Chapter 17
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
BECKY
“Fuck,” Becky all but screamed as she buried herself back under her covers. That was not at all how she wanted this morning to go. She didn’t get much time to wallow though because Wren had left her bedroom door open and she could hear very loud, thudding feet marching down the hall.
There was a surprisingly soft knock at her door.
“What?” Becky asked, not uncovering herself.
“Wanna tell me why Wren Eames just sprinted out of our apartment?” Katie’s voice was muffled through the layers of Becky’s duvet.
“No, thank you,” Becky said, knowing damn well that was not going to be the end of it. That was proven with the fact that no footsteps tromped away from her door.
There was a long pause, however. Becky knew Katie was trying to figure out the best course of action, but really, who knew what to do in a situation like this?
“I brought home ice cream last night,” Katie said. “You can have it for breakfast.”
Becky really carefully lowered her blankets. She didn’t want to flash her roommate, but she was admittedly overheating and desperately trying not to cry. “Really?”
Katie nodded. “Yeah, I might have called that out to you to let you know, but you might have been making too much noise in here to hear me. I think its safe to say you burned enough calories for it, though.” She shot Becky a teasing wink.
“Go away,” Becky said, covering herself back up with her covers. “I’ll just die in here, thanks.”
An easy laugh floated across Becky’s room.
“I tell you what, I’ve already made coffee.
So, I’ll just go fix you a cup while you put some clothes on.
But then I’m getting the whole story, because, I for one, need to know how you go from slide-tackling Wren Eames—arguably from behind—to having sex with her in one night.
” Katie paused. “Congrats on that? I think?”
Becky groaned. There was no way she was going to talk her way out of this.
She might as well get up and face the music.
There was a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach that she’d made a massive mistake by sleeping with Wren last night, but she couldn’t really let herself believe it.
It hadn’t felt wrong. Not for a single second.
Well, not until Whirlwind Wren took over at the first chirp of her alarm.
Worse still, Becky even understood where Wren was coming from this morning.
She couldn’t imagine how expensive Los Angeles was, but she did know how hard they had both worked to make it to where they had.
Playing for your country was an honor, and it had taken them their whole lives to get there.
It wasn’t that Becky wanted to throw it away for really great sex; it's just that Wren always had a way of feeling like more than just really great sex. It didn’t make reality change, though.
They had still signed a contract, and they had still violated that.
But none of that meant that Rebecca didn’t want to figure out some sort of loophole.
How could she not? When Wren was just still, obnoxiously, everything that Becky had ever wanted.
Maybe coffee, Katie, and ice cream could help her figure it out.
“Okay,” Katie said as Becky settled into her favorite spot on their couch.
Becky was wrapped in her favorite fuzzy blanket.
She’d put on her comfiest, oversized hoodie, and had the hood pulled down as far as it would go.
When she’d been picking out what lounge clothes she’d be wearing until she had to get ready for her team’s cooldown practice that afternoon, she’d been startled to discover just how insanely marked up her neck and chest had gotten.
A warmth had spread back through her body as she did her very best to not think about how each mark had gotten there.
She wondered if she’d left Wren just as covered, but then remembered the turf rash that had gone all the way up Wren’s leg and thought it was best to not think about the marks she’d left on Wren in the past twenty-four hours.
Becky shook the thoughts off again as she took a sip of coffee and waited for Katie to fling a barrage of questions at her.
Katie cleared her throat. “So, we both know that Wren…” There was a pause, one that went on for so long that Becky dared to look up at her friend under the edge of her hoodie.
She was very clearly trying to choose her words carefully.
“Well, that you and Wren… sort of… fucked it out last night.” She cringed at her own words.
Becky almost laughed at the way Katie’s eyes had widened at her own interesting word choice. She wondered if she should help or just see where Katie took it.
With a sharp inhale and a quick shimmy reset, Katie powered through.
“What I don’t know is how y’all got from, you know, what happened at the game last night, to the,” she paused again, clearly trying to find a more eloquent way of phrasing it.
She must not have been able to come up with anything though, because she finished her sentence with, “you know, to the sex bit.”
On a small, warped level, Becky enjoyed watching Katie struggle to have this conversation. They’d grown up in such a tight-knit, Southern Baptist community that while sex was something they’d both done, Katie had never gotten any better at talking about it.
Katie tilted her head to the side, her dark brown eyes studying Becky intently.
“You know, when I got home last night to all the destruction, I almost barged into your room thinking that something had happened or that you might have gotten drunk or something,” she paused, her whole body softening.
“But when I got to your door, I could hear you laughing. Don’t worry.
I couldn’t hear what had been said. I think I’d rather not have those details. But you both just sounded so… happy?”
They had been, Becky thought. For almost the entire night, they had been deliriously happy. She nodded, confirming at least that.
Katie nudged Becky’s knee with her own. “So, how did you go from bloodshed to… you know… what happened next?”
“Hmmm,” Becky hummed, buying herself a little time by drinking some coffee and chasing it with a massive bite of ice cream straight out of the pint.
“Well, obviously, the game did not go according to plan,” Becky started.
Her shoulders curved inwards. She hadn’t heard from her family after the match or this morning.
And honestly, she hoped she never did. She didn’t need anymore reminders about the game.
She pulled her knees up to her chest reflexively.
“It was—the game, I mean—it was going just fine until near the end of the second half.” Becky didn’t need to give much of a recap.
Katie had actually been there. She and her boyfriend, Danny, were season ticket holders.
It was the first time in a long time that Becky hadn’t immediately found her after a game had ended.
Becky sighed, continuing, “I screwed up. Y’all saw it.
She just—And I can’t—There’s just something about her.
And when I play against her,”—she ran out of words.
“I mean, before, like, during college, it made sense. But last night I still couldn’t let it go.
I couldn’t let her go. When it comes to her, I can’t just lose.
” She tucked her hands into the kangaroo pouch on the front of her hoodie.
“Okay. But how did y’all go from that to what happened here?” Katie asked, softly.
“Well, I had texted her several times after the game.” Becky flinched. “You know, apologizing. And she finally responded by asking for my address.”
Becky didn’t say anything else after that.
“So, then she came over here. And what?” Katie asked, clearly needing more detail than that.
“Then she kind of yelled a little bit,” Becky bit her bottom lip, remembering just how pissed Wren had been when she’d stormed through the front door. “And then, I don’t know, she mentioned the vibes that have been between us recently.”
“The vibes?” Katie asked.
Becky hadn’t really filled her in. Not about falling asleep in Wren’s bed while watching a movie. Definitely not about wearing her Los Angeles University sweater. She forced an uncomfortable nod. “Yeah, you know. Just kind of flirting and being overly nice to each other for once.”
Katie’s eyes narrowed. “How did she go from yelling to talking to you about vibes?”
“Um, well, she was saying about how we weren’t in college anymore and that she thought things were different between us.
That we had become friends. And then she mentioned that she thought we had had some vibes.
And I might have confirmed that we have, in fact, had some.
” She sank deeper into her cushion on the couch.
“And then y’all had sex?” Katie asked, clearly still a bit lost on the jump from point A to B.
Becky just nodded. There really wasn’t much more in between.
“What happened to the hallway?” Katie asked, as if that would provide some more context.
Becky’s eyes widened, and she shook her head no. “I’ll fix the frames or get us new ones, promise.”
“I don’t give a shit about the broken frames,” Katie said with a laugh. “I’m more just curious how they got knocked off the walls?”
Becky sank even farther into the couch. “I was a little busy and wasn’t exactly watching where we were going.”
Katie’s head fell back in a laugh. “Y’all did that much damage just trying to make it into your room?” Katie wheezed. “Jesus Christ, did y’all just do it in the hall or something?”
Becky cleared her throat. “No.” It was the truth. They hadn’t done it in the hall. The little twitch of her lips gave away her near lie. She let out a laugh of sheer disbelief. “We did it in the entryway.”
Katie laughed manically at Becky’s confession. When she could finally breathe again, she asked, “So, what happened this morning then to cause Wren to leave in such a rush? From the sounds of things, you kids had a fantastic time last night,” Katie grinned at her.
This was the part Becky didn’t really want to face. The part where reality crept in and shattered everything. “The real world happened. She needed to get back to her team’s hotel so she could grab her stuff and catch the shuttle to the airport.”
Katie’s face softened, all of her teasing gone. “Becky, she scampered. What happened?” She asked again, reaching over and grabbing Becky’s hand for support.
“What I knew would happen. What was logically going to happen. She told me we can’t do this.
She needs her spot on the National Team.
It’s not just like an accomplishment to her.
She needs the money. When she and Andy broke up, she kept their lease.
What was supposed to be a payment split into two, it now all falls on her.
” Becky shrugged, willing herself not to cry.
“She wasn’t trying to be mean. She just can’t lose her spot on the team.
Those contracts we signed forbid fraternization, and the coaches honestly seem to hate the drama we keep dragging around with us.
So, she basically said last night shouldn’t have happened. And then she left.”
“Ouch,” Katie said.
Becky just pulled her hoodie down farther on her head.
“I mean, she’s right though,” she said, her voice barely louder than a whisper.
“We’ve both worked so hard for our entire lives to get to where we are today.
Throwing it away for… honestly, really phenomenal sex doesn’t make much sense.
We just have to be professional. You know?
Just make it through this year as travel buddies.
Then the coaches will let us choose who we’re with next year, and we can just let it all go and pretend that we don’t have just, like, insane chemistry with each other. ”
“Right,” Katie said, her voice still soft.
It was fully locked into that gentle way in which she approached Becky and Becky knew it, but she couldn’t even muster being annoyed with Katie for it.
She really felt like she needed the extra gentleness today.
“But, Becky, do you really think that’s going to be possible?
Can you really just act like last night didn’t happen? ”
The answer was solidly probably not, but she’d have to. For Wren, she’d have to. “I’m just going to have to do my best,” she concluded. This was going to hurt.