Chapter 11 #2
The pitch was bright green, the touchlines fresh white, the players warming up in jerseys that matched the ones they were wearing.
When Aspen settled beside her, her knee came to rest against Maddy’s. Neither of them looked at each other, but neither of them moved their knees either.
The crowd rose above them for the player introductions. Pink and blue waved through the stadium in a sound that was much louder in person than it seemed on television.
She was sitting eight feet from a Wave pitch, with her knee against Aspen St. Claire’s, in a borrowed Wave jersey that belonged to Aspen, holding a beer Aspen had bought her, at a game Aspen had asked her to.
And Maddy wondered, yet again, what the hell was happening.
* * *
The ball was placed in the center of the field, and the opposing team kicked it off.
Thirty thousand people lifted into a roar that made the cheap plastic seat under Maddy vibrate against the backs of her thighs. She drank her beer and refused to glance over at Aspen, who had been suspiciously quiet since they sat down.
Aspen’s right leg bounced lightly while her thumb drummed on the armrest. Neither of them had spoken a word in fifteen minutes.
Maddy’s eyes traveled down the field. Then to the Jumbotron. Then back to the field. Her own knee started to bounce before she actively forced it to stop.
This was getting ridiculous.
She had handled two hundred and sixty-four contestants over eleven seasons of a hit reality television show. She could handle a few hours of sitting next to Aspen St. Claire in the first row of a soccer match that Aspen had invited her to.
Aspen bent forward to set her kombucha in the cupholder, and her hair fell to the side, revealing part of the number on the back of her jersey.
Maddy cleared her throat. “Whose number are you wearing?”
Aspen’s hand froze on the cup, not yet released. She looked over, slightly alarmed.
Maddy pointed at her shirt. “On your jersey.”
Recognition arrived. Aspen released the cup and sat back. “Oh. Eleven. Avery.” She leaned in and pointed to #11 on the field. “Center back. She’s smart, reliable, never out of position.”
The first thing Maddy registered was the familiar scent of Aspen’s coconut lotion, followed immediately by the warmth of Aspen’s cheek close to her own. She locked her attention onto #11, who appeared to be doing the same thing every two seconds.
“And who’s number…” She twisted and made a show of trying to look at her own back. She had a vague memory of pulling a twenty-something on. “25?”
Aspen chuckled. “22. Lussi.” She pointed at a young player who was getting in the face of an opposing player. “She’s new. Drafted out of Florida State in January. Fast, dangerous, mouthy as hell on the pitch.” Aspen’s mouth pulled at the corner. “I gave you the chaos jersey.”
“Of course you did.” Maddy turned back to the field to conceal her smile. “And exactly how many Wave jerseys do you own?”
Aspen’s smirk deepened. “A few.” She kept her eyes on the field.
So Aspen had picked this particular jersey on purpose. For Maddy.
The players on their respective backs, based on Aspen’s two-sentence summary, sounded like polar opposites. She supposed that tracked.
One of the Wave players jogged toward the bench with a slight limp.
Another jogged onto the field to replace her.
A man and a woman in matching Wave FC Staff polos crouched beside the injured player to assess her.
The man glanced up at Aspen, calmly stood, walked over, and leaned across the wall of the technical area to say something short.
Aspen nodded once, said something in return, and he walked back to the bench.
The whole exchange took maybe twelve seconds.
Aspen settled back in her seat. Maddy gave the silence half a beat, then asked, “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, Brooks has had multiple ACL injuries, so she’s one we have to keep an eye on.” Aspen’s eyes had not left the player. “There’s no swelling, so she should still be fine to play.”
“You don’t need to check her out?” Maddy followed her gaze to the player.
Aspen shook her head. “The team has two Certified Athletic Trainers who handle the on-field stuff. Marcus, who was the one that just came over, and Nora.” She nodded toward the woman in the polo. “If there’s anything to be concerned about when they examine her at the half, they’ll call me in.”
Maddy let the new information sink in and returned her eyes to the field. Then decided it was time to commence the interview portion of their evening. “So you work for both Offshore and the team? How does that work?”
“I’m at Offshore most weekdays. That’s where my regular practice is.
” Aspen paused for a free kick. The ball sailed wide, and the crowd groaned.
“They call me when an injury is bad enough to bring a player off the field and into the locker room. I do the assessment, build the recovery plan, and work them through it back at Offshore.”
Maddy watched Aspen watch Brooks jog back onto the field.
She sifted through the queue of questions that had been forming in her head since Wednesday night.
The queue somehow got longer with every question Aspen answered, which was the opposite of how information was supposed to work.
Maddy had built an entire career on asking the kinds of questions that compressed people into a single-page dossier.
Aspen St. Claire had been doing the opposite for four straight weeks.
Every piece of information she learned about this woman made her more of a mystery.
“Do you travel to away games too?” Maddy had no idea why that particular question had made it to the top of the queue, but it was already out.
“No. It was a part of my contract negotiation. I didn’t want to be traveling all the time and not be around if Maisie needed me.
So if a player gets injured at an away game, the trainers FaceTime me so I can have the player go through a series of movements and talk me through where they feel the pain.
I can usually tell what we’re working with pretty quickly.
” Aspen gave a small shrug. “If a player suffers a minor injury on the field and walks off herself, like Brooks did a little bit ago, they’re still eligible to go back into the game.
If they need assistance getting off the field, they go straight to the locker room and can’t play again until they get mine or the Team Physician’s clearance. ”
So Aspen, who had been guiding Bunny through pelvic floor exercises on the living room floor for a month, also picked up FaceTimes from professional athletes in other time zones on Saturday nights and ran triage through the screen. Seriously, who was this woman?
Maddy let her eyes drift back to the field. “Do they ever lie? Try to downplay the injury to get back in the game faster?”
Aspen laughed, her eyes staying on the field. “Almost every time. That’s why my golden rule is to always listen to what their body is telling me, not their mouth.”
Maddy swallowed back the very inappropriate urge to ask what, exactly, Aspen thought her body was telling her.
“I’m sure that makes you real popular with the players.” Maddy teased instead.
Aspen smirked. “It’s my job to get them back on the field as quickly as possible, but not at the expense of the player’s body. If they exacerbate an injury without proper recovery protocol, it could be the difference between a match-ending injury and a career-ending one.”
Until this exact second, it had not occurred to Maddy how high the stakes were in Aspen’s job. The kind of stakes that were everything to these particular women.
“I know the players are eager to get back on the field as quickly as possible,” Aspen continued, “but my bigger goal is always to keep them playing the game they love for as long as they can.”
Maddy nodded. Then nodded again. She noticed she was no longer interviewing. She was just listening—which was something Maddy rarely did without intention.