Kate Christie (28 page)

“That’s just the ice talking. Dude, you came back from an injury to win! You know, triumphing over personal tragedy and all of that.”

“Ha, ha,” she said, swatting me.

We were sitting on the aluminum bench at the edge of the empty court on an early summer’s day, smiling into each other’s eyes. And I suddenly thought,
This can’t end, not ever
. But what if it did?

A shadow crept across us. My arm fell away from her shoulders as we looked back, squinting in the sunlight. I had an impression of a slightly familiar patrician woman in a tailored suit with a gold necklace and matching earrings. Then Jess jumped to her feet, the Ace bandage around her leg unraveling, the bag of ice tumbling to the ground.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded, eyes suddenly flat, voice harsher than I had ever heard.

I stood up too. The stranger was definitely Jess’s mother—she had the same high cheekbones as her daughter, the same long waist.

Only Jess’s muscles were bulkier and more clearly defined, while the lines about the older woman’s eyes were etched deeper.

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” the woman who had to be my girlfriend’s asshole mother said. “I just wanted to congratulate you, Jessie. I wanted to tell you how proud I am. Your father would have been too.”

Beautiful Game 203

Her eyes were a pale blue, her hair in its tight bun streaked with golden highlights. She was beautiful in a cool sort of way and very well put together. But she didn’t sound nearly as confident as she appeared.

“Thank you,” Jess said, her voice clipped. Her eyes were dark, narrowed against the sun and something else. “But you don’t get to be proud. This has nothing to do with you.”

I tried not to squirm as they stared at one another. “I can leave you two alone,” I offered, “if you want.”

Jess blinked at me. “You don’t have to go, Cam.” She glanced back at the woman. “My mother and I have nothing to say to each other. Do we, Mother?”

The older woman clutched a small white purse to her side. “I hope that’s not true,” she said, her voice uneven. “I’m sorry about everything, Jessie. I’ve tried to tell you, but you won’t answer my letters, you won’t return my phone calls. I divorced Harvey years ago. He moved back to Connecticut.”

Harvey? Who was Harvey? And then an idea occurred to me, too horrible to entertain seriously. It couldn’t be.

As if she could sense the wheels spinning in my head, Jess shot me a quick unreadable look before glancing back at her mother. “I know. Gram told me.”

Her mother took another step forward, stopping as her nyloned knees brushed against the bench. “I wish I could take it all back. I would do it all over differently if I could.” She hesitated, looking down at the ground for a moment. Then she took a deep breath and said, “I know I don’t deserve it, but I am your mother. Can’t you find it somewhere in your heart to even consider giving me another chance?”

For a moment, I thought Jess wavered. Her eyes glistened as she stared into her mother’s face. Then a tear spilled over, slipping down her sweat-dampened cheek and breaking her reverie. Scowling, she swiped at it and stood straighter.

“No,” she said firmly. “You’re right. You don’t deserve it.”

“Jess,” I protested inadvertently, feeling my throat tighten.

How could she turn away her own mother? And yet, this was the same woman who had, apparently, brought Jess’s attacker into their lives to begin with.

204 Kate Christie

Jess cast a wounded look my way. “Don’t, Cam,” she said, her voice low. “You don’t understand.”

“It’s okay,” her mother said, looking at me. “She doesn’t deserve a mother like me. She deserves so much better.” She lifted her chin. “I understand, honey, and I don’t blame you.

When you’re ready, if you’re ever ready, Gram knows how to get in touch with me.”

Jess looked down at the dark stain that had begun to seep onto the court from the melting bag of ice. She didn’t say anything.

“Congratulations, Jessie,” her mother added. “I do so love you.” Then she nodded at me, turned and walked quickly away.

In a few moments she had disappeared into the passageway between the courts.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Jess said. She blinked, and the tears spilled over again. She stooped to pick up the ice, wincing as she bent her leg. “Shit.” She dropped onto the bench.

I knelt beside the bench, trying to take the bag from her.

“I’ve got it.”

But she shoved my hands away and arranged the ice again, securing it to her leg haphazardly with the Ace bandage.

“Don’t touch me,” she said, her voice hoarse. “How could you do that? How could you take her side?”

I inhaled deeply. She was upset from seeing her mother, I told myself, not to mention emotionally drained from the roller-coaster match she’d only just finished. I was feeling fairly overwhelmed by the day’s drama myself, and I hadn’t won a national championship or faced down an estranged parent.

“I’m sorry it seemed like that,” I said. “But I’m on your side.”

“You have no idea,” she said, shaking her head. “I went to her for help, and she told me I was ungrateful, that I couldn’t be happy for her. She said I was just jealous of their relationship.”

Her voice broke again, and she pressed her hands over her face.

She was right. I couldn’t possibly know what it would be like to be raped by my stepfather and then abandoned by the one person I should have been able to trust. Her mother should have taken Jess to a hospital, should have called the police, should have kicked the son-of-a-bitch to the curb faster than you could say Beautiful Game 205

“Prison.” But she hadn’t done any of those things. Instead, she had turned her back on her child. Now Jess was reciprocating.

I took a risk and sat down on the bench, wrapped my arms around her and pulled her against me. She resisted at first, actively trying to push me away. But I stayed where I was and refused to let go, and eventually she gave in, leaning into me and pressing her face into my shoulder.

She cried like she had our first night together, the salt of her tears mingling with her sweat against my bare neck as she sobbed. The sounds were so gut-wrenching that I felt tears stinging my own eyes, a lump in my own throat. So much pain, terror, hurt, rage. It didn’t seem possible she could survive as wounded as she was.

But more than anything, Jess was a survivor. She’d proven that fact over and over again. My pep talk earlier in the day had contained elements of truth—the pain she’d suffered had made her stronger, even as she maintained it had left her permanently damaged. But maybe strength and injury weren’t contradictory states of being. Maybe, instead, they were intimately connected.

“I love you so much,” I murmured, stroking her hair and kissing her forehead, “and I’m so freaking proud of you.”

“Good,” she mumbled through her tears, tightening her grip on me.

We stayed at the edge of the court like that, me propping Jess up while tennis matches played on around us, the crack of racquets, grunts of battle, cries of myriad fans echoing throughout the complex as, slowly, her tears abated and her breathing settled back to normal.

Finally she checked her watch, unwrapped the Ace bandage, and looked at me, eyes bloodshot and swollen but clearer somehow too.

“Time to move around,” she said, and cleared her throat, laughing a little at her own hoarseness. “You ready, Wallace?”

“Ready, Maxwell.”

Standing up, I held out a hand. She took it and let me pull her up.

As we headed for the passageway where her mother had disappeared, Jess added, “Thanks for sticking around.”

206 Kate Christie

“You got it,” I said, looping my arm through hers. “I told you—you’re stuck with me.”

“Yay.” She tugged me closer and we crossed the court arm in arm while the midday sun beat down and tennis fans cheered all around us just out of sight.

You know how people are always saying that anticipation is worse than what you actually fear? Yeah, well, that wasn’t the case for me. Leaving La Jolla—and Jess—for the summer sucked even more than I’d anticipated.

We spent Sunday night celebrating NCAAs with the tennis team and Holly and even Becca, Jess limping on crutches around the off-campus apartment of one of her teammates, laughing and drinking more than I’d ever seen her do before. The pressure was finally off. In addition to facing down her mother, she had finally lived up to the hype of her preseason All-American selection and number one ranking throughout the year. Talk about a momentous weekend.

The next morning, though, I woke up to find her sitting in the chair beside the bed watching me sleep.

20 Kate Christie

“Good morning, Miss National Champ,” I said, yawning and stretching.

She shook her head and frowned.

I mock-frowned back. “Is it not a good morning?”

“In case you’ve forgotten, this is our last day together for three entire months.”

“Well, when you put it that way.” I pulled a pillow over my head. “I’m going back to sleep.”

She limped to the bed—I could hear her uneven gait through the pillow—and threw herself on top of me. “The better to tickle you, my dear,” she said, reaching under the covers to find my sensitive armpits.

Naturally, this led to a different form of physical interaction much more satisfying than tickling, and we occupied ourselves for some time that morning—finally!—before the growling in both of our stomachs could no longer be ignored. Then we got up and fixed a big breakfast. We’d worked out that I was good at eggs and she highly skilled at French toast, so that’s what we made that morning, drinking coffee (me) and tea (her) and both of us talking almost without taking a breath. There seemed to be so much to say and not nearly enough time.

The whole day was like that. We had lunch with Sidney and Claire in the backyard, a combination celebratory/send-off meal. They carefully guided the conversation away from the immediate future and on to topics like favorite foods, the tennis tournament, SDU classes and professors we’d especially liked.

The last thing Jess and I wanted to talk about was how we’d be spending the next three months until we saw each other again, and Jess’s landlords seemed to understand instinctively.

After lunch, they suggested we borrow Duncan for a neighborhood stroll. Twenty-four hours of Carrie’s ice on, ice off routine, minus a few hours of naked fun this morning, had left Jess’s hamstring in considerably better shape. She no longer needed crutches.

As we walked slowly away from Sidney and Claire’s house, I said, “I’m glad you have them. They take such good care of you.”“I know. They’ve been amazing.”

Beautiful Game 20

I hesitated. “Have you ever thought of telling them what happened? Or your teacher back in Bakersfield?”

This time, Jess didn’t flinch away at the mention of the rape.

She tilted her head slightly, pursed her lips and said, “I’ve thought about it. But I don’t want to always wonder if they’re thinking about it whenever they look at me.”

“What about someone else, maybe a professional?” I hazarded.

“I’ve thought about that too,” she admitted, “but I haven’t gotten much past the thinking stage. Can’t tell you’re a psych minor or anything.”

“Gotta proselytize. It’s in the contract.”

We walked in silence for a few minutes while I pondered what she’d said. Then I asked, “So do you ever wonder that with me? You know, if I’m thinking about it?”

“No,” she said, nudging me with her shoulder. “I know your mind is on other things. For example, what we did this morning.”

“True,” I agreed. “I fantasize about your French toast all the time.”

“Who wouldn’t, really?”

When we reached the park at the end of the street, Duncan tugged on the leash. I unhooked it from his collar so that he could snuffle about the bushes. Then I leaned against a tree and tried to memorize the way Jess looked, midday sun glinting in her hair and reflecting from her sunglasses.

“Stop looking at me like you’re taking a picture,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

But I couldn’t keep from looking at her like that throughout the day, our last together for what seemed like forever.

That evening, we had a marathon dinner at a fondue restaurant in town with Holly and Becca, where we relived the tennis tournament and heard about Holly’s new barista job and Becca’s job search, again carefully avoiding the topic of my impending absence from the city where the three of them would all be going about their lives while I lived at home with my parents and mowed lawns, trimmed hedges and painted fences, no doubt wishing I could be here with them. I even suspected I 210 Kate Christie

would miss Becca. Once you got past the poor little rich girl act she wasn’t so bad. Really.

After dinner, the four of us walked to Seal Beach and watched the seals settle in for the night as the sky darkened and the tide receded and the day grew closer and closer to an end. Finally Jess hinted that it was time to go. We walked back to the cars, where I hugged Holly and Becca goodbye, forcing a grin as they drove off toward their apartment in the city.
Not jealous,
I told myself as I waved until Becca’s car was out of sight. But I was a lousy liar.

Back at the apartment, Jess watched me pack my bags and putz around checking for forgotten objects. I’d managed to make myself quite comfortable in her space in the ten days since Holly had helped me move out of my dorm room. I couldn’t believe now how quickly the time had gone. If I could have any superpower, I’ve often thought, I would pick mastery of time.

Then nothing terrible would ever have to happen because I’d be able to go back and prevent any tragedy from ever happening.