‘What was the event?’
‘It was boring, do you really want to hear about it?’ I ask the question with a roll of my eyes, but clearly Deen isn’t buying my lies.
‘You’re being weird about it, so yeah, I want to hear about it. Was it for something weird? Was it like … a furry convention or something?’ Deen grins.
‘No, it wasn’t afurryconvention. It was … a fundraiser.’
Deen keeps looking at me expectantly, so I know I have to say more.
‘For … women in football.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Yeah. I know. Just my luck, right?’
I expect Deen to drop it at that, but he tilts his head to the side and studies me. ‘And what else?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Dina.’
‘I think you and I are too close. It’s not very healthy.’
Deen gives me a poke in the ribs and I pull away from him, groaning.
‘OK, OK. Maya was there.’
‘Really?’ Deen’s eyebrows shoot up. ‘So … did you guys talk?’
‘Why would you think that?’
‘Because the fundraiser happened a few days ago, and you haven’t been talking my ear off about how much you hate Maya. You haven’t even mentioned it.’
I guess I’m more of an open book than I thought.
I know that Deen isn’t going to let up, so I spill about everything that happened. How she ran into me, how angry I was. Then, seeing her upset and following after her. Her panic attack and how I calmed her down. Her speech. And our conversation afterwards. The one proper conversation we’ve had in nine years that hasn’t erupted into a fight. That felt like being back to the old us.
‘Wow. So, what are you going to do?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean … you guys actually had a conversation with each other. She even thanked you for helping her. You’re not going to try to reach out to her? Talk to her again?’ He’s studying me a little too closely and I worry that he can see everything in my expression – my confusion, my desperation, my longing. But I don’t even know what any of it means.
I would be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about it. That I hadn’t spent the last few days thinking about barely anything but Maya. I even asked Jen for her phone number, pretending I needed it to make arrangements for our match. But I haven’t called or texted her. I’m not sure what it would look like to open up a line of communication with her again. I’m not sure how to be around Maya when I still feel angry about everything that has happened in the past.
‘Look, Maya is … She’s … We’ve always been …’ I keep stopping and starting, trying to find the right words to describe things but coming up blank. But finally, it just spills out of me, like I’ve been holding it all in; a dam waiting to burst until this moment. ‘Maya and I have always been complicated, but I obviously have thought about her over the past nine years. I’ve thought about her, like, every single day, no matter how many times I didn’t want to think about her. And her being back is just … weird. But not even weird bad. It’s just … I don’t know. It feels like I finally have something now, you know? With the football competition and going up against her again. It feels right, like this is what I was missing in my life.’
Deen just shakes his head, chuckling like I’ve told him some kind of joke instead of spilling my heart out to him.
‘None of this is funny,’ I say angrily.
‘Actually, it’s all kind of hilarious. Dina, you and Maya have a pattern.’
‘How can we have a pattern when we haven’t seen each other for the past nine years?’
‘Because it happened before. When the two of you were so obsessed with each other, all you could do was compete in whatever you could compete in. If it wasn’t trying to outdo each other in your classes, it was trying to outdo each other on the football pitch. And now you’re doing the same but with the teams that you’re coaching. The writing is on the wall, Dina. You like her, she likes you. Now what are you going to do about it?’
And when Deen says it like that, it almost sounds that simple.
