Chapter Thirty-Eight
They’d done it.
She’d done it. Almost.
The eighty minutes was up. As soon as the ball went out, the game was over. All the time the ball stayed within the lines, the game continued. She could still lose.
Forge had their hands on the ball and weren’t letting it die. They passed it quickly, hand to hand, down the left wing.
They wrong-footed Jess Carter, then Rachel.
Georgia sprinted on an intercept, pushing her tired legs to their limits.
The Forge player faked a jink right and Georgia overshot, stumbling.
She threw an arm out, her fingers catching her jersey and holding on.
She felt the muscles in her shoulder stretch as she swung round, her back protesting, the grass rushing up towards her face.
The Forge girl stumbled too, the dead weight of Georgia’s fall slowing her sprint, unbalancing her next steps. Georgia grabbed her arm with her free hand and pulled. The momentum of their run, of Georgia’s fall, sent them twisting, turning, falling together, a jumble of legs and elbows.
Georgia collided with the heel of the other girl’s boot, hitting the hard moulding with her cheek.
Head spinning, Georgia rolled away, scrambling to her feet, ready to reset, to jackle, steal the ball and punt it wide into the stands. Between the legs of the opposition player, she saw the white line of the pitch edge, the ball already out of play.
The match, and the season, was over.
Georgia bent, resting her hand on her thighs, adrenaline and disbelief crashing through her.
Kamsi was there first, tackling her from the side in a flying hug, then Jess, Sam, Riley, the team collapsing in a heap of laughter and tears.
Georgia let herself be folded in, swept up, cheered and shouted for.
For a minute, she let herself float in it, this moment of being enough.
As they broke apart, everyone peeling off for a drink, a rushed celebration with friends, teammates, the coaching staff, Georgia paused. Some movement in the crowd caught her attention, a smudge of red and black jackets in a sea of blue and white Westcliffe shirts.
They had a banner with WE LOVE HOTCH painted across it.
It was the Redford girls, bouncing and flushed with joy. If she squinted, she thought they were also all wearing masks of her face.
Behind them, just behind them, was Erin.
Her hair was up, sunglasses perched on her head even in the evening gloom. She must have been watching Georgia, waiting for her to spot them. She lifted her hand in a wave that faltered halfway, caught between hello and something else.
Georgia’s breath caught. All week, since she’d stalked their Instagram feed, she’d been thinking about the Redford girls.
About Crumpet and nights on the sofa with Erin, talking deep into the night about everything and nothing.
All the moments they'd shared: coffee trips and bougie brunches, sunsets and star-gazing.
About all the ways that Georgia had been the one to close off, to withdraw.
This time, she wasn’t going to run.
She took two steps towards the stands, when she heard her name on the loudspeaker. She blinked, shook her head.
Georgia could have sworn they’d just announced her as player of the match. Not Kamsi, and her precise left boot. Not the backs and their tries. Her, and her last-ditch tackle. Her steady, grinding discipline.
She followed the media officer’s gentle corralling, allowed herself to be pushed to the side of the pitch, positioned in front of the hastily erected Westcliffe branded backdrop. The camera’s light blinked red.
Vix Hargrove smiled at her, microphone held at the ready.
“Georgia,” she said. “Player of the match, and you were just everywhere today. Even in the last moments, there you were. How does it feel?”
Georgia gave her stock answer first, eyes flitting to the live broadcast of her face up on the big screen. The team effort. The brilliant forwards, Kamsi’s metronomic kicking. Aoife’s turnover, the try from thirty yards out.
Standard. Safe.
But then Vix added, “It’s been a turbulent few months for you - on and off the pitch. You made headlines earlier this year after we went a bit off script. Any thoughts on where you are now, after all that?”
The question hung between them. Georgia could have cracked a joke, kept it light. She could have said she was just happy to be playing. She looked past the camera, to the hordes of spectators still swarming the stands.
Don’t let the worst moment decide the rest of you.
From here she couldn’t see the little knot of red and black jackets. They’d be able to see her, hear her more clearly than if she was stood beside them.
She cleared her throat.
“Well.”
She hadn’t rehearsed anything. Hadn’t got anything planned. And there wasn’t that same raging fire that had sparked her tirade before.
“I might have played well today,” she said slowly, carefully.
“I hope I did. I guess the fact you're talking to me not someone else means I did.
And for that I have to thank my team around me – the girls have played brilliantly today, all season even.
But even brilliant teams and players of the match make mistakes, and I've made a few this season.”
She let her lips twitch into a rueful smile. Vix smiled back, holding the microphone steady in front of her.
"But I think that's part of just being a human.
A person. You can't be perfect all the time, you can't control everything, avoid every kind of mess.” Her voice cracked, but she didn’t stop.
“It's more about how you get up, how you recover, how you apologise for those mistakes.
And that's why your team is important. Both on and off the pitch.
Because they're the ones that help you when you fuck up.”
She huffed a laugh, aware of the slow freezing of Vix’s expression. "Like when you swear in a live interview. Again. In fact, I've made a lot more mistakes – like that – off the pitch this season than on it."
Vix shifted, the microphone wavering. Georgia reckoned her time was almost up. This wasn’t going to go viral like her rant, it wasn’t going to be good clickbait or a stitch-able soundbite.
The sweat was drying on her forehead, a bruise swelling under her eye.
Georgia twisted her fingers together, feeling the knuckles pop.
"There's someone in particular who's made a big difference to me this season that I would like to thank, and apologise to.
Someone who's influence I didn't appreciate, properly, until I lost it.
A former captain of mine, from right at the start of my rugby career, who still has so much more to teach me about being the kind of person I want to be.
What I'm trying to say is: I hero worshipped her as a teenager, and I love her now.
So thank you for the honour of being the player match, but I've got to go. "
Georgia stepped away from the mic. The light on the camera blinked off, the large screens around the stadium filling instead with match highlights, adverts. Her teammates were still greeting fans, taking selfies, signing shirts.
The Redford girls wouldn’t have disappeared just yet.
***
The air in the massive stadium was still thick with noise - horns, cheers, the steady thump of the loudspeaker music.
Georgia worked her way along the edge of the pitch, scanning the sea of faces in front of her.
She’d be pulled away, monopolised shortly.
There’d be team celebrations, drinking, dancing.
The Redford girls were easy to spot, shrieking and waving their banner, their faces all covered in cut-out paper masks of her own face. They’d bunched up together in the corner of the pitch, and were already swarming Riley, pressing her for autographs and pictures.
Georgia jogged across the turf, slowed only by the fans wanting high-fives, selfies. Her legs felt heavy and giddy all at once.
“What are you doing on this side of the barrier?” Riley teased as she came to stand beside her. “A clone’s escaped the pack.”
The girls shrieked, Riley forgotten, screaming out a combination of “Georgia!” and “Hotch!” and some unintelligible sounds that only dogs or pterodactyls would have been able to make out.
Erin stood a little back from the crush, just to the left of a vendor selling the red rose hats that were always sprinkled throughout the crowd. Her hair was wind-tossed. A little out of place. Her arms folded. Eyes locked on Georgia.
“Hi, girls,” Georgia said, grinning, almost breathless. Her stomach was doing flips, unable to keep itself grounded. “This mask thing is kinda creepy.”
The girls launched into an overlapping chorus of explanations.
“Woah,” Erin said, stepping forward to calm them down, her hands out, placating. “One at a time.”
“Yeah,” said one of the masked girls. “One at a time.”
There was something knowing in her tone, and all the other masks turned to towards Erin, parting like the Red Sea before Moses.
Hands reached out and pushed her forward, forcing her to the railing.
They closed behind her again, suddenly quiet.
A sea of her own expectant face, looking back at Georgia.
“Hey,” Georgia said.
“Hi.”
A spate of muttering broke out from the girls, before it was quickly hushed. Georgia laughed, nervous.
“So,” she said. “Did you see it?”
Erin’s mouth twitched. “You were four times life size. That’s quite hard to miss.”
“Too much?”
Erin shook her head. She started to say something, then swallowed.
Georgia lifted her hand, reached for Erin’s where it lay on the barrier between them. “Did it work?”
Erin turned her hand over, linking their fingers together, her focus on their joined hands for a long moment. Then she stepped forward, pulling Georgia to her by the front of her jersey, and kissed her.
There was cheering.
A lot of cheering.
The Redford girls exploded into hoots and whistles, their jumping jostling Erin, pressing her closer into the barrier, closer into Georgia.
Over her shoulder, Riley laughed and whooped along.
Erin stepped back. “You tell me, captain,” she said, brushing a loose strand of Georgia’s hair behind her ear.
Georgia leant in again, pressing their lips together. “I thought I’d ruined everything,” she said.
“You almost did,” Erin murmured, a hint of her old prickliness leaching through into her tone. Georgia tried to pull back, but Erin held on, stopped her. She smiled, the hard edges bleeding away.
Georgia closed her eyes. “I’m here now. I’m all in.”
“Good,” Erin said. “Because Crumpet has very high expectations for our celebratory takeaway.”
Georgia laughed again, giddy with it. "God, I’ve missed you."
“I missed you too. And for the record…” Erin smiled, brushing a thumb across Georgia’s cheek. “You make an excellent captain.”
Georgia shrugged. “I learnt from the best.”
***
Georgia’s post-match interview didn’t go viral. It was broadcast then disappeared into the content void. A few days later, something else did.
Rachel sent it to her, forwarded the latest video posted to the Redford girls’ account. Georgia opened it, leaning on the counter in Erin’s kitchen while she cooked.
It was an edit of her and Erin, grinning at each other like lovesick fools over the railing. There were at least nine angles of their kiss, one of which came from over Georgia’s shoulder. They’d interspersed it, the cheeky bastards, with clips of her in the Westcliffe gym, mooning over her phone.
She’d have to have words with Riley when pre-season began. Not everything needed to be content.
The video kept going. They’d got hold of Tam’s wedding footage, pirated it from her open Instagram account, searched through it for any second Georgia and Erin were in it together, frowning at each other, avoiding each other’s gaze.
“Where the fuck did they get that?” Erin said, peering over Georgia’s shoulder, arms around her waist.
Whoever had edited the video had a good career ahead of them in videography, no doubt. They’d even caught a moment in the Redford club house, the two of them leaning into each other in the background of a dance video, oblivious to the rest of the world.
“You alright with the circus? With this?”
Erin put her hands on Georgia’s waist and spun her around. “I’m not interested in the circus.”
Georgia shook her hair out of her eyes. “I can’t stop it. People are going to be nosy. They’re going to want to know.”
“I don’t want the circus,” Erin repeated, slowly, “but I do want you.”
Georgia exhaled and let her head drop to Erin’s shoulder. “Okay,” she said. “Then let’s do this properly.”
The season was over.
Other things, Georgia supposed, were just beginning.