Page 26
“No. It sounds like Paige. The real Lauren is still in there somewhere, waiting to fuck it up.”
“Shut up. You won’t fuck anything up. And if you do, we’ll forgive you.”
“Because you need me between those posts?”
“Now you’re fishing.” Jenna rolled her eyes. “We love you, you idiot.” She reached for the changing room door handle, then glanced back. “And if she ends up joining us, even better. You get your redemption, and I get my defender.”
“See! I knew that was the only reason you were doing this.”
Lauren lobbed a glove at her. Jenna ducked, laughing, and it hit the door instead.
Jenna disappeared into the warmth of the changing rooms, leaving Lauren to bend down and retrieve her glove from the concrete.
Maybe Jenna was right. If Carly joined The Blues, she’d see Lauren as everyone else apparently did: the dependable keeper, the solid teammate, the woman who finally had her shit together.
And maybe, if she stood in it long enough, she’d start to believe it herself—the way you learned to trust a repaired knee. Not all at once. By putting weight on it and seeing if it held.
10
Carly
Deep Heat. Stale fryer grease. Wet mud.
It wasn’t a bouquet anyone would bottle for the duty-free counter, but it hit Carly with a wave of nostalgia.
She leaned back against the scuffed wood of the bar, nursing a lemonade while the room roared around her. There had been good times in places like this: celebrating wins with a pint, rubbing aching muscles, thawing out over a plate of hot chips. For a moment, she let herself sink into the memory.
“Lloydy!”
The shout shattered the peace.
Jenna appeared through the crowd, dirt-stained and manic, hair poking out in all directions like a startled dandelion. She held pride of place in most of Carly’s best memories of Sunday league.
Unfortunately, the worst had trailed in behind her.
Lauren gave a limp, nervous wave. She’d changed into jeans and a fresh T-shirt, but her hair was wet at the ends.
“War wound?” Carly asked, gesturing with her glass to the faint purple bruise blooming on Lauren’s upper arm.
Lauren scratched it, then hid the arm behind her back. “No big deal. Just taking one for the team.”
“You made a lot of saves. Good ones.”
“Thanks. I really didn’t want to let one in, but it was tough.”
“I saw.”
Carly took a slow sip, watching Lauren over the rim of her glass the way she’d once read terrain—looking for the place that would give first.
“The back line was a mess. They didn’t know whether to step up or drop deep. Looked like a confidence issue.”
She waited to see whether Lauren’s old certainty was still there: the belief that she was always the only competent person on the pitch. Surely it hadn’t vanished completely. Surely it was waiting for permission to resurface.
“One of the centre-backs was struggling for fitness,” Carly pressed when Lauren only shuffled her feet. “Caught in two minds constantly. Did you notice?”
Lauren shrugged, eyes fixed on the floor. “I guess. But I don’t want to be mean. She’s trying.”
Not being mean. That was new. Or an act.
