MERYL WILSNER writes happily-ever-afters for queer folks who love women. They are the author of Something to Talk About and Mistakes Were Made. Born in Michigan, Meryl lived in Portland, Oregon, and Jackson, Mississippi, before returning to the Mitten State. Some of Meryl’s favorite things include: all four seasons, button-down shirts, the way giraffes run, and their wife.

Also by Meryl Wilsner

Something to Talk About

Mistakes Were Made

Cleat Cute

Copyright

Published by Piatkus

ISBN: 978-0-349-43410-0

All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2023 by Meryl Wilsner

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

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For Ashley,
and so

You can’t win a championship without gays on your team. It’s pretty much never been done before, ever. That’s science, right there.

—Megan Rapinoe

One

The vending machine takes the crumpled dollar bill Phoebe feeds it, then immediately spits it back out. Phoebe huffs, taking the bill and flattening it against the thigh of her spandex shorts.

“Don’t let me down now,” she murmurs as she tries once more.

When the dollar isn’t smugly returned, Phoebe pumps both hands above her head in victory. She jams her index finger against buttons with only vague outlines of C and 4 left after years of use, and peanut M&Ms plummet to the bottom of the machine.

“How many blues in this bag?” she asks her brother, Teddy, who always times his break at the front desk for when Phoebe is between personal training clients.

Teddy picks at the chipped top of the lone table in the break room, legs splayed wide like that will make him taller. “What do I get if I win?”

“I’ll share ’em with you,” Phoebe says. “If I win, you buy my next bag.”

“Is that just because you’re out of cash?”

He isn’t wrong—she’d had to dig through her drawstring bag, thinking all hope was lost until she found a bill in the bottom corner.

“It’s because it’s an equal bet,” Phoebe says, then admits, “Or, well, it can be because of two things.”

Teddy used to be her Mini-Me, before he’d chopped his hair and changed his name. Not that it affected too much—no one could look at their flaming red hair and fully freckled faces and think they’re anything but siblings. Teddy leans into the messiness of their matching hair, always looking like he’s just rolled out of bed, but somehow managing to pull it off. (At least Phoebe knows she’ll look good if she ever decides to cut hers and go butch.)

“Ten,” Teddy says. “And if I win, you take me to New Orleans with you.”

“That seems like awfully high stakes for a bet about M&Ms.”

It’s better than Teddy’s usual bet, though, which is to make Phoebe wash his binder. He always waits until after working out to collect, the asshole.

Still, she’d take him with if she could. Her only reservation about heading to Louisiana at the end of the month is how far she’ll be from her family. College was one thing—Mapleton was close enough to bring her laundry home. Moving to NOLA will be her first time living outside of Indiana in her twenty-two years.

On the table, Phoebe’s phone rings with a shrill melody. She got it out of her locker earlier to scroll TikTok during the half hour she waits for her next client to arrive. It’s weird to have this long of a break between clients. Throughout college, she always scheduled an entire day of back-to-back sessions to make the thirty-minute drive from Mapleton worth it. Plus, it’s the first week of January, when the gym is still full of people yet to give up on their resolutions. Phoebe typically shoots for 100 percent retention of New Year’s clients, because it means she proved to them working out is fun, but she didn’t take anyone new on this year. It wouldn’t have made sense, since she’ll be leaving for New Orleans in a few weeks.

“Why in God’s name is your ringer on?” Teddy says with a grimace.

Phoebe hurls herself into the plastic chair beside her brother and looks at her phone. It’s a Chicago number.

She didn’t used to pick up numbers she didn’t know. She didn’t used to have her ringer on, either, given that she’s not a boomer, but since New Orleans drafted her in December, there’ve been a lot of phone calls to set things up before the preseason starts next month. Granted, most of those numbers are from Louisiana, but just in case, she answers the call.

“Hello?”

“Hi, is this Phoebe Matthews?” The voice is accented—Phoebe doesn’t know enough about the UK—Great Britain? the British Isles? whatever it’s called—to place it exactly.

“Yup, that’s me.” Phoebe pins the phone against her ear with her shoulder so she can open the packet of M&Ms.

“Phoebe, hi. This is Amanda Greene with the US Women’s National Team.”

Phoebe’s hands pause. Her heart slingshots around inside her rib cage. “What?”

“I wanted to congratulate you on being drafted last month,” the person says. “You’ll do well with New Orleans. But more specifically, I wanted to invite you to training camp with the national team in a couple of weeks.”

“Shut the fuck up.” Phoebe laughs, high-pitched and awkward. This has to be some kind of prank. She pulls at the edges of the bag of M&Ms again and says to her brother across the table, “Did you do this?”

“What?” both Teddy and the person on the phone say.

Phoebe swallows. “This is really Amanda Greene?”

Teddy’s eyes go wide.

“It really is,” the person on the phone says.

The bag in Phoebe’s hands finally opens—but too enthusiastically, sending M&Ms skittering across the break room floor. Phoebe doesn’t move to pick them up. She told the coach of the US Women’s National Soccer Team to shut the fuck up.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry for—I shouldn’t have—I didn’t mean that. When I said to shut up, it was just an expression. I’m—wait, are you really serious? You’re inviting me to camp?”

“We are.” The person—Amanda fucking Greene, apparently, coach of the national team—sounds like she’s smiling. “I can’t make any promises about the likelihood of getting called up again this year, but I’m looking forward to getting a look at you.”

Phoebe grins. “I’m looking forward to earning another call up.”

This might feel unreal, but Phoebe isn’t lacking confidence in her talent.

Amanda chuckles. “Someone will be following up later this week to get you set up with everything you’ll need to join us in Jacksonville. I’ll see you soon.”

“Thank you. I can’t wait.”

“You’re fucking with me, right?” Teddy says as soon as Phoebe ends the call. “That wasn’t Amanda Greene.”

Phoebe gulps down a couple of breaths. “That was Amanda Greene.”

“You’re going to January camp?” If it were a text message, the comment would’ve been in all caps with twenty question marks at the end of it.

“I’m going to January camp.”

Phoebe can’t seem to do anything but parrot her brother’s words in answer form.

Teddy leaps out of his chair, his hands tugging at Phoebe’s to pull her up, too. She stumbles to her feet while her brother jumps up and down beside her.

“You got a call up! You got a call up!”

Teddy is shouting, but Phoebe’s head is filled with the sound of blood rushing through her veins or static or the Lake Michigan waves at Indiana Dunes State Park. Her heart thumps against her sternum.

“Tell me everything she said. Verbatim.”

Phoebe can’t remember. “I didn’t even think it was her. I thought it was a prank call, that you or Alice had put someone up to it.”

“We’re rude but we’re not that rude.”

She relays what she can remember of the conversation to her brother. It happened. It just happened, but it doesn’t feel real. Like a dream that you thought made sense, but as you explain it to someone, the surreality unfurls.

Getting drafted into the American Women’s Soccer Association was a dream come true in and of itself. Phoebe had sat in that hotel conference room in December, a week out from graduating college, wearing a tailored navy-blue suit that cost as much as the rest of her wardrobe combined. The expense was made worth it when the New Orleans Krewe picked her in the first round of the draft.

At the time, it was the best thing that had ever happened to her.

This is better.

The national team has multiple camps throughout the year. The best American players from all over the AWSA—and sometimes even farther (Becky Ewing plays in Europe)—come together for training and often games before going back to their club teams. Being called into camp is the first step toward making the national team roster. When you’re on the roster, you not only get a chance to play for your country, but—more importantly to Phoebe—you get bonuses.

A lot of things are more important to Phoebe than “playing for her country,” actually, but the national team is the route to all of them. Beyond the money, making the national team is about playing on the biggest stage. It’s about being the best.

“You’re on the fucking national team!”

“Okay, I mean, I’m not like—” Phoebe hedges. “There are no games during this camp. It’s just training. And she specifically said she couldn’t promise me anything about future call ups this year, which obviously makes sense because it’s a World Cup year. It’d be wild to make the team right now. She’s gotta have the lineup mostly figured out already, right? Or at least the options narrowed down?”

“Maybe she does, and you’re one of the options.”

Phoebe sucks in a breath at the thought. How is this her life?

“I have to get back to the front desk, but I’m so fucking proud of you, dude.”

Teddy hasn’t stopped grinning since Phoebe got off the phone. He throws his arms around her shoulders even though she’s got five inches on him. They squeeze each other tight.

After pulling back, Phoebe looks at the floor and says, “So I have to clean up the M&Ms you jumped on top of?”

Teddy, obviously unrepentant, makes the face of the grimacing emoji. “Pretty please?”

“You suck so bad.”

“Thanks, love you!” he says, flicking her off over his shoulder as he leaves.

Phoebe pulls her scrunchie out of her hair. She combs her fingers through the messy red waves and wrestles them back into another ponytail. The vacuum in this place only works half the time, so Phoebe starts by picking up the M&Ms that didn’t get crushed in the celebration.

Twenty-three players make the roster for the World Cup. More than that are called into most training camps, to give Amanda and the rest of the coaching staff a chance to evaluate each player close-up. Of course, they’re also evaluated by their club play.

Phoebe intentionally graduated early so that when—she always said when, rather than if, even though non-NCAA players rarely got drafted—when she was drafted, she could join her AWSA team in the spring. She planned that part of her career out. She’d never thought to add the national team as a goal.

Or, of course she had considered it—making the national team has been her goal since she was twelve years old, sitting too close to the forty-two-inch TV that only got four channels, stars in her eyes, while Grace Henderson subbed on for the national team for the first time. Her first career appearance—first cap, as it’s called—came before she’d gotten her driver’s license, according to the announcers. To this day, a poster of Grace Henderson hangs on the wall in Phoebe’s bedroom at her parents’ house.

But being Grace Henderson is not a realistic career goal. It never made sense for Phoebe to expect to make the national team right out of college. Not in a World Cup year. Instead, once she got drafted, her plan became about playing so well while the biggest stars of the league are away at the World Cup that she’d have a chance to make the Olympic roster next year. Sure, it’d be amazing to make the World Cup roster, but it isn’t realistic. Even someone like her, who barely passed her stats class last semester, can recognize the probability of making that roster, having never been called up before, is minuscule. Better to plan for things that might actually happen. Things she can have a hand in making happen.

But now that she’s gotten called into a training camp? This gives Phoebe some control. This gives her some power.

This gives her too big of a head and she’s getting so far ahead of herself. She’s not about to make the World Cup roster; she is vacuuming the break room—it’s working for once—at Planet Fitness in Buttfuck Nowhere, Indiana, with five minutes until her next client arrives.

She puts the vacuum away, shoves the still half-full M&M bag into her locker, and tells herself not to get carried away. A single call up doesn’t mean too much, except that she got noticed. The camp in two weeks is her time to make sure they keep noticing her.

Two

The practice field is silent when Grace arrives. The fences cast long shadows across the grass, still damp with dew. The team won’t even be out here today. First day of camp means being indoors—weights and cardio equipment and the like. But Grace likes to start at the field. It helps her remember why she’s here. She loves a soccer field.

That is what this is supposed to be about: doing what she loves. Of course outcomes matter. She wants to win. But at its core, playing with the national team is about just that: playing. It’s supposed to be fun. Most of the time it is, but any year with a major tournament makes Grace tense. They’ve won three World Cups in a row. Anything less than winning is failing.

So Grace will make sure they win.

Even with the side trip to the pitch, she’s the first to the locker room.

Other players arrive in groups. Grace focuses on organizing her locker so she doesn’t have to say much more than hello. Returning for January camp is like the first day of school: chaotic and too loud. The AWSA season doesn’t start for another month, and the last national team camp was in November. For those who arrived early enough last night, there’d been a team dinner, but otherwise, no one has seen each other since before the holidays.

“Hey, Captain,” Kayla Sorrell, one of Grace’s teammates on the Krewe, greets her.

“Not captain here,” Grace says. She can handle being the captain of New Orleans, but captain of the US Women’s National Team is too much. “I don’t want that kind of responsibility.”

A heavy hand claps on Grace’s back. “Plus, my shoes are too big for you to fill, Baby Spice.”

The national team’s actual captain, Courtney Trout—better known as Fish—grins down at Grace. Her microbraids aren’t pulled back into a ponytail yet.

“Big and old, that’s Fish in a nutshell,” Sorrell teases. “You know I had to look up the Spice Girls the first time I heard you call her that?”

“I refuse to believe that’s true,” Fish says. “I’m gonna make them play ‘Wannabe’ while we lift and you’re both gonna sing along.”

Grace shakes her head. Not that she doesn’t know the song—it may have come out the year before she was born, but she doesn’t live under a rock—she just will not be singing in front of anyone. Fish knows that. The whole team knows that. Except the two new players, who both got their first national team call ups after being drafted to the Krewe earlier this month.

Grace doesn’t know anything more about the rookies than what she saw in the draft: their names, positions, and headshots. Forward Gabriella Rodriguez is changing on the other side of Sorrell. Grace glances around the locker room. The other new girl, Phoebe Matthews, is a midfielder with bright red hair that’s hard to forget. But it’s nowhere in the locker room.

When Matthews does finally arrive, she makes a scene.

The rest of the team is already in the weight room. Amanda is halfway through her welcome speech when someone slams into the doors of the room from the outside.

“Shit!” The person grunts for a second before pulling, rather than pushing, and finally getting the doors opened. The other new girl. “Sorry! Sorry I’m late. I couldn’t find—” Her mouth snaps shut. “Sorry,” she says once more, quieter this time, almost demure.

Amanda nods. “Matthews.”

“Hi,” Matthews says, head down, shoulders up. She slinks farther into the weight room, coming to stand behind Sorrell on the side of the team.

Not being the captain means it’s none of Grace’s business if Matthews is late. She doesn’t need to care. She doesn’t care, really, except that she can’t imagine being late on your first day with the senior team. If Grace remembers correctly, this is Matthews’s first day with any national team. She hadn’t been in the Olympic Development pipeline. She came from some nowhere school after growing up in some nowhere town. And she’s still willing to throw away her shot by being late on the first day of camp.

Grace isn’t impressed.

Matthews’s freckles are evident from across the room. Her hair is even redder in person. It’s still down, too, or had been when she arrived. By now, she’s combing her fingers through the mess, which is thick and full of tangles. Grace wants to get her hands in it. After years of experience with her younger sister, she’s been the designated hair braider on the team for almost as long as she’s been on it. Grace can get Matthews’s hair in order. Two french braids, starting on either side of that middle part and connecting to a ponytail. It’s more practical than the squirrel’s nest of a bun Matthews manages to secure with a lime-green scrunchie.

Amanda goes on explaining the plan for the day. Most of the players would rather be on the field, but the coaches make sure they ease into training. Elite athletes are too competitive for their own good.

Cardio machines—bikes, ellipticals, and treadmills—are mainly used for warm-ups and testing. You can’t outcompete a heart rate monitor. Pulse ox, VO2, heart rate: Grace likes these numbers. She likes things you can measure. They aren’t the be-all, end-all—a better lung capacity doesn’t score goals—but they’re concrete.

Grace has the unknown quality, too, the thing that makes her the one who other players turn to when they’re tied in the eighty-fifth minute of a knockout game and no one wants to go to overtime. She has grit, perseverance, drive, whatever you want to call it. But she can’t explain it. Fitness numbers, on the other hand, make sense.

Before cardio, Grace has her one-on-one with Ilse. The team’s fitness expert has one-on-ones with every member of the team at the beginning of the year. They’re an analysis, really, assessing each player’s range of motion and flexibility through a variety of stretches, both static and dynamic. But Ilse always makes it seem like a conversation.

“Anything been bothering you lately?” she asks as Grace goes through the required movements.

“No,” Grace says.

Nothing more than usual, anyway. She’s had a twinge in her hip for months, but Ilse doesn’t need to know that. Grace has seen too many aging players sidelined by the smallest of failures of their body. That’s what getting older is: your body falling apart. At least it seems that way.

“You’re not working too hard?” Ilse asks.

“We’re not even in season, Ilse.”

They aren’t even in preseason; the Krewe doesn’t have players report until the end of the month.

“Like that has ever stopped you.”

It isn’t bad to stay fit in the off-season. Grace has spent the last ten years taking the best care of her body that she can. The right food, exercise regimen, sleep schedule. It’s paid her back in spades, but she’s always known there’d come a point when she wouldn’t be able to bounce back like she used to. She was a teenager when she’d started on this team; of course her body has changed.

Ilse mostly stops lecturing Grace. Their conversation is more about catching up than catching Grace in her lie. For the last movement, Ilse directs Grace to an open area in the middle of the gym, about ten yards long. Butt kicks one way, high knees the other. Grace steels herself. High knees bother her hip. It isn’t too bad, but it isn’t comfortable.

“I promise I’m being good, Lil Il,” Grace says midway through the high knees, employing the nickname she knows will distract the trainer.

Ilse rolls her eyes. “You might not be working yourself to death, but you’re gonna be the death of me. Get outta here. Phoebe, you’re up.”

Grace moves on to the stationary bike. She might as well have stayed for Matthews’s assessment—the redhead talks loudly enough that Grace can hear the whole conversation.

“Nope. No pain. I had Osgood-Schlatter’s in my right knee as a kid and it still sometimes aches when it rains, but not, like, every time it rains. And even then it’s not bad or limiting, just a little achy, I just wanted to make sure you knew.”

She wants to make sure Ilse knows a lot of things, apparently, like how she has a younger brother named Teddy and an older sister named Alice and no pets right now but she’s more of a dog person than a cat person, though she loves both. Grace tries not to listen. She didn’t know it was possible for someone to talk more than Fish.

Grace has never liked the constant proximity of national team camps. It’s one thing to be on top of one another in training, but then there are team meals and assigned roommates. At least with the Krewe she can go home at the end of the day and sit alone on her screened-in porch.

Of course, there are benefits to camp. Not being captain is one. Getting to see her teammates’ baby after dinner is another. Half the team crowds into H and Madeeha Wilson’s room when their nanny brings Khadijah by once the day is over.

Grace met the little peanut last fall when the Krewe played Philadelphia. Khadijah was still bald then, but her hair has since come in, black fuzz now covering her head. Grace tries to be patient while her teammates who have yet to meet Khadijah coo over her, but eventually she decides they’ve had enough time and scoops the baby out of H’s arms.

She retreats to the corner with Khadijah while the rest of the group rehashes their day. Babies are the perfect conversation partners: cute as hell and not too talkative.

“What did you think about the newbies?” H asks.

Grace further tunes out. She doesn’t gossip about her teammates. She makes faces at Khadijah instead, scrunches up her nose, waggles her eyebrows, gives the girl an open-mouthed smile.

Grace’s eyes are crossed and her tongue out when she hears, “How about Grace’s protégé?”

She looks away from Khadijah. “What?”

“What do you think about your new fangirl?” Kelsey asks, smirking.

There are only two brand-new players, and Grace has spoken to neither. She should’ve, probably; they’re both rookies on her club team, too. But she doesn’t want the responsibility of being their captain yet, so she’s avoided them.

“Oh my God, do you not know?” Kelsey laughs. “I’ll pull up the video. You have to see this.”

“Gimme that baby,” Fish says. She takes Khadijah off Grace’s hands. “No screens before she’s two.”

“Seriously, look at this,” Kelsey says, thumbs flying over her phone screen.

Amber and Kelsey crowd on either side of Grace, close enough that the end of Kelsey’s high blond ponytail tickles Grace’s shoulder. Grace tries not to prickle while they wait through an ad on the video. She never knows how much Kelsey is pretending. Kelsey acts like she didn’t break Grace’s trust, or at least like it isn’t a big deal that she did. Grace doesn’t know if it’s acting, really, or if what happened between them mattered so little to Kelsey she really did forget about it. Meanwhile, it still gets under Grace’s skin every time Kelsey sidles up beside her. She used to do it because she liked being close to Grace; at least that was what she’d let her think.

It doesn’t matter. This isn’t about Kelsey. It’s about Matthews, apparently, who is on Kelsey’s phone once the ad ends, an AWSA press screen behind her. She’s breathless, her cheeks as bright red as her hair. Grace would think she just played a game if she wasn’t wearing a navy-blue suit that fits her perfectly. Her face splits into a wide grin.

“Are we sure this isn’t some fever dream?” she says on the screen.

The person holding the microphone laughs, and Matthews’s grin grows.

“Is it possible I’m still fourteen and having the best dream of my life? Getting drafted to Grace Henderson’s team? Not only do I get to play soccer—not only is someone going to pay me to play soccer, but I get to play with my idol? It absolutely does not seem real. How could I have gotten this lucky?”

Grace can feel Kelsey looking at her, glancing between the screen and her face, checking for her reaction. The reporter in the video asks what it feels like to be one of only a few non-NCAA players ever drafted.

“There’s one more thing she says at the end,” Kelsey says over Matthews’s answer. She skips ahead to the end of the video.

“When I was a kid, all I wanted to be was Grace Henderson,” Matthews is saying. “God, I’m going to embarrass the hell out of myself the first time I meet her. And quite possibly every time after that.”

The reporter congratulates her again, and the video ends.

“Somebody’s got a crush,” Amber singsongs.

Grace tries not to grimace. How is she supposed to react?

“Who doesn’t have a crush on Grace?” Madeeha says.

“Look at that face,” H says. She catches Grace by the chin. “How could you not have a crush on that face?”

Grace shrugs H off and uses the movement as an excuse to get away from Kelsey and Amber.

Fish doesn’t look away from Khadijah to say, “She’s not called Baby Spice for nothing.”

“She’s not called Baby Spice at all,” Grace grumbles.

“All right, I thought she was smiling at me but she’s definitely pooping,” Fish says. “This baby is no longer mine.”

Madeeha takes her child back, and the conversation turns to diapers.

Grace will have to buy Khadijah another book for getting her out of that. There’s still a smirk on Kelsey’s face, though, like she’s waiting for the chance to say more about the Matthews video. While Madeeha and H jokingly bicker over whose turn it is to change the baby, Grace slips out of the room without saying anything.

So Matthews is a fangirl. Great.

It’ll be annoying, but not a big deal. It might help, actually, at least on the Krewe when Grace will be her captain. The ones who look at Grace with stars in their eyes are usually the easiest to lead. Very Grace says jump and they say how high?

That’s what Grace thinks of the next morning, the entire team save one on the pitch.

Training hasn’t officially started when Matthews barrels up the sideline in slides, her cleats dangling from one hand, but in Grace’s opinion, if you’re not early, you’re late.

“I’m here!” Matthews shouts.

Grace sighs. She can’t imagine being late in the first place, much less announcing it as she arrives.

No one else seems to care. Matthews didn’t get lectured for being late yesterday, and she doesn’t get so much as a side-eye this morning.

Coaches are gentler on young players than they used to be. It’s a good thing, for a lot of reasons, including that it means Grace doesn’t have to be. Matthews has enough people being nice to her. Grace can be the hard-ass.

“Matthews,” Grace says without looking at her. “With me.”

Oohs go through camp. Amanda turns away, but not before Grace sees her smile.

Either ignoring the ominous oohs or oblivious to them, Matthews bounds to Grace’s side, beaming. “I’m Phoebe. Matthews. You know that already, obviously. Hi. Nice to meet you.”

She offers her hand. Grace doesn’t take it.

“Training starts at nine. That means you’re dressed and ready at nine.”

Matthews’s smile dampens. “Right. Yeah. I’m not super great at time management. I have a couple of different alarms, but now that I know how long it takes to get to the field, I can set one with a different noise for when I have to leave my room, and that way—”

“I don’t need your morning routine,” Grace says. “Just need you here on time.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Matthews says. She tilts her head like she’s considering something. “Not ma’am. You’re, like, barely four years older than me, I don’t think I should be calling you ma’am.”

Fish snorts to Grace’s left. Grace ignores her. She ignores Matthews, too, who still has to change her shoes while the rest of the team starts warm-ups.

They begin with dynamic stretches halfway across the width of the field and back. Grace puts on her game face. Even in training, she isn’t willing to show weakness, and she never knows when her hip might send a shock of pain through her. Better to look angry and unapproachable than to let the pain show.

Sorrell, who is used to Grace’s game face, has no problem approaching her as they wait for their turn to lunge across the field.

“Thought you weren’t captain here,” she says.

Grace shrugs. She’ll be Matthews’s captain on the Krewe, might as well act like it here, too. She has a feeling Matthews is going to need a firm hand.