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Rebecca is used to being stared at. That’s no idle boast—simply a statement of fact. She’s platinum blond, she works her ass off at the gym, and she stands just a hair over six feet in flats.
She almost never wears flats.
Point is, she isn’t afraid of sticking out in a crowd. Most of the time, she rather enjoys the attention.
But something about the way Beard looks at her at morning staff meeting—like he’s trying to bore two black holes into her skull—throws her right off. It’s so odd that she has to get a second opinion.
“Ted?” she says, catching him at the door to her office. She waits until the rest of the coaching staff is out of earshot. “Is there something on my face?”
Ted’s bright gaze rakes over her from hairline to chin. She flushes a little in response; she didn’t expect him to give her such a thorough once-over.
After a moment, he grins. “Besides a new shade of lipstick that I gotta say really jives with your skin tone? Nope! Why’d you ask?”
Rebecca frowns down the hallway, where Beard is exchanging clipboards with Roy.
“It’s nothing,” she says. “Thanks anyway.”
A week later, it happens again. Rebecca is about to pop into the boot room for something—all right, she’s sneaking a smoke, it’s been a long day, so sue me—when Beard steps out of the physio office a few doors down.
They lock eyes. She freezes, feeling vaguely guilty and not sure why. “Can I help you, Coach Beard?”
“No,” he says in a monotone. Then he walks backwards (backwards!) down the hall, glowering at her the whole way.
Rebecca blinks at the floor. Maybe she’s hallucinating. When she looks back up, Beard is chatting with one of the massage therapists, acting for all the world as if staring down your colleagues is completely normal workplace behaviour.
She forgets about her cigarette and makes a beeline for the locker rooms. Isaac nods at her on his way out; he’s wearing a calm, pensive expression, which can only mean one thing.
“Someone got the Lasso treatment,” Rebecca says.
Ted smiles and leans back in his chair, hands behind his head. “He’s a little keyed up about United is all. Nothin’ a good old-fashioned pep talk can’t fix. To what do I owe the pleasure, boss?”
“I need to talk to you about something. It’s a bit sensitive, actually.”
“Uh oh,” he says, and straightens up. “If this is about the toaster in the break room, tell Angela I’m real sorry and I already ordered a new one.”
“Er, no.” She edges closer to his desk, though there’s no one in the locker room to overhear. “It’s about Beard. I haven’t done anything to offend him, have I?”
As he considers it, Ted’s eyebrows dance around his forehead. “Not that I can reckon. Why?”
“He’s been…staring at me a lot lately.”
“Staring at you. Like, I-saw-you-from-across-the-room-and-like-your-vibe kinda staring? Or I-saw-you-put-that-tuna-melt-in-there kinda staring?”
“The latter. I think.” Rebecca shakes her head. “I swear, every time we see each other, he glares at me like he’s trying to peer into my soul. Frankly, it’s unnerving.”
Ted’s eyes round. “Uh oh,” he says again. “The gauntlet has been thrown.”
“Oh, God. It was that comment I made about Jane’s kimono, wasn’t it? What was she even thinking, wearing that to a fancy dress party? It isn’t a bloody costume.”
“It is not Jane’s kimono. Though you’re probably gonna wish it was.”
“What, then? Spit it out.”
Ted sighs and leans forward onto his elbows, looking up at her like he’s about to break devastating news. “What’re you doin’ tonight?”
Rebecca’s teeth click shut. Is he asking me on a—
“You’re gonna need the pep talk to end all pep talks,” he says, as if to answer her question. “Plus a whole heap of complex carbs.”
That’s how they end up at the Crown & Anchor later that night, sharing a double order of chips.
“A staring contest?” Rebecca repeats, incredulous. “Are we running a football club or a primary school?”
“No, ma’am, this is no child’s play.” Across the table, Ted squirts more ketchup onto a plate—a separate one, because he knows she hates ketchup. “Beard is the Brett Favre of staring contests.”
“The who?”
“The Kevin Durant, if you will.” He glances up. “The David Beckham of staring contests.”
“Bloody hell. Why me?”
Ted hums sympathetically. “Like the Lord, Beard works in mysterious ways. But he wouldn’t be callin’ you out like this unless he saw greatness in you. He is a consummate sportsman.”
“I see. I had no idea anyone took this so seriously.”
“He got into the underground scene in college,” Ted explains. “Long story. All you need to know is that he abides by the old ‘ambush’ ruleset. Soon as you two make eye contact—bam! Game on.”
She almost spills wine on herself. “You mean I’ve been losing staring contests with Beard for a whole week?”
“‘Fraid so, Jackie O.”
“I hate losing,” she mutters into her glass. It sounds a little petulant, even to her.
“Most folks do,” Ted says. He chews a chip, looking thoughtful, then drums on the tabletop and settles into his seat. “Alrighty. Show me whatcha got.”
“Sorry?”
“If I’m gonna take on a padawan, I wanna see what I’m workin’ with.” He chuckles at the look on her face. “Aw, c’mon! Do or do not, there is no try. Well, trying is A-okay in my book—but y’know, for the sake of the Yoda bit.”
Rebecca watches, baffled, as Ted closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. On the exhale, he opens them again and stares intently at her.
“Ted, I don’t think—”
“Lost, you have. Trying, you were not.”
She snorts. “Here? Are you mad? Everyone’s going to think we—”
“Lost again. Hoo boy, I sure got my work cut out for me.”
She can’t help it—she laughs out loud. With Ted, it’s useless to resist.
“Fine,” she says, and sets her glass down.
By Rebecca’s estimation, she lasts a grand total of ten seconds before she convulses in a fit of giggles. In her defense, Ted was waggling his mustache like some demented Inspector Clouseau. Distraction, apparently, is a legitimate tactic.
“When it comes to staring contests, what’s goin’ on up here”—Ted taps at his temple—“is just as important as what’s goin’ on down here,” he finishes, pointing at his own eyes. They’re very dark, a little crinkly at the corners, and sparkling with good humor.
Rebecca takes a sip of wine to hide her flaming cheeks. She really is used to being stared at, but no one looks at her quite the way Ted does.
Meanwhile, he's flagged Mae down to order another beer. After she leaves, he turns back to Rebecca and grins.
“Rematch?” he asks.
The next day, she carefully avoids meeting Beard’s gaze head-on. The day after that, Ted stops by to drop off biscuits and ask if she has dinner plans.
“‘Cause if you’re up for more training,” he says, “there’s this new Indian place I wanted to try. All that chili pepper oughta toughen those peepers right up.”
Rebecca agrees. After all, she hates to lose. And if she spends the rest of the afternoon smiling like a complete fool, then—well. She tries not to look too closely into that.
The whole thing feels so natural that it takes a few weeks for it to register. She doesn’t even notice anything’s amiss until she has a lunch meeting with Roy, to go over the draft of next season’s contract.
“Our solicitors want to change the language on sponsorships. Page seventeen.”
“Whatever,” Roy grunts. “My solicitor’s just gonna change it back.” A beat. “You coming to yoga tonight? Maureen wants to do sound healing after.”
Rebecca winces at him over her readers. “Sorry, Roy. I’m dragging Ted to that gender-swapped Swan Lake.”
He stabs his fork into his salad and leaves it there, sticking straight up out of the quinoa. “I’m happy for you. Fucking ecstatic. But could you two snap out of that lovey-dovey phase already? I haven’t seen you outside work in ages.”
“What are you on about? Ted and I aren’t dating. We’re just…” She trails off, waving her sandwich around as she searches for the right word. “Training,” she decides.
“At the fucking ballet?”
Slowly, Rebecca lowers her sandwich. “Fuck me,” she says around a mouthful of pickle. “We are dating, aren’t we?”
Roy levels her a flat, bushy-browed glare. “Why is everyone I love an idiot?”
Just then, Jamie pokes his head in the door, brandishing his phone. “Oi. You know how the Americans have been shootin’ down these balloons? Hear me out. What if they tried using skydivers with, like, machetes?”
“Case in fucking point,” Roy grumbles, and picks up his fork.
That night, Rebecca thinks fuck it and wears stilettos. There’s nothing like a pair of spiky red heels to make you feel seen, especially when you’re pacing in front of the sweeping plate glass entrance to the Royal Opera House, all lit up from the inside like a paper lantern.
At first, when Ted jogs up to join her, she worries that she’s overdone it. He looks very handsome in a suit—handsome in a clean, down-to-earth way that reminds her faintly of James Stewart—but in these shoes, she has a solid three inches on him.
It doesn’t seem to bother him, though, so she soon forgets all about it.
“Ooh, are those Louboutins?” he asks. “Never seen any in the wild before.”
“You know your designer shoes.” A pause while she takes him in. Tom Ford can fuck himself, she thinks. “You look quite nice to—”
She stops short when Ted suddenly raises an eyebrow. They’re staring at each other now, her green eyes locked on his brown.
“Oh, bugger,” she says, but she doesn’t look away.
After what feels like a long time, he starts snapping a beat with his fingers.
“Stop it.”
He doesn’t stop it. He escalates. “It’s the eye of the tiger, it’s the thrill of the fight—”
“That’s not fair!”
“Rising up to the challenge of our rival—”
“Stop—stop that shimmying, Ted, for fuck’s sake—”
Just like that, it’s all over. Rebecca couldn’t keep a straight face if her life depended on it, and anyway her eyes are stinging like the blazes. They both laugh as they try to wink away the grit.
“Much to learn, you still have.”
“Sorry,” she says, dabbing under her eyes. “I’m hopeless.”
Ted smiles. “No one’s hopeless. Lucky for you, lost causes are somethin’ of a specialty of mine.”
They’re looking at each other again, her green eyes on his brown. But this time it doesn’t feel strained, and when he takes a step forward, and she dips her head down to kiss him on his soft, slightly chapped lips, that doesn’t feel strained either.
It feels like—like when she stretches her neck out after a long Zoom call, or takes a drag from the first cigarette she's had all month. It feels like unpinning her hair and scraping her fingernails across her tingling scalp. It feels like popping into the off-license for pinot on the way home—like kicking the door shut behind her and tossing her bag onto the counter and stepping out of those bloody impractical shoes she insists on wearing. It feels—
Easy. Yes, that’s the word for it.
Rebecca pulls back when she runs out of air. Ted’s positively beaming now, and he hasn’t let go of her arms.
“Rematch?” he asks, breathless.
Beard bests her five or six times over the next several weeks. He seems impressed by her performance, at least. Each time, he gives her a slow, almost imperceptible nod that she chooses to interpret as a sign of approval.
Maybe that’s why she can’t be arsed to care about the West Ham match, looming over the club like a storm cloud on the horizon. Or maybe it’s because she keeps waking up next to Ted. Ted, who makes her laugh into her morning tea, spends ten hours managing the controlled chaos that is AFC Richmond, then tumbles her into bed at night like he’s thought of nothing else all day.
All this time, she had assumed Sassy was exaggerating. If anything, Rebecca thinks, she was selling him short.
On the whole, she’s happy. Very happy, actually. Catches-herself-singing-in-the-lifts happy. There’s a fuzzy glow in her chest that won’t go away, and her feet scarcely seem to touch the ground anymore.
But her heart still sinks when West Ham pulls ahead in the seventy-second minute. And when the whistle finally blows, all she can think of is what Rupert’s stupid smirk must look like, plastered on every telly in Britain.
“Oh, babe,” Keeley says. “Fuck ‘im.”
As the terrace empties around them, Rebecca squeezes her hand and promises to call her later. Then she autopilots her way to her office, fills a bankers box with as many bottles of champagne as she can carry, and heads downstairs.
She treads lightly in the hallway outside, straining her ears. Except for one voice, the locker room is silent as a church. Ted’s always had that power: when he speaks, people listen.
“I know y’all worked your butts off,” he’s saying, “and I know this isn’t the outcome we were hopin’ for. But to quote a very wise, very green little man—the greatest teacher, failure is.”
A few appreciative murmurs, some scattered clapping.
“If I might be so bold, I’d add that the secret to winnin’ is knowing how to fail. And the way we fail here is we pick ourselves up, figure out what we might do better next time, and forget the rest.”
The box clinks in Rebecca’s hands. Ted turns, and his face spasms with uncertainty.
This doesn’t change anything, she wants to say. She wants to grab him by the jumper and look into his honest face and say, I don’t give a fuck whether you win or lose.
But they’re trying to be discreet. So instead she smiles, steps in the doorway, and asks, “Would champagne help?”
The boys applaud. Ted chuckles. “Hell,” he says, “it can’t hurt.”
The mood lightens as she starts doling out champagne in little plastic cups. They fall into a rhythm—Rebecca pours, Ted passes—and she lets her fingers brush his a few times, hoping that sly half-smile means he understands her.
Once the boys have theirs, she lays out five more cups and goes down the line. Generous pours for Roy and Ted, a splash for Will, and one for—
“Coach Beard? Would you like some—”
She almost swallows her tongue when she realises what she’s done.
On the other side the room, Beard steps forward and squares his shoulders. The hum of chummy conversation fades—slowly at first, then all at once, until it’s so quiet she can hear boots squeaking on the tile. She half expects a tumbleweed to blow across the floor between them.
Ted goes still. Rebecca hands him the bottle and draws herself up to full height.
“That’s it. It ends here. If I win this one, I win for good.”
Beard narrows his eyes without closing them. Show off. “Agreed,” he replies, voice clipped. “But if I win, you have to tell us something. A deep, dark secret.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Something you’ve never told an-y-one.”
“Oh, shit,” someone says.
A pause. “I accept your terms.”
“But your training!” Ted cries. “You must complete the training!”
Rebecca brushes off his concern and stalks forward, arms crossed. Beard mirrors her, and soon the two of them are nearly toe-to-toe, each willing the other to look away first.
The seconds tick by, slow as dripping treacle. With effort, she evens her breath, relaxes the muscles of her face, tries to soften her gaze. Her eyes prickle. Then, they start burning. She notes with some satisfaction that Beard’s left eyelid is twitching. That powers her through the next twenty seconds at least.
At about the one-minute mark, her vision goes blurry. But she can feel it in the air—the jittery buzz of excitement, the press of unwashed bodies around them. She’s pretty sure one of the squad is filming this; someone is definitely playing that song from Chariots of Fire on their phone.
“Two forty-five,” someone mouths.
Tears are streaming down her cheeks. She tries to focus on the tense whispers, on the rousing piano, on Ted’s steady presence behind her—anything but the searing, lava-hot pain in her eyeballs.
But the underdog doesn’t always win, except maybe in the movies. In the real world, it takes more than stubborn pride to defeat Brian Favre, or whatever the hell his name was.
Rebecca blinks. The room explodes into cheers.
Beard raises his arms in a triumphant V, then brings his palms together and bows over them. The gesture is so absurdly majestic that she can’t help but smile, even though her mascara is probably a wreck and she fears her corneas may never recover. Ted pats at her shoulder, drawling gentle encouragement.
After a few moments, the squad settles again. “Our terms?” Beard says.
Rebecca sucks in a bracing breath. “Right. A deep, dark secret. Something I’ve never told anyone.”
“Correct.”
Another breath. Then she brings her fingers to her temples and mumbles something that sounds like, “icahntyooshopshticks.”
Ted’s eyebrows lift. “You can’t do what now?”
“I can’t. Use. Chopsticks.”
Isaac is the first to speak up. “You go’ an issue with your motor skills or something?”
“I never learned, all right? My mother tried to teach me when I was kid, and it didn’t take, and the next thing I knew I was forty-six and couldn’t use chopsticks. Now you know, I hope you’re all bloody satisfied.”
“I’m satisfied,” Beard says.
The boys are chuckling into their sleeves; Ted strokes at his mustache to keep from grinning.
“I don’t fucking believe this. I’ve been to sushi with you.”
“Yes, Roy, posh sushi. Where everyone uses their hands.”
“Fuck,” he breathes.
Next to her, Ted clears his throat. “Wow. Imagine the tabloid headlines if that one ever got out.” He looks over at Beard. “RICHMOND’S WELTON DROPS BOMBSHELL CHOP-SHOCKER.”
Rebecca titters, and everyone laughs more openly. With a merry pop, Isaac sends a cork whizzing into the ceiling and starts refilling outstretched cups.
Beard makes a fist and holds it to his mouth, thumb-side up. The room goes quiet once again.
“WELTON REVEALS WORST NIGHTMARE,” he intones. “RAMEN.”
He drops his imaginary mic, and all hell breaks loose. Just utter, absolute pandemonium. The noise is deafening—twenty sweaty, grass-stained grown men jumping up and down, whooping at the top of their lungs like they’ve won the lottery—and champagne is flying everywhere.
A weight seems to slide off Rebecca’s back. It’s only been thirty minutes by the clock—but somehow, in the middle of that racket, the match already feels like ancient history.
She swipes the bottle from Isaac and takes a defiant swig, to more cheering.
“Laugh all you like!” she shouts, though now she’s laughing too. “Just remember who signs the bloody cheques around here!”
With that, she and Ted beat a hasty retreat to the doorway of his office, where they stand side-by-side under that silly sign, looking on as Beard takes a victory lap around the locker room.
Ted sidles closer, hands shoved firmly in his pockets. “Hey. I, uh, know you hate losing, but—”
“If this is about West Ham, it’s all right. I’m proud of you.”
The smile he gives her is warm and earnest, if a little impish. It makes her think of sleeping in on rare Sundays off, when his hair is messy and the light under the sheets is a snowy, dreamlike white.
“I appreciate you sayin’ so. Truly, I do. But I was talking about this little rivalry with Beard.” He tips his head toward the man in question, who’s moonwalking down one of the benches.
She rolls her eyes and takes another swig. “Some rivalry. I didn’t win once! My coach was rubbish.”
“Take it up with management, ma’am. In the meantime, your coach would like to remind you that the world is won by those who let it go.”
“Hmm. Yoda?”
“Lao Tzu,” Ted says. He bounces cheerily on his toes, glances down at himself. “At least the consolation prize ain’t half bad, right?”
Rebecca threads her free arm through his, discretion be damned, and leans over to kiss him. No one notices though, because the boys are too busy showering Beard in champagne.
“No,” she laughs, “not bad at all.”