Chapter Text
“We should get married.”
Alex’s voice cuts through the dead air of a tv commercial, and it’s a little unsteady, even after she’d spent so long working up the nerve to say it. Kelley is quiet from her spot on the couch, tucked beneath a mound of blankets, her feet propped up in Alex’s lap.
“I think we already agreed to do that,” Kelley says eventually, slow and drawn out from the anticipation of sleep.
“No, I mean we should get married now.”
“Right now? We’re already halfway into this new Dateline.”
Alex lets go of a long exhale and slides her coffee cup onto the corner of the table that had just been occupied by her feet. There’s a bit of maneuvering involving arms and legs, and slipping beneath the blanket that’s warm from Kelley, until Alex is wedged exactly where she wants to be, in the tight space between the couch and this person she still thinks about endlessly.
“Be serious,” she says, her face close enough to Kelley’s that her voice is barely a whisper.
“Does this have anything to do with the rumor going around that you’re dating that basketball player?”
“No,” Alex’s slow blink is labored, like her eyelashes are weighed down with the white lie that her voice could barely hide, and she’s glad that Kelley’s eyes are still closed in a half-assed attempt at sleep.
“Because you know that doesn’t bother me, right? It’s just part of the deal when you don’t spill the details of your private life. People speculate.”
“But no one ever speculates that I’m in love with you.”
Kelley’s eyes open then, bright and sad, and her hands are warm when they slip across Alex’s face.
“Honey,” is breathed across her cheek without the familiar drawl that usually accompanies it, and Alex lets it warm her skin.
“I talked to him for five minutes at an after party, and we followed each other on twitter. That was it. I’ve lived with you for years, I’ve held your hand on red carpets, and bought Christmas trees with you. Why does no one think I could be in love with you?”
Alex’s voice isn’t bitter, or broken, or sad. It’s just soft.
“I don’t know,” Kelley answers quietly. “Sometimes it still catches me by surprise, even after all of this time.”
“Me too,” Alex smiles and it almost reaches her eyes.
“Al, do you want to talk to Sports Illustrated?” Kelley asks, a finger tracing Alex’s chin.
It’s their shorthand for going public, that when they want to, when they’re damn good and ready to, they’ll say it in print. Alex has had the writer she wants for it saved in her phone contacts for a year.
“No. I don’t know,” Alex says, shifting to pull the blanket tighter over her shoulder. “I just want to marry you. And not because of what anyone else is saying, or isn’t saying, but because I really, really, want to.”
Kelley’s mouth twitches the way it always does when she’s thinking, before she leans forward to press her lips to the end of Alex’s chin, and when she pulls back there’s certainty in her eyes.
“We’d need at least two weeks, probably three just to give my family time to get here. And it would have to be small. We wanted small anyways, but I’m talking really small.”
“Really?” Alex asks, so small and hopeful it makes Kelley smile back at her.
Kelley presses her toes into the couch to inch higher up Alex’s torso, until her lips are close enough to press a string of slow kisses against Alex’s.
“It was never gonna take a lot of convincing to get me to marry you sooner.”
Kelley’s words curl into her with a tenderness that has never faded, and the familiarity makes her heart ache.
“You always say the right things,” Alex whispers, and Kelley kisses her again, harder, like she’s forgotten about Dateline and the promise of sleep.
“Hey Al,” Kelley says eventually, not bothering to pull back, so the words are messy and warm across Alex’s mouth. “You know how I knew you weren’t dating that basketball player?”
Alex doesn’t open her eyes, her response hummed against lips, and she plays along with Kelley the way she always does.
Kelley’s answer is punctuated by kisses that linger, “Way, way too tall to be your type.”
Her eyes are still closed, but she can feel the way Kelley’s mouth splits into a smile against her own, and Alex’s laugh is swallowed away.
***
It’s Syd that shows up before anyone else, hours before the ceremony is supposed to start, in a dress that’s brand new and impossibly tight. It’s a dress that suggests she’s figured it all out, that what had been billed as a last minute party to celebrate an engagement that had been official for well over a year, wasn’t actually that.
A silver gift bag dangles from the edge of Syd’s outstretched finger, and Alex leans against the open front door and narrows her eyes.
“How did you know?” she asks, pulling at the belt of her robe, her hair partially done and messy with clips.
Syd laughs when she steps inside the house past Alex, “You had like, twenty boxes of paper straws in your guest room closet, right under a garment bag with a white dress.”
“You are so damn nosy.”
“I know,” Syd says, shrugging her shoulders before grabbing Alex’s hand. “Now, let’s go get you married, lover.”
*
The house is quiet in the lead up.
Parents mingle in the hallway, wiping at tears that threaten to mark delicate fabric, while sisters twist hair and button white dresses. Syd spends her time floating between the separate rooms that Kelley and Alex each occupy, an always full cup of beer perched carefully between her fingers, a souvenir from her short-lived stint helping Jerry tap kegs.
“How’s it going over there?” Alex asks when Syd slips back into her room.
“Oh, she’s doing really good now, I just took her and Erin some beers. They looked thirsty.”
Alex’s hands tremble when she laughs, and the makeup brush is clumsy between her fingers. Syd’s sudden hands on hers steady them.
“Hey, I got you,” Syd says grabbing for the brush, her voice so unusually soft that Alex looks up at her with a line between her brows.
Syd stares back, leaning in close to brush gentle strokes across the bow of Alex’s cheek.
“She looks amazing,” Syd says, softly still, a hint of beer on her breath. And then in a tone that feels more familiar, “If you don’t marry her, I will, because damn.”
*
There’s a moment that’s just theirs in the winding minutes before they become official, alone together in the narrow hallway that leads to a backyard filled with people they love.
Alex looks at Kelley in vintage lace and soft waves that frame her face, and her mouth drops open so suddenly that Kelley nearly misses her lips when she springs forward to kiss her. It feels nervous and shaky, and then Alex can feel a laugh, loud and aggressive, across her flushed skin when Kelley pulls away.
“Why are you laughing?”
“So I don’t cry,” Kelley says, her voice with a noticeable shake.
Kelley won’t look at her, her eyes following the movement of her fingers as they trace across the seams of Alex’s dress. And when she does look up at Alex, after a long pause that feels like she was gathering some courage, Kelley’s face is twisted into a silent sob that she forces another laugh through.
“You look so beautiful,” Kelley says, and her shaky laugh fades away when Alex leans down to kiss her.
*
Alex Morgan marries Kelley O’Hara on a January day that’s bright and warm.
*
Hours after they’re forever, and hours before they board a flight to Paris, Alex’s hands fumble over the delicate buttons of Kelley’s wedding dress.
Her head is light from joy mixed with an open bar, and it softens the edges of everything just enough to force narrowed eyes and exhales of frustration across Kelley’s bare shoulders.
“I don’t want to rush you or anything, but we’re kind of on a time crunch, you know? Early flight,” Kelley teases, alcohol making her words drawn out and heavy.
“These buttons are too small,” Alex huffs, her patience even thinner when it involves something she really wants, like her wife out of a dress that feels like an endless tease. She pushes Kelley’s hair up and over her shoulder, and the touch of fingers to skin only increases her irritation.
“My dress has a zipper for this very reason, so you could take it off in no time, even with a lot of drinks. Especially because of a lot of drinks. I know what you’re like at weddings.”
“Hey.”
“A zipper is thoughtful. These tiny buttons are not. I hate them.”
There’s a harder tug, and the sound of fabric starting to tear, and Alex’s fingers stop.
“Was that what I think it was? Al, this dress is vintage.”
“Kelley,” her name comes out in too long of a whine, frustration and hunger stirring something in both of them then. “Please help me or I will go find some scissors.”
Kelley’s hands are warm when they reach back to lace with Alex’s, and it’s a deliberately slow journey, Alex’s hands being brushed over lace and skin and the curved edges of hips, before their hands are knotted together in the hollow beneath Kelley’s ribs.
Alex can feel her heartbeat against Kelley’s back, and then she can feel the way it starts to slow when Kelley presses a kiss to her knuckles.
“Now,” Kelley breathes. “Just take it one button at a time there, tiger. We’ve got all night.”
*
The wedding still throbs in their temples too early the next morning. Alex’s eyes are shielded by a dark pair of sunglasses, less for anonymity and more to guard against the sunlight that has started to invade their quiet block of seats near the terminal window.
“My whole body hurts,” Kelley groans. “What did we drink last night?”
“Everything,” Alex answers with just enough regret in her voice. Her stomach churns and she shakes her head, “I’m never drinking again.”
“Jeri was relentless with that bottle of tequila. I’m pretty sure Syd is still passed out in that lounge chair by the pool,” and it’s enough to make Alex laugh, with fingers pressed into her temples.
“It was a damn good wedding though,” Alex mumbles.
“It was the best wedding,” Kelley agrees, holding out her hand, palm up, for a high five that Alex gives with as much enthusiasm as she can manage.
The rising sun creeps up higher along Kelley’s face, the light bouncing off the soft waves of her hair, and Alex leans over to kiss the spot along her jaw that’s been warmed by the sun before dropping her head onto Kelley’s shoulder and closing her eyes.
“You’re my wife,” Kelley says eventually, stretching her legs out in front of her. The words roll out of her so casually that it makes Alex feel warm, and she can only nod.
“You are my hungover wife,” and Alex nods again, her hand curling into Kelley’s thigh.
Kelley takes a picture of them then, weary and pressed together, and Alex doesn’t protest.
“That’s for Syd,” Kelley says, and Alex can hear the warmth of her smile when she stares at their picture before sending it off. “You’re still a knockout, Morgan, even with a hangover.”
“I’m actively holding back vomit, but thank you for lying,” Alex shifts lower into her seat, fishing for a better angle against Kelley’s shoulder. “What are you working on over there?”
Kelley answers the question by angling her phone so Alex can see a picture. They are blurred edges under strands of white lights, pressed tightly together on the dance floor. Only their faces are in focus, the sharp angles of Kelley’s jaw dropped open into a generous laugh, and Alex’s eyes wide with something that feels too big for words, joy and certainty and a mix of other things.
“I was thinking, since we are now officially official, that it might be time to consider Sports Illustrated. But until then, and because I want to instagram the hell out of Paris with my lady, we could start with this. It’s a big step, I know, but we could sleep on it if you want. Or we could keep living our life the way we always have, and that’s ok with me too.”
Alex still hasn’t looked away from the picture of them. There’s a tightness along her ribs at the thought of living louder than they ever have, and the ache feels comfortable and welcome. There are no nerves in her fingertips when she reaches over to drag them across the filter selections on Kelley’s phone, because Alex knows that this is what she’s always wanted.
Alex taps on her filter choice with confidence before picking her head up off of Kelley’s shoulder to meet her gaze, “Definitely Valencia.”
Kelley doesn’t say anything, but the words are in her eyes and the upturned curve of her lips, and Alex can hear her perfectly. She leans over to kiss Kelley in their corner of the airport, lips pressed to lips, and then the spot along Kelley’s temple where Alex’s own head had ached until a few minutes ago.
Kelley messes with the keyboard, typing and retyping before finally hitting ‘post’ before Alex can see her words. Kelley powers down her phone and tucks it into the pocket of her carry on before curling into Alex’s side, faking an attempt at a nap even though Alex can feel the way her heart races.
Alex opens instagram, her own heart pounding while the photo loads slowly on free airport wifi. And then they’re there, dancing in filters and soft light.
Love is wild. Right, @alexmorgan13? #happywifehappylife
* * *
After two days in Paris, Kelley is the first one to turn her phone back on.
“You don’t know how to say it,” Alex teases, her voice strained as she stretches sleep and ache from her muscles.
“Yeah, I do. Just give me a second to remember, and stop trying to distract me with those legs.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Alex rolls closer into Kelley, propping herself up on an elbow, and tightening the grip her bare leg has across Kelley’s hip. “You’re taking a long time to remember, though.”
Kelley ignores her, staring up at the ceiling while she mouths words with a familiar crease of frustration running between her eyebrows.
“I only took two years of French in high school, and that was like, 15 years ago,” Kelley says, still not looking at Alex, but fully aware that she’s being stared at.
“You can’t turn it into “only two years” now, after you’ve spent the past week bragging that you had “two whole years” of it. You pretty much insinuated that you were bilingual.”
“Ok, I got it,” Kelley says, cutting Alex off when she reaches for the phone that’s been abandoned on the nightstand for days. “Just let me double check my inflection.”
“Cheater,” Alex laughs, leaning down to press a kiss to Kelley’s shoulder, her stomach doing a flip when she hears Kelley’s phone power on.
It’s quiet in their room then, as they both wait for what they pretend they aren’t waiting for. And then it’s a chorus of tones: email notifications, text message alerts, and dozens of missed calls, all chiming loudly until Kelley flicks her ringer off. There’s still a ringing in her ears, until Alex realizes it’s her heartbeat.
“Ha,” Kelley says after a long pause, flipping her phone towards Alex too quickly for her to see anything. “I knew I was right. ‘Alex Morgan, tu es l’amour de ma vie’. That’s exactly what I was going to say.”
“Morgan-O’Hara.” Alex corrects without thinking, as if it’s always been that way, the two of them connected forever by a hyphen and what it means, and she catches the grin at the corner of Kelley’s mouth.
Kelley glosses over all the missed texts and emails, but Alex knows they’ll have to answer those things soon, and she looks over at Kelley for a hint of when that time might be. Kelley still stares at her phone, and Alex can see her opening a new app, the change of light flashing in the tired gloss of her eyes.
“Oh my god, Al,” Kelley says slowly, her mouth hanging open so exaggeratedly that Alex eventually feels ridiculous falling for it.
“What? What’s the matter?” Alex pictures negative press and angry tweets.
“I got 20,000 new instagram followers,” the fake enthusiasm is bright in Kelley’s eyes and the volume of her laugh, and Alex stretches out across the top of her to kiss her silent and steal the phone away.
*
It’s another two days before they decide to weed through everything they’ve chosen to ignore in favor of days and nights spent under the covers of their too-expensive hotel room.
They spend a late afternoon in an empty cafe, Kelley flicking through a long list of text messages while Alex starts on emails, deleting anything that isn’t from their reps, or sponsors, or US Soccer, and then quietly reading aloud everything that is.
“Kevin wants to know if we want to release an official statement through him?” Alex asks, summarizing the already brief email from her agent.
“Syd has some questions for us also, um, ‘Jesus, have you guys even left that room yet?’, ‘Kelley, can you instagram a cup of coffee so I know you’re alive?’, ‘how long has this milk been in your fridge?’, and then finally, ‘it’s been over three days, you pervs.’” Kelley reads the string of texts in an even, dull tone that makes Alex grin. “That last one wasn’t really a question, but you get the idea. There are about 30 more just like that from her. And 15 from Pinoe.”
Kelley takes a picture of her extended middle finger hovering over her latte and sends it to Syd before looking towards Alex.
“Do you want to make an official statement through Kevin?”
Alex is only half-listening, her attention focused on the screen grabs of her twitter mentions that her agent had included in his email. There is public support from teammates and friends, athletes that she’s played against, and plenty of others that she’s never even met, and mixed in along the way are messages of support from young people who wear her jersey in their profile pictures.
Alex looks at Kelley to answer her question, but the words won’t come around the lump in her throat.
*
“Let’s do it again.”
“Al, I’m tired.”
“Come on, just one more time,” Alex kisses her, soft and tempting, her hands playing along Kelley’s hips.
“You better make this worth my while,” Kelley says, faking annoyance while she adjusts the tilt of her beanie with gloved hands. “I want a beret.”
Alex squats low to fiddle with the self-timer on her phone, adjusting the angle just right against the paper coffee cup she uses a makeshift stand.
“Ready?” Alex asks, bright and loose as she moves back to stand beside Kelley.
“Eighth time’s gonna be the charm. Hold my hand on this one,” Kelley reaches out, wiggling her fingers until Alex’s hand is in hers.
It’s the tenth time that’s the charm, the two of them centered perfectly in front of the Eiffel Tower, holding hands in a mid-air jump that leaves the bottoms of their coats looking like wings, limbs splayed out wide at their sides. Alex looks that last picture over carefully one final time, before kissing her approval to the tip of Kelley’s frozen nose.
“I was serious about that beret.”
Alex buys Kelley a beret, and then takes her to bed.
*
They don’t release an official statement through their agents.
Alex follows Kelley’s lead instead, posting their carefully choreographed picture to her twitter account with a simple caption that doesn’t test the character count.
Kelley and I are so grateful for the love and support we have received these last few days. Thank you!! #betrue
***
Their club team had gained a name while they’d finished their time in Germany, and when Alex looks over the gear they’ve been sent in preparation for the start of preseason, she can’t help but feel like it might be a jinx.
The Los Angeles Victory release their supplemental roster in the weeks before the college draft, and Alex and Kelley take to studying it carefully in the early morning hours just after a run. It’s filled out with a few younger players they don’t know much about, two Americans who bypassed college to sign Europan contracts, and a healthy amount of semi-pro players who’d spent years proving themselves in lower leagues.
The roster is hopelessly lopsided, too full in some positions, and threadbare in others. They don’t have a keeper, or much of a back line, and Alex’s only real help up top is a Bundesliga player coming off of knee surgery.
For two weeks they watch blurry college soccer highlight reels at their kitchen table, Kelley quietly making notes on players that stand out, in the margins of magazines, or at the bottom of their grocery list. They watch the draft in the same spot, their early morning coffee growing cold while they keep track of their team’s picks in a half-empty notebook.
The picks fill in some holes, a few forwards, and a keeper they both liked. Their last draft pick is a small school centerback that Kelley had been instantly charmed by, a quiet player with pace and a knack for clean, smart tackles. She’d dedicated the entire back page of a grocery list to notes about her, before she’d typed them up in a email to the team’s general manager. Alex looks over at Kelley when they announce the pick, and she can see the wheels turning in Kelley’s head, wondering if they’d listened to her advice, or if maybe they’d just been sold on her all along.
Alex knows, and she kisses congratulations in Kelley’s skin.
***
In the days after Paris, it was Sports Illustrated that had reached out first. The lengthy article had been pitched as a way for Alex to promote the new league, tying it in with her time in Germany, and her changing role as a veteran. The unspoken question in their offer was obvious, “Can we ask about Kelley?”
When Alex asks Kelley for some sort of permission that she’s already been given, Kelley straddles her lap and kisses her slowly.
“Don’t tell them everything, but maybe mention that you kissed me first, and that it took you friggin’ forever.”
*
Three weeks before the start of the season, Kelley reads her advanced copy twice through while stretched out across the living room floor. And then she reads it again, out loud the sections that are about her, pride lifting through her voice.
When pressed about why she chose to come home to this new league, and why she chose Los Angeles out of all the cities available to her, Morgan’s answer is simple.
“I loved my time playing in Germany, more than I ever thought I would, but California is our home, and I’ve waited my entire career for the chance to represent it. So it was always going to be LA. I think it was an even easier choice for Kelley, mostly because the surfing’s better here than on the Oregon coast.”
There’s an almost bashful smile when her name is finally mentioned. Kelley, of course, is Kelley O’Hara, Morgan’s longtime teammate on the national team, and as recently revealed through their various social media accounts, her new wife.
When pressed about their relationship, Morgan reveals what feels like a practiced amount. From a set up on the balcony of the apartment they’ve shared for years, she stares out at the ocean a few blocks away where O’Hara (both women will keep their last names, professionally at least) surfs with fellow national team player Tobin Heath.
“I used to think that Kelley snuck up on me, but I know now that I spent a long time falling for her. I think that rooming together in 2012 for the Olympics was the start of it, and after that, I was a goner.” Alex’s smile is sly, and that’s as far as she’ll go. “I never questioned the way I felt about her, though. Not once. Not because she was my teammate or one of my best friends, or because she was a woman. I just- I knew she was it.”
The difference in Morgan from years past to now is marked. Gone are the fumbled words that had become the inadvertent trademark of her interviews. She’s measured patience when she speaks now. Even the way she spins the wedding ring on her finger seems more of a habit, instead of an outlet of nerves. It could be chalked up to her time in Germany, where she learned to speak slower in post-game interviews, mindful of the way words could be lost in translation. Her age could also have something to do with it, the veteran striker will turn 29 this year, but when Morgan speaks now, her eyes stay locked on the ocean in front of her, and it’s not hard to figure out the effect her wife has had.
“Kelley and I have managed to live a very low key life together for the past few years, not because we were hiding, but because that’s the way we liked it. We don’t really plan on changing that, but when you get to marry someone like Kelley O’Hara, you brag about it on twitter a little.”
Morgan and O’Hara are the two biggest names on the LA Victory. And where other clubs are stockpiled with three to four allocated national team players, in Los Angeles it will only be the two of them. Their season starts later this month, with a home match against a talented Chicago team led by Morgan’s national team strike partner Sydney Leroux, and they’ll lead a squad full of young, unproven players right out of college. It will also be the first game they play as married teammates, but Morgan doesn’t expect it to effect their relationship on the field.
“I don’t think either of us are worried about it, we’ve handled pressure much bigger than this before. I think there might be some challenges, we have a very young team, obviously, and this is a brand new league, a brand new team, but I know that we’re all game to work hard to establish something here. This is important to all of us. We want to win a championship, or three, for this city.”
Morgan’s smile is coy, but there’s noticeable weight behind it. “I think we’ll do good things here.”
* **
Alex hears it before she sees it, a ‘pop’ followed by a howl of pain that rings in her ears, and the cross she’d been expecting from the right flank never makes it to her feet. She turns with her hands already on her head, and their other big name forward, the Swede from the Bundesliga that Alex had connected so easily and instantly with, is twisted on the field with her face pressed so tightly into the grass it almost mutes her cries.
A trainer sprints past Alex’s peripheral, and Kelley is right on his heels.
They’re four days out from the home opener.
“Fuck,” Alex says, loud enough for just her as she starts the long jog across the field. “Fuck.”
*
In the car later, after the rest of practice is canceled and everyone has slipped out of their eerily quiet locker room, Alex yells it this time, just once.
“Fuck!”
Kelley lets her have this moment of anger that clashes wildly with panic. She keeps her hands tucked into her lap just behind the steering wheel until Alex is ready. And when she is ready, signalled by a long exhale from the passenger’s seat, Kelley reaches over to slip a hand across Alex’s knee.
“This doesn’t feel like a promising start,” Alex says, calmer now as she stares out across the empty parking lot.
“I know, but we’re gonna be fine. This is just a setback,” Off Alex’s look, Kelley corrects herself. “It’s a big setback, but they’ll pick up another forward from somewhere, and you’ve got Kelsey up top in the meantime. She’s looked good in those scrimmages.”
“She’s still too timid on the ball.”
“Than help her to not be,” Kelley says, the slightest edge in her voice that suggests her solution should have been obvious.
“Are you my wife right now, or my captain?” Alex turns toward Kelley with narrowed eyes, but the tight line of her lips has softened, and the corners start to turn up slowly.
Kelley still has her hand across her knee when she leans over to press a kiss into Alex’s shoulder.
“I’m both for the next eight months, darlin’.”
Alex’s easy laugh fills the car and it feels like what they both needed.
***
Alex’s knee bounces when she dresses in front of her locker.
A reporter had asked her the night before, in the long media line she’d had to navigate just after practice, what it felt like to have the weight of the league stacked onto her shoulders, and it had broken her focus so easily. There was a stammered out non-answer before she’d slipped away to spend the rest of her night thinking about it until Kelley begged her to stop.
She’d felt it just fine on her own, the weight, the expectations. She didn’t need the reminders.
And now, half a day later, her knee shakes wild with nerves while she pulls on a kit in colors that still look foreign against her skin, a bright shade of red she’s never worn in her career, and she tries to find focus in perfecting the fit of her game socks. She pulls and tugs and fiddles with the seam along her toes when Kelley’s unlaced boots stop right in front of her.
“Al, can you help me with this?”
Kelley’s armband is hanging from her outstretched hand when Alex looks up.
Alex knows this is for her benefit, because Kelley has always been able to read her so effortlessly, but also because she’d caught Kelley trying on that armband in the empty version of this locker room an hour earlier, adjusting the velcro a dozen times until it had fit just right when she’d flexed her bicep against it.
Alex pulls the armband from Kelley’s fingers as she stands, and it’s quiet, methodical work as she slips it high up onto her wife’s arm, calm fingertips grazing Kelley’s skin before they neatly tuck the sleeve of her jersey under the band. Alex gets the tightness right on the first try. Kelley flexes her approval, and Alex starts to find her focus.
“I might make you do that before every game now,” Kelley grins, and her fingers trail down to Alex’s wrist, and it’s their moment in this otherwise hectic locker room.
“Whatever it takes to stay on the captain’s good side,” Alex’s smile is wide.
“Quit flirting and get your boots on,” Kelley says as she spins away and cups her hands around her mouth. “Ok, let’s huddle up.”
*
Alex takes the rest of the night in with a sudden eagerness.
From the grown men and young girls who wear their names across their back, and their city across the front, to the way Kelley’s voice rings through the tight huddle, calm but brimming with confidence. Kelley pats her on the butt as they break for the field, yelling something over her shoulder that Alex can’t quite make out. It’s the slightest break in the serious way Kelley has always stormed onto the field, and something about it stirs up Alex’s nerves, but they’re the kind she lives for as a player, that little bit of shake in her fingers just before kickoff, when the pitch is pristine and full of potential.
The crowd noise swells just before the whistle blows, and Alex catches the wide eyes of the young forward as she lines up across the midfield line from Sydney Leroux.
Alex calls her name then, loud enough to filter over the crowd, and so Syd is sure to hear. Kelsey looks over at her, and Alex smiles.
“She’s just any other player out here. You don’t even know her name.”
Alex gets a nod in return, and she can see the clenched jaw in the young forward’s profile.
*
They gut out a tie in the dying moments of a game they were largely outmatched in.
The goal comes off a quick restart after a hard foul on Alex right outside the box, and the throbbing pain in her hip disappears when their replacement rookie forward redirects a lofted ball just past the keeper.
Alex practically carries Kelsey off the field on her shoulders.
*
Syd feigns offense at dinner hours later.
“You don’t even know her name?”
“Oh, come on. It’s just a little head game I picked up from some asshole I played against in Germany,” Alex says, motioning towards Kelley.
“And it works,” Kelley shrugs, sipping from her beer. “Obviously.”
Alex reaches for Kelley’s hand under the table, giddy at the way Syd rolls her eyes at them.
***
They’ve got the small theater to themselves, the perks of a late night movie on a random weeknight, but Kelley still leans in close to Alex when she talks through the trailers.
“Hey, are we rooming together on this road trip?”
Alex doesn’t look away from the screen, distracted by the lights that flash across her face until she can feel Kelley’s eyes on her.
“Huh?” Alex asks, dropping a hand on Kelley’s leg as a wordless apology for her distraction. “Rooming together? No. Right?”
“Why not?”
“We could if you want to. It’s just- we don’t room together for national team stuff. I guess I figured we’d do the same for club.” Alex’s attention is still divided between the screen and quick glances at Kelley from the corner of her eye. “And you always say I’m moody on the road.”
When Kelley’s silent for longer than she’s supposed to be, Alex looks towards her, just making out the pensive stare in Kelley’s profile when a warning against texting during the movie flashes bright across the screen.
“So it’s not because the rookies tease you and call you ‘Mrs. Cap’?” The question comes out too fast, like it’s something Kelley’s been secretly dreading to ask.
“No,” Alex says, her face twisted up in surprise. “You know I only flipped them off for that because they were chanting it at me to try and get me to miss that PK at the end of practice.”
“And you still made it.”
“And I still made it,” Alex says behind a smirk, her hand finding Kelley’s in the dark and over the armrest. “I don’t mind that you’re my captain. I think you’re damn good at it. And I kind of just assumed the Mrs. Whatever-Kelley’s-Current-Title-Is nickname would be following me around as long as we’re playing together. I’m pretty proud of it actually. I promise.”
“Ok,” Kelley breathes out, hiding the sheepish curve of her smile against the warm skin of Alex’s cheek just as the lights start to dim. “Just checking.”
***
On the first road trip of the season, Alex rooms with a defender and they lose two in a row.
There are no last gasp goals to salvage a point. There are only losses that feel earned and goals they couldn’t keep from littering the back of their net.
The lineups don’t change, the formation never adjusts, and Alex spends two halftimes in unfamiliar locker rooms staring stone faced while their coach yells and angrily circles plays on a whiteboard that will never work against a defense like Philly’s, or a front line like New York’s.
They don’t talk about the losses together, on the road or the long, quiet flight back to LA. It’s an unspoken agreement to keep it away from home, so they pretend to leave it all in another city, ignoring it like the pile of luggage they dump just inside the doorway the minute they’re back in their too-warm apartment.
Kelley leaves a trail of of clothes in her wake, shedding team gear and running shoes in scattered heaps that stretch from the front door to the living room. Alex follows it eventually, stepping over a pair of warm up pants with a tight grip on the last beer she’d salvaged from their otherwise empty fridge.
There’s a long sleeve shirt emblazoned with their club crest occupying the spot on the couch next to Kelley, and Alex looks it over before flicking it away. It lands somewhere out of sight while Alex settles in and bumps the cold bottle against the leg Kelley has propped up on the coffee table.
There’s a gash across the lower half of Kelley’s leg, bright red tears of skin that cut an angry path from her shin to the curve of her ankle. Alex can still make out the stud pattern of New York’s center forward in the messiest parts of it.
“She got me good,” Kelley mumbles, pushing the edges of the trainer’s makeshift bandage back against her skin, before reaching for the bottle Alex is still offering. She presses it over the top of the bandage for a minute, letting loose a little sigh that’s about more than the cool relief the sweating bottle offers.
“I’ll get her good next time,” Alex growls, and Kelley’s laugh is soft and appreciative through her nose when she leans back into the couch.
“There’s no food,” Alex says eventually, soft like an apology, and Kelley moves to drape her banged up leg across Alex’s lap. Her foot hangs loose at the ankle and Alex tugs at her sock.
“That’s ok,” Kelley sighs, taking a long pull from the bottle. “Hey, I missed you this week.”
“You saw me every day.” Alex’s fingers trace the edge of the bandage and then continue on along Kelley’s shin.
“I missed you as my wife,” Kelley clarifies. “I had my fill of you as my teammate.”
“You’ve never had your fill of me as either one,” Alex cocks her eyebrow and pulls the bottle from Kelley’s hand. Her wedding ring clicks against the glass and Kelley drops her leg and sits up on the end of the couch, an arch in her back that makes everything feel sudden.
“Hey, Al?” Kelley asks, turning back to look at her wife, her hand coming to rest just inside Alex’s thigh.
Alex stares at the spot where Kelley’s fingers are curling into her leg, and her response is a grunt from low in her throat.
“Want to go to bed?”
*
Alex forgets their forgettable week in the heat of Kelley’s skin.
***
With time, things become harder to ignore.
Two months into the season, Alex hasn’t won a game since Germany, and her life becomes defined by an increasingly hostile series of shirt tugs.
Cheap tackles from outmatched defenders had always been a part of her career, but they start to come less frequently when she’s wearing club colors, and it’s an unavoidable statement. Alex is less of a threat here, in this city, on this team. Calls for her begin to transition into calls against her. The quick temper she’d always played with becomes less and less controlled every time she’s stripped of the ball, until it spills over into something undisciplined and dangerous, tackles from behind, a tangle of legs without the slightest regard for ankles or knees, her hand knotted up in her opponent’s jersey to make sure they fall together.
She starts to accumulate yellow cards at a quarter of the rate she used to score goals, and the only thing that keeps the cards from turning red is Kelley.
Alex learns quickly that she has limited time to argue a call before Kelley is down the field and right behind her, pulling her away from a debate they both know she won’t win by a handful of the back of her jersey.
“Go” is all Kelley ever says to her on the field, as many times as it takes until Alex walks away, feigning innocence that makes Kelley grit her teeth.
Alex starts to learn how to play entire second halves on a yellow card, with apologetic pats on the back as a defender tries to find her legs again, as quickly as Kelley learns their coach isn’t willing to pull her, even with the looming potential of playing down a man.
“You need to sit Alex,” Kelley says to him eventually, finally, from the sidelines, the two of them staring across the pitch as Alex gets a warning from a too-patient official. Kelley toes the sideline, her voice low enough for just his ears, but he never looks her way.
“How about you just get her under control out there? We need her to score goals,” Rob doesn’t bother lowering his voice to match hers, and Kelley catches the way some of the bench players turn their heads.
“She isn’t scoring goals, and this isn’t going to help,” Kelley’s louder too, defensive of her abilities as a captain, and of her stubborn wife.
“I’m the coach,” Rob says, sharp like a challenge, and the whole bench stares over at Kelley then, hopeful for a rebuttal that she can’t give.
There are crescent-shaped nail marks dug into her palms when she turns on her heels to jog back to her line, and then his voice is loud at her back, cutting through the quiet stadium, and punctuated by aggressive claps.
“Hey, let’s tighten it up back there, Kelley.”
*
There’s visible tension in Kelley’s hands, white knuckles gripping at the steering wheel on the silent drive home, but Alex keeps her eyes trained outside the passenger window, and Kelley doesn’t let it spill over. Not yet, because she doesn’t want an argument echoing through this small space. She doesn’t want an argument at all, and it startles her how quickly that has become their default.
When Kelley makes the turn onto their street she catches sight of Alex in her peripheral, and it’s immediate the way the tight coil of anger she’s begun to play with starts to fade from her posture as the promise of home draws closer. Alex is out of the car before Kelley can cut the engine.
She wants to let it go as easily as Alex pretends to do, to leave it all for another night, to ignore the way the frustration of their job has started to creep closer to home in a way they promised each other it never would, and she almost does. The driver’s door closes behind her, and then she watches Alex dig out her own gear bag from the trunk, looping it up onto her shoulder before finding Kelley’s and hoisting that one onto her shoulder too.
It’s something Alex has always done when she’s feeling guilty, carrying Kelley’s gear bag, or her carry-on, or the heaviest bag of groceries. It’s the same sort of wordless apology that’s carried them for so long, the one Kelley finds endearing and understands completely. And something about it makes her snap.
“One more yellow and you’re suspended,” Kelley’s tone is sharp, honed by Alex, and Rob, and too many losses. “Do you get that?” “Yes,” Alex bites back, her hands twisting around the straps of Kelley’s bag.
“Then start acting like it, Alex.”
Kelley grabs her bag from Alex’s hands and turns towards home, the trunk of their car slamming shut loudly at her back.
*
Kelley wakes the next morning with something close to an apology on the tip of her tongue, but the space next to her in bed is empty, and Alex, and her running shoes, are already gone.
***
It’s Kelley who picks up right where Alex left off.
They’re six minutes away from their first draw since the home opener, a stretch of time that seems impossibly long ago. It’s a point that means nothing in the standings, but everything to them, and it’s Kelley’s voice that has carried them through a solid 84 minutes. The backline stands tall under her direction and it trickles up the field, instilling a jolt of confidence in every player along the way, including Alex. Especially Alex.
And then all of the careful patience, the gentle build of fragile team chemistry, the potential for that one desperate point, is for nothing.
Houston gets one last shot at goal, pushing through on a counter attack that’s sloppy but dangerous, the way a wild, last gasp effort always is. Kelley’s back line holds steady, and she knows exactly where the ball is going, hours of game tape has taught her that, and she tracks the target forward’s run into the box. The through ball slots perfectly into the narrow gap left by the center backs, but Kelley’s already on her mark, the timing of her tackle measured so perfectly in patience that she knows it’ll be clean before she even leaves her feet.
Kelley doesn’t expect the whistle, not even when the forward tumbles too easily over the top of her, but it comes, sharp and long, and it feels like the pitch drops out from under her in an instant. It’s heartbreak that transforms instantly into venom.
The forward’s legs are still draped across her own, and she shoves them away with both hands, hurrying to her feet with a protest already filling her lungs. The ref point to the spot, with both hands so there’s no mistaking it, and Kelley’s suddenly in his face.
“That was clean, are you kidding me? Sir, I did not touch her,” Kelley’s voice is even, raised just enough, but her heart pounds loudly in her ears. “That was a dive.”
“Take a step back, five,” is her warning, but Kelley doesn’t move.
“Check your linesman, he was even with me. That was a clean tackle. I never touched her.,” Kelley catches the forward out of the corner of her eye, the ball spinning in her hand as she steps towards the penalty spot.
Kelley’s fists clench when her protesting goes ignored, anger reigniting the short fuse she thought she’d left behind in college. She remembers what it did to her then, that footnote on the end of her collegiate career, but it’s too late to let it go now.
“This is bullshit,” Kelley grits out, turning from the ref to plant her feet on the penalty spot just before the ball can be placed.
She narrows her eyes at the striker in front of her, “Hey, you fucking dove.”
Her keeper is at her side, pulling at her elbow with soft hands, but Kelley shrugs her off.
“Five, step out of the box, now.”
“You can’t do this to them,” Kelley doesn’t move, her pulse still thumping wildly in her ears, anger flexing every muscle in her body so tightly that she’s planted in place.
And then there’s a hand at her back, and fingers that twist around a handful of the back of her jersey and pull just hard enough. It’s Kelley’s own move used against her by the one person who could get away with it.
“Kell,” is all Alex says, and it’s enough to get Kelley’s feet to start moving from the spot, replaced by a ball that she knows is going in, because of hours and hours of game tape.
They’re met at the edge of the box by the referee, the wallet that hold his cards already in his hand, like he’s daring her. And Kelley makes one last bite.
“Do you get credit for an assist?”
The ref holds Kelley’s yellow card higher over his head than necessary.
She doesn’t watch the penalty kick, keeping her back to the goal and her eyes trained on the suddenly active sideline. The ball curls into the back of the net with a minute left to play, but Kelley’s night is over, her number suddenly red on the substitution board.
Kelley breezes past Rob, skipping the bench and heading straight to the locker room. She can hear his voice in the tunnel, the echo following her past the spot where the stadium lights start to disappear.
“Not your night, captain.”
*
“There’s no food,” Alex gripes, hours later, as she leans into their empty fridge.
They’ve had this conversation before.
“Order a pizza then,” Kelley says, distraction making her edgy as she scrolls through her phone, skipping over an email from Rob that just appeared in her inbox.
“Order a pizza at 10 pm?”
“I don’t know. What do you want to do, go to the grocery store at 10 pm?”
“Not with you,” Alex shoots back, forcing Kelley to look up from her phone.
They’re stationed on opposite sides of the kitchen, leaning against counters with a matching hunch in the shoulders. Kelley’s bare feet stick to the tile beneath them, and the space around them feels smaller than ever.
“You’re the only one who’s allowed to be in a bad mood after a game?”
“No,” Alex says, the edge in her voice sharpened by Kelley’s dig.
Kelley can hear the growl low in Alex’s stomach from across their divide, and it forces Alex to her side of the kitchen, and into the cabinet just over Kelley’s shoulder. Kelley doesn’t budge when the door swings open near her head.
“Rob shouldn’t have pulled you,” Alex’s voice echoes into the pantry, and it makes Kelley’s stomach twist to remember the way her boots sounded when they clicked through the tunnel alone, how overwhelming the quiet of the empty locker room had been.
“I don’t want to talk about that.”
“Fine,” Alex says, dragging a box from the pantry and slamming the door shut behind her. The noise rings in Kelley’s ear, and the tension across her shoulders burns brighter.
Kelley’s still rooted into place, arms folded across her chest while she watches Alex move clumsily around the kitchen, filling a pot with water while she pretends to read the cooking instructions on a box of quinoa.
“That’s too much water,” Kelley says finally, crossing the kitchen to turn off the tap. “Do you want me to make it?”
“No,” Alex says, softer, like the rest of the day has finally caught up with her. “I hate quinoa.”
Kelley doesn’t say anything. Her feet are sticky on the tile when she moves to close the gap between them. Alex’s breath is across the bridge of Kelley’s nose when the box is pulled from her hand, and then it’s dropped to the ground, the corner of the box hitting the tile just right so it bursts open just as Kelley rocks up onto her toes to kiss Alex.
It isn’t gentle, or patient, Kelley’s hand already knotted around a fistful of Alex’s collar, the thin material stretching as Kelley uses it to pull her closer. When Kelley’s teeth scrape across her bottom lip, Alex pulls back first, confusion and a different kind of hunger knitted together in the crease between her eyebrows. Kelley’s hips pin Alex to the counter in a wordless invitation to a release they both need, and Alex accepts, leaning down to kiss Kelley harder than they’re both used to, a frantic mash of teeth and tongues, fingers curving around the waistband of team warmups.
There’s quinoa beneath her heel, and greedy hands beneath her shirt, and Kelley presses in harder, and harder, until Alex has to pull back again, this time for deep lungfuls of breath. Alex pushes off the counter then, Kelley wondering briefly if she’ll find a bruise along Alex’s lower back later, from hips pinned too hard against a countertop at just the wrong height, and then her feet are moving backwards and she’s getting kissed again. Alex makes quick work of her shirt, yanking it up and over Kelley’s head just as her back gets pressed into the refrigerator. Bare skin on cool metal with just enough force releases a gasp from her lungs that Alex doesn’t hesitate to swallow away.
The angry pinch between Kelley’s shoulders starts to fade, just enough, when Alex’s teeth drag across her collarbone.
*
Kelley wakes hours later to sweat still drying along the nape of her neck, and a gap in the bed that feels slightly bigger than the one from the night before. Alex is an arm’s length away, stretched out across the top of her pillow, the exposed skin of her back inviting a slow drag along her spine with the tip of Kelley’s finger. When Alex doesn’t wake, doesn’t even stir, Kelley checks the surf report.
Her toes are in the sand before the sun rises.
***
They lose again, and the gap between them in the bed grows a little more each night.
Kelley goes to sleep in more clothes than she’s used to, the long sleeves of a sweatshirt pulled down over her knuckles, her body suddenly not used to keeping warm on its own, without Alex curved around her side.
The hours they used to waste together in the mornings, coffee in bed, or fingers playing along curves, gradually becomes something else, spent somewhere else, Alex in running shoes and Kelley in the water. Their reunion at the breakfast table is quiet, but easier, as if sweat and saltwater have washed away enough to get them through a day of training. They drink coffee and share the newspaper Kelley buys from the corner store every morning, tossing aside the sports section that no longer gets opened. Kelley still tucks her feet up on the rung of Alex’s chair, but she works the crossword puzzle alone.
Their drives to training are quiet, tension growing in the knots in Kelley’s stomach, and flexed along Alex’s jaw line, all of it building the closer they get to training, until it all spills over onto the field. Nicknames get replaced by something more professional when they scrimmage in small-sided games, tackles are too eager, and Rob never steps in to tame the noticeable tension when Alex eggs on teammates’ runs with wild shouts that they’re faster than ‘her’. No one is faster than Kelley, and when she catches up to the young attackers, stripping the ball away cleanly to start a counter that catches Alex off guard, she’s rewarded with high fives from her rookie centerback, the one she’d wanted from the start.
The look she gives Alex over her shoulder says enough, but Kelley still pushes, “Faster than who, Morgan?”
Sometimes it’s Alex with a rare burst of confidence, charging at Kelley with the ball comfortably at her feet, a cut and a vicious lean that leaves Kelley scrambling at her back and clipping at her heels. The nights are almost better on the days those shots hit the back of the net.
*
Alex scores her first goal wearing LA’s crest four months into their long season, but there is no celebration. It’s gritted teeth and an angry turn on her heel back to midfield, because Kansas City is already up by two, and the weight on her shoulders doesn’t feel any lighter.
Kelley kisses her just outside of the locker room later, pressing something that isn’t quite congratulations against her lips, then slower along the spot on her jaw that aches from an endless, angry clench.
“It won’t always be like this,” Kelley says against her skin.
It’s a gentle acknowledgment that she isn’t happy either, one that Alex has been waiting for, a hopeless reassurance that they’re both miserable, but just like her goal, it doesn’t bring the relief it seemed to promise.
The locker room is quiet when Kelley pushes through the door, and Alex thinks about Germany.
***
In the end, it’s a tie that finally breaks her.
The article had come with their careful morning routine, quiet cups of coffee and Kelley’s hair still smelling faintly like the ocean, but the tossed aside sports page isn’t ignored this time. It’s all laid out above the fold, an opinion piece written by a columnist Alex has never seen at training or in the post-game media line. He calls her ineffective and overpriced, with an attitude as poor as her form. There’s a box breaking down which options they could pick up in a trade for her, hard working veterans, quiet, steady, unselfish.
Alex reads most of it before Kelley can pull it away, her own eyes scanning the last paragraph, the one that questions whether or not married teammates are a hindrance to team chemistry.
Kelley drops the paper into the recycle bin, and pushes a pile of eggs around her plate while urging Alex to forget it.
It settles over both of them anyway, and it’s still there hours later in the volume and urgency of Kelley’s voice in the huddle, and the way she tugs at Alex’s jersey when Rob starts in on her, urging goals that Alex hasn’t been able to deliver all season.
“Just play,” Kelley urges, right before she takes off on a sprint to her backline.
*
They go up early on a goal from Alex, a laser into the upper ninety that no one could have stopped, and it’s like blood in the water for a doubted striker. She spends the next eighty minutes playing with a carefully controlled fury, covering more of the pitch than she ever has. Her legs are heavy and her lungs burn, but she still drops back deep into her own half to defend before racing to press high on goal.
Their season has been defined by the desperation for single, unattainable points, and Alex knows that won’t be enough now, not for her, or the team, or the journalist who wrote things about her she’d already known. She wants this more than anything.
The tying goal comes in the dying seconds of stoppage time, the ball dropping into the open space on the back post, right where an outside back should have been stationed on the corner kick.
Someone scrambles for the ball in the back of the net, but the whistle blows immediately, drowning out the angry curse Alex shouts towards her boots.
There’s something in her then that aches to give up, and her eyes scans the field for Kelley, in the strange mix of happy opponents and worn down teammates, her pulse pounding in her temple. Alex finds her still tucked into the goal, a hand on the shoulder of the outside back who’s suddenly where she was supposed to be, leaned against the post with the heels of her hands pressed into her eyes. Alex watches her urge the rookie off the post, a supportive arm draped around the younger players’ shoulder that steers her across the field and towards the locker room.
“That goal has happened to all of us, you learn from it and you do your best to stop the next one, ok?” Kelley’s captain voice is warm, and Alex resists the urge to find comfort in words that aren’t meant for her.
The rookie continues to the locker room without them, and Kelley is at Alex’s side, their toes on the painted strip of sideline.
“Why wasn’t she on the post?” Alex says, tremors of anger in a voice that’s too even.
“I don’t know,” Kelley breathes. Her hands are on her face, and the words are muffled through her fingers, “She got caught up in the last seconds. It happens. I don’t know.”
“Did you tell her to get on the back post? Why didn’t anyone see it was open? I mean, fuck, how does that happen?”
“They threw everyone into the box, and sent a quick ball in.” Kelley’s arms are at her side, then they’re folded tightly across her chest, and when Kelley speaks again it’s without the gentle tone of a captain. “I did the best I could, Alex. We all did.”
Alex doesn’t say anything, hyperaware of the remaining cameras trained on them now, the reporters lingering at the edge of the grass, and the buildup of anger that has her biting back all the things she knows she shouldn’t say.
Their sighs come at the same time, Alex’s frustrated, Kelley’s defeated, and it’s a wordless stalemate on a place they used to connect so effortlessly. Kelley’s the first one to move, edging her feet over the touchline and towards the locker room, only making it a few steps before she reaches back for Alex, catching the bottom of her jersey between her fingers. Kelley gives the fabric a pull, a gentler one than Alex is used to these days, but the silent plea is still the same: relent.
Alex doesn’t budge, and Kelley walks to the locker room alone.
*
They make it home hours later than normal, after interviews in the press room where they both said too much, and a drive home where they didn’t speak at all. They drop their gear bags just inside the door, and Kelley tosses the car keys onto the corner with a little too much force, and they glide over the edge, falling into the drying rack full of dishes.
Neither of them wince at the crash of glass and metal, both hardened by another bad night, and Kelley doesn’t look over her shoulder when she starts for their bedroom, “I’m going to bed.”
“That’s it?” Alex asks, her voice on the verge of a shout.
Kelley stops immediately, turning to stare across the living room, the tight line of her mouth telling Alex not to press any farther, but she does anyway.
“Every week we lose another game, and every week I have to sit in the locker room and watch you try and make that ok for a bunch of kids. It’s not ok. None of this is ok. Rob is a joke, the stands are empty, and now people are writing articles about how much I suck. This is what I left Germany for?”
“Yes.”
Alex doesn’t have a chance to try and feel guilty about finally saying the angry words she’d held back on their field, the same one’s that have been in her head for months, because Kelley’s response is sharp and immediate, like she’d known all along.
“You left that cushy life in Germany for the exact same reasons I did, because it meant we got to come home and play together. Nobody forced your hand, and no one ever guaranteed that it was going to be easy starting this league. No one guaranteed us championships, or that you’d score every time you stepped on the pitch. The only guarantee I had when I came back was that I’d get to play behind you every game.”
“You don’t get it,” Alex hits back, but it rings false to both of them.
“I do get it. You think I don’t remember what it’s like to live life as a fragile forward? You think I like to lose day after day? This isn’t my dream season either. I’m frustrated, and I’m angry, but I’m still here. I’m still with the team working my ass off in every practice. I don’t get to quit on them. I wouldn’t quit on them. But you’ve been mentally checked out of this team since Annika blew out her knee in that last week of preseason. And maybe I should have stepped in earlier, but honestly, Alex, I thought you’d be better than this.”
“Hey,” Alex starts again, but these things have been in Kelley’s head for months, too, and they feel more earned than anything that’s spilled from Alex’s mouth.
“You’re supposed to be by my side, we’re supposed to be building something good here. This is our home, Alex, this is where we always wanted to end up.”
The sharp edges of Kelley’s voice start to soften, worn down by this night, and this season. By Alex.
“I fell in love with you in this city, and I’m so proud to wear its crest over my heart every game. This place means something to me, I wish it meant something to you too.”
When Alex looks at Kelley then, at her face twisted up in sober disappointment, there’s a pang of regret so sharp and sudden in her chest that it forces her backwards by a few shaky steps.
There are a hundred different apologies rapidly forming a lengthy queue in her head, anything to change the way Kelley is looking at her now, but when she finally manages to speak, her voice is small, and desperate, before it catches on the second syllable and goes unfinished.
“Kell…”
But Alex’s words are at Kelley’s back, and she wonders for a minute if she should follow her this time, flashing back to hours earlier and standing alone at midfield until her legs started to ache, and then the door to their bedroom clicks shut softly from down the hall.