it.
Erin wasn’t Matt. She didn’t flirt with the world and its wife. With her, that sentence felt different, aimed. Like a dart thrown straight at her ribs. Like it was meant to land. And now Georgia was walking across the wet grass, trying not to shake apart.
Erin left her before they got to Tam, who was already pacing up and down, following the action of the game. Georgia carried on towards the knot of parents further down the pitch, taking up her spot again.
She tried to breathe. In for four, out for four. It didn’t help. Her thoughts kept looping.
The woman who’d spoken to her earlier had found another scarf to wrap around herself, leaving only her eyes exposed to the cold.
“My daughter says you’re Georgia Hotchkiss,” she said after a minute.
Georgia gave her a rueful smile, ignoring her swooping obsession with Erin’s words. “Guilty as charged.”
“You play a bit, do you?”
“Sometimes.”
The other woman rolled her eyes, the gesture exaggerated enough to be seen even above her scarf. “You like an understatement, don’t you? Apparently, I’ve seen you on the telly.”
“I should tell you,” Georgia said seriously, “the camera adds ten mistakes per game.”
“Don’t be modest. The girls have been obsessed since you came down for that training session. My Ems says you’re her rugby crush.”
Georgia flushed with a kind of pride she still wasn’t used to and didn’t know where to put. She’d had more than ten years as a professional rugby player, and she still found it impossible to believe that she - Georgia - inspired that kind of admiration. “Well, tell her I’m flattered, but taken.”
They stood in companionable silence for a few seconds, watching the girls bunch up around a midfield scrum. Georgia kept her eyes on the action on the pitch, her hands tucked away out of the wind, but her own words echoed back at her louder than they should have.
Taken.
Was that what she and Matt were? They’d been seeing each other for a few months, shared wings and wine and some really great sex. He’d made her coffee, kept her from crashing out over Aegis. He was tidy, safe, easy.
She could be taken by him, if he asked.
Except, as she’d said the words, it hadn’t been Matt in her imagination. Georgia shifted her weight from foot to foot, suddenly too warm under her coat.
Next to her, Ems' mum didn’t notice. She was too busy shouting encouragement at her daughter’s team, voice hoarse with pride and the chill.
Georgia tried to follow her gaze and keep her mind on the game, let the rugby anchor her.
But her brain was already spiralling into somewhere she didn’t want to name.