Erin winced at the tone of her voice.
Lia sighed. “Sorry. I’m still having some trouble handling this.”
“Our mistake, you mean?”
The words were bitter enough to make Lia regret saying them in the first place. Especially because, even knowing what had come after, she would do it all over again if she could go back in time. “Are you telling me you don’t regret it?”
Erin’s throat bobbed as she swallowed. “The only thing I regret is how I treated you after. I’d take it back if I could. And if there was a way I could make it up to you, I would. Not that it matters now, anyway.”
The tone of Erin’s voice made Lia tilt her head. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.”
“No.” Folding her arms across her chest, Lia met Erin’s gaze head-on. “Tell me.”
Erin’s teeth flashed white as she bit at her bottom lip, a rare display of uneasiness. “I overheard you talking to Hannah on the phone a few weeks ago. It seemed…friendly. I thought maybe you’d got back together.”
Not what Lia had expected at all—she was so surprised, she laughed. “Are you joking? Is that why you’ve kept your distance these last few weeks?”
“No. I kept my distance because you asked for space. Because we made a mistake.”
One Lia still couldn’t get off her mind, no matter how hard she tried. “Maybe we should start fresh. Pretend the last six months never happened.”
“You think you can do that?”
“I don’t know.” But what they were doing now wasn’t working. And if Erin was nearly back to a return, ignoring one another wasn’t going to fly. They needed to work together for the good of the team. “But I think I’d like to try.”
* * *
“We have two things to celebrate tonight.” Shanice stood at the head of the table and raised her glass of wine.
Around Erin, their teammates did the same, and Erin lifted her own.
“First and foremost—happy birthday, Lia. I’m sure you’re thrilled to be spending the evening with all of us.”
“Nowhere else I’d rather be.” Lia sat on the opposite side of the table from Erin, a few seats down. The smile she flashed at Shanice seemed forced. She hadn’t been herself all night, quieter than usual, keeping to herself and only speaking when spoken to.
At team dinners that was usually Erin’s approach, not Lia’s. But though things between them had improved somewhat over the last week, Erin didn’t know if they were in a good enough place for her to ask Lia what was on her mind.
“And second,” Shanice said, turning her gaze toward Erin, “congratulations to our star striker, who’s back in the matchday squad this weekend for the first time in nine months.”
Whoops and hollers echoed around the table, and Erin couldn’t hide her smile. Unlike Lia’s, hers was genuine, cheeks aching with the force of it.
Shanice lifted her glass higher. “Can’t wait to see you back on the pitch, Erin.”
“Thank you. I can’t wait, either.” Being in the squad didn’t necessarily mean she’d get any minutes on Sunday, but it was one step closer. She’d sit by the side of the pitch instead of in the stands, inching her way toward her long-awaited return.
Even five minutes would be enough. Five minutes of hearing the cheers ring out around their stadium, of gliding over the grass, of dodging and weaving around players she didn’t know inside and out.
She could almost taste it.
Shanice sat, and around Erin conversations resumed or were started, providing a hum of background noise as she finished her glass of wine.
But her focus—as it always was these days—was drawn back toward Lia. Her eyes were downcast; she was staring at her hands. Not the behaviour one would expect from the birthday girl.
Erin felt that way about her own birthdays, but she was on the wrong side of thirty. Lia had seemed fine—if embarrassed—at training earlier when she’d walked into a canteen full of balloons and been serenaded by a chorus of “Happy Birthday” during lunch.
On the training pitch, she’d been fine, too, moving with her usual tenacity. For the past week, they’d trained exclusively together, and Erin had to admit she relished it. As when they’d both been injured earlier in the season, Lia pushed her every day to be better.
