Kate Christie (26 page)

as Mel had once jokingly put it.

On Tuesday, we reluctantly left the apartment and returned to real life. In the days that followed, school quickly reasserted itself in the form of classes, homework, practice, matches, all trying their best to keep us apart. We fought the pull of other commitments as well as we could. I started spending nearly every night at Jess’s apartment, even the ones pre-competition, parking my car behind hers outside Sidney and Claire’s house and letting myself into the upstairs apartment with the spare key Jess presented me with a week after I’d started staying over.“Is it too soon?” she asked worriedly as I stared at the key in its tiny jewelry box sitting between us on the kitchen table.

We had just finished dinner, and I had been wondering how she would react if I suggested we make it an early night. I’d been thinking about her all day, my palms damp as I remembered the way she’d gazed at me the night before, all sexy and in charge, as she did wonderful things to me.

Now I looked from the tiny box up into her eyes and smiled.

“What took you so long?”

In response, she pulled me up and led me toward the bedroom. Seemed I wasn’t the only one who’d been having X-rated fantasies all day.

Friends become lovers, we were officially dating from the night I told her I loved her, unofficial honeymooners from the first morning we awoke wrapped around each other. We shared 10 Kate Christie

most meals, talked on the phone incessantly when we were apart, and even Holly claimed to find our cuteness nearly unbearable.

“Payback’s a bitch,” I told her unapologetically one Saturday afternoon as we lounged in the tennis stands watching my girlfriend pummel the top singles player from CU-Rancho Cucamonga. Becca had chosen not to attend the match, and I was just as happy—gave Holly and me some needed best friend time.

I hadn’t told her about the rape, and I wasn’t sure I ever would. Not without Jess’s permission, and even though matters were progressing in the bedroom—Jess had taken my hand and moved it under her boxers for the first time the night before—I doubted she would be comfortable with anyone other than me knowing her history anytime soon.

“So how’s the sex?” Holly asked, lowering her voice so that no one around us would hear.

“Dude!” I shoved her sideways. “None of your effing business, that’s how.”

Holly rolled her eyes. “You Oregonians are so uptight.”

“Yeah? Well, you Californians are too loose.”

“And that’s supposed to be a bad thing?” she asked, arching a superior eyebrow in my direction.

She might have had a point, not that I would have admitted as much to her.

At the end of our second dreamy week together, Jess confessed that tennis somehow no longer seemed quite as important.

Secretly I was pleased by this admission, but outwardly I scolded her. She was still number one in singles in the country, and SDU, the top-seeded Division II team, was due to host nationals in a matter of weeks. She couldn’t afford to lose focus now.

As they always do after spring break, the weeks began to slip away in a blur of warm weather, spring fever and rising academic pressure. They went even faster this time because I desperately wanted to slow everything down. Despite the auspicious beginning, my growing relationship with Jess felt tenuous somehow, as if everything could suddenly end without warning.

We were a couple now, double dating with Holly and Becca for real, holding hands on campus and around the city when it seemed safe to do so, attending LGBA functions together, even Beautiful Game 11

occasionally dirty dancing at eighteen-and-up nights at Zodiac.

But at times even now Jess retreated to that place no one else could reach, her eyes blank and body rigid. Sometimes after we made love, she closed her eyes and turned away from me, shutting me out entirely as she took deep, calming breaths. I understood where she went to at those moments—and why—but I was still powerless to bring her back. I could only quell the urge to touch her and wait for her to soften toward me and everything else around her. She was well worth the wait, but I wasn’t always sure she’d come back to me.

The days and nights marched inexorably past, taking us closer to summer and our inevitable parting. With tennis season in full swing, my girl was busier than I was. Sometimes I only saw her late at night for a cuddle session and the perennially too-short sleep of the exhausted. She spent three weekends in April away, traveling throughout the region for various tournaments and away matches. I slept in the dorm then and got caught up with my other friends, who teased me about spring mating season and my recent vanishing act. Alicia was envious I’d gotten the girl when she hadn’t, but she graciously congratulated me over lunch the week after spring break, agreeing that there were indeed other fish in the sea, even for her. Mel’s roommate had asked her out, and she was thinking of saying yes. The hockey player was no Anna, but she had a nice smile. Had to start somewhere, I told her, trying not to glow too brightly.

April came and went while I was too love-struck to notice, and then suddenly, somehow, it was only a week until finals and I was finishing up end-of-term projects and studying for my Macro and Word War II exams. I went into the econ final with a solid B. Not bad considering I hadn’t cracked my textbook even once during the semester. Even if I bombed the exam—which I didn’t plan on doing—I couldn’t get lower than a C+ overall, according to my calculations. No matter what, my eligibility was safe, and I had won the bet. Laura was not just a little pissed that I had managed to make a mockery out of her beloved Macro. She wasn’t nearly as annoyed as Holly, though, who, in accordance with the terms of our wager, had to pack my room for me at the end of the term.

12 Kate Christie

Tennis nationals were slated for the week between finals and graduation. I was supposed to go home as soon as I finished my tests, but I decided to stay an extra week to watch Jess play in the tournament. Holly stayed too. In fact, she had no plans to go home except for a brief visit. She and Becca were going to try living together in San Diego for the summer. Becca was planning to look for a job in her field, marine science. But there wasn’t much you could do with a bachelor’s degree anymore, she kept telling Holly. She was putting off grad school until Holly graduated so that they could plan a future together.

The week before commencement, I helped Holly and Becca move into their new apartment, a one-bedroom place a mile north of San Diego’s business district. They had the top floor of a two-story house on a quietish street a few blocks from University Avenue, and Holly had a job at Starbuck’s on Fifth.

Afternoon and evening shifts only, she told me as we hung her posters throughout the apartment. No early mornings for her.

Jess was busier than ever that last week, getting ready for nationals. Every day she had double practice sessions, and nearly every night there seemed to be some sort of team event. I felt like I barely saw her, even though I was staying at her apartment the week between finals and commencement. I spent a lot of time working out, hanging out with Holly at the beach before her shift, riding my bike around town, and reading magazines and paperback novels—my respite after a semester of academic study—under an umbrella in the tennis stands while Jess and the rest of the team practiced.

She might have said tennis didn’t seem as important anymore, but you couldn’t tell to look at her. At least, I couldn’t tell. I tried to tamp down rising jealousy as she worked on and off the court on a single goal—playing the best she possibly could at nationals.

There would be time later for us, I told myself as Jess crawled into bed each night with a half-hearted kiss for me, falling asleep on my shoulder almost before I turned off the bedside lamp. But time was dwindling for us. When tennis season ended, so would my sojourn in Southern California.

National semis were Saturday, finals on Sunday. Sidney and Claire came to all of Jess’s matches, waving occasionally from Beautiful Game 13

under their sun umbrella on the hillside overlooking the courts.

Holly and I sat in the stands in baseball caps, tank tops and shorts, cheering on SDU and sunning ourselves at the same time. Becca didn’t come either day, citing her job search. Holly thought she might be envious of the sports thing Holly, Jess and I all had going. Momentarily, I felt sorry for her. It passed quickly.

On Saturday, Jess rolled through her matches without dropping a set while SDU beat its opponents easily to advance to the team finals. After the match, as I waited for Jess to come out of the field house with the rest of the team, I thought I saw a tall, slim woman in a familiar tan and gold suit disappear into the crowd. Was she Jess’s mother? I was tempted to run after her, but the tennis team exited the field house just then, laughing and chatting a million miles a minute. I didn’t mention the woman to Jess. No need to risk knocking her off her game.

I thought about her later, though. Would she come back for the finals? Who did she think she was, anyway? I pictured telling her off. I saw myself decking her. I imagined asking her what she’d been thinking when she turned her back on her own child, if she knew the damage she’d wreaked. But in the end, I knew I probably wouldn’t get a chance to enact any of my fantasies. It was Jess’s life, her decision to talk to her mother or not, assuming my hunch was right and the mystery woman was Jess’s mom.

That night we ate leftover pasta and salad at the apartment, careful not to load up on too many carbs. Then we went to bed early so that I could give her a full body massage to work out the kinks from the day’s matches and get her relaxed and ready for the finals.

In the bedroom, she took her shirt off and lay on her stomach.

I straddled her hips and went to work on her back, kneading lotion and a bit of tiger’s balm into her muscles and trying to ignore my own tingling. I’d been flying solo in that regard all week. Jess had told me she’d make it up to me somehow, but I wasn’t sure how she planned to accomplish that one.

“That feels so good,” she murmured, turning her head on the pillow to sigh softly. “You’re amazing.”

Not the context I’d hoped for such accolades, but it would have to do. After all, a national championship hung in the balance.

14 Kate Christie

“Face forward, Ms. Tennis Pro,” I said, working on her lats.

“Even out your shoulders.”

“Mmm.” She buried her face in the pillow.

After ten minutes, my hands were tired and Jess’s breathing was deep and even. I lay down beside her, running my hand across her back and feeling the muscles beneath my touch. My hand drifted over her hair, silky strands soft against my fingertips.

She turned her face toward me, blinking in the lamplight, and smiled sleepily.

“Thanks, Cam. That felt awesome.”

“My pleasure,” I said, sliding my fingers down the side of her face. “I’m going to miss you so much.”

I didn’t mean to say it out loud. We should be focusing on tennis, both of us, specifically on finals the following day. Not on our impending separation, slated for first thing Tuesday morning when I would climb into the Tercel and point my wheels north.

Her eyes narrowed. “I know. I’ve been thinking.” She hesitated. “Do you really have to go home for the summer?”

A spark glimmered in my chest. She didn’t want me to leave?

But I couldn’t enjoy the feeling long.

“I wish I didn’t have to,” I said, “but I told the Parks guys a while ago I would work this summer. I can’t back out now.”

“I knew you would say that,” she said, closing her eyes again.

“You’re so good.”

“We can’t all be California flakes,” I said, but the joke felt hollow even to me.

I had thought more than once how perfect it would be, the two of us in La Jolla hanging out with Holly and Becca on the beaches and at the parks and around town when we weren’t working, taking weekend trips to the mountains and Baja and L.A. But La Jolla in the summer was Jess’s turf. I hadn’t wanted to invite myself into her life. Now it was too late to do anything other than reluctantly head home for the summer and wish I’d had the nerve to say something sooner.

“Does this mean you would want me to stay if I could?” I asked.

“Of course I want you to stay,” she said, eyes closed, voice and body relaxed. “I love you. I’ll always want you to stay.”

Beautiful Game 15

She’d said it, finally. I leaned my chin on her shoulder and kissed her cloud of hair. “I love you too,” I murmured.

In response, she snored, and I laughed quietly. Such was the life of an intercollegiate athlete.

While my girlfriend slept, I took the phone into the kitchen and called Holly to tell her about the latest happy milestone Jess and I had managed to achieve.

“Great, now you two will be even more obnoxiously cute,”

Holly said, but I could hear the smile in her voice. “Bet you’re glad now you don’t ever stay mad,” she added.

“My friend,” I replied, “I’m ecstatic.”

Now if only life could continue this unfailingly happily.

Somehow, I doubted it would. But I had hope. After all, I was from Oregon.

On Sunday, Jess woke up at six a.m. and never went back to sleep. She told me this later—I didn’t wake up even when she left the apartment to take Duncan for an early walk. I know, some girlfriend, right? Jess had to meet the team for breakfast at a bagel shop near campus, so she left after her walk. But she came home between breakfast and the match for another massage.

Her muscles had tightened since the previous night’s bodywork. I kneaded a knot below her shoulder blade until she grunted in pain.

“You’re tense this morning,” I said, relenting a little.

“No kidding,” she muttered.

“You know you guys are going to kick ass. All you have to do is maintain your focus.”