Chapter 18 Elise
ELISE
The pool was warm and chlorine-blue and the morning light came through the high glass windows of the aquatic centre in wide, angled bands that turned the water to liquid silver.
Elise floated on her back, her arms spread, her hair drifting in a dark halo around her head, and let the water hold her weight while her muscles unwound from yesterday's game.
Around her, the team was in various states of recovery.
Lou was doing slow laps in the far lane, her broad shoulders breaking the surface with the mechanical efficiency she brought to everything.
Camille sat on the pool edge with her legs dangling, her blonde hair piled on top of her head, scrolling through her phone.
Frankie was in the shallow end doing stretches, her crooked nose and scarred chin giving her the look of a retired boxer at a spa day.
Dani floated nearby with her dark braids coiled on top of her head and her grey eyes closed, looking like someone who could fall asleep anywhere.
Rowan was practising underwater handstands, her light hair streaming behind her like seaweed.
"She lives," Frankie called from across the pool when Elise surfaced and pushed her hair out of her eyes. "The returning hero graces us with her glorious presence."
"I wasn't gone that long."
"Eight weeks. We had to learn to function without you. It was devastating." Frankie grinned. "Actually, we were fine. Lex scored a lot."
Elise splashed water in Frankie's direction. "Thanks for that."
Frankie dodged and her grin softened. "Welcome back, though. Seriously. You looked good out there yesterday."
"She looked great," Lou said from her lane, not pausing her stroke. Lou's compliments came in the same dry, efficient packets as everything else she did. Two words and a nod. If Lou said you looked great, you looked great.
"Thank you," Elise said, and she meant it more than the words carried.
She swam over to the shallow end and stood, the water at her waist, and stretched her left shoulder through its range of motion.
The joint was loose and warm from the pool and the movement was clean and painless.
Eight weeks of Sienna's hands and Kylie's gym programmes and her own stubborn determination, and the shoulder was back. Better than back.
Sienna. The name moved through her chest with a heat that had nothing to do with the pool temperature. She'd texted Sienna at six this morning, before the alarm, and Sienna had replied with:
Miss you already.
Three simple words and Elise had pressed her phone against her chest like a teenager and laughed at herself.
Camille slid into the water and waded over. "So. We should talk about the elephant in the pool."
"There's no elephant."
Camille tilted her head, water lapping at her collarbone. "There's a giant elephant and it's wearing a lab coat and rectangular glasses and you're in love with it."
Frankie appeared at Elise's other side. "We've been polite for weeks. Weeks, Elise. Do you know what that's cost me? I'm not built for discretion."
Elise kept her face blank. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"You hugged her on the bench yesterday," Frankie said. "On the bench. In front of cameras. In front of Mara."
"It was a professional celebration."
Frankie crossed her arms, water dripping from her elbows. "You had your face in her neck."
"My face was near her neck. There's a difference."
Lou had stopped swimming and was treading water at the edge of their group, watching with quiet amusement. Dani had opened one eye. Even Rowan had abandoned her handstands and was drifting closer with poorly concealed curiosity.
"Fine." Elise leaned against the pool wall and crossed her arms over her chest. The water was warm against her stomach. "Yes. Sienna and I are together."
The cheer that erupted was loud enough to echo off the aquatic centre's glass ceiling. Camille clapped. Frankie pumped a fist. Rowan said "Finally" and then blushed. Dani opened both eyes and nodded serenely, as if she'd been waiting patiently for the obvious to be confirmed.
"How long?" Camille asked.
"A few weeks."
Frankie waded closer, water sloshing against the lane rope. "How is it?"
"It's good." Elise kept her voice even but her face betrayed her. Heat rose in her cheeks and the smile pulled at her mouth and spread through her chest. "It's really good."
"Define really good," Frankie said. "We need details. Nutritional information. Star rating."
Elise shook her head. "You're not getting details."
"Not even a hint?"
"Not even a hint. She's a private person and I'm going to respect that." Elise crossed her arms, firm on this point.
Frankie groaned and sank lower in the water until her chin touched the surface. "That's annoyingly mature of you."
"She's worth being mature for."
Camille nudged Frankie with her knee beneath the water. "Can you at least tell us if it's better than average?" Frankie persisted. "A nod will do. A facial expression. A subtle hand gesture."
Elise pressed her lips together, but the smile was already forming, the kind that started in her chest and worked its way up, and her face must have said everything because Frankie groaned and threw her hands up and Camille let out a low whistle and even Lou, who had been pretending not to listen, paused mid-stroke.
"Look at that face," Camille said. "Absolutely gone."
The teasing paused. The shift was subtle but real. Frankie's grin softened. Camille's eyes went warm. Even Lou, who expressed affection through silence and proximity, moved a fraction closer.
"You love her," Camille said. Not a question.
Elise looked at the water. The silver light played across the surface, shifting and reforming.
She thought of Sienna in the cove at sunrise.
Sienna crying on the sofa. Sienna saying thank you as if two words required all her courage.
Sienna's mouth on hers in the dark. Sienna's voice on the phone last night, sleepy and warm: I love you. Sleep well.
"Yeah," Elise said. "I do."
"Good," Lou said, and resumed her laps.
They swam and stretched and the conversation drifted to the weekend's upcoming game and Lou's complaints about the new protein bars the nutritionist had introduced and Camille's plan to take Max to the beach.
Normal things. Team things. Conversation Elise had felt locked out of for two months, and now she was in the middle of it again, and the belonging was a physical sensation, warm in her chest and solid under her feet.
She thought, as she climbed out of the pool and wrapped herself in a towel, that this was what happiness looked like.
Not the explosive, breathless kind that came with first kisses and orgasms, but the quieter, steadier kind that came from being known.
From having a team that cheered when you told them you were in love.
From having a woman in another city who sent you sunrise photos and told you she missed you.
It was almost too good. The thought arrived uninvited and lodged itself beneath her ribs like a splinter.
She'd had the same thought at nineteen, the night before her scholarship was confirmed, lying awake in her childhood bedroom with Sophie asleep across the hall and her mother's shoes by the front door and the certainty that happiness this complete couldn't possibly hold.
And it had held. That time. She pushed the thought away, shoved it down where she kept all the superstitious, anxious thoughts that athletes accumulated over years of competition.
Don't think about the good thing or you'll jinx it.
Don't say it's going well or the universe will correct.
Stupid, irrational, and she knew it was stupid and irrational, and she pushed the thought down and walked to the showers.
The locker room was warm and steamy and smelled of chlorine and mint shower gel, Frankie's brand, which had permeated the space over months of use.
Elise stood under the hot water and let it run over her shoulders and down her back and through her hair.
She was thinking about tonight. Sienna would be back late tomorrow evening.
Elise was planning to have flowers at Sienna's apartment.
Not because Sienna expected grand gestures, but because Sienna had spent forty-one years not receiving them and Elise intended to correct that imbalance.
She turned off the water and reached for her towel and was halfway through drying her hair when the locker room door banged open.
Mara was standing in the doorway and her face was wrong. The colour was gone. Her blue eyes were wide and her jaw was tight and her hand was gripping the door frame as if she needed it to stay upright. Elise had seen Mara angry, frustrated, jubilant, tipsy. She had never seen Mara look like this.
"Elise." Mara's voice was controlled but the control was thin, a membrane stretched over panic. "I need you to come with me. Right now."
"What's happened?"
"Sienna's been in an accident. A car accident. On the road to the airport this morning." Mara took a breath. It was visible, the forced expansion of her chest, the effort of keeping her voice even. "It's serious, Elise. They've taken her to Phoenix Ridge Hospital."
The words entered Elise's body in sequence and each one was a blow. Sienna. Accident. Car. Serious. Hospital. She heard them and understood them and then felt them, not in her mind but in her chest, her stomach, her legs, the floor tilting under her.
Her knees buckled.
She didn't fall because the bench was behind her and she sat down hard on the wet wood and the towel slipped from her hands and her vision went narrow and dark at the edges.
The locker room contracted to a tunnel with Mara at the far end, Mara's mouth moving, saying more words that Elise couldn't process because the roaring in her ears had swallowed all sound.
"Elise." Mara was in front of her, crouching, her hands on Elise's knees. "Elise, look at me. Breathe."