serendipity ;

How she so wishes she could shoot back with your name or shove the sweet polaroid she keeps you the two of you in their faces. But instead she just groans a what-ever, laces up her cleats tight and plays a little too hard. (So what if she barreled over a freshman? They need to get tough.)

She’s found that the faster she moves, passes, destroys the other team, the faster she can get back to you. Her rapid improvement is putting her in contention for a varsity spot, she’s heard, but all that work comes from a desire to see you. The harder she practices, the less time she has to think about how much longer there is, the faster practice goes. She’s got it down to a science.

Her desperation to see you isn’t truly unfounded. She barely sees you at all during the day, just for English—where she can barely even cough without the teacher writing her up—and lunch—loud, oppressive lunch that always makes you hole up like a turtle. A cute turtle, but still a turtle. It’s hard to get conversation when all her friends crowd, so she settles for half-an-hour of hand-holding and daydreaming about after practice.

So as soon as practice ends she’s out. Her excuse, the one she started long before you started dating, is that her parents are super strict. No one would expect the stern-faced Mr. Ibarra to be an absolute teddy bear—especially for his daughter—so it works out. She doesn’t even bother to shower, just hops in her car and peels off towards your house.

She always, always comes through your window. Even though she has a key to your front door she’s insistent on climbing up the tree like some kind of Romeo. You worry about her falling and spraining an ankle, but leave the window unlocked regardless.

She pushes open the glass, crawls through. Flops on you, all sweaty and gross and dirty from the field, right onto your clean sheets.

“Gross, Mar.” You scoff, half-asleep and barely conscious at her routine arrival. It makes her pout, hard.

“You’re not even happy that I’m here? You’re terrible.” She pokes your cheek until you peek open an eye, and then tips her head.

You groan and shift as she wants you to, letting her sweaty ass bundle you to her chest. You curl easily into her, nose nuzzling at her damp collar.

“Asshole.” You murmur.

“Princess.” She retorts.

Rolling your eyes, you go quiet. You’re not sure how to breach the subject—the discussion about going public. Mari’s never expressed the desire, but she’s never kept you much of a secret anyway, even with your pleas to keep it under wraps.

You sigh, and then speak.

“Mar.”

“Princess.” She scoffs, half-amused.

“Be serious!” Laughing now, you hit her on the shoulder, bringing a faux wince and another pout. “I… well. I think it would be good if we went a bit more public.”

Mari goes silent, before a wide grin spreads. It’s spells trouble—big trouble—for you, and anyone else she intends to direct it at.

"Can we fuck with them, at least?"

So you help her do just that. You press lipstick-coated kisses (whether or not you wear it) just low enough so that when she changes into her jersey they'll be visible—bright red and prettily defined. She lets you (begs you) to press hickeys there as well, the skin of her collarbone molted purple and green.

Everyone starts asking who the fuck she got to agree to do that, and all she responds, smug grin splitting her face, is "oh, just my girlfriend,” met with many eye rolls.

At this point you’re getting restless—you’d already waited so long to build up the courage to ask her, and now she’s dragging it out because she wants her friends to suffer.

So, in a show of reckless bravery (though your hands still shake), you kiss her in the lunchroom. She’s unaware of you coming up behind her, even less aware of how her teammates’ gazes stray towards you.

The entire table goes silent as you shut her up yourself, tilting her head back to seal a kiss over the thin seam of her mouth. She smiles, all teeth, as she pulls back.

“Hey, princess.” She murmurs, soft as she scoots so you can sit next to her.

They’d wheeled you into the infirmary, fresh off the mat, and she was there. She stared at you as they transferred you, and watched with intensity as you winced. You couldn’t bend your knees, and bit your lip to hide a whimper when you tried. They’d told you they wouldn’t move and not to hurt yourself attempting it. You did so anyway. 

Hers was already wrapped in a suffocating coffin of gauze, making her left leg look much larger than the right. The straight set to her shoulders had only come about when you’d entered, spine upright. It’s utterly ruined by the pallid quality to her skin. In her eyes gleams recognition, and yours reflects right back. Who wouldn’t, even among such elite athletes? Adidas’s star girl, known for her relentless tennis and her dignified media presence, and the flag bearer on top of that. Tashi Duncan’s First Olympics was practically written in the stars. 

You moon over her as if you aren’t in the same boat. This might not be your first, but people expected it to be the continuation of a legacy. That you’d swoop in and win, taking home the gold once more. Sponsored and showered with equipment and sports drinks and money, you were a shoe-in.

And now you’re here, head swimming from the pain after your knees popped sickly and left you unable to stand, your support crumpling under you and your coach cradling you, dizzy, in her lap. Terribly ironic, really. You don’t know enough literature to find someone comparable. But you’re sure that someone, somewhere, had penned this. Perhaps with their knees aching as yours do. 

You’re fed two pills, small enough to swallow dry. You choke regardless, eyebrows knitting in anguish as your body squirms instinctively. They work quickly, the powdery-white pills—you're drowsy now. Perhaps they’re for the pain. Perhaps you're just too far away for it to matter anymore. 

You meet her eyes, watch how they flash in horror. They’re wide and frightened, as if knocked back into her own adrenaline seeing her suffering so violently reflected. Her injured leg draws up instinctively, painfully, as they swarm you—remembering what had happened not long before you arrived. 

You share with her that one last moment of pain. The wince on her face brings one onto your own, dragging you briefly back to your body. Not that there’s much time to experience it—you’re yanked under swiftly, lost before the spasm even registers. Your eyes shut in a blink, and don’t open again. Not for quite some time. 

For the first month after your surgery everything is… well. Not smooth sailing but… better. The pain relieves slowly, slipping away with each day of strengthening. Waking up tense and aching, something that used to make you lock up and panic, is now a routine that begets a grumble and a shifting towards the floor to do your stretches. Your mobility increases as the swelling falls, and eventually the crutches fall from your sides and never return. 

Your sessions with the physical therapist are weekly. Now, weeks after the procedure, they’re check-ins. How much pain are you in? Are your stretches still helping? The works. Usually the sessions are one-on-one, an hour dedicated to just you and their guiding hands. Today, it seems, that is not the case. They say the addition of another person “with an injury like your own” might “spur recovery through companionship.” You’re not quite sure what else they said: it was eight in the morning on a Sunday. Your body craved the sanctity of your bed and blankets and would not get with the program of being up and active. 

The U.S. Olympic Team, apparently, sends everyone to the same physical therapist. You know this not because of a teammate’s testimony but because of Tashi’s slow arrival. She emerges much like a star would, having the door opened for her with an indulgent smile. But as she steps into your view you’re hit with the reality of it all. Here, she’s not the perfect athlete, lithe and beautiful and charming. She’s barefaced, pain’s grimace etching new lines between her brows, hair whisping from its ponytail and clothes swallowing her. She looks less pallid than she did before, and she’s not mummified in gauze and bandages, but still she limps, the black knee brace obtrusively strapped onto the joint. 

In the weeks since you’ve seen her you think you’ve spared more time towards her injury than your own. You’ve watched the tape of that fateful day over and over, collecting angles and perspectives. They’re saved, hidden in a folder on your phone, needlessly paranoid that her media team might wipe them from the face of the internet. You find yourself curling in bed, overwhelmed by the hotly throbbing ligaments and the frigid ice pressed to them, watching the anguish on her face from the court, from the audience, twenty different looks until all angles are burned into your mind. It feels perverse and cruel to watch her, to make this immortalized version of her relive this moment continually, but the knowledge that you’re tethered by this same-day butchering eases the feeling into the Catholically-guilty corner of your heart that has long since been beaten down into (relative) submission.

Seeing her in person, seeing her walk after weeks of watching her lay on your little screen (tinny speakers muted because hearing her scream was nauseating enough the first time and you’re not that dedicated to your own emotional self-destruction) is overwhelming. You falter, almost falling off the yoga ball they’d carefully planted you on to make your recovery exercises a bit more strenuous. You’re wide-eyed, feeling young and parasocial in a way you hadn’t since you’d left your fangirl days behind.

The quick plant of your foot and the gentle hiss of pain that follows pulls her gaze to you. Instinctively they narrow, and your heart picks up like a startled rabbit’s. Then they soften, her mouth stretching with humor, and you can’t help but smile back. She’s not much younger than you, only a few years, but still she has that unrelenting drive to connect that comes with being juvenile and malleable. Yours, that you thought was stamped out, flairs. 

Two weeks later, they decide to merge your sessions, including her in your recovery. The cynical part of you sneers, thinking it a shady way for the committee to save money and mourning the privacy you had to hurt. The other part of you, the one high on a new friendship, cheers. 

Slowly, ever so slowly, Tashi seeps into your life and sinks into every part of it. She takes you out to coffee and tea, slides annotated books across the plyo boxes with a conspiratorial wink. You learn she pushes and pushes and pushes until you snap, and then pulls back from you like a wounded animal before you soften and she tries again—getting closer and closer every time. Observing her youthfulness, the warm determination she applies to everything, is inspiring to yourself—feeling old despite the fact that she’s only a few years younger than your ancient twenty-four. 

She catches you unaware one night, showing up after you were already softened and wound down. Her plea for you to come out to the club turned into a movie night, her face glittered purple but her body swamped in your spare Team USA hoodie and a pair of sweats. She snuggles deep into your side, not paying attention to the beautiful film on the screen. It’s some old Armenian movie, tasteful visuals abundant and red everpresent. Still, she’s more focused on how it reflects over the curve of your cheek. 

“Hey.” She huffs, obviously attempting to be cool, even with the way she nuzzles into your neck. It says pay attention to me, the burn of her eyes into your skin something overwhelming. 

“Hey.” 

She squirms closer, throwing herself over your lap and blocking your view. 

“What are you doing?” She murmurs, as if she wasn’t the one moving. 

“What are you doing?” You laugh, curling your warm hands over her hips. She tenses, seared through the fabric, glaring at you until you falter and smile awkwardly. “What?”

Your recovery is hard, grueling, but it picks up quickly. The mending ligaments, surgically surtured, slowly support more weight with every session and all exercises. The meandering recovery is a gift, at least to you—after running at full, even on an empty tank, for years, the opportunity for a long rest is something to be cherished. Your team talks eagerly about when you can return to the sport. All you feel, despite this being your life’s dedication, is dread.

She asks you about it, some wine-soaked night on your balcony, when your guard was ruined by fuzzy laughter and the press of her against your arm. You’d completely forgotten that she’s nosy, and obviously she listened in on the phone call you took earlier. It’s not a betrayal—not really. You’ve both shared passwords, drunken kisses, and showers. Small taxis and drinks at the club and the lounge chair you’re currently smushed into. It’s encompassing and reciprocal—her business is your business is her business. 

Still, it’s sobering. It wasn’t truly a reality, just a lingering suggestion, until she pushed with moony eyes, drunken and eager and slightly envious. Your breath is choked as you respond. 

“...I’m not sure I want to, Tash.”

She’s quiet the rest of the night, quiet as you lay in bed together. Quiet, quiet, quiet. Pensive, contemplative, tight. She doesn’t leave, but something in her has departed—floated away, higher and higher, a spiraling worry you see between her brows. 

You pull her down with chocolate, breakfast served steaming. It lays, a sweet-bitter smear over and in the fluffy pancakes, and in the iced mocha you present. She eats and drinks and calms, head heavy enough with it that you can take her in your lap, back to chest. 

“What’s up, Tashi?” You murmur. Tucking into her neck, she shudders at the brush of your breath. Your arms flex, wide and strong around her stomach. Engulfing, just slightly. “You’re too quiet.”

She sits, ponders, chin against her chest. Letting her keep her silence for just a few minutes more, you wait, warm against her back with your hair tickling her neck. 

“It’s just—” she cuts off with a sigh. The sound settles heavy on your heart. “—you could go back. Your injuries are healing better than mine is. Why don’t you want to keep going?” 

You don’t exactly have an answer. Wrestling was—is—the love of your life. You’re unsure when that faltered, when the practices you once relished in became a chore and your enthusiasm became sluggish. 

“I… really don’t know.” You murmur into her shoulder, smelling the sunshine of her skin and your body wash overtop of it. 

She stiffens in agitation, the non answer unsatisfying. “Well, why not?” You stiffen as well, a reflex, and then force your shoulders to fall. This isn’t a match—there’s no rising wave of offense for you to meet or redirect. Just Tashi, warm and willowy in your lap, wrapped in your worn hoodie and smelling of shea butter. 

You breathe out, and she shudders at the air’s caress. 

“Because I’m really tired, Tash.” Your voice is soft. It’s a confession, one you’ve never told to anyone else. “And I don’t know if I’d love it as much if I tried again.”

You feel her weight shift, and for a single, terrifying moment, you think she’ll get off. Instead she turns, wraps her legs around your waist and nuzzles into your neck. She inhales shamelessly, and for a moment you wonder if she’s just as addicted. 

No response to your words come, just a kiss to your collar. Your arms tighten, and she sighs. 

“Just… try.” She whispers. “Please.”

“...okay.” You murmur, a promise. She kisses you again, now mouth-to-mouth, swallowing that confirmation, the gasp you inhale wholly from her lungs. 

When you get back to practicing, slowly rediscovering the love of your life, she comes with you. She sits on a plyo box and watches you drill slowly, first by yourself, then with a partner. 

You notice how she squirms when you’re working with someone else—the easy clap of your hands against their shoulders, thighs, anywhere, is overwhelming. One day, instead of calling anyone who lingers on the mat, you gesture at her with two fingers. 

“C’mon, babe.” 

She’s hesitant—obviously. In tennis, the connection is less physical and more mental. There’s no touching, not until the end, and that is just a bare clasp of the hands. The clasp of the hands, for you, starts it, the overwhelming physicality and intimacy of being intertwined with another person, slinging them around and being thrown back. 

But she slides off, takes your hand, and replicates the stance you show her. It’s quite similar to the one she always knew, so she slips into it like water. 

You take her slow, and then intensify. By the end of the hour she’s flushed but giddy. Drilling pushed aside she scraps with you, the open ease of it—no winning, no losing—so unfamiliar. 

You’re fluid as you lock under her arms. Her spine straightens with yours, and bows as you drop—strong arms locked tight around her waist. Your knee presses into the back of her braced one, and she flails in panic—

You lower her. She doesn’t drop, nothing to support her. Her leg doesn’t crumple under her, your knee there to hold her as you guide her over your thigh and down, back to the mat. It’s no quick slam. She feels—well. Light. The ease at which you lower her should be embarrassing, but it just feels like that fairytale catch a much younger her dreamed of. A prince, haloed by light—no matter how fluorescent—here to keep her safe. 

She flushes as you laugh, half-worried by the startled look on your face. “Hey, you okay, Tash? I didn’t hurt you, did I?” You murmur, soft and low. 

She leans up to kiss you, pushing hard enough to put you on your back. The cooing of your teammates fades out as her hands box your ears and she settles to devour you. You exhale and she inhales, only pulling back when all of the air between you has totally depleted. 

“What was that for?” You huff, skating your nails over her cheek. Her lips twitch, betraying her, and she finds she doesn’t have an answer. 

“Just because.” She settles down, pushing her legs blissfully straight. Her knee creaks softly, but there’s no twinge of pain. Not anymore. Just an ache, beating in tandem with your heart against her cheek.