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I made one final, and dumb, attempt at normalcy.
“Since he’s not here, I’m going to run practice, okay?” I asked.
Their faces weren’t in agreement with this plan, but maybe they’d just let it slide?
Pfft, please. As if.
Sophia squeaked out, “Um, Catya, what’s going on with you and Simon?”
That one comment seemed to break the dam. Suddenly, all the girls were asking what was going on between me and him, how long it’d been going on for, what our plans were, if we were official… so many questions that I couldn’t even tell who was speaking. It sounded like one giant noise, rising over me like a tsunami about to crash.
“Okay,” I interrupted. “One at a time. I’ll answer your questions, but you’ve got to be organized about it. Hand raising and everything.”
Beth’s hand popped up first.
“Yes?” I said, pointing to her.
“So you’re sleeping with Simon?”
I wanted to roll my eyes at the word choice, but instead replied frankly, “Yeah. I am. Next question.”
“How long have you been sleeping with him?” Riri queried.
I cast my mind back, trying to think. It seemed like ages, but it could only really be a matter of weeks. Was that right? It felt as though we’d been together a lifetime.
“Not long ago,” I responded. “Right after that midnight practice where we were all drunk.”
The group nodded, remembering, not like they could forget. So far, this was going all right. The questions were fairly innocuous—
And then Tanya spoke, saying, “Are you going to keep sleeping with him?”
My words faltered and I thought maybe I could just ignore that question, but everyone was looking at me with big, lost eyes and I knew I had to answer.
“I want to,” I said. “But I don’t know if I can.” Well, hell with it, they might as well know the whole story. “Simon’s going to quit right now, so after that—”
“What?!” Sharon-Ann exclaimed. “He can’t do that!”
“Yeah, he can’t do that,” Sophia chorused. “We need him here. We need to go to championships, and he’s our best shot. He’s a great coach.”
The girls all murmured their agreement, and it made me sad, thinking about how much Simon would’ve liked to hear that. His job meant the world to him — and I’d been the one to force him out of the position. Oh God, he’d never be able to buy his mother that house by the sea.
And just like that, I was crying.
But that wasn’t the surprising part. After all, I’d been pretty certain I’d cry eventually. No, the real surprise happened when the girls raced to comfort me. They encircled me in a big group hug, patting my shoulders, stroking my hair, as I sobbed in their arms.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to cry, it just happened.”
“That’s okay,” Rose affirmed.
“Yeah, don’t worry about it,” Sharon-Ann said.
The group stepped back to give me space, and I took a deep breath.
“I’m sorry,” I said once more. They didn’t need to accept my apology, but I definitely owed them one. “I’m sorry that I got involved with our coach, regardless of my feelings for him. Obviously, I wasn’t thinking of the team when I made that decision, and it’s my job to be always thinking of the team. I put our success at risk in a variety of ways, some of which you saw play out this past weekend.”
Nobody wanted to disagree with me on that one.
“And I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you once I started sleeping with him,” I continued. “I just knew that it would end — well, maybe not like this, but with either him leaving or me losing my scholarship. I was hoping that we could, I dunno, keep it a secret? But that was dumb. Of course we couldn’t. A secret that big always gets out. So I should’ve told you, or tried to clear it with the governing board, or devised some way to work around it. Instead, I lied and lied and lied until I was tired of my own lying. More than anything, I’m sorry for the lies.”
The girls gazed at me, the lines around their mouths softening. I could feel the mood changing, moving from anger to sympathy, and it was like the sun slowly beginning to peak out from thunder clouds.
“Do you love him?”
I looked around, trying to figure out who’d said that.
“Do you love him?” the voice reiterated.
Grace. It was Grace asking the question. She’d moved forward, from the back of the circle to the very front, until we were only a foot or so away from one another.
Finally able to tell my best friend the truth, I was relieved to say, “Yes. I love him.”
The team gasped, but Grace didn’t. I think she’d expected it from the moment I’d told her I slept with Simon. She was perceptive like that.
