Chapter Twenty
The night air outside the pub was bracing. A few smokers huddled together under the heat lamps, sheltering from the wind.
The cold made Georgia’s eyes water and the inside of her nose sting fiercely. She blinked the moisture away, swiping with the back of her hand. She didn’t stop walking until she’d crossed the small car park, breath rising in frantic little clouds.
Her chest ached.
Matt’s words circled in a loop in her head, ugly in their casualness. She was shorter than him, weighed less than him and fucking benched less than him. As if those were the only things that mattered.
The years of bruises, blood, selections, rejections meant nothing to him. The hours of grinding training, repeated drills over and over until they moved together just right. The mental work, the tactics, the years and years of building a career.
None of that mattered to him. None of it matched up to his local league referee qualification, and his ten years in the Redford second string.
The worst part was how easily he’d said it. Just… in the middle of everyone. Not hiding it, not thinking it through. As though he didn’t care who heard, as though he’d been thinking it the whole time.
She wrapped her arms around herself, trying to calm the buzzing beneath her skin. She’d left her coat on the back of the chair, and she'd chosen the short sleeves of her blue silk top to show off her sculpted shoulders, not protect against the elements.
She’d have to go back in soon. Signal to Tam she needed to leave. Make her pleasantries, claim her early start also meant an early bedtime.
She supposed Matt might object, try and keep her out. Try and take her home.
That idea, now, made her feel sick.
She could hear someone approaching, somewhere out beyond the cars. The steps were steady, confident, and they were heading straight towards her.
Georgia took a gulping breath.
Perhaps it was Tam, keys in hand, ready to take her home. They could go back to hers, get her interview outfit, and Georgia could flee back to the safety of Westcliffe and her flat.
God, if it was Matt…
It wasn’t either of them.
“Brought your coat,” Erin said, holding it out like a shield between them.
“I didn’t mean to just disappear,” Georgia said, sitting back on the cross bar of the car park fence. “I just needed some air.”
That was obviously a lie. She didn’t need to be skulking about behind cars if all she wanted was air.
“Well,” said Erin. “I was looking for you because I wanted to tell you something, but maybe you already know.”
Georgia laughed mirthlessly. “Yeah, I probably do.”
Erin’s jaw tightened. “He’s a dick. Always has been.”
Georgia shook her head, breath curling white in the cold air. “He’s not. Not always. He can be kind. Thoughtful.”
“Oh sure,” Erin cut in, waving Georgia’s protests away. “Kind, thoughtful, an absolute poo monger.”
Georgia blinked. The childish insult made her smile, despite herself.
“A what?”
“A poo monger,” Erin repeated, the corners of her mouth tugging into a grin. “A seller of poo. Bullshit. Crap. Piles of absolute steaming dog mess. Take your pick.”
Georgia huffed a laugh. “Yeah. Seems like it.”
Her eyes were stinging again, tears threatening.
Erin’s expression softened. “We could go for other languages, if you like. Merde. Schiess.”
“Mierda,” Georgia agreed. Her voice broke on the word, throat tight and choking. She sniffed, trying to hold back the tears. “I’m afraid I don’t know any other languages.”
A burst of laughter went up from the smoking area, drifting out across the car park.
Erin turned her head to look at them, the orange glow of the overhead streetlights sending her profile into sharp relief.
After a moment, she turned back, sat on the same fence and hunched her shoulders against the cold.
“I know that guy,” Erin said at last. “That type. Loads of them at work, hanging around rugby clubs, and I do not like them.” She sighed.
“Have you seen that video online? The one where they get like forty men to say whether they could take a point off Serena Williams? And then put them all on the court together, one by one?” She shook her head.
“It’s not just him, and it’s not just you. ”
“He liked that I was a big deal,” Georgia said, thinking out loud. “Just not if I was bigger than him.”
“Yeah. He liked the idea of you.”
Georgia’s throat closed up again. She sniffled, swallowing hard against the emotion.
“But,” Erin continued, “the rest of us?”
Georgia shifted on the hard fence, turned towards Erin. “The rest of you?”
“We knew you’d be dangerous, Georgia.”
“Dangerous?”
“Very,” Erin continued, “exceptionally. Whole different league.” Erin turned to her, lifting one leg off the ground, letting her foot swing.
“You don’t need to make yourself smaller for anyone, you know.
Especially for someone who can’t handle the shine.
There are so many people out there who would love you for that shine, not despite it. ”
It hung in the air between them.
Georgia smiled, a small tug at the corner of her mouth. “You did always have a thing for speeches.”
Erin reached sideways, wrapped her hand around Georgia’s wrist, pressing into the feathers under the waterproof material of her coat. “Only when they matter.”
The wind shifted, tugging at Georgia’s coat. She didn’t move. She wasn’t sure she could.
Erin looked at her for a long moment. “Let me take you home. Before we both freeze.”
“I can’t ask you to do that. It’s, like, forty-five minutes each way. I’ll drive myself back.”
“I’m not letting you drive,” Erin said.
“I’ve had two drinks,” Georgia protested. “I’m fine to drive.” How she’d get back to the car was another question. It was back at Tam and Ollie’s, parked up on the driveway. She’d have to get an Uber, if Uber had even made its way out to Redford.
“I’m not worried about your blood alcohol,” Erin cut in. “I’m worried that you’re holding yourself together with string right now.”
“It’s zip ties, actually.”
“Much sturdier,” Erin agreed. She squeezed the hand that still circled Georgia’s wrist, sliding it down to take Georgia’s hand in her own. Her skin was warm, soft and dry against Georgia’s own. “But I still don’t think you should drive when your hands are shaking.”
“I’ll have to come back for my car,” Georgia pointed out the obvious. “I can’t just leave it on Tam’s drive. And my interview outfit for tomorrow is locked up in her house.”
“You can,” Erin said. “It’s not going anywhere overnight.
You can get the train back for it tomorrow, the next day, next week, whenever.
” She waved her hand in the air, thinking up other options.
“Your dad could come and get it for you. I’m in the office on Tuesday; I’ll bring you back then.
You have so many options, no doubt for clothes too, and you don’t need to worry about it now. ”
Georgia opened her mouth to argue, but at Erin’s look she closed it again.
“Come on,” Erin said, tugging on their joined hands, pulling Georgia towards her car. “You can officially owe me a favour, if it makes you feel better.”
Georgia let her fingers twine through Erin’s, blaming the cold and the slow creep of Erin’s warmth. She sighed. “You know I hate it when you’re right.”
The lights flashed on the car in front of them, and Erin opened the passenger door. “Then stop making me practice.”
Georgia slid through the open door into the passenger seat, reluctantly detangling her fingers from Erin’s. She pulled the door shut and settled back into the wide leather seat. As Erin made her way around the back of the car, Georgia leant her head back and let herself breathe.
***
The car ride back to Westcliffe was quiet, an easy forty minutes down the dual carriageway, no traffic, Erin driving one-handed, the other resting lightly on the gearstick.
Her music started automatically when the car fired up, a playlist which was almost entirely guitar-heavy female singer-songwriters.
Georgia rested her head against the passenger window, watching the dark countryside blur past and letting the hum of the road dull the rough edges of her thoughts.
Erin didn’t try to talk to her, she just drove steadily, eyes on the road. Every so often, she’d adjust the heater slightly, change the volume as the song moved on. She didn’t press, didn’t ask. She just let a comfortable silence settle between them like a blanket.
As they slowed through Westcliffe's tightly packed Georgian terraces, the bubble they’d been in for the car ride popped. Georgia’s phone buzzed, with notifications from Rachel, Tam, and Matt all lighting up the screen.
Georgia couldn’t deal with any of them.
Instead, she opened TikTok, almost on instinct.
The first video made Georgia roll her eyes.
Riley Carter appeared, grinding matcha and pouring it over iced milk.
It would be more impressive if Georgia hadn’t heard Riley complain, loudly and often, how matcha tasted awful.
Like burnt grass clippings, she’d insisted.
Georgia scrolled up, flicking the video away irritatedly.
The next video was another reel from the Wyverns game, of their fullback stepping neatly around Riley’s outstretched hands and powering away down the pitch. The poster, a well-known highlights account, had captioned it simply: one of the world’s fastest rugby players.
The comments set her blood ablaze.
“Not one of the fastest rugby players,” some man opined in the top comment.
“If you include ALL rugby players, she’s not even in the top 1000.
” He’d followed it up with more comments in the replies, going on and on about “intentional social gender engineering”.
It would be easy to write him off as a pathetic internet troll. A loner, a one off.
His first comment had more than ten thousand likes.
Still much faster than you, you slug, Georgia typed out, smashing her thumbs against her phone screen.
The next comment made her grind her teeth. “They could be playing in my back garden, and I wouldn’t bother to put my shoes on to watch it.”
Georgia gave it a thumbs down. She couldn’t think of anything witty to respond except I wouldn’t bother to call the fire brigade if you were on fire, and – even in the grip of her white-hot anger and betrayal – that seemed too much.
She deleted it. Instead, she went through and started reporting all the other similar comments as hate speech and harassment.
It would do nothing - no way any of the commenters would even be told of her reports, but the petty act of blocking each one swirled like victory in her stomach.
“Okay,” said Erin, reaching out for the phone and gently prising it out of Georgia’s hands. “That’s enough, I think.”
Georgia looked up and blinked in the red glare of the traffic lights at the corner of her road. They were already back, almost at her door.
Erin gave her a tentative smile, and reached out for Georgia again, twining the fingers of her left hand through Georgia’s own.
Georgia stared at their joined hands for a long second. Erin’s hand was warm. Steady. It didn’t demand anything, it just offered something solid to hold onto.
Her fingers were longer than Georgia’s, strong and sure.
Georgia had once spent evenings picturing those hands - younger, slighter - closing around the ball in the lineout, around her wrist, her waist, curling her hair, trailing down her throat.
Back when she was seventeen and stupid with wanting, she’d spent a lot of time thinking about those hands.
She’d wanted to bite those hands.
She tightened her grip and tried to breathe like it didn’t matter.
There was a scar, small and pale, right on the knuckle of Erin’s thumb where it met the back of her hand.
Georgia remembered the night it happened, the silly, high-spirited rounds of cheering and underage bottle chinking.
The neck of Erin’s bottle had split clean away from the bottle, slicing her hand and spilling beer all down her new white shirt.
Georgia was there, right beside her as it happened. They’d gone down together to the locker room for the first aid kit, Georgia kneeling in front of Erin, swabbing her hand carefully, wrapping it in gauze and bandages.
“Thanks,” Erin had whispered, looking down. Their eyes met, and Georgia had sworn an understanding passed between them. She’d felt that connection, that mutual pull. And then she’d leant forward, pressed her lips to Erin’s, and ruined everything.
In the car, the silence closed back in.
Erin put her hand back on the steering wheel, turning into Georgia’s road, slowing as she looked for the right door. Her profile was unreadable, lit only by the streetlamp glare. Older now, of course. Softer than she had been but still carved from marble.
Erin pulled into a space behind Rachel’s car and looked at Georgia, waiting. The engine ticked over in the cold. Neither of them moved.
“Well.” Erin peered up at the towering white house above them. “Here we are then.”
“Here we are,” Georgia agreed.
There was something in Erin’s face that sent Georgia falling back in time, back to the Redford locker room, the concrete floor pressing into her knees. The wave of nostalgia and historic longing, hit Georgia hard.
She could lean in. Erin was just there, on the other side of the driver’s console, perfectly within reach.
Would it be fair, to either of them, to kiss her right now?
Georgia put her hand on the door handle. “Thank you. For bringing me home.”
Erin reached out, smoothing the wild strands of Georgia’s hair behind her ear. Her fingers were soft against her cheek, leaving a slew of goosebumps in their wake.
Georgia’s breath hitched.
“You’re welcome,” Erin said.
Georgia wasn’t seventeen anymore. She recognised outright flirting, which this wasn’t. Women had no game, but she could tell when a woman wanted to be kissed, which Erin did. She understood that someone might say “so many people” when they really meant just one.
“Do you want to come up? Have a cup of tea, use the loo?”
Erin took her hand back. She shook her head. “Thank you, but no. I’ve got to be getting back. No doubt the cat will be wondering where I’ve got to, probably labelled me as a dirty stop-out, and will act as though I’ve abandoned her when I get in.”
“You have a cat?”
“Crumpet,” Erin said. “She’s about a hundred years old, very spicy. And if you say, like mother like daughter, I will throw you out of the car.”
Georgia laughed, properly, in a way she hadn’t expected to. She opened the door, putting one foot down on the pavement.
“Give my love to Crumpet, then,” she said. “And see you soon.”
“Yeah,” Erin promised, one hand still on the steering wheel, the other draped gently over the centre console. “See you soon.”