#evare

Consequently, she evades the opponent’s 9 in a move so simple and elegant as if she were dancing, right before she shoots, still beyond the penalty box yet straight through the gap in the defense and before the goalkeeper can react to prevent our scoring.

Captain Samos roars, once, and so do I. Just as in sync, our team gathers to cheer with her. There I’m slower, keeping it to a half-hearted hug and a few high fives. Still the newbie come from another club, but part of the win.

No time for more connecting when the match goes on and already, the captain emerges from the embrace cluster to shoo her team back into positions. She jerks her chin and a shiver runs down my spine as I realize it’s for me. I don’t know what to make of it. Acknowledgement? Praise? Or rather another, “I’m watching you, Barrow”, as to remind me she is not only the captain, but also the central conductor of the team and no matter how well I filled the same role in my old club’s soccer team, I have no place to challenge Evangeline Samos’s lead.

In the locker room, I wonder if I could’ve passed to another player, and avoid Samos entirely. I couldn’t have made the goal myself from my point, but at least I’d have been recognized for good preparation if Samos’s textbook shoot didn’t grab everyone’s awe by the throat.

She really has enough of that, mine included. Hailing from prestigious families, she’s the star of the Archeon Soccer Club, a talent able to pick pro-team scouts instead of the other way around. But her stardom begins to outshine the rest of the club like we’re the darkness between when –

I startle embarrassingly for a mere hand on my shoulder, a proof my grumbling went too deep when among a group. I can’t help it; I’m frozen even once I’ve turned. Speak of the devil, of course it’s her, the captain.

The perfect and pristine model athlete, from the curve of her thighs, to defined abs and strong arms and not a hair out of place. I’m envious of her magic tricks to fix her hair so short after the match, my short curls would take ages just to get dry.

Not that I intend to bother with her generally elaborate coiffure, with her long ponytail bleached a silvery-white the black roots shift into through carefully dyed, dark-greyish transitions.

She snorts and I cough, finally releasing the breath I’d been holding.

“Good work, Barrow”, she says with a smirk I can’t determine as ironic or genuine which reminds me that I’ve gaped enough. It’s her method, reaching out while never making you sure of your footing, encourage while letting you know her doubts. Like when she offered to drive me to training or matches in her car – our ways overlap expediently – and then never talks with me like I’m not worth the attention.

Too bad I excel at this game as well. A sneer I can return, just like her resolute posture. “I do my best for the team, Captain,” I reply.

She frowns, detecting my tease. Maybe a mistake. Maybe I should bow and flatter to rise in the team but such had never been my strength. I only know success by demanding my due. Now she leans forward, stepping ever closer as if to put me back in place.

When she lays a hand on my chest, I expect her to shove.

I don’t fall back an inch. Only her head inclines to speak in my ear as my heart beats faster with her hand pressing against my collarbones.

“If you want my position, Nightmare,” she whispers, “you’ll have to take it.”

I flinch at the blighting of my name as she shifts aside, smiling sweetly. “Don’t call me that,” I quietly retort, “not among the team.” I’m all too aware of the teammates around us and yet I don’t scan their reactions to our exchange and my hot face. I’ll be glad enough if by tomorrow, not everyone calls me Nightmare.

Her smile doesn’t waver at all. “Sure,” she mouths unperturbed and leaves me standing, back in the game that’s both soccer and not soccer at all.

 Evangeline

On autumn Sunday mornings, I enjoy running at the break of dawn when the streets are so empty as if they belong to me alone. I may exert yet it feels like freedom on my strictly scheduled Sundays. After running comes styling for the nearly endless family brunch with Grandmother Éva and Aunt Sofía, followed by the weekly soccer match, the team meeting aka fastfood feast, and another formal dinner while I’m to excel on all accounts, which is naturally impossible.

Grandmother resents the sportive break in showing me off to Mother’s and Father’s business connections in finance and industry, as I resent missing the team’s more outgoing after-match events. There were …the parties in our lake house but they grew rare since last year, like so much. Formal dinners aren’t what they used to be when hardly anyone besides the most loyal friends attend anymore, and even the brunch is make belief the Samos shipyard isn’t in decline.

Sofía and Grandmother are the worst at it, treating brunch and dinner like a family tradition when it’s always only revolved about the prestige they could reap from the family’s success, having never been their own, but always swept up in the gearing of a company that exclusively demanded from, but not encouraged them.

All they see is more reason for “networking”, as Grandmother, Sofía and my parents call their matchmaking, when my college fund was depleted for my brother and the company, as if they weren’t the ones who decided Tolly is more likely to save the company instead of giving me the chance.

Once more checking my straps, one more breathe before I break into a run. I grind my teeth for the first minute until I get used to the cold and the pace. I endure it, as I endure the stress at home. I welcome the first as a distraction from the latter.

I can’t help resenting the company, can’t ignore my aversion to ever work for it. It is not my brother who I’ll always love more that envy, though nowadays I’m almost glad when he doesn’t come to visit and I suffer our family’s reminiscences of our better times alone. He’s expected to present his efforts at connecting in college which means bringing at potential date for me.

Of course, they never call it that, as if my future lies in marriage, certainly not so soon, but what options do I have when Father won’t give both of us a company to rule? I hear Sofía’s voice and want to scream but the exertion does the job of numbing my anger just as well. Pretending must run in my blood, as Grandmother can also very well feign ignorance if I simply allude to the truth of my romantic intentions.

At least Tolly showed his instincts when such a setup couldn’t be avoided, presenting friends not any more interested in “economically advantageous relationships” than me.

Moments like that remind me how close I’ve always been to Tolly, smiles and eye-rolls our secret language. Without him, I have no ally when I can’t keep a straight face as Father rants about Lesbos and greek politics once more.

Tolly played soccer with me first, passing me the ball I never let go of. We both joined clubs, he for fun and friends, me for passion. And ever-growing ambition.

With our money gone, I’ll need a sports scholarship to study and later get a prestigious job, like a proper Samos. Or I give a fuck about the crumbles of our past glory and seek it by becoming a totally unladylike soccer pro.

Imagining my family’s faces at that news first lets me giggle, then stumble in my tracks, just for a second. If the idea hasn’t been growing more and more serious lately, I would’ve burst out laughing.

Elane certainly would’ve, her chirp-like giggling my favourite melody. The memories of her are those I hold dear, where Father dreams of vanished successes. Hallucinations both.

I take in the sight of the prism of sunrise and wish Elane was still with me. She hated my routine, both for the early hour and the work-out itself, but she’d drive with me one town away from home nonetheless, up to the parking lot before we separate so she could wait for me in a bakery-café, sipping hot chocolate until I was done and could join her for breakfast.

Our only dates not in the dead of night in her garden and yet as much out of sight.

In my now loveless days with her in boarding school in paradise – Finland – I can only imagine the feel of her hand, my hand tracing along her spine. There’s just me, the crisp morning, and the performances ahead of me.

Catching my breath, I finish my lap at my car and don’t want to drive home at all. I want to check on Barrow, my reluctant driving companion living in a village along the way, to invite her to jog with me, or her to invite me to her Sunday morning, to pick on me in her very own way, anything but to crouch back under the dead weight of expectations.

I need several more breaths before the illusions of escape vanish and my lungs relax. I lean back against the car. What a foolish notion – the weight has never left; I only need to wait for the afternoon to pick up Barrow for our match.

It can’t come soon enough, but it will come.

“Good to be alive but I hate my life” – I try to restrain from humming along to the song playing in my car, try to evade Barrow’s glances attempting to figure me out, my choice of music.

“Who can’t relate?”, she says with a shrug. A trace of a smile hides in her face as she settles in, stretching her legs and putting her ankle boots up to the dashboard. She fits there surprisingly well, thanks to her short stature. I faux-glare at her, long used to this display. I can’t refuse her the repose, not when I can hardly find the words when once more, I try to unravel the familiar secret of her perfume.

I could ask, but never do. I could tell so such but stay silent. I keep on pretending yet also want her to see me. It’s tiring to no end and still each small but true guess elates me.

Barrow, on the other hand, remains unknowable to me with her eternal frown. If my resting bitch face is noticed, for good or bad, it’ll always be inferior to Barrow’s. Perfection in its own way; perfection my eyes are ineluctably drawn to at every chance the traffic lets me.

I chew my lips at the next song, with its “love like a loaded gun”, to distract myself from brushing Mare’s hand as I use the hand brake. From laying my hand on her thigh. From –

I catch her gaze and avert it, my heart rushing as I rush back into traffic.

Barrow’s ever-apt perception didn’t miss it, of course not, the same perception that makes her so good a player she desires my position, my rank.

I can’t give it up, not when my future hangs from it, but – if she desired something else –

Foolish. Foolish. I’m sick with yearning from missing my ex-girlfriend and listening to sad sapphic songs that make me long to kiss any girl’s lips –

“Already know how to use me today, Captain?” Barrow breaks into my confusion and I don’t know if I want to thank or throttle her. Use me.

Good we’re just arriving at the club house. I lean back and flash her my widest grin. “I always know what to do with my team. Forgotten the tactic?”

Barrow isn’t intimidated. “Thought you’ve come up with something better by now.”

“Dream on, Nightmare. I’m still the number 10.”

She sighs dramatically. “Too bad I’m an 11.” And then she – we – burst out laughing, our sound both harmonious and discordant, different from Elane and me, but as engrossing. Even when the laughter dies down, the mood lingers and I touch her brown hand before I can stop myself.

“Want to come running with me next week?” I ask and don’t curse myself for it, for once.

She is silent. Ridiculously blinking for seconds as if it’s funny. “Weird way to ask for a date,” she blurts out.

Whatever we had for a few seconds is gone. “Are you fucking joking?”, I spit, my voice low like a hiss.

Her mouth opens and closes, stunned quiet.

I can’t decide whether to berate her or scream at her as calmly explaining how terrible a joke it were is out of the question. “Are you fucking joking?!” I repeat, louder, and finally shame begins to bloom on her face.

If only she took me seriously, she could know it to be true. And yet – how can saying the truth out loud feel so disrespectful? I wish, I wish –

“Gimme a minute,” I mutter and storm out of the car.

I am truly a coward. I don’t speak to her until the match begins.

Captain Evangeline Samos cannot but stay gold. The star of the soccer team, the top of the science classes, the daughter of prestigious families with at least half a dozen college and sport scouts vying for her, likely proud to award themselves brownie points for her japanese-greek origins by recruiting her. Even her art class projects – ambiguous metal sculptures – make it into school exhibitions. She’s so perfect she’s asking for resent.

She doesn’t appear to care about that, of course, as to be expected of any high school queen bee worth her rank. Indeed, she might just see it as preparation for a career in a similarly socially mined field. And thus, I’m glad to be of service to rile her.

Though it shouldn’t rile me so hard, when she’s a year above me. Maybe it’s like my siblings use to say, I’m born to be a thorn in someone’s side. A nightmare, they tease, just what Samos has begun to call me, like a lure I can’t withstand.

If she likes a fight, I grew up on it. What fell into her lap, I had to work for. While she runs and brunches on her Sunday mornings, I look after my impaired Dad as Mom works at the factory. Even her shifts as supervisor aren’t enough to secure college for me. My brother Shade is the first in our family to try and he still complied with the quite average and inexpensive college in the next city.

If I want more, putting my advanced science classes to use for an engineering career, I need the scholarship scouts the captain is so keen to flirt with although she already has every chance in the world at her hand while I’ll need luck to grasp any.

“It could be worse,” Mom would say at times and hug me. I know. I know. Mom immigrated from Mexico as a teen and only gained US-american citizenship as an adult, so my siblings and I could have it easier here from birth. And my parents are proud of me as I am. But there’s no such as wanting too much for me. Can’t I not strive for the best just because?

I curse under my breath as Iral runs offside just when I kick the ball to her; and curse again when the captain loses a vital duel. I’m not demure or silent, not a nice and friendly girl moving smoothly forward without getting seen. I’m raw and full of edges and I’ll use them to climb up – but they make it so hard to enter the soft realms of cliques.

I miss the old team I grew up with and as I struggle to fit in the new, all I’ve got is to give my best, snort and keep running.

Captain Samos, though, does not acquiesce, as if her coolness turned into ice, brittle and stiff. Almost as if she invites me to usurp her place like she told to me last week. I can’t believe the mess she’s making. When she misses a pass and viciously fouls an opponent, the whole team is left aghast and frozen at the shrill whistle from the referee.

She takes the red cart with dignity, throwing back her head and managing to look both subdued and upright as she exits the field and hands Goalkeeper Welle the captain’s ribbon. Her gaze falls on me as we cross. I don’t hear what she whispers but it’s obvious enough – your turn.

I don’t enjoy it, that’s not my place. Yet I make damn sure that we win this match.

Afterwards, the surge of victorious joy stays curbed. It is there, a new level of certainty, of belonging, holding me up and in the team, which, I believe, should leave me euphoric before it settles in like a new normal. I didn’t expect Samos to make me deputy captain, but in this moment, I believe I could be, one day. Still, on the way to the locker room, I brush it aside because my eyes cleave to Evangeline.

She likely received our coach’s scolding already but must be preparing for more – from the teammates. Even if they’re all besties.

Suddenly, my outsider-who-doesn’t-give-a-shit-instincts kick in again. Before I go in to change, I take her by the arm and pull her away, outside.

The late October sky is cold slap without the exertion to warm me but I don’t care. I need this. I need the cold to focus. I need to face her. I –

“Do you want to chide or to gloat?” After coming along easily, Samos’s snap is a lash.

I flinch and let go of her. “I wanted to apologize,” I say.

Her dark eyes burn, from anger or tears I can’t decide. “Now you want to apologize? When I’m down and you’re on the rise?”

Whatever broke loose in her, I feel it as well. “Oh, is that a new feeling for you? Welcome to my life! No matter what you were told, you can’t have everything, Evangeline Samos, so get used to it.”

She sucks in her breath like this hits her harder than anything. She’s taken aback, shocked, enraged, I can’t say, as I can’t say what she’ll do. Hit me, shove me, scream out loud? But then she simply steps back and spins around, as if it – I’m – is not worth it, not worthy to know what she feels. And for me it feels impossible to agree with this, to let her leave as a stranger and never cross the rift between us when I know in my veins the bridge is already there.

I grab her hand and hold her back. She is shivering, I notice, and it’s infective, although mine has another reason than hers. Every time we touch, even by glances, she wakes something in me I no longer wish to ignore and let sleep.

-       “Want to come running with me next week?”

-       “Weird way to ask for a date.”

“I wasn’t joking,” I whisper to her back. Deep down, it was both and that shames me. A hurtful joke as well as a dare that I hoped she’d accept so she could show me what to do.

It was mean, and coward. I swallow and, trembling, my arm moves to embrace her from behind, uncertain how tight or close I may go. “Evangeline,” I whisper, and this time, speaking her first name leaves my tongue bewitched.

I need a moment to try again. “I’d like …” I start but am too exhilarated to continue.

It’s of no consequence, because Evangeline both turns and leans into my feeble embrace, and makes it real by it. No matter her sorry performance in the game, she’s on the offensive now, as she kisses me.

 Evangeline

January rain prattles against the windows of the lake house. I watch the raindrops fall into the water, leaning back in my sunchair and stretching out my bare legs, their summer tan slowly fading to dark beige, glad to be inside and for the coffee in my hands.

“What a grey day,” mutters Mare as she sneaks in and puts our brunch on the table. She’s not quiet about it, though efficient, shoving clutter aside and dropping bread rolls on plates, lastly tossing her wet coat out of the way.

We can afford to, now, and here. Unlike before, this brunch is wholly ours. Private. Alone. Without family attending. The first time we did this I couldn’t believe it’d be so easy, just not to give my Sundays to my family. With Mare at my back, I made this space for me, for us, by taking it.

My gaze follows her motions and soon hers traces mine when I rise and step to the table. The difference is stunning: Me in the revealing but comfortable black nightgown, she in wet and loose jeans. I wonder if she’d like a warming hug. Or the trousers out of the way entirely.

She snaps out of her stare, tucking her chin-long browns curls behind her ear. “There’re cakes as well,” she mumbles and proceeds to place the mouth-watering cherry- and hazelnut cakes, more careful this time while avoiding my eyes.

I see enough of her though. Her blushing cheeks. How she bites her lips. I grab her wrist before she runs off any further. “Thank you, Nightmare,” I say softly as she gives up to hide her smile.

Mare falls on a chair, sighing and covering her face with her hands. “… that you really turned that into a pet name,” she says. She straightens to cross her arms and brown eyes fix me.

I set down my coffee with a clank, trying to subdue my smirk. “It is a reminder,” I say in a neutral voice and close the little distance she put between us. I cup the nape of her neck with my hand. “That you aren’t an unattainable fantasy I dreamt of.” She leans back into my hold. “But real. And here.”

“And a nuisance?” she asks softly, the challenge in her voice swallowed by her trembling – that she stills trembles at my touch! – lips, full lips I long to kiss like nothing else, to test if they taste better than the delicacies she brought.

I grin with a headshake, letting my hair sway. “The best kind of nuisance. The one who succeeds.”

Now it’s her who pulls closer.

 Eventually, Mare did get rid of the jeans, to sit crossed-legged on the couch to multitask between eating and doing homework on her tablet while I sit beside her, my feet against her thighs. The food is enough for me as she does physics again, reminding me of our earlier afternoons of learning together when she was still undecided whether to go into engineering. A surprising mutual interest of ours. Mare is certain now, ambitious to take a leading position in the industry where her mother had to work her way in step by step, and only got so far.

We shared a lot of worries and hopes, as well as family memories and secrets in the last months, ignorant of how much we had in common and where we diverged for real, or where we erred about the other. Unlike my former Sunday circles, Mare wasn’t diplomatic about it and I fell for that as hard as I fell for her. She has the teeth to fight but for me, they’ve been a blessing. I want to warn her sometimes, against the industrial high society I hail from and she intends to enter. They’re not more refined, certainly not better than anyone else, but believing themselves so rather makes them – us – worse.

“Captain?”

“What?” I startle, then roll my eyes. “Don’t call me that.”

“And I told you not to call me Nightmare.” She frowns. “I’ve asked about geothermic efficiency factors twice now and you said nothing.”

I grimace. “Yeah, well …” But I fall silent.

“Well, what?”

I open my mouth, sigh, shake my head. Finally, I pull my legs back and straighten my posture. I take a sip of juice, Mare’s full attention grazing my neck. “About that. I let it slide.”

Before more exclaims of confusion rain down, I stare her down and go on. “I’ve decided to sign with a professional team. I’ll start training with them in spring, so.” I shrug.

Mare is completely stunned. “Wow,” she gasps, then smiles all over her face and embraces in a flash. “Captain, I mean, Eve, just, wow.”

I squeeze back, once, but can’t let go. I hold her closer and closer, drinking in her reaction and basking in her support. It takes an age before we break apart and still I want to hold her. My fingers trace her cheek, playing with her hair. “So you see,” I mumble, “I can’t be your captain for much longer.”

“Sure, but …” Although she’s happy for me, she’s struggling to grasp the whole of it. Pursuing a sports career wasn’t a main possibility I considered, not even with her. The weight of it hits me again, sobering me too much for more caresses.

“You were right,” I say, fumbling with my ponytail. “I could be anything. Do everything. So, I realized I should do exactly that: Go for everything and gamble. Start anew and work myself up from scratch, even if I could fail. Take the risky way instead of the straight one.”

Mare can’t help chuckling at that, and neither can I. Before I notice, my resolved declaration is over and Mare takes me in her arms again. “I wish you well, Eve.” My name in her mouth feels like the touch of a feather. “All the best.”

My head leans back on her shoulder as I take her hand. Elane and I, our love was always like a whisper in the moonlight. But Mare is like a lightning strike. She could be the death of me as well as a challenge. Energizing. Illuminating. And powerful all on her own.

I’m tired of fearing to touch old wounds I’ve gathered by wanting to be myself. Even if it hurts, I’ll open up and unfold the person I can be.