Chapter Text
There were two kinds of people at Hawthorne University.
There were people who knew Emily Charlton.
And there were people Emily Charlton had not yet had occasion to meet.
Andy Sachs belonged firmly to the second category.
She knew who Emily was, obviously. Everyone did. Emily was student-government vice president, senior editor of The Hawthorne Review, president of the campus chapter of the International Affairs Society, and the person professors trusted to guide distinguished guests around campus without embarrassing the institution.
She was tall and striking, with red hair that made her impossible to lose in a crowd and a crisp British accent that made even the words budget subcommittee sound vaguely intimidating. She moved through Hawthorne as though the brick walkways, ivy-covered buildings, and carefully landscaped courtyards had been arranged for her convenience.
But she was not cruel.
That was what confused Andy.
Popular people were supposed to be easy to dislike. Emily, however, remembered the names of dining-hall employees. She tutored first-year students before exams. She could silence a room with one pointed look, but Andy had once seen her kneel in the rain—in cream trousers—to help a frightened freshman collect the pages of a dropped portfolio.
It would have been much simpler if she had been awful.
Instead, she was merely aggravating.
Andy captained the Hawthorne Hawks women’s soccer team. On campus she was usually identifiable by some combination of black athletic shorts, Hawthorne training gear, backward baseball caps, and the battered duffel bag she carried as if it were an extension of her body.
She was cool without seeming to try, which was fortunate because Andy tried very hard.
She trained before sunrise. She attended every class, even after away games that returned the team to campus at three in the morning. She maintained the GPA required for her athletic scholarship and then pushed it higher because merely maintaining anything felt dangerously close to complacency.
She had strong legs, defined arms, and a taut strip of muscle across her stomach that became campus folklore whenever she peeled off a sweat-soaked jersey after practice and stood in a sports bra while searching her bag for a clean shirt.
Andy pretended not to notice the staring.
She noticed all of it.
The first time she properly met Emily, Andy hit her with a soccer ball.
It was not intentional.
The women’s team had been assigned a patch of grass near the student-organization fair for their penalty-kick challenge. Andy was demonstrating how to strike with the inside of the foot when a first-year volunteer moved the portable goal without warning.
The ball sailed past it.
“Look out!”
Emily turned at exactly the wrong moment.
The ball struck the stack of folders in her arms. Papers erupted around her like startled birds.
The entire soccer team went silent.
Emily stared at the scattered pages.
Then she looked at Andy.
“Brilliant,” she said.
Andy jogged over, biting the inside of her cheek.
“I yelled.”
“You shouted look out after launching a projectile at my head.”
“It didn’t hit your head.”
“No, it merely assassinated the seating charts I spent two hours alphabetizing.”
Andy crouched to collect them. “Who alphabetizes seating charts?”
“People capable of organizing events attended by more than eleven women chasing a ball.”
Behind Andy, Lily made a strangled noise that sounded suspiciously like laughter.
Andy glanced back sharply. Lily became fascinated by the penalty spot.
“Okay,” Andy said, handing Emily a stack of papers. “I’m sorry.”
Emily inspected them. “You’ve put row seven ahead of row six.”
“It’s paper. I think it’ll recover.”
“Some of us enjoy doing things correctly.”
That landed more sharply than Emily could have known.
Andy’s smile became easy and careless—the expression she used when she was anything but.
“Well, some of us have games to win.”
She turned away.
“Sachs.”
Andy stopped.
She had not introduced herself.
Emily held out the soccer ball. “Try not to maim any prospective students. Hawthorne’s insurance is already dreadful.”
Andy took the ball from her. Their fingers brushed.
Emily’s expression did not change, but something flickered in her eyes as she glanced at Andy’s bare arms.
Andy tucked the ball beneath one arm and smirked. “You know my name.”
“I know everyone’s name.”
“Sure you do, Charlton.”
Andy jogged back toward the team before Emily could respond.
Lily waited until they were out of earshot.
“What,” she asked, “was that?”
“Nothing.”
“That was not nothing. That was foreplay for emotionally constipated people.”
Andy shoved the ball into Lily’s stomach.
“Set up the goal.”
Across the lawn, Serena leaned closer to Emily.
“You’re staring.”
“I’m ensuring she doesn’t commit another act of violence.”
“She’s walking away.”
“She could turn around.”
“She does have very nice shoulders.”
Emily snapped her gaze toward Serena. “That is entirely irrelevant.”
Andy chose that moment to pull her training shirt over her head, exposing the smooth, toned plane of her abdomen before the new shirt dropped into place.
Emily lost her train of thought.
Serena smiled.
“Oh,” she said. “Entirely.”
Andy’s parents both called after Hawthorne’s first match of the season.
Her father called first.
“You won four–one,” he said.
“Yeah.” Andy sat alone in the locker room with her cleats at her feet and an ice pack balanced on one shin. “I had two assists.”
“I saw the stream. You should’ve taken that shot in the sixty-third minute.”
Andy’s smile faded.
“The angle wasn’t good.”
“You passed backward.”
“To Lily. She scored.”
“You had space, kiddo. Captains have to be willing to take responsibility.”
Her mother called twelve minutes later.
“You looked tired near the end.”
“I played ninety minutes, Mom.”
“Exactly. You need to work on your conditioning if you want scouts to take you seriously. Your father said you hesitated on a shot.”
Of course he had.
They had been divorced since Andy was seven and had perfected the art of speaking to one another only when it concerned something Andy could have done better.
“I’ll work on it,” she promised.
Afterward, Andy sat with the phone loose in her hand.
A cheer erupted in the corridor as several teammates discovered the box of cupcakes someone had left outside the locker room.
Andy dragged in a breath, pulled her expression back into place, and joined them.
She did not know the cupcakes had been sent by student government to congratulate the team.
She did not know Emily had chosen the bakery.
And she certainly did not know Emily had watched the entire match from the back row of the bleachers.