Thalassa called out in pain as she collided hard with the grass on the Stanford practice field. "Fuck," she groaned. It has been the third time Gabrielle had made her go to ground after executing a perfect slide tackle. She'd caught all ball but the sudden stop in forward momentum sent Thalassa flying.
Ngara walked over to Thalassa and reached out a hand to help her to her feet.
"It's just a 6v6," Thalassa pointed out as she reached her feet and began brushing the mud off her shoulder. "Why the hell is she going so hard?"
Ngara sighed as she peered at Gabrielle, who had already sprinted down the field to rejoin the offensive attack. "I think she is telling her parents tonight. Apparently, she had been training almost every hour she hasn't been doing schoolwork."
Thalassa rubbed her shoulder as they began running toward the other end of the field. "I hope it goes well. I don't know how much more of this I can take. You best stir clear of her since she still doesn't know about the identification camp."
Ngara shrugged. "She has a lot going on."
"Well so do you," Thalassa shot back.
A poorly weighted pass from the other team drew them back into the action and ended their conversation.
Xena walked over to the benches at the Red Stars practice facility with the rest of the front-line players. They had just finished their sprint workout and water bottles had been set out for all of them. Xena reached down to grab her phone that she had tossed haphazardly atop her bag under the bench. Still nothing. Well, there was the reminder Aphrodite had sent about their early dinner plans, a few pictures from Ming Tien, which he had only recently learned to send via Whatsapp, and some Twitter notifications.
But there was nothing from Gabrielle. She had sent her a good morning text. Another wishing her luck at practice, since she knew she was doing a 6v6. She had even sent her a link to a UK women's football reporter's story speculating about who would be called into the upcoming identification camp since Ngara was mention. But nothing. Xena was supposed to Skype her at 8:45 p.m. her time so they would have some time to talk before Gabrielle called her parents at 7 p.m. her time and 8 p.m. for her parents in Texas.
She thought about texting her again but then decided against it. They were called back out to the field and Xena attempted to put it out of her mind as much as she could.
A few hours later, Xena was entering the brewpub on the outskirts of Boystown after having walked from the El stop. Dite and Ephiny were already at the table they had reserved for five. The hostess seemed to recognize her and assumed she would be meeting them.
"Have you seen that beer list?" Ephiny pointed behind her toward the bar and its chalkboard of beers as Xena approached their high-top table and sat on her stool.
"Ah, no," Xena uttered as Aphrodite slid a beer menu across the table toward her. "Thanks," she replied. She looked it over for a moment. "Damn, this is good," she stated as she peered up at them.
Ephiny wasn't looking at her and scoffed at whatever she was actually looking out. Amarice has clearly walked into the crowded brewery and then decided to keep holding Yachi's hand. She had been a mainstay of Chicago's midfield for years and had had gotten consistent call ups to the Japanese National Team for years. Through Xena, Ephiny, or Aphrodite had always assumed, it had never been officially confirmed that they were together.
They sat down and Amarice made a show of putting her arm around Yachi.
"What the hell is going on with you two?" Ephiny questioned of them.
They looked from their club team captain to each other. Amarice quickly said something to Yachi in Japanese before turning to her national team teammates. She pointed from Yachi to Xena. "Distractions are fucking needed."
"From what we've heard anyway," Yachi added with a shrug.
Xena glared at them.
"Fine," Amarice admitted. "Gabrielle told me everything. We are doing this more for her than for you, so don't act all annoyed."
"Huh," Aphrodite called out in realization. "This always happens with you, Xena. Queer women trying to use queer news to distract from your queer drama."
Ephiny scoffed.
"What? Did Eve and Varia offer to come out before the divorce game?" Amarice joked.
Xena groaned and Aphrodite raised her eyebrows and shrugged.
"Is China part of your farewell tour?" Yachi questioned with a smile. "That should be a fun game."
Everyone laughed, expect Xena, who lightheartedly glared at her.
"Nah, but Japan is. So, watch yourself kid," she shot at her.
Gabrielle had attempted to avoid as many people as she could throughout the day. She woke up before any of her roommates and went on basically a four-mile sprint around their neighborhood, showered, and headed to practice before any of them were coherent enough to acknowledge her. At practice, she played hard. Maybe a bit too hard, but she needed the distraction. She showered quicker than normal to evade either Ngara or Thalassa waiting for her. She slung her bag over her shoulder started to walk home.
Her phone vibrated in her pocket. She felt like she didn't even need to look at it. She could almost feel that it was from Xena. She had been kindly and politely texting her all day, like it was any other day. Like she was there for her. Like she said she would be. Like she agreed to be in about an hour, but it all made Gabrielle feel terrible. She needed her. She needed her so much she was embarrassed and avoided expressing it to her fully. Gabrielle felt petty and childish. Xena had been married to Lao Ma. She had divorced Lao Ma and know she was going to be on a Skype call while Gabrielle came out to her parents.
Gabrielle turned the corner onto her street and her phone vibrated again. She finally decided to pull it out of her pocket since it buzzed twice in quick session.
The first message from Varia was a screenshot of the photo of her kissing Xena from a tumblr post. The second message was text.
Varia: Duuuude, I am going to stan you so hard when this becomes official. Fuck yeah, we've officially basically sister-in-laws.
Gabrielle laughed down at the message. Varia's excitement has giving her a strange sense of confidence. She went to her messages from Xena. She had only read down to the one wishing her good luck at practice when she reached her front door.
Everyone scattered around the worn-out couches around the TV peered at her as she entered.
"Hmnh, look who has finally graced us with her presence," Orion called as he twisted away from the episode of Schitt's Creek on the television.
"La-la-lay off, asshole," Twickenham shot at him.
"Exactly!" the blonde beside Stanlous, who had his arm around her, called out. "You have not ideal the time commitments of a nearly professional footballer."
"Ngara?" Gabrielle questioned. "What are you even doing here?"
"Oh, they've gotten rather close since you took them jet-setting around Seattle," Euripides shooting Gabrielle a wide smirk. "if you have any other cute British friends just laying around?"
Gabrielle laughed. "None you'd be interested in."
"Well, damn," he replied with a heavy sigh. He seemed to notice Gabrielle awkward stance among the populated living room. "Scurry away to converse with the gods of your desire…and those of your parentage."
Gabrielle shook her head. "You fucking suck."
"I put a bottle of white in an ice bucket on your desk, with a chilled glass," Euripides added.
She pointed at him as she reached her bedroom door. "I take that back. I love you."
"Love ya too, Gabrielle," he said with a fake salute. "Good luck."
Gabrielle shut her bedroom door and sighed. She dropped her bag on the ground and laughed as she pulled the six-dollar bottle of grocery store wine out of the fancy ice bucket and poured into one of their few fancy wine glasses. She sat down and reached for the notebook she had been jotting down ideas of what she wanted to say and trying to map out how this conversation would go.
Xena sat at the head of her kitchen table with her laptop opened in front of her. She had left the rest of her teammates and Aphrodite back at the brewpub. They all had a vague idea of what she was doing so nobody protested when she left so early. She took a sip from her pint glass and leaned back into the chair. She still had a few minutes before she needed to call Gabrielle.
She glanced over at the mantel of her decorative fireplace.
"About time," she grumbled to herself as she got to her feet. She stood before the photos of her old life, her life with Lao Ma before taking two of the three down. She left the one of her and Lao Ma with Ming Tien at once of his soccer games. The photo wasn't about her and Lao Ma, it was about him. Xena was still so incredibly thankful that Lao Ma had allowed that relationship to continue. She took the other two photos to her hall closest, opened the storage bin at the bottom of it and placed them inside.
She sat back down in front of her laptop, waiting for Gabrielle to Skype call her.
Half a glass of wine in, Gabrielle decided it was time to Skype Xena.
"Hey," Xena said with her always present casual confidence that was most of the reason why Gabrielle wanted her there so much.
"Hey," Gabrielle replied softly.
"Ya ready?" Xena asked compassionately.
Gabrielle took a sip of her wine and shrugged. "I mean, I have to be right?"
"No," Xena replied. "Ya don't have to do anything, Gabrielle. If you wanna leave it to them finding out, or hell maybe they even won't, from some tabloid or niche soccer news, ya could do that."
Gabrielle almost started to cry. "I know," was all she was able to say though she wanted to tell Xena that she couldn't fully understand how she was so good at calming her down and making her feel better thought it was just a Skype call.
"Hey," Xena said softly as she leaned forward. "And however this goes, I'm here for you. As is the rest of the national team. And with the way Amarice has been goin' probably all of the Red Stars too."
Gabrielle laughed.
They had a few minutes of casual conversation before the hour hit and Gabrielle was forced to call her parents. She did so on her phone while keeping Xena on Skype. She did not put the phone on speaker, so Xena sat anxious in her apartment hearing only Gabrielle's side of the conversation.
"Um, yeah," Gabrielle told her parents with her neck and face turning a soft shade of red. "I have something kind of important to tell you."
She glanced at Xena, so she nodded with an encouraging smile.
"I…uh…I'm dating someone…on my team."
Gabrielle was tensely slight for a moment. "Yeah," she eventually said. "Yeah, another player."
There was another tense silent.
"No," Gabrielle replied into her phone. She looked at Xena and held her gaze for a moment. "From the national team."
The corners of Xena's mouth upturned slightly and she gave a small shrug.
"Uh…it's…" Gabrielle reacted and peered at Xena with a sense of urgency. She nodded, willing to approve of whatever Gabrielle had or needed to say. "It's Xena."
Xena was peering at her so confidently that Gabrielle almost felt like she didn't have any reason to be nervous. She rode that wave for a moment and decided she would stop being so nervous.
"I'm dating Xena," she stated for her parents.
Xena raised her eyebrows at her impressed but then almost sank through her floor from the weight of the guilt over the expression that crossed Gabrielle's face. A hand shot up to cover her mouth to suppress the cry that escaped her lips. As it failed, she held the phone away from her face.
"Oh baby," Xena called softly, knowing Gabrielle might not be able to hear her. She leaned forward, wishing that she could reach out and comfort her.
Gabrielle pressed her phone against her ear again but kept her hand over her face.
"Yeah," Gabrielle replied tearily. "Yeah, okay."
Xena was starting to hate herself for not insisting on going to Stanford or flying Gabrielle to Chicago for this.
Gabrielle seemed to be silently thinking something over for a long while. "I…I mean I had been thinking about it. And I was going to, but…well, someone got a photo of us together last weekend at the Regin-Red Stars game…"
Xena could see that Gabrielle could not bring herself to say it, she looked too nervous about the reaction. Xena almost began to cry as well, she felt at that much of a loss of her ability to comfort through a computer screen halfway across the country.
"I…I wanted you to hear it first from me," Gabrielle eventually said.
She fell silent again.
"Yeah, okay," Gabrielle responded covering her increasingly tearfully eyes with her hand. "Yeah, yeah, bye."
She dropped her phone to her desk as she brought both her hands to her face and began to cry.
"Ah shit, Gabrielle," Xena said softly. "I'm so sorry. I didn't want to…I didn't mean to…I'm so sorry I put you in this situation."
Gabrielle removed one hand to turn up the volume on her computer. "It's…" she paused to take a deep breath. "It's not your fault, Xena."
"Ya…ya wanna tell me what they said?' Xena asked.
"They, um," she darkly scoffed. "They wished that I had never told them anything. And…and that I had never acted on anything that I felt…for you, because that would have been the right thing to do."
She covered her face again and began to sob.
"Damnit," Xena uttered, as she sniffed back tears. "O'hare isn't far. I could be there in a couple of hours."
Gabrielle shook her head. "That's absurd. I have class in the afternoon. I have a game on Saturday. You have to be in Orlando on Sunday."
Xena peered at her silently for a moment. Her loving and caring expression made Gabrielle start to cry again. There was a politely soft knock on Gabrielle's door. She turned to peer at her door with tears streaming down her face but didn't say anything.
"Tell them to come in," Xena reassured Gabrielle. "Ya clearly need somebody there, Gabrielle."
"Yeah," Gabrielle called tearily.
"Oh, the weight of that sadness, my darling," Euripides stated as he pushed the door opened and entered.
Ngara trailed behind him and pushed the door closed. Ngara stood back for a moment, unsure if Gabrielle wanted her to approach. "It didn't go well?" she asked as Euripides, who had no such precautions, crossed the room until he reached her. He knelt beside her chair and encapsulated her into a hug. She cried as she pressed her face into his shoulder and hugged him.
Once Ngara reached them she saw that Xena was still on their scheduled Skype call.
"Thank you," Xena stated softly as she peered at Ngara from the screen.
"I am sure you have already done more than we ever could," Ngara told her as she leaned down toward the laptop screen.
Xena scoffed. "I might have caused more harm than good. You guys will take care of her?"
"Of course," Ngara said seriously with an understanding nod.
"Good. Thank you," Xena replied.
Ngara nodded in return and Xena ended the Skype call.
Without doing much thinking at all, Xena picked up her phone and texted Ephiny.
Xena: You guys still going?
Ephiny: The winery by the river. Dite's idea.
X: Be there in 10.
