Chapter 9
CHAPTER
NINE
WREN
Wren woke up the next morning to her alarm clock blaring.
She had actually gotten a really solid night of sleep.
She frowned when she realized her phone was ringing, alarms weren’t going off.
She hadn’t needed to set any, and she thought the sound of them might wake Rebecca up with a killer, hangover-induced headache.
Her phone screen informed her that it was eight in the morning and Barbara was calling her.
Wren slid off the bed quickly, thumbing the answer button as she did.
She grabbed her room key, slipped on her sweatpants and slides, and padded out into the hallway of the hotel, shutting the door as quietly as possible behind her.
“What’s up, Barbs.”
“What’s up?” Barbara was full of energy for seven o’clock in the morning her time. Especially for a Sunday. “What’s up is that you scored your first goal with the Women’s National Team yesterday!”
Wren let out a laugh and found a little hallway bench to sit down on. “I did, yeah.”
“Your dad was up until like one in the morning calling everyone he knows.”
Wren laughed at that. She could picture the scene perfectly and the thought made her heart swell.
“When are you coming here? I want to celebrate with you so bad.” Barbara was practically shrieking into the phone.
“Uh, I don’t have any set plans on that front, but how about I talk to your mom and pops and see when works best for them. You wanna text me your test schedule so I don’t get in the way of you and straight A’s?”
“Yes! I’ll text you right now.”
Wren smiled. “Cool. That sounds like a much needed break from reality.”
“I can’t believe Becky is the one who passed you the ball. Are y’all friends yet?”
“Yeah, actually we are. She’s not so bad now that we’ve talked through the last couple of years.”
“I had a good feeling about her,” Barbara said.
Wren blushed. She was thankful that Barbara couldn’t see her.
Barbara would always call her on her shit, but there was nothing Wren could or would say about her complicated past with Rebecca to Barbara.
For one, that was her baby stepsister. Even though she was seventeen now and older than Wren had been when she first met Rebecca, Wren wasn’t about to taint her little innocent ears with the truth of their relationship.
And on top of that, she still didn’t know how Rebecca would feel about her telling anyone that story.
Last night the team had guessed she was straight and Rebecca hadn’t really corrected them.
That hadn’t gone unnoticed by Wren. Then with Rebecca’s comment about her family being so intense…
She shook her head. She wouldn’t do that to Rebecca, especially not now that they were friends.
“Yeah, yeah. She doesn’t suck,” Wren mumbled.
Barbara chuckled at that. “Well, I’m going to let you get back to your day. I’m going over to James’s house in a bit to do homework.”
“Who’s James?” Wren asked, suddenly much more alert.
There was a pause. “Just a friend,” Barbara said.
“A friend I need to threaten?”
Barbara let out a nervous chuckle. “Oh, would you look at the time? I should go.”
Wren narrowed her eyes. “I have a very particular set of skills. Namely, I’m a professional ball kicker.”
“Oh god,” Barbara groaned. “Please don’t friend him on any social media. When you come visit, maybe you can meet him if it turns into something serious. We’ve only hung out like twice. It’s not a big deal yet.”
“Hmmmm, okay. I won’t stalk him yet. But the world has seen my muscles at this point. I will destroy him if he hurts you.”
“Ew,” Barbara laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Alright, alright, go have fun. Thanks for calling me,” Wren said.
“You’re welcome. Thanks for not sucking. I told some people at school that you were my sister. Would have been a rough Monday if you had whiffed.”
Wren cracked up at that. “No pressure or anything.”
“I could have told you before your game,” Barbara teased.
“Thanks for not. And thanks for watching it. It really means a lot.”
“Are you kidding? You know the whole family has your jersey already.”
Wren’s voice caught in her throat. “What? I would have sent them to you.” She did her best to not get emotional over the phone. She had no idea they had gotten her jersey. To be honest, she really didn’t even know that they were selling her jersey yet. The thought floored her.
“Ohhh, can you send us your Riptide jersey? We haven’t gotten those yet.”
“Yeah, I can. I’ll set that up at practice next week.”
“Thanks, Bird. I love you! Fly home safe today.”
“I love you, too. I’ll text you when I land.”
Wren sat on the little bench for a minute after they had hung up.
She was so lucky to have a dad as supportive as he was, and she was lucky to have Barbara and Linda rooting for her, too.
Sometimes it got a little overwhelming. She scrolled through her phone notifications, and her heart sank.
For all her friends and former teammates who had messaged her, there weren’t any notifications from Andy.
She had grown used to not getting any support from her mother.
But now that her girlfriend had started behaving the same way, it made that carefully closed hole in her heart feel like it was starting to rip open again.
She hit the button on the side of her phone, locking the screen.
She wasn’t going to do that. She wasn’t going to go down that thought path, though it did remind her about Rebecca’s fear the night before, how concerned she was that the world would see her as anything other than perfect—that her own family might see her as an embarrassment.
She wondered how badly Rebecca’s hangover would hit this morning.
They hadn’t talked much after making it back to the hotel last night.
Wren had sat outside the bathroom while Rebecca had showered, listening carefully to make sure her teammate didn’t slip and fall.
Then she’d made Rebecca chug a glass of water and take two Advil.
But they’d passed out pretty quickly, all things considered.
Her stomach rumbling broke her train of thought. She should head down to snag a few plates full of hotel breakfast, but she figured she should probably put on a sports bra, real pants, and some real shoes first.
Surprisingly, she was the only player scavenging the hotel’s continental breakfast. She quickly filled one plate with scrambled eggs and breakfast sausages for Rebecca and another with scrambled eggs and bacon for herself.
She also grabbed one of each type of muffin they had on display, not knowing which Rebecca would want but knowing that hungover people needed carbs.
Finally she poured two cups of coffee. She had watched Rebecca ruin coffee for two weeks straight by adding two things of vanilla creamer and one packet of sugar.
As much as it pained her, she destroyed the heavenly goodness that was plain black coffee.
With quite a bit of effort and a few murmured curse words, she got the food all stacked and balanced on her forearms and headed back upstairs.
For half a second, Wren thought she was going to have to sacrifice a coffee, but she finally got the door open without dropping anything.
She did, however, make a lot of noise, which caused Rebecca’s hazel eyes to flutter open.
“Wren?” Rebecca asked, confused and sleepy, her accent warming the sound of Wren’s name.
Wren smiled as innocently as possible while she got all the food items safely down on the little generic hotel desk. “Good morning, Rebecca.” She sat the diluted coffee down on the bedside table next to her.
Rebecca eyed it and then Wren. “Did you get me coffee?”
Wren nodded. “Yep, and breakfast.”
Rebecca sat up and sipped it. “Holy shit,” Rebecca whimpered.
“Did you burn your mouth? Or did I get it wrong?” Wren asked, frowning.
“You made it exactly right.” Rebecca sounded like she was in actual heaven. Their eyes caught for a second before Rebecca looked away, biting the edge of her lip.
Wren blushed. “Well, I figured you’d be hungover, so…” She let her sentence trail off. There was nowhere for it to go really. So she just stopped talking and plopped into the desk chair. “You ready for this?” She asked, nudging the eggs with sausage towards her roommate.
Rebecca pushed herself up in the bed and nodded. “You’re my hero,” she said happily as she took the plate from Wren.
“Yeah, yeah. Don’t you forget it,” Wren teased. They fell into an easy silence as they ate their breakfast. Wren was thankful that, for the first time, everything between them felt easy.
On Monday after her practice with her club team, Wren lounged on the couch that she and Andy shared.
Andy had gone out again. She hadn’t been there when Wren had gotten home the night before and had slept in before Wren had gone to practice.
Wren had been pretty annoyed when she had come home from practice and Andy hadn’t been there, but she honestly expected it at this point.
She jumped almost a foot when Andy came barreling in around seven-thirty.
Andy looked livid and was holding a celebrity gossip magazine, clutching it to her chest like her life depended on it. “What in the fuck is going on between you and Becky Rothschild?”
Wren paused the Netflix show that she had been semi following along with as she had folded her laundry.
This was not at all where she thought this evening was going to go.
She dropped the unfolded shirt she was holding back into her laundry basket, giving Andy her undivided attention.
“Well, we’re teammates, roommates, and I guess friends?
After the last few days in Houston, yeah. I’d say friends.”