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“I like you.” It’s a phrase Hope’s heard so many times in the past. She’s heard it the day the first boy in her middle school started noticing girls, and started noticing her in particular. She’s heard it from so many boys since then; she’s heard it from girls, friends, and strangers. But she’s never heard it from a teammate before.
“I like you too.” She replies without a second thought. Kelley O’Hara shifts in place and rubs her right eye with her palm, irritated by the sweat beading down from her forehead.
“No, I really like you.” Kelley repeats and Hope has no such quick response for her. Kelley and Hope watch the ball approach their end of the field and Kelley takes a step towards the opposing players. “I just...I thought I would let you know.” The ball flies sideways, and Hope is glad that Kelley makes the tackle, sending the ball to the feet of Boxx because Hope knows she isn’t thinking clearly enough to make a save, should it come down to it.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Kelley.” She hisses as she watches the team shift forward to attack.
~**~
Abby doesn’t say much after practice when Hope reveals Kelley’s confession to her. Abby swirls the foamy beer in her glass and sighs.
“I’m not surprised.” She responds with a shrug before taking another large gulp. Hope slams her head on the desk and lets out a frustrated cry.
“Why? Why now? Why ever?” She groans. Abby laughs quietly at Hope’s predicament.
“It was bound to happen sooner or later. Come on, you’ve been on the team for ages, you didn’t think at least one of your teammates would confess? Frankly, I’m surprised there haven’t been more.”
“What about you?” Hope demands, lifting her head just enough to watch Abby’s reaction. She wonders if she’s going to hit a mine. They rarely talk about their trysts together when they were younger, just finding their feet and place on the team. They were restless, and full of hormones, but not once did their feeling ever cross the divide between friendship and actual infatuation. Again, Abby’s shoulders lift and fall nonchalantly.
“We were different.” She says and it’s the best answer Hope could want. “But really, it’s not surprising. Have you seen the way she clings to you?” Hope knows exactly what Abby’s referring to. She knows all too well the magnetic way Kelley floats to her side after every game or practice, hugs her, and doesn’t let go. She’s like that off the field too, when the cameras aren’t on and she can be herself. If anything, it’s worse. Kelley’s recently taken to sleeping on Hope’s shoulder, as if she was a goddamned pillow. Hope groans again and her forehead hits the wooden desk again.
“What do I do?” Hope asks. “Team dynamic is fucked either way.”
“Oh, come on, Hope. She told you because she trusts you. I’m sure she’s just as concerned about the team dynamic. She’s an adult, she can handle rejection...unless you don’t plan to reject her.” Abby’s eyebrows quirk curiously.
“She’s a kid! She was in diapers when we started playing for the team!” Abby chokes on her beer at the thought.
“I think you’re exaggerating just a bit.” She notes when the coughing dies down. “But...you haven’t said a word about rejecting her. Don’t tell me...could the great Hope Solo like Kelley O’Hara right back?” Hope sort of wants to throw her beer at Abby to stop the grin from spreading ear to ear but she’s not sure that will have any effect.
“She’s a kid, she’s a baby.”
“That’s still not a ‘no.’” Hope wants to say no. She wants to say that she’s too grown up, too responsible, too straight to have butterflies in her stomach whenever she’s near the young defender. But there was something about her, something infectious about her smiles, her ridiculous faces, and the glimmer in her eyes whenever she stared at Hope that made the 32 years old feel like she was 22, reckless, and dealing with feelings she did not know how to maturely handle. Abby’s stare turns serious, and she leans forward off the bed.
“Well shit. Looks like you’ve got bigger problems than a ‘kid’s’ crush on you.” Abby whistles low and Hope careens off the chair. “Where are you going?”
“For a jog.” Hope says - anything to get the alcohol out of her system so that she can start thinking straight again, for lack of a better term.
~**~
She jogs around the circle that housed their hotel. She jogs all the way to the practice field and she can hear laughter coming from the pitch. In particular, she hears one voice that she could pick out in a crowd of a thousand.
Hope watches the younger players from behind the fence. Tobin, Alex, Cheney and A-Rod are gathered in a circle with Kelley in the middle. They kick the ball around from player to player, keeping it as far from the hopelessly flailing Kelley as possible. Kelley’s a mess, sliding to no avail, running like a hyperactive puppy from one person to the next. At one point she body-checks A-Rod with little effect and winds up on the ground in a fit of laughter. Tobin playfully kicks the ball right at her ribs and Kelley snatches the ball before it rolls away.
“Got it! It’s mine!” She yells, running away with the ball in her arms. Hope snorts, trying to contain her laughter as the others chase her down and tackle her to the ground, dog piling on top of her when Alex manages to wrestle her down. Hope brings her hand up to her mouth to hide her smile. When did she become such a grinning idiot?
She knows the answer, or at least when it started. After the 2007 controversy, she’d been regarded as somewhat of an untouchable. Younger players stayed distant, not sure how to approach her or if they even should but Kelley...
“I’m not used to playing defense, so don’t go easy on me. Just tell me what to do, ok? Scream at me if you have to.” The first thing Kelley’s ever said to Hope, she asks Hope to just be herself. “Relentless” is a word Hope would use right under “optimistic”, and just above “idiot” to describe Kelley O’Hara because no matter what Hope did, Kelley somehow managed to worm her way into her life with those stupid antics, and, God, that moronic little growl she did every now and then to psych herself up before a game.
It hits Hope when Kelley lays still on the ground, pretending to be dead while the other girls congregate around her, that she actually likes this idiot back.
~**~
Hope is terrible at words. She either says too many of them, or she doesn’t know how to say them at all. She somehow manages to string every possible combination of words together except the one that counts most. “I really like you too,” somehow turns into “let’s play a game. Loser shoots.” The team gathers around the common room table, each taking turns drawing cards. Hope is anything but focused, trying to think of some better way than saying “I like you too.” Because that’s too middle school for her, and there has got to be a more grown up way of admitting her affections.
Then again, Kelley is anything but grown-up.
The only thing that stops Hope from getting flat out smashed was Kelley’s own inability to hold her alcohol. Three shots later and even Hope’s worst reaction time was Kelley’s best.
“She fell asleep with her shoes on!” Heather O’Reilly can hardly contain her glee when she spots Kelley passed out on the couch, still in her kicks. She ducks into the craft room, as Kreiger fondly dubbed it, and returns with a black sharpie.
“I get first dibs!” Hope surges from the floor and yanks the sharpie from HAO’s hand.
“I’ll do it.” She replies with a steely glare that, while Kelley did not know it at the time, protected her from the chaos that could’ve been her face the next morning. HAO’s shoulders slump and she kicks at the carpet.
“Party pooper. Draw something good, ok?” Hope plops down on the couch next to Kelley, and the room is filled with an awkward silence as she studies the defender’s freckled, bright red face. Abby clears her throat and stretches loudly.
“Time for bed guys.” She says, motioning for everyone to leave. “Let’s give Hope space for her masterpiece.” Hope shoots her a thankful look as she herds the team out of the common room. Once the silence sinks in, Hope turns to Kelley and uncaps the sharpie.
“You idiot...can you imagine what HAO would’ve done to your face?” Kelley responds with a soft snore and Hope bursts into laughter. With no one listening, she finally finds the courage to say it.
“I like you, Kelley O’Hara. Same way you like me.” Even though the girl is fast asleep, Hope’s heart races as if she were actually awake and listening, as if this were a confession instead of a response. She stares adoringly at her face. “God you have so many freckles...” She brushes stray hairs from Kelley’s visage and brings the marker up to her face. Instead of mustaches, or phallic symbols, she takes the sharpie and connects Kelley's freckles. It starts as just one heart, a simple one right on Kelley's cheek. In her sleep, Kelley swats at the marker, but Hope waits until she settles down before drawing another, this time right above her collarbone. By the end, Kelley has at least a dozen and Hope has managed to find enough freckles to spell her name over her heart.
Hope's drunk too, and it's not long before the alcohol sets in. She sits down next to Kelley and caps the sharpie. Her eyes droop, and the smile fades from her lips until she's fast asleep. Kelley, like a heat seeking missile, rolls over and wraps her arm around Hope's waist and presses her cheek into the crook of Hope's neck. She lays there for a while, her body affectionately vandalized. When she finally pulls away, she leaves Hope with a faint black outline of the heart drawn on her face.
~**~
Hope wakes up alone on the couch. When she sits up, a blanket falls down to her lap and she blinks in wake of the bright morning sun. When the pounding of her head affectionately reminds her of what she’d done last night, she feels a faint panic set in. She stands up and hurries back to her room where she knows Kelley must be washing off the marks she’d left last night.
“Kelley?” She opens the door but she doesn’t hear anyone in the bathroom. The bed shifts and Kelley peeks at the doorway. When Hope sees her, she can’t help but burst into laughter. She’d forgotten just how many heart she’d drawn on Kelley’s body and face, and she practically looks like a dalmatian.
“You like?” Kelley grins, waggling her eyebrow suggestively. She spins around to show the full extend of Hope’s work. “Someone named...EPOH...did this.” She reads the name written on her heart in the mirror and Hope shakes her head with a defeated smile.
“You need help washing it off?” She asks, grabbing a small towel from the bathroom. Kelley studies herself in the mirror, turning this way and that to admire her new body art.
“I don’t know, I kind of like it.” She replies. The smile fades from her face and her eyes flit to Hope. Even with just a glance, Hope can see the unspoken question, is this your response or is this just a joke?
“Well, EPOH spent a lot of time on it, and I’m sure she’d be glad to hear you’re not getting rid of it so easily.” She’s never done direct well. Her heart pounds in her ears, drowning out the pounding in her head.
“Ok, well, I would really, really like to keep all this.” She gestures to her face and shoulders. “What about you?” Kelley points to the faint black outline of a heart on Hope’s neck. Hope grins and brings her fingers up to the exact spot.
“I guess...I’m keeping it too.” Kelley’s smile is blinding, and for once Hope doesn’t see her as a kid. They stand in the room, Hope struggling to put together words that actually mean something, and Kelley caught between waiting for her to figure it out and not wanting to push her too far too fast.
“We should get ready for practice, huh?” Kelley asks, sitting back down on the bed.
“Hey, Kelley?” Hope’s mind fights what she wants to say - Let’s practice hard, no, you’re a great defender, no, you should put on sunscreen, dammnit...
“I like you back, if that wasn’t obvious.” It’s the greatest victory she’s ever won. Kelley looks up from tying her shoes.
“I know.” She brings her elbows to her knees and smiles mischievously. “But my heart apparently belongs to an EPOH.” The two of them break into a relieved laughter. She’s an idiot, Hope thinks. She’s an idiot that I like more than I’ll probably ever admit. But when Kelley stands up again and tentatively brings her lips to her cheek, Hope knows that one day she’ll find the words.
And if not, she can always connect Kelley’s freckles again.