Page 8 of Rumor Has It

Wren didn’t bother unpacking when they made it to their hotel. She didn’t bother asking which side of the room Rebecca preferred either. She rolled her checked bag in, hefted it up onto the foot of the closest bed, rifled through it for her light-wash, ripped-up jeans and her all-white Jordans. She didn’t bother going into their shared restroom to change. They shared a locker room, and it wasn’t like Rebecca hadn’t seen it all before anyway.

“Wren, can we maybe talk about everything?” Rebecca asked.

Wren knew Rebecca was watching her as she stuffed her wallet and phone in her pockets. “Nope,” she replied, genuinely not caring about the look on Rebecca’s face as she stormed back out of their hotel room.

She headed down the hall, walking towards the lobby. The coaches had told them that practice started tomorrow morning at seven o’clock sharp. One look at Wren’s watch told her that it was more than twelve hours away. Surely someone would want to grab food with her. She pulled her phone out and texted Courtney. It was still wild to her that she had Courtney Sinclair’s phone number.

Wren Eames (5:07 PM): Hey, wanna go find food?

She sent it before she could overthink it.

Courtney Sinclair (5:08 PM): Yeah. Meet you in the lobby in ten?

Wren liked the text. She clicked into her conversation with Ali and sent the same message, telling her to join them in the lobby. Then she headed down to wait, not wanting to risk the chance that Rebecca could come looking for her. The hotel lobby was filled with expensive looking furniture, all leather or suede and all very sleek. It’s not like they were being put up in a fancy, luxurious resort, but everything above a motel still felt fancy to her.

While waiting, Wren tried to call Andy, but she was sent straight to voicemail. Before Wren could leave a voicemail, Andy sent her a text message letting her know that she was heading out with some friends. Wren sighed. Of course Andy was going out. Wren looked at her watch and frowned. It was only two o’clock back in Los Angeles. Where was Andy even going at two in the afternoon on a Sunday? She shook it off. She wasn’t mad that Andy was going out. She knew that was part of the job: Be seen out and about with a bunch of A-Listers; and you, too, can become an A-Lister. Wren was just upset and frustrated and was hoping she could call and vent later about the bullshit Rebecca pulled in front of the coaches today.

She could always call her dad and vent, but eventually her dad would circle back to summer camp six years ago when he came to pick Wren up and she had gone out of her way to make sure he met Rebecca. That was before Rebecca had blocked and ghosted her without a word. That was before college and before Rebecca had taken Wren’s greatest fear of turning out like her mom and verbally stabbed her with it. She had never told her dad what had happened between them—they were close, but not that close—but she figured he always knew on some level. The only person Wren had ever told about camp and Rebecca had been Molly Andrews, Wren’s best friend in the entire world. Wren made a mental note to arrange a FaceTime chat with Molly soon. Molly had twins and coordinating times to talk was sometimes a little complicated, but always worth it.

She sat in the lobby spiraling. After camp, Wren had been so hurt by being blocked and ghosted, but she’d thought that maybe Rebecca’s parents had found out. Then came the next time Wren saw Rebecca and she’d been so casually cruel. And Wren had honestly stopped caring about why Rebecca had blocked her. All of her pain had shifted into rage, and she’d never let herself stop to question it. But now, as Wren sat in a fancy wingback chair, tracing the brass tacks on the arm rest, she replayed today over and over in her head. Rebecca had seemed so mad about everything from camp six years ago. She had acted so sure that that had been the turning point. But she had been the one to block Wren, not the other way around. Somewhere along the way, Wren had stopped associating their rivalry with that camp and had just let it become a brutal soccer vendetta. Two star players of two teams that were the best their universities had seen in some time, fortifying and solidifying a program-wide rivalry that would last for the rest of time.

Thankfully, she was pulled from her thoughts as Courtney and her travel buddy, Danielle Rodriguez, stepped into the lobby. Courtney and Danielle were a juxtaposed duo if ever Wren had seen one. Courtney was tall, with dirty blonde hair that was cut just below her ears. Danielle was maybe all of five-foot-two with long jet black hair. But they had been teammates and best friends for the last decade. They were also two of the best players in women’s soccer history. Ali must have caught the next elevator because less than a minute later she was there, too. Her outfit was almost identical to Wren’s: light-washed jeans, fresh Vans, and a basic athletic T-shirt that’s only style point was the company’s logo.

“Where are we going?” Ali asked, as she walked up to join the group.

“Oh, we should take them to the little Pho place that’s just down the street,” Danielle said, bouncing back and forth on the balls of her feet, clearly excited about the idea.

“Aw, hell yes. I forgot about that place,” Courtney said. “You guys like Pho, yeah?”

Wren was the world’s least picky eater. If you told her something was edible, she would eat it. After being raised by only her father, she had also developed an iron stomach.“Yeah, let’s do it,” she said with a shrug.

Ali was on board, too. So, off they went, walking down the side of the road just outside of Fayetteville. Wren shook off the last vestiges of her anger towards Rebecca. She was finally living the life she’d always wanted—dating a Victoria’s Secret supermodel, hanging out with two of her biggest soccer idols, being a member of the Women’s National Team herself—she’d be damned if she let Rebecca Rothschild ruin that.

They slid into a dimly lit red leather booth in the back of the cramped Pho restaurant. Wren had high hopes for the place. It smelled heavenly. Not only that, but everything on the menu looked good, too. It was one of those places that only had six options, but they were clearly the only six options that mattered.

“What do you recommend?” Wren asked.

“I get the number three, medium spice,” Courtney said.

Wren scanned the limited menu. The number three was chicken; that seemed safe for a night before practice.

“What did the coaches say when Coach T took you and Becky to Jameson’s office?” Ali asked, her curiosity clearly getting the better of her.

Wren chewed on her thumbnail for a second. Courtney and Danielle were definitely listening, but as older players, they seemed to be uninterested in the kind of drama that rookies brought with them. Wren also wanted to impress Courtney. They had gotten along well at practice for their club team. She didn’t want drama from over six years ago to get in the way of that. Rebecca had caused enough damage with her outburst during their photoshoot. Wren wasn’t about to let her cause any more.

She shrugged. “I mean, nothing super exciting. They told us to get over our shit and bond. So, we’re travel buddies for the year.”

Ali looked horrified. “That sucks. She seems like a bitch.”

“You know, I don’t actually think she is,” Wren said carefully. There was a really good chance that the coaches would talk to Courtney about how the team was gelling, and Wren wanted to make sure that word got back that she was actually trying. “I think we’ve just been at each other’s throats for so long we haven’t figured out how to do anything else.” She pushed her thoughts back to the deepest, darkest corners of her mind that reminded her that six years ago, they had definitely figured out how to do other things.

That night Wren waited until just after ten to slip back into her hotel room. If memory served, Rebecca had never been a night owl. Her thoughts drifted back six years to a younger Wren teasing a younger Rebecca about keeping her awake. She pushed the memory aside, thankful that Rebecca was already asleep or at least pretending to be. She yanked her pajamas out of her suitcase and headed into the little shared bathroom. The last thing she wanted was to give Rebecca ammunition to call her a shitty roommate, so she changed and got ready for bed as quietly as humanly possible. She was even careful with how high she let the water pressure get when she was washing her hands and face and wetting her toothbrush.

She crawled into her bed and pulled the covers up over her head so she could play on her phone for a bit. A sports news alert buzzed on her phone. “Bitter Rivalry Burns Bright As Ever,” the headline read. Wren closed her eyes tightly. She knew exactly what this was about to be. She clicked on the article and sure enough, it was a photo of her looking smug and mildly pleased with herself as Rebecca flicked her off.

She skimmed the article. Key phrases stuck out as she scrolled: “They can’t even stand next to each other long enough to take a photo,” and “Sources say the coaching staff is furious,” to her favorite “The whole team is choosing sides.” Wren sighed and closed out of the article. She sent Andy a quick “Goodnight, I love you,” message and willed herself to go to sleep.

Her alarm the next morning went off at five-forty-five. She quickly silenced it, not wanting to give Rebecca anything to complain about. She had fallen asleep facing away from Rebecca’s bed and had woken up in the exact same position. She leaned backwards, trying to see if Rebecca had been disturbed. Only to find that Rebecca was already out of bed. Wren strained her ears to see if she could hear any noises coming from the bathroom, but she was met with only silence. She would take silence, and she would utilize the alone time to get herself organized a little bit. They were going to be here for two weeks. She didn’t want to spend the whole time digging through her suitcase, so she stuffed all her underwear, bras, and socks into her bedside drawer. It was one of those typical hotel pieces of furniture with a massive singular drawer and a lot of open space underneath. She tucked her Jordans, her slip-on Vans, and her slides under it and made her way to the dresser on the other side of the room.