Chapter Text
New York, New York. December 2010.
The first time you see her, she’s running late as usual. Her Nike sneakers are untied, and she’s dangerously close to tripping over the laces as she runs inside. Behind her crash two suitcases, bouncing against each other precariously as they catch on her heels, dangerously close to making her trip. In one hand is her iPhone, its screen cracked and dimmed. With the other, she is dragging her luggage and trying to pull the strands of windblown hair from her mouth at the same time. She nearly loses her balance as she slips past the double doors, one foot stomping the other’s shoelace. Her soft lips are drawn into a thin, worried line, and those wide doe eyes flicker around nervously. She’s running late as usual.
The first thing you notice is not her untied shoes or that she packed entirely too much for only a week. You do not notice that she is almost half an hour late or that her naked iPhone is shattered. It does not occur to you that she is clumsy when she doesn’t have a ball at her feet or that she looks concerned almost all the time. Instead, you notice the slope of her jaw as it meets her neck, where a white scarf covers her throat from the bite of December in New York. You can’t take your eyes off the curve of her cheekbones as she stands facing away from you. And for the first time in maybe years, you find yourself with your mouth dry, rendered speechless before you even know her name, and it’s only when she speaks that you are able to pick your jaw up from the floor. Her voice does not ring like bells as you thought it would. It’s slow and almost a mumble at first, soft and dripping with a lilt that you are not familiar with. You still have not noticed her untied shoes, or her two suitcases, or her broken phone screen, or that she is late.
The first thing you want to say to her is hello. She looks lost and scared, and you want nothing more than to make her feel safe and comforted. As she stands a few feet away from you in the lobby, looking around for some sign of familiarity or reassurance, you know only that this is the hotel you will share with her for a week. You know that there are twenty-four other women here for the same purpose, including her, but it will be the hotel you share with her for a week. Her. She has not looked at you yet, but you have not taken your eyes off her. Her scarf slips from her neck to the floor, and you want to pick it up but your feet are suddenly anchored to the floor like you are standing in cement. She retrieves it herself, not even noticing you, and your breath catches in your throat because how can a person be so beautiful that even their hands are attractive?
The first thing you say to her is “um.” She has checked into her hotel room and knows now that her roommate is Heather Mitts, not you, and you feel oddly possessive of her even though you don’t even know her name yet. When she speaks, your heart races. You don’t know why, but her voice sends chills up and down your spine, and you are so entranced with that slight accent that you don’t notice that you are still staring at her back. When she turns around, she catches your eyes locked on her—not any particular part of her, but her in general, because she might be the most beautiful human you have ever laid eyes on—and asks if you have a staring problem.
You answer “um.”
It is not a hello or even an introduction, but you have spoken to her, and suddenly you feel your face grow hot and your eyes drift to your own Nike sneakers, their laces tied in neat bows. You are suddenly hyperaware of the fact that you didn’t brush your hair after the nap you took when your flight got in and didn’t put on more deodorant after you played a quick game of air hockey in the arcade of the pizza joint you all went to for lunch. Your voice sounds too high and too girly, and you don’t dare breathe again until she walks away for fear that you still smell like garlic and pizza sauce. You know that your lips are chapped and your cheeks are sunburned, and your mascara is a day old. Your mom always did say that “um” was a filler word and you should never use it, and you know it’s not quite “hello,” but it’s the first word you said to her. It starts running through your mind over and over again, “um” and the way her eyes lit amusedly as you stumbled over those two letters. You do not have a staring problem; you have a her problem.
The first time you sit by her, she’s late again. (As usual.) It’s dinner—a buffet of something catered in the hotel conference room, lukewarm and tasteless by the time you get through the line—and she comes banging through the double doors right as you’re sitting down to eat. Her hair is wet and wavy from her shower, and she’s changed from her jeans, sweater, scarf, and pea coat to the familiar black sweatpants and red Nike shirt that matches you. (She matches you and twenty-three other women, not including the coaching staff, but all you can think about is how much better she looks in a tight tee shirt than you do.) Her untied shoes have been forgotten, and she has come to dinner with bare feet. You are both fascinated and curious. By now, your chicken is cold and the green beans you heaped onto your plate are slimy, but she smiles across the room and suddenly it feels warm again.
It is purely coincidence that she sits by you. She is no rookie to the team. The other twenty-three women in the room are her family. For years now, she has been a constant in their lives and they in hers, spending weeks upon weeks with each other. If anything, she is a veteran. The way people greet her is completely different from the way they greet you. When she walks into a room, her name is shouted joyously from fifteen different directions. You want to join in, but instead you smile and repeat her name in your head. Ali. Ali. Ali. Most of them, of course, call her Kriegs or Kriegy or Krieger, but you call her Ali. Still, she comes into dinner late—after Lauren Cheney has said grace and Pia has serenaded you all with an upbeat version of You Are My Sunshine—and you watch her eyes scan the room for a seat before she even gets a plate. You do not notice that her eyes are nervous again, flickering with that ever-present and ever-so-slight doubt, or that her lips are drawn into a worried line. You only notice that the only empty seat in the room is next to you.
She doesn’t ask any questions when she plops down between you and Hope Solo seconds later, her plate filled with cold chicken, flavorless mashed potatoes, and slick asparagus. A slight breeze follows her as she sits down quickly, and you catch a hint of her sweet perfume as she scoots her chair in and smiles across the table at your teammates. You pick up your sweaty glass and try not to let your hand shake as you take a sip of water to wash down the chicken and want in your throat. You reach for your fork again, and your hand brushes against hers as she reaches for the salt and pepper. The fork clatters to the china plate, and you pray that nobody at the table notices how red you turn. She smiles at you and tells you thanks. You nod. It’s better than “um.”
The first time she laughs at you, you are sure your heart will stop beating. You have listened to her answer questions about Germany, say a few things in the language like she’s been speaking it since birth, joke with your teammates at the table. You have taken notice of the way her doe eyes light with passion when she talks about Frankfurt and her family, and you’ve fallen in love with the way she begins to talk out of the corners of her mouth and slip into a slight accent as she talks longer and longer about her home away from home. You’ve watched her giggle her betrayal as Heather Mitts tries to pull a prank on Hope, and you’ve found yourself studying the smallest thing—the curve of her hands clasped together on the table, the heavy blink of her eyes as she admits she’s a little jet-lagged, the crinkle of her nose when she laughs. And you realize that you want to be the one making her laugh.
It’s an accident that she laughs at you, because you aren’t trying to be funny. You’re trying too hard to be anything but yourself, because you are loud and overbearing and sometimes too brash. For a moment, though, the facade slips, and you say something so authentically “Ashlyn” that she can’t help but throw her head back and squeeze her eyes shut while she laughs that nose-crinkling laugh you’ve found to be just as intoxicating as her voice. It’s only a split second that you allow your guard to go down, but it’s enough. She laughs louder and longer than anyone else, and they all notice it. She apologizes, blaming it on jet lag and exhaustion and being back with her team.
The first time someone asks you about her, you immediately put up your guard and become defensive. You’re rooming with Hope, who normally keeps to herself and doesn’t inject herself into any team drama or gossip, and you’re all but knocked off your feet when she calls you out on it. She brings it up casually. While you both change from your sweatpants and Nike shirts into different sweatpants and different Nike shirts to sleep in, she manages to slide it into conversation—how’s your first call-up, is everyone being nice, are you excited to learn, is Pia overwhelming you yet, we’re all really excited to have new goalkeeper talent in camp, work hard and my job could be yours one day, so you have the hots for Ali Krieger, do you prefer to shower in the morning or at night?
You push back the second she tells you everyone can see it from miles away—Ashlyn Harris has a big fat crush on Ali Krieger. You yell that you have only known her for a few hours, and you’ve barely exchanged a few words. You remember what Mittsy told you laughingly in the elevator—forget about it, Kriegs has been dating the same girl for seven months now, and before her there was a man she loved who couldn’t stay, and before him there was a girl who made Ali believe that the stars were her eyes and the whole world was in her heart. You tell her she’s wrong—you don’t have a crush on Ali Krieger. You aren’t even really lying, because you’re afraid it’s already way more than just a crush—you’re afraid you might be in love with the girl you met six hours ago.