smol & tol

“What do you need, Hope, are you okay? Do you need me to come out there?”

The worry in her brother’s voice comes through loud and clear, even if the words are muffled by the bad connection, the shoddy reception out there in the middle of some wide forgotten wilderness. She can picture him, his thick leather work boots, faded jeans. Some old t-shirt, maybe a hole in the collar, a streak of dirt across his chest, and a ball cap pulled down over his eyes to block out the noonday sun.

And as she imagines him, with their father’s gentle eyes and their mother’s firm mouth, she’s tempted to say yes. Just for a moment. She’s tempted to let her big brother fly out and help her untangle the mess she’s found herself in again.

But she can’t. He’s got enough on his plate, and there’s nothing to be done. No quick and easy fix to make things right again.

No, she got into this mess all on her own. She’ll just have to deal with the fallout.

Still. she wishes she could say yes, wishes it was years ago again, and he could fix everything with a bandaid and a popsicle again.

Instead, she rubs a thumb at the space between her eyes and turns down his offer. “No, Marc,” she says into the phone with a sigh, “I’m fine. I’ll be fine. I’m just tired, you know? I just need a break, some time away to figure out what to do about my career, my life.”

She takes a deep breath, and he can see her so clearly in his mind, so far, far away. She’ll be sitting outside, knees drawn up into her chest as she hunches in on herself. Even as a kid she did that, tried to make herself smaller, tried to fold up inside of herself. Like she could disappear into the space where her body was supposed to be.

Like if no one could see her, no one could hurt her.

It never quite worked, Marcus remembers, visions of his sister through the years dancing across his eyes. The world still always knew where she was, always knew how to cut her where it’d hurt the most.

“I was thinking–” she starts, but he interrupts, cuts her off before she can finish whatever she was going to say.

“Come home, Hope,” he tells her. “Pack a bag, hop on a plane, and come home. Hang out with your niece and nephew, take long morning rides in the fields, spend your afternoons napping on the porch. Whatever you want, whatever you need. Just come home.”

She blinks away the tears that gather and threaten to spill over, to run, hot, down her cheeks.

“Marc, I–” but her word fades into silence as something in her chest cracks open, the place where she’s buried every dream, every want, every need that wasn’t her job, that wasn’t “Hope Solo, number one goalkeeper in the world,” the brand that followed her every move, every thought. A most unwelcome shadow, a prison disguised as a genie’s wish.

“I’m so tired, Marc,” she whispers, “I’m so tired of it all. The fans, the players, the press. I don’t even feel like me anymore. I don’t even know who I am anymore.”

Her voice cracks, breaks, as she confesses everything she’s been bottling up for so long. As she feels everything seep out of her, all the anger and fear and contrived detachment, the role she’s played for so long.

“I know, Hope,” Marcus says quietly, in a voice almost like a lullaby, “but maybe this is exactly what you need. A break from everything. An escape. You know,” he adds gently, “it’s okay to run away sometimes. To give yourself some space to breathe and think.”

She’s silent, the only sound on the other end of the line is her breathing, hitched and heavy, and if he wasn’t worried before, if the media reports and the weeks and months of unanswered voicemails on her phone weren’t enough to concern him, it was her silence.

Because the Hope Solo he knows and loves, the Hope Solo he’d grown up with and cheered for and watched become one of the best athletes in the world?

That Hope Solo would have jumped on his words faster than he could get them off his tongue, an almost violent “I’ve never run away from anything in my life, Marcus” in an icy tone.

But this Hope, this Hope who is a stranger to him, to even herself, it seems, just sucks in a shaky breath.

“I’m so tired of running, Marcus,” she tells him, and the ache and pain inside of her is plain. He can almost hear her heart bleeding.

“I know, honey,” he says softly, soothingly, “I know.”  It’s the voice he’s rocked his children to sleep with, the voice he’s whispered his love to his wife with in the earliest light of the dawn. It’s everything good and gentle inside of him, and he hopes that even through the crackle of the phone line, even through the static, she can hear it.

“Just come home, Hope,” he tells his sister once more, and it’s not a question, it’s a command. A fatherly request: Come home. Let us carry your burdens for a while, heal your wounds. Come home and let us make you light with life and laughter and love. 

He hears the tell-tale echo of his own voice in the earpiece, and knows that they’re just borrowing time before the call drops, before their connection is lost once again, and he’s about to speak when a shaky “okay” comes through, her voice rough and ragged and wet with tears, and he breathes a sigh of relief.

“I love you, kid,” he says, even knowing that they’ll talk again soon, because she needs to hear it, needs to remember that he’ll always have her back.

When he ends the call, Marcus leans back in his leather chair, boots up on the desk in front of him, and sighs.

It’s not the best timing. They’re down at least two members of staff and they’re fully booked through their busy season.

But Hope’s his sister, and she needs him. She needs this–home and family and the freedom to rediscover what she wants out of the world, who she wants to be in it.

They’ll make do, they always do.

“Why the Hell She Love Me”

Finally, Kelley’s home.

Hope looks down at the younger woman, sprawled face down in their bed, snoring in a way that is somehow sweet despite everything, and takes a deep, relieved breath.

Hope stretches out her hand, steady as she holds it out, as she carefully, softly, traces the sharp line of Kelley’s jaw with the tip of a finger. smiling a little as she feels the woman move into her touch in her sleep–just the slightest. And it’s enough.

She feels her whole body relax as she carefully sits on the edge of the bed, not wanting to wake the exhausted woman, but needing to be close. To feel the soothing comfort of Kelley’s body against her own. And Kelley shifts, hitching her knee up toward her chest and somehow burying herself even deeper into the mattress, into the comforter she hadn’t even had the energy to pull down before collapsing.

And Hope exhales, letting go of that last little bit of ache that she’s held tight inside her chest since that final match. Since she’d watched Kelley rise and then fall, still, onto the green pitch an ocean away in France.

She’s here. She’s okay.

Everything is almost right again.

—

They’d fought before Kelley left for camp.

They’d been fighting a lot in the months leading up to the Cup, actually.

It had hurt, watching Kelley prepare for the tournament. Hope hadn’t expected that.

It had hurt, remembering the last time. How Canada had been a journey they had been on together. They’d lived together, trained together. They’d watched film on other teams with each other, Kelley’s feet in the goalkeeper’s lap, the dog snoring on his favorite rug over by the fridge.

They’ve lived and breathed every hope and dream together. Because it wasn’t just the World Cup.

It was their World Cup.

But this time, though, the very thought of France, it cut her open. Broke into the wounds she hadn’t completely stitched over yet.

She’d thought there’d been a chance.

She’d taken her punishment. She’d done her penance, made her amends.

The alcohol, it was gone. The anger, something she worked on with her therapist twice every week, her religion of healing, of forgiveness. She’d had her shoulder fixed and worked tirelessly to get her body back into match fitness.

Into National Team fitness. Cup fitness. Starting XI fitness.

But none of that had mattered, Hope began to realize. As every camp came and went and her phone never rang.

As she watched Kelley pack her bags, dropped her off at the airport and picked her up again.

Every trip, every match closer to the day the final roster for France would be released, the truth became clearer.

It was over.

Her career.

It was over.

Kelley had tried to help. Could have, too, if Hope had let her. Could have soothed away the tears, could have offered the warm comfort of her understanding, her constant unyielding love.

But, Hope had figured, she didn’t have a reason to try and be better any longer. There was nothing she was fighting for any more. Not as far as she could see.

She’d been wrong, of course.

—

When she left, Hope missed her. An ache that bit deeper than all the others, all the little cuts and scars from every grudge she carried, every wound she’d bore.

Missing Kelley was bigger than all the hurts that had come before, and she realized how much time she’d wasted carrying her anger everywhere she went.

“I’m sorry,” she’d whispered in the messages she left when she knew the other woman couldn’t–wouldn’t–pick up. “I’m sorry, I was wrong.”

Their paths crossed in Paris, only just the once. Kelley with her sunglasses perched atop her auburn hair and Hope, a stack of notes in hand as she hurried across the street to the studio for a taping. And she’d been struck dumb then, in the middle of the street, just looking at the woman she loved.

“Kelley–I’m,” Hope began, but Kelley put a hand on her arm. “I got your messages,” she whispered, and her thumb drew soft circles over Hope’s bare skin. “It’s okay, okay?”

And it’s not. It’s so not, and Hope has to credit all those hours in therapy for knowing this. But Kelley is giving them both the gift of forgiveness, and Hope’s heart practically breaks with love at the gesture.

She wanted to kiss her. Right there on the Rue de whatever where they’ve found each other again. But that’s not their style. That’s not the agreement they came to so long ago when Hope finally came to her senses and let the younger woman love her. When she finally gave herself permission to love Kelley back. Not in public, not in uniform, not on anyone’s time but their own.

“I’ve got to–,” Hope gestured weakly at the building across the street, and felt Kelley’s thumb again. Their secret goodbye.

“Call tonight,” Kelley had whispered. “I promise I’ll pick up.”

—

The ache was still there, Hope realized. It would probably never completely go away, but settle into her toes and her shoulders and her fingertips as the years went on. But it did lessen, overcome by waves of pride and love as she watched Kelley and her old team make their run.

Every great cross sent in by the woman she loved cut back a few of the wiry thorns that had seemed to grow uninhibited in her soul an, for once, they didn’t grow back.

Thailand, Chile, Sweden.

Spain and France and England.

She kept her cool on-screen but inside her heart was screaming, and it wasn’t the heat coloring her cheeks as she broke down the plays, the tactics, the mentality on the British broadcast.

It was love.

—

Her heart stopped when she saw Kelley fall. And thankfully, her co-anchors took the lead, filling in the space with their thoughts on how the game had gone so far as Hope watched the replay over and over and over again.

Finally, when Kelley was on her feet, she took a breath again and–the camera closing in on Kelley’s face, her reaction to the ref–laughed out loud.

“You see that?” Hope smiled toward the camera on the anchor desk. “Tomorrow morning, when the Netherlands start to break down why they lost, they’re going to be looking at this moment. Right here.”

And maybe it wasn’t entirely professional. But Hope suddenly couldn’t find it in herself to care. Because Kelley was standing and glowering and so beautifully mad, and maybe the score was still zero-zero, but Hope knew–she knew–it wasn’t going to be long now.

France was Kelley’s Cup, and she was bringing it home.

—

She asked if she should come home. Pull an Ertz and skip everything after the parade, but Hope had told her no. Had told her to take her time, take the trip out to LA, enjoy every single moment of her victory.

This was her moment, and Hope wanted her to experience it, all of it.

Of course she’d worried–mostly about her liver and her head–and of course she’d checked in on her, even from all those states away.

But she didn’t regret telling Kelley to stay, to enjoy the ride.

Because Hope knew, knew with every fiber of her being, Kelley’s last stop was home.

—

She can’t help herself. Can’t help but touch her now that she’s here. Now that she’s home.

Hope’s hand moves up to stroke the soft hair–streaked with sun–gathered there, still pulled back, as if Kelley had forgotten to undo it, or just let it go this once.

“Hey,” the younger woman rasps softly, blinking up at her, “you weren’t here when I got home?” And she sounds exhausted, just the slightest bit confused.

And Hope cups her cheek, her palm just soft there against Kelley’s tanned skin. She’d been out running an errand, maybe the most important one she’s ever done. The little box, it’s already burning a hole in her pocket, and it takes everything within her to not to pull it out right now, this second, and ask Kelley to be hers.

But somehow Hope manages, and leans forward to kiss her forehead, careful of the slight bruise that’s already fading away.

“You’re early,” she whispers, and gives Kelley a shy smile. “Your flight wasn’t supposed to get in until this afternoon.”

The younger woman’s hand comes up to her jaw and Hope leans into the soft touch.

“It was,” Kelley whispers, looking up at her with bright eyes, “but I changed it. I missed you.”

And Hope feels her heart settle at last.

“A Waltz for the Girl Out of Reach”

The roar of the crowd echoes throughout the stadium, so loud it ceases to be sound at all but white noise, a focused silence that drowns out everything in the world that isn’t this moment, this field, this feeling. Victory and triumph and pure joy.

But Kelley isn’t paying attention anyway, not to the cameras or the people milling about. Not to the crowd or her team or even the heavy weight of the medal against her neck.

All she can see is the crowd parting like a lover’s legs, and the dark head slowly, carefully, making its way down to the front of the stands. The loose curls wild today in the heat and the excitement of the victory, falling softly over the jersey–a few years old now–her number on the front, her name spread across the back for all to see.

And then Kelley’s there, pulling herself up against the wall.

“Hey,” she grins and tilts her head up for a kiss as that long, dark hair falls to cover them, and then she’s looking up into the clearest, sharpest, bluest eyes she’s ever seen.

Hope just laughs. “Shift down a little,” she nods to Kelley’s left, where a photographer’s abandoned chair is free for the shorter woman to stand on. “So you can kiss me properly,” and there’s nothing the younger woman can do but to shimmy over until she’s standing, still on her tip-toes, and stretching up in to her partner’s embrace.

“You did it,” Hope whispers into her ear as Kelley’s fingers brush against her cheek, as they rest over the back of her neck, scratching softly at the little hairs there. Her girlfriend touches her brow, the tender bump there, and searches her eyes, looking for any sign that something is not right. But Hope finds none, and Kelley stretches up even more, and kisses her something fierce, not caring who will see, not caring if their not-very-secret relationship is finally and fully public at last.

“We did,” she nods, grinning up at Hope lovingly as the older woman’s finger traces the ribbon of her medal. “And I’m okay. I promise.”

She wants to pull herself up higher, vault over this barrier and pull Hope into a tight embrace, feel the curves of her body against her own. Feel–

“Someone’s quite excited,” Hope says, seeing the question in Kelley’s face, “been moving non-stop since Rose sealed the win,” and the defender can just see the slightest curve of her belly over the wall. Still a few months away from being real, from being in their arms.

Kelley grins and pulls herself up for another kiss–longer, sweeter. Full of months of missing this simple, easy love.

** Preliminary list of fic. Includes everything. Will probably continue working on it to better mark what everything is. Not all minifics are labelled atm. Also right now all the links are weirdly redirects? I’m too tired and burnt out today to fix that. Will fix eventually. ** 

Tell Me When You’re Ready

He’s born on a Sunday.

The last summer weekend before the fall, before the autumn chill takes the air.

And when Hope holds him for the first time, this much beloved little boy, she knows—this is exactly where she was always meant to be.

-*-

“You’re retiring.”

The call comes in the middle of the night, as unexpected as all of Hope’s most regretted ideas.

But she’d seen the email, the brief in anticipation of tomorrow—no, today’s—announcement, and she couldn’t keep herself from reaching out. From dialing the number she’d never quite been able to delete from her phone.

“You’re retiring,” Hope whispers again, this time barely loud enough to transmit across the miles, across the distances between them. Time and trauma and memories they’d both rather forget but can’t.

But can’t.

Kelley rolls over into her side, decades of courtesy too deeply ingrained to override the instinct soon, this strange lone hotel room in the last city where she’ll ever take the pitch.

“Hope.”

Maybe it’s an admonishment.

Maybe it’s a prayer.

Maybe it’s a memory and a gift and a curse, everything they were to each other once upon a time ago.

But then there’s a breath on the other end of the line, that soft, inevitable inhale, and Kelley’s voice softens.

“Hope—” she whispers, and the older woman can picture her so clearly, there in the orderly hotel room.

And it’s the hour, and the distance, and the sound of that little hitch in Kelley’s breath that fills in the doubts in her head and in her heart.

“Listen,” Hope says softly, “I’m going to be there. I’m coming—I’m packing a bag and flying out tonight.”

Her courage falters for one tiny nanosecond as she hears the silence on the other end, but Hope pushes through the walls her own heart has put up. “I’m going to be there. To see you play your last game. To hear you say the words.”

“I’m going to be there,” Hope promises again, this time to herself, already slipping on a pair of Keds over her bare feet,  looking around the small master bedroom of the farmhouse she fought so hard to keep in the divorce.

And for just a moment, Hope pauses, realizing that aside from her name, Kelley hasn’t said a word.

“Kel—“ she starts to ask, but finds herself cut off by the softest promise she’s ever heard.

“I’ll find you,” Kelley whispers.

It’s enough for now.

-*-

His skin is milky-soft, fresh from his first bath, and his little feet press against the palm of her hands as she looks down at him, at the way his face changes in response to each new thing in his little world.

So new still that she counts his age in hours, minutes, marks it in her mind against the inevitability of forgetting all but the biggest moments of these early days.

“There we go, Danny,” Hope whispers as she guides his arms into the soft fleece of the onesie they’d packed in the go-bag more than a month ago. And it startles her, his wide eyes looking up at her, the way he already knows her, knows her voice.

This is her son, this beautiful, perfect boy. The spitting image of his mother, who Hope can hear breathing deeply—exhausted—in the bed on the other side of the room.

This–for the rest of her years–is her life.

-*-

It’s after the game, after the press conference, after dinner with all her family and friends and teammates–

–and Hope, the extra chair added on at the last minute, everyone shifting to make room at the table.

There had been laughter and tears. A slideshow of all her greatest moments, and plenty of her most embarrassing. Anecdotes from a few of her closest teammates, her very first coach.

Tributes to the end of an era.

For Kelley, the start of a brand new story.

It’s after everything, friends and family all retired to their rooms, their homes, and now they’re alone together in the hotel room overlooking a city she once called home.

Kelley comes out of the bathroom, having traded her dress and heels for bare feet, old sweats, and for a moment she just watches Hope watch the lights of they city as they flicker and dance below. And she wonders why–how–they’ve ended up here again. A dimly lit room, endings and beginnings well within reach, the weight of their memories both a burden and a blessing.

She’s older now. Older than she was the last time they meant the world to each other. Maybe wiser, though considering Hope is there at the wall of glass, turned now to look at her, it doesn’t seem likely.

Still, something seems so different now. As much as it feels the same.

“You changed,” Hope whispers, and she’s as much talking about the clothes as she isn’t.

Kelley nods and rubs a toe into the thick, soft carpeting of the bedroom. “This is more me anyway, comfort over class.” And Hope laughs, exactly as Kelley had expected her to.

And she wonders if Hope knows that these are her sweats, long forgotten in a drawer back at her Sky Blue apartment. If she can somehow tell that they’ve been tossed away and then retrieved in a panic time and time and time again.

Hope looks down at the bag she’d brought along to the game, to the presser, to the dinner after, not caring about the looks she got at every new location, by every new group of onlookers.

“Do you mind–I think I packed more than clothes for the game and the dress.” To be honest, though, she’s not certain. Can’t quite picture them in the fast, almost desperate way she’d shoved things into her carry-on, unwilling to waste any time on checking bags in or waiting for them to come off the plane after. Not when she’d be cutting it so close trying to get to the stadium, to the game.

To Kelley.

And the younger woman shakes her head, gesturing in the direction of the bathroom. “Go ahead, use anything you need.”

-*-

Kelley feels the warmth of another body behind her and smiles, but she doesn’t turn.

“You’re supposed to be in bed still,” Hope whispers into her shoulder, arms circling the younger woman’s waist, and presses a kiss to the curve of Kelley’s neck. But Kelley just leans back into her, letting Hope support her weight.

And they stand there for a moment, looking out at the way the waters light up as the sun inches higher, higher, in the sky.

“Remember the night I retired?” Kelley asks, hearing Hope’s soft answering hum, the two of them swaying in the early morning quiet. “I knew that night–we’d end up here.”

Hope’s hand comes up to rest under Kelley’s arm where it supports the delicate head of their son at her breast, and brushes her thumb over the little swirl of auburn curls there. “You did?” she asks, sounding surprised only because her own journey here, to this moment, has felt less like fate and more like a series of happy accidents, stumbling from one perfect moment to the next.

“Well,” she laughs, their son mewling at her breast, and tilts her head up to kiss at Hope’s jaw, “pretty close to here.”

-*-

It isn’t a fix, but it’s a start, Hope thinks as she strokes her fingers down Kelley’s spine, the younger woman sprawled out and sleeping on her belly in the large bed.

Kelley had taken her by surprise, holding out a hand as she’d come out from the bathroom. She had packed other clothes, some gym shorts, a hoodie. But it hadn’t mattered.

She hadn’t been worn them very long.

Kelley stirs under her touch and Hope pulls back her hand. “I didn’t mean to wake you,” she whispers in apology, but the younger woman shakes her head and whispers something into the pillow she’s buried her face against.

“—n’t,” Kelley turns her head and tries again. “You didn’t. It was just nice, you touching me.”

Her voice is sleepy, but awake, and Hope smiles, shifting back down to lay next to her, to share Kelley’s pillow. Her hand resuming its gentle touch, a little bolder now with Kelley’s permission, a little more deliberate.

She swallows hard and takes a moment to memorize every feature of Kelley’s face that she can see in the dark room. Banking it as insurance against the inevitability of losing her again.

“Everything I wasn’t ready for before,” Hope begins, swallows hard. “Everything I was too afraid to want with you, I’m not. Not any more.”

The words are soft, and there’s a quiver in her voice as she thinks: it might be too little.

It might be too late.

-*-

“Oh, Kelley,” her mother says, voice full of wonder and love as she looks down at the grandson sleeping in her arms.

He’s ten days old now, and after patiently waiting for the new family to get settled together, Kelley’s parents have flown in to meet their newest grandchild.

Daniel is wrapped in soft blankets to ward against the slightest hint of a chill in the air, and held tight in his grandmother’s arms, and still, Hope can feel her heart racing, her fingers curling anxiously as she struggles against the impulse to steal him back, her sweet, sleepy boy. And it’s not that she doesn’t trust Karen–Karen, who raised up three children of her own, including the one sitting carefully on the porch swing next to her mother and their son–not at all.

It’s just that every moment he’s not in her arms, every moment she’s not looking down at that perfect little face, she aches for what she’s missed and missing, what brand new thing he’s done that she hasn’t borne witness to.

“I know that look,” their son’s namesake says in an amused tone as he steps onto the porch and hands her a fresh coffee. And it throws Hope, it always does, to see Kelley’s familiar grin on the older man.

One day–she can already tell–she’ll see it again on her son.

“What look?” Hope takes the mug from Dan gratefully, sleep already hard to come by in these early days, and Kelley’s father laughs softly.

“The look of someone who’s only just realized that they carry the entire world in their hands.”

-*-

“Tell me,” Kelley whispers in the dark hotel room. “Tell me why you’re here.” 

It’s the middle of the night, summer hurrying on its way into fall, and far below them the nightlife of the city begins to turn toward tomorrow’s hustle, tomorrow’s dreams. And Hope can only sit there on the bed for another long, quiet breath, and gather herself, try to keep the walls she’d worked so hard to break down from rebuilding in this moment of vulnerability. 

This moment on the edge of everything. 

Kelley lays before her on the bed, on her side with her head resting on her arms, and her eyes watch Hope softly. 

This, Hope realizes, is the moment. It doesn’t matter that she ran, doesn’t matter that she fought against what she wanted, what she needed for so long. Because this is the chance she’s going to take, the fall she’s going to trust in. 

This woman, this hope, this love that’s lived alone inside her for far too long. 

“There’s a farmhouse,” she starts slowly, laying down next to Kelley in the bed, pressing their bodies together as she rests a hand–only just barely shaking–on the younger woman’s warm hip. “It’s mine now, just mine. And I keep seeing you there. Just out of the corner of my eye. Sitting on the porch with me as the sun comes up, spraying me with the hose while I’m trying to garden, walking up with the dogs after a run.” Hope breathes in softly as Kelley’s fingers play over her abs. “Inside, too. These little nooks and crannies where you fit in so well. The kitchen or the living room or the–” 

And she pauses for a moment before continuing. 

“Our bedroom. I see you all over, what we could be, what I hope I’m not too late for.” 

Softly, carefully, she presses a kiss over Kelley’s jaw. 

“All those things you believed we could have, it may have taken me a while to get here, Kel,” Hope feels the way the younger woman softens under her touch, yields to her, and it eases the anxious ache in her chest, “but I’m here, and I’m ready. This time, I’ll wait for–”

But the last words go unsaid. 

And it doesn’t matter. 

It’s past one a.m. in New Orleans when the rain finally begins to come down.

Allie and Kelley on stage today were like:

“What do you need, Hope, are you okay? Do you need me to come out there?”

The worry in her brother’s voice comes through loud and clear, even if the words are muffled by the bad connection, the shoddy reception out there in the middle of some wide forgotten wilderness. She can picture him, his thick leather work boots, faded jeans. Some old t-shirt, maybe a hole in the collar, a streak of dirt across his chest, and a ball cap pulled down over his eyes to block out the noonday sun.

And as she imagines him, with their father’s gentle eyes and their mother’s firm mouth, she’s tempted to say yes. Just for a moment. She’s tempted to let her big brother fly out and help her untangle the mess she’s found herself in again.

But she can’t. He’s got enough on his plate, and there’s nothing to be done. No quick and easy fix to make things right again.

No, she got into this mess all on her own. She’ll just have to deal with the fallout.

Still. she wishes she could say yes, wishes it was years ago again, and he could fix everything with a bandaid and a popsicle again.

Instead, she rubs a thumb at the space between her eyes and turns down his offer. “No, Marc,” she says into the phone with a sigh, “I’m fine. I’ll be fine. I’m just tired, you know? I just need a break, some time away to figure out what to do about my career, my life.”

She takes a deep breath, and he can see her so clearly in his mind, so far, far away. She’ll be sitting outside, knees drawn up into her chest as she hunches in on herself. Even as a kid she did that, tried to make herself smaller, tried to fold up inside of herself. Like she could disappear into the space where her body was supposed to be.

Like if no one could see her, no one could hurt her.

It never quite worked, Marcus remembers, visions of his sister through the years dancing across his eyes. The world still always knew where she was, always knew how to cut her where it’d hurt the most.

“I was thinking–” she starts, but he interrupts, cuts her off before she can finish whatever she was going to say.

“Come home, Hope,” he tells her. “Pack a bag, hop on a plane, and come home. Hang out with your niece and nephew, take long morning rides in the fields, spend your afternoons napping on the porch. Whatever you want, whatever you need. Just come home.”

She blinks away the tears that gather and threaten to spill over, to run, hot, down her cheeks.

“Marc, I–” but her word fades into silence as something in her chest cracks open, the place where she’s buried every dream, every want, every need that wasn’t her job, that wasn’t “Hope Solo, number one goalkeeper in the world,” the brand that followed her every move, every thought. A most unwelcome shadow, a prison disguised as a genie’s wish.

“I’m so tired, Marc,” she whispers, “I’m so tired of it all. The fans, the players, the press. I don’t even feel like me anymore. I don’t even know who I am anymore.”

Her voice cracks, breaks, as she confesses everything she’s been bottling up for so long. As she feels everything seep out of her, all the anger and fear and contrived detachment, the role she’s played for so long.

“I know, Hope,” Marcus says quietly, in a voice almost like a lullaby, “but maybe this is exactly what you need. A break from everything. An escape. You know,” he adds gently, “it’s okay to run away sometimes. To give yourself some space to breathe and think.”

She’s silent, the only sound on the other end of the line is her breathing, hitched and heavy, and if he wasn’t worried before, if the media reports and the weeks and months of unanswered voicemails on her phone weren’t enough to concern him, it was her silence.

Because the Hope Solo he knows and loves, the Hope Solo he’d grown up with and cheered for and watched become one of the best athletes in the world?

That Hope Solo would have jumped on his words faster than he could get them off his tongue, an almost violent “I’ve never run away from anything in my life, Marcus” in an icy tone.

But this Hope, this Hope who is a stranger to him, to even herself, it seems, just sucks in a shaky breath.

“I’m so tired of running, Marcus,” she tells him, and the ache and pain inside of her is plain. He can almost hear her heart bleeding.

“I know, honey,” he says softly, soothingly, “I know.”  It’s the voice he’s rocked his children to sleep with, the voice he’s whispered his love to his wife with in the earliest light of the dawn. It’s everything good and gentle inside of him, and he hopes that even through the crackle of the phone line, even through the static, she can hear it.

“Just come home, Hope,” he tells his sister once more, and it’s not a question, it’s a command. A fatherly request: Come home. Let us carry your burdens for a while, heal your wounds. Come home and let us make you light with life and laughter and love. 

He hears the tell-tale echo of his own voice in the earpiece, and knows that they’re just borrowing time before the call drops, before their connection is lost once again, and he’s about to speak when a shaky “okay” comes through, her voice rough and ragged and wet with tears, and he breathes a sigh of relief.

“I love you, kid,” he says, even knowing that they’ll talk again soon, because she needs to hear it, needs to remember that he’ll always have her back.

When he ends the call, Marcus leans back in his leather chair, boots up on the desk in front of him, and sighs.

It’s not the best timing. They’re down at least two members of staff and they’re fully booked through their busy season.

But Hope’s his sister, and she needs him. She needs this–home and family and the freedom to rediscover what she wants out of the world, who she wants to be in it.

They’ll make do, they always do.