Page 24 of Rumor Has It

“Wren?” Rebecca asked, confused and sleepy, her accent warming the sound of Wren’s name.

Wren smiled as innocently as possible while she got all the food items safely down on the little generic hotel desk. “Good morning, Rebecca.” She sat the diluted coffee down on the bedside table next to her.

Rebecca eyed it and then Wren. “Did you get me coffee?”

Wren nodded. “Yep, and breakfast.”

Rebecca sat up and sipped it. “Holy shit,” Rebecca whimpered.

“Did you burn your mouth? Or did I get it wrong?” Wren asked, frowning.

“You made it exactly right.” Rebecca sounded like she was in actual heaven. Their eyes caught for a second before Rebecca looked away, biting the edge of her lip.

Wren blushed. “Well, I figured you’d be hungover, so…” She let her sentence trail off. There was nowhere for it to go really. So she just stopped talking and plopped into the desk chair. “You ready for this?” She asked, nudging the eggs with sausage towards her roommate.

Rebecca pushed herself up in the bed and nodded. “You’re my hero,” she said happily as she took the plate from Wren.

“Yeah, yeah. Don’t you forget it,” Wren teased. They fell into an easy silence as they ate their breakfast. Wren was thankful that, for the first time, everything between them felt easy.

On Monday after her practice with her club team, Wren lounged on the couch that she and Andy shared. Andy had gone out again. She hadn’t been there when Wren had gotten home the night before and had slept in before Wren had gone to practice. Wren had been pretty annoyed when she had come home from practice and Andy hadn’t been there, but she honestly expected it at this point. She jumped almost a foot when Andy came barreling in around seven-thirty.

Andy looked livid and was holding a celebrity gossip magazine, clutching it to her chest like her life depended on it. “What in the fuck is going on between you and Becky Rothschild?”

Wren paused the Netflix show that she had been semi following along with as she had folded her laundry. This was not at all where she thought this evening was going to go. She dropped the unfolded shirt she was holding back into her laundry basket, giving Andy her undivided attention. “Well, we’re teammates, roommates, and I guess friends? After the last few days in Houston, yeah. I’d say friends.”

That didn’t appear to be the correct answer. “Look me in the eyes and tell me you didn’t have sex with her.” Andy shoved the magazine article in Wren’s face, stabbing Rebecca’s picture with her other pointer finger. When Wren didn’t immediately answer, Andy’s voice shot up an octave. “Well?”

Wren sighed, this was it. Time to tell the truth she had been avoiding. “Look, I didn’t have sex with her recently.” She gently eased the magazine article out of Andy’s hand and tossed it down onto their little couch as she stood up to look Andy directly in the eyes.

“What does that even mean? You had sex with her when? At your training a month ago?” Andy’s eyes watered for half a second and then flashed back to rage.

Wren shook her head. “No.” She still had never talked to Rebecca about any of this and she felt like she might be about to majorly violate their new found friendship trust, but her relationship was also spiraling around the drain, just waiting to sink. “Do you remember when we first started dating and we briefly went through our sexual history?”

Andy didn’t answer. She just looked confused and mad.

Wren sighed again, feeling dramatic with the heavy sound that kept escaping her. “When I was sixteen, I lost my virginity at a soccer camp.”

Andy shrugged. “Yeah, so?”

“It was Becky. At the soccer camp.”

Andy’s eyes widened. “And then you had that crazy vendetta against her. And now you’re what? Rekindling lost love? What the hell, Wren? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I was going to when I got back from that first two-week stint with the National Team, but I was so mad at you for posting that photo of me that I wasn’t really worried about some chick I slept with years ago and was more concerned about our relationship and about how little you value my privacy.”

Andy rolled her eyes. “This again? Oh my God. Wren, you can barely even see anything in that photo. I pose in thongs and see-through bras all the time.”

“That’s something you choose to do. And it’s fine if that’s what you’re choosing, but that picture wasn’t that. It wasn’t even me in a sports bra. It was a sexy photo meant for your eyes and your eyes only. It’s one thing if I do a brand ad in a sports bra. Or if I one day do the body issue for Sports Illustrated or something. That’s completely different than a photo that is intentionally and contextually sexual.”

“I don’t even know why I let you derail the conversation to that, when you had sex with someone else.”

Wren’s eyes widened. “No, I didn’t. Should I have told you about our history? Probably. But I didn’t cheat on you. Whatever that article is saying isn’t indicative of anything.”

“It says you left the club together early, Wren,” Andy yelled. “You two are all over each other, leaving the club early, and now I find out you actually have had sex with her?”

“She was puking her brains out in the bathroom. I’m her travel buddy. It’s my actual responsibility to get her out of there. As her friend, it’s my responsibility to get her out of there, but you would know that if you had any actual friends and not just people your agents send you out with.” Wren’s jaw clamped. That was too far, and she knew it.

Andy looked like she had been slapped. “Fuck you. I’m done. We’re done,” she yelled as she stormed into their bedroom and started packing a suitcase. “You’ve never really believed in my career. You’ve always hated what I had to do to make it. That’s why you never come out with us. If you did, you’d see that the people that I hang out with are actually really cool. They’re not fake, like you’re so determined to think they are. They’re more real than you. They would never have kept something like having had sex with their “travel buddy” a secret.”