Disclosures - SF4 (22 page)

Ryan gave her a grateful nod, and strode into the office, Jamie right at her side. She smiled at the man sitting behind the desk, and they both sat when he motioned them to. Rich Placer was a good looking, dark-haired young man, about 28 years old. He had been hired the year before to take over from the coach who had wooed Ryan when she was in high school. He finished his call and stood, extending his hand. "Ryan?" he asked.

"Good to meet you, Coach. I've brought someone with me. Is that okay?"

"Sure," he said easily, offering his hand to Jamie. "Rich Placer."

"This is Jamie Evans, Coach. She’s my life-mate."

"Life-mate, huh?" His eyes were twinkling as he sat down and regarded the pair. "I like that term, Ryan. Life is a lot more pleasant with a mate to help you through it, isn’t it?"

Ryan grinned at him, his stock rising dramatically in her book with just those few words. "Life is wonderful with the right mate," she said, sparing a meaningful glance at her partner.

The coach pulled a legal-sized manila folder into the center of his desk and tossed it open. He started thumbing through the two-inch-thick pile, smiling to himself as he scanned the notes. "So, I read the file that Coach Nichols made about your high school career. He was obviously very impressed with your game to recruit you when you only played his sport for one year."

Ryan nodded, thinking about her reply to that comment for a moment. "It always bothered me that I had to choose between sports, but when two of them are at the same time, you have to pick. During my freshman year, I got a slight head injury playing soccer. They wouldn’t let me play the rest of the season, so I finagled my way into an open spot as an outside hitter. I really only played six games, so I was surprised to learn that Coach Nichols was interested in me."

Rich Placer smiled at the self-effacing, confident young woman who smiled back at him. "Well, I remember you from U.S.F, even though you only played one year there too. You tend to make a rather lasting impression on a coach, Ryan." He smiled at the slight blush that traveled slowly up her cheeks, charmed to be able to speak to an athlete who did not think they invented their sport. "I don't think there's any question that you can play. Check that. There
IS
no question that you can play. Obviously your grades have been superb since you've been in college, but I'm really puzzled by the path you've taken. Tell me what happened in high school."

Ryan took a deep breath and decided to tell it all. It wasn't really much of a risk at this point in her life, but she still felt a little nervous about talking about her personal life with a stranger. "As you can probably tell, I had three great years at Sacred Heart. But during the summer after my junior year, I fell in love. With another woman." She waited for a beat, then continued, "Things didn’t work out quite like I had hoped, and she …freaked out," Ryan said, minimizing the incident as much as she could. "She stopped speaking to me and that was really hard, but I could have lived with it. However, I guess she told someone at school that we had sex, and within a week the entire school knew."

Coach Placer looked puzzled by this part of the story, and he asked for clarification. "Why would she do that, Ryan? If she was freaked out, why tell everyone?"

"To this day I have no idea, Coach. All I know is that everyone knew, and she and I were the only people involved. I know I didn’t tell…" She shook her head sadly, still unable to understand the betrayal. "It’s actually worse than it sounds, to be honest," she said softly. "I don’t know what she said, but the other girls definitely had the impression that our time together was not entirely consensual."

Ryan looked like she was about to cry, and her voice had grown so quiet that Jamie had to lean towards her to hear the last of her sentence. She reached out and grasped Ryan’s hand firmly, shocked at this stunning revelation. Ryan’s face was set in a grim mask of pain, and most of the color had drained from her skin.

"That’s not uncommon, Ryan," the coach said softly. "Sometimes kids deal with their own guilt about something like this by trying to blame the other person. I’m sure that the people who knew you didn’t believe it."

Her dark head lifted slowly and Jamie could see every bit of pain and dismay from those days settle onto her face. "That’s what nearly destroyed me," she whispered. "Everybody did believe it. Within days there wasn’t one girl who would take the risk of talking to me in public. This happened at the end of junior year. I got through the end of the term, and spent the summer in Ireland with my family. I honestly thought things would blow over after the summer. But after the second game of the soccer season, some of the most talented players accosted me in the locker room and told me that they wanted me to quit. They said that they didn't want to have a predator watching them get dressed and taking showers."

The color was back in her cheeks now, but it was the deep flush of shame that showed on her face. "I relied on these women. We were teammates," she said simply, still unable to process the hurt. "We had won the state championship the year before, and we still had an excellent team. But they were so afraid of being associated with me that they demanded I quit."

Both Jamie and Coach Placer were taken aback by this revelation. They both stared at Ryan for a long time, until Jamie silently reached for her partner’s hand again and grasped it tightly. Ignoring the coach, she lifted the hand and brought it to her lips, placing a gentle kiss on the soft skin and whispering, "I’m so sorry, Sweetheart. I’m so very sorry that happened to you."

Ryan just nodded her head briefly, her lower lip caught between her teeth in her characteristic effort to stave off tears. "It was horrible," she agreed, her voice no more than a whisper. "In one of the most gay-friendly cities in America, in 1993…It still boggles my mind."

"It makes perfect sense that you quit," Jamie murmured, still holding Ryan’s hand close to her face. "Nobody should have to put up with that kind of treatment from their teammates."

"I didn’t quit immediately," Ryan amended softly. "I guess I was still naïve about the ways of the world. I went to the coach of my soccer team. We had always been close, and she had made me the team captain at the end of the previous year. I told her that the other girls wanted me to quit, and I asked her what she thought I should do. She said that she couldn't 'take the risk' of standing up for me. She said that it would probably hurt the team if I stayed on, so I finally realized that I couldn’t stand up to the whole school by myself, and I quit."

"Did it eventually get better?" Coach Placer asked, causing Jamie to gasp as she remembered where they were.

Ryan shook her head again, defeat clouding her features. "Once I gave in, it actually got worse and worse. I had disgusting notes taped to my locker and my bike was vandalized more than once. I couldn't concentrate in school and my grades just plummeted. I was considering dropping out and just getting a G.E.D., but my family finally got me to tell them what was happening, and they were a tremendous help in getting me back on track. By second semester my grades were back to normal, but I was never treated any better by the students. Only two or three girls were openly hostile to me, but nobody else had the guts to talk to me in public. I spent the entire second semester without a single word being said to me socially."

Coach Placer asked, "The file I have here says that you decided not to pursue playing for Cal. Why was that?"

Ryan barked out a bitter laugh. "That’s a lie, Coach. I desperately wanted to come to Cal, but every one of the coaches here dumped me. I hadn’t signed my letter of intent yet, and my soccer scholarship, which I thought was a lock, disappeared. I was pretty bitter about it for a long time, but I think I'm over it now. I decided to not let my animosity rob me of my goal of graduating from here. I’m happy that I transferred, and now I want to play a varsity sport. Mostly I want to do it for myself, but partly, I want to show those coaches that they should have taken a chance on me."

Coach Placer silently stared at the ceiling for a long minute. Finally, he gave Ryan a big smile and said, "You do know that my predecessor is now at U.C.L.A."

She found this an odd path for the conversation to take, but she acknowledged his statement. "Yeah, I do."

"There's no team I'd be happier to beat," he said with another grin.

Ryan understood his point immediately, and answered him with a beaming smile. "Death to the Bruins!"

As they left the office, Ryan reached over and took Jamie's hand. They walked together down the long corridors until they found their way back to their car. "He certainly seemed excited about having you play...whatever sport it is that we're talking about," she said as she pinched Ryan in the ribs.

"I thought you were a detective," she teased. "Use your deductive reasoning."

"I could, but I might as well wait until you go back to work out for the whole coaching staff. I guess we'd better get to bed early tonight, huh, Tiger."

"I wonder what poor souls he's going to make show up to play against me at seven in the morning?"

Jamie squeezed her hand and offered, "I could play against you. You'd look a lot better if I was your competition."

Ryan laughed a little at Jamie’s offer, but reminded her, "You don't even know what sport we're talking about, remember Babe?"

"I know. But whatever it is, I'm sure you could whip me at it."

"Maybe," Ryan agreed, "but you get to whip me when we play golf on Saturday. Did you make arrangements?"

"Yeah. I called the club and got us a tee time for 8 a.m. Is that good?"

"Perfect. I’ll call the boys and let them know."

"Do you mind if I play on Sunday with my father?"

"No. I can spend the day with the baby. We have a week’s worth of bonding to make up for."

Ryan slipped her key into the lock and slowly opened the back door, sticking her head in tentatively. "Anybody home?" She turned to Jamie, who was right on her heels and instructed, "Now you ask the same thing in Spanish."

"You goof!" Pushing her partner into the house, Jamie restated the schedule. "Maria Los comes on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, Babe. The others are Mondays only. We’re completely alone on Thursdays."

"Can’t be too sure," Ryan insisted. "I’m still sleeping with one eye open just in case you’ve given out any other keys to the house."

Jamie laughed at her exaggerated caution, but suddenly stopped short. "I think Cassie still has a key," she recalled.

Without a word, Ryan stood and walked to the door, noting the manufacturer of the lock. She purposefully strode to the small desk by the telephone and pulled out the yellow pages. Thumbing through the listings, she found what she was looking for and made eye contact with a puzzled-looking Jamie as she dialed.

"Hi, I need a locksmith to come over and change out some Medeco locks for me."

Jamie pulled into the parking lot of Women Power at 3:30. Ryan wasn’t expecting her, but since her partner was planning on working out after her last client she knew that she would still be there.

They hadn’t had the opportunity to discuss the revelations Ryan had made to Coach Placer, and although she had put on a happy front, Jamie knew that the issue would linger in the background until they could speak about it. The gym wasn’t the place to have this discussion, but Jamie thought that Ryan could use some extra attention, so she cut her time at the golf course short to be with her.

The gym was fairly deserted at this point in the afternoon, and Jamie spotted her partner immediately upon entering. Ryan had removed her gym-issued black polo shirt and was working out in a black sports bra and a pair of long, black Lycra tights. She was obviously in one of her little "zones" because she did not notice Jamie enter, and the smaller woman indulged in the guilty pleasure of watching her lover for a few minutes.

Ryan was apparently working her trunk today, and Jamie marveled at the single-minded determination that she brought to the task. She dropped to a mat and began to perform a horribly tough-looking series of crunches. Ryan had grabbed a 45-pound weight plate from a rack, and as she prepared to work she grasped it with both hands and held it a few inches above her breasts. Her knees lifted a few inches and she crossed her ankles just to help hold her legs together, then she began to perform the crunches, using just her torso to move the upper and lower halves of her body together. It didn’t take long for the veins near her temples to start to throb, and Jamie was actually a little concerned by the flush that covered her face and neck, but she assumed that Ryan knew what she was doing, so she continued to watch silently.

After a few sets of that exercise, she hopped to her feet and went to a pull-up bar. The bar was hung almost six feet up the wall, and Ryan had to stand on one of the conveniently placed wooden boxes to get to the right height. She slipped her forearms into a pair of heavy black slings which supported them in the correct position, then she crossed her feet at the ankle and lifted her knees until her thighs were parallel with the floor. Supporting her body weight with just her upper arms, she began to torture her abs by twisting her lower body until her knees nearly touched the wall behind her—first to the right, and then to the left. Jamie watched in fascinated silence as beads of sweat trickled from nearly every pore of her lover’s body as she put herself through this self-inflicted torture.