Disclosures - SF4 (23 page)

She had no idea what was going through Ryan’s mind, but her partner was obviously trying to exorcise some internal demons. Jamie had seen Ryan work out on numerous occasions, but she had never seen the dark woman look so determined to inflict pain upon herself. Ryan didn’t look like she was even keeping track of how many of the contortions she did. It looked to Jamie like she was just going to continue to torment her body until she dropped. Ryan was now grunting audibly with each rep, and the few other women present were giving her surreptitious glances as they worked. Turgid blue veins were standing out sharply against her flushed skin as her arms shook heavily, obviously nearing failure. She completed her last rep in an uncharacteristically ragged fashion, letting out a strangled groan as she did so. Her legs searched for the step and she stood atop it for just a moment, clearly trying to make sure that her legs would hold her before she slid her arms from their supports. She took a few deep breaths and hopped off the step, finally making eye contact with Jamie as she did so.

"Been here long?" she asked quietly as she crossed the short distance between them.

Jamie just nodded, unable to conceal the worried look that she knew was betraying her concern.

"Wanna toss the medicine ball at my gut while I do some crunches?"

It took a second for Jamie to realize that her partner was serious. "No, I most certainly do not!" Her hand came to rest on Ryan’s slick arm, and she said in a low tone, "I think you’ve done enough, Honey. How long have you been working?"

Ryan checked her watch and nearly did a double take. "Wow! I guess 45 minutes is enough time for just my abs, huh?"

"Yeah…I think it’s more than enough." She grabbed a towel from the stack near the wall and handed it to her lover. "Do you have any other clothes here?"

Ryan looked down at herself and noticed that her clothes were nearly dripping with sweat. "Yeah. I’ve got a pair of shorts and a T-shirt or two."

"You go change, Babe. We’re gonna go pamper ourselves a little bit."

Ryan dutifully went to do her lover’s bidding, not even asking for clarification before she walked into the office.

A half-hour later they were relaxing in a eucalyptus-scented hot tub located in one of the new day spas that had opened up in North Berkeley. They were the only two women in the large tub, since it was too late for the lunch crowd and too early for the after-work crowd. "Wanna talk about it?" Jamie asked after ten minutes of silence had passed between them.

" ‘Bout what?" Ryan asked lazily, the warm water rendering her nearly unconscious.

" ‘Bout what you were thinking about while you were trying to burst a blood vessel at the gym." There was no accusation in her tone, but it was clear that she was determined to get an answer.

"That obvious, huh?" Ryan sat up a little and looked like she was trying to make up her mind about something. She finally turned to Jamie and said, "It pisses me off that I’m still so pissed off."

Jamie shook her head a little, not getting her partner’s point.

"I’m mad at myself for still being so upset about things that happened six years ago!" The frustration in her voice was building, and Jamie was afraid she was going to start yelling.

"Okay, Baby, it’s okay," she soothed in a calming tone, trailing her hand down Ryan’s arm. "

"No, it’s not okay," Ryan growled, her building anger clearly evident. "I’m letting a couple of small-minded kids still get to me over something that happened when I was barely old enough to drive, for Christ’s sake! It pisses me off that I can’t control my mind any better than that! Jesus, Jamie, I practically cried today in front of a total stranger that I was trying to impress!"

"Honey, honey." Jamie spoke in a very low, soft voice, trying to let her reassuring tone reach the angry part of her partner. "It doesn’t do you any good to try to minimize what happened. You were treated terribly by the girls in your school, and when you add the betrayal by your own coach, it makes it twice as bad. But I know you, Babe, and I believe that you would have gotten over those wounds quickly if the whole thing hadn’t been started by Sara. The fact that she was the source of all of your trouble had to be a hurt that you just can’t let go of."

Ryan took a deep breath and scooted forward a little. She leaned back and lowered her head into the steaming water, letting her dark hair float around her for a moment before she sat up abruptly, water streaming down her face. She didn’t verbally acknowledge the truth of Jamie’s statement, but she turned to her and asked, "So…how
do
I let go?"

Jamie gave her a sad smile and palmed her cheek, tenderly brushing her lips with her thumb. "I’m not sure, Baby, but I know that it can be done. Have you spent much time talking about how it felt?"

A very rough headshake indicated that very little time had been spent in this pursuit. "Since I had no friends left, that wasn’t an option." She let her head loll back against her shoulders, finally adding, "Bringing up Sara’s name at home wasn’t a real smart idea. I was truly afraid that Da or one of the boys might go ballistic."

Jamie nodded slightly, acknowledging that the O’Flaherty men had a very hard time remaining passive when Ryan’s happiness was threatened. "They let their love for you get in the way of being there for you to talk about things sometimes, don’t they?" she asked gently.

"Yeah…" Ryan started to slap at the water with the flat of her hand, trying to see how hard she could hit it without having it splash her in the face. Jamie recognized this as another nervous habit that she used to distract herself while talking about painful issues. "I wind up keeping things to myself because they get so angry. I almost had to physically restrain Da from going to Sara’s house to berate her." She shivered with the memory of the terribly tense scene, and recalled how out-of-control the whole house was on the day she revealed everything that had happened. "To this day, he doesn’t know that my soccer coach told me to quit for the good of the team, he doesn’t know about my bike being vandalized, and he doesn’t know about the vile notes I got at school."

Jamie felt her heart clench with sadness for the young girl who'd had to keep her feelings bottled up to protect the people who loved her the most. She slipped her hand underwater and lightly rubbed Ryan’s thigh, trying to send a supportive message that Ryan should keep talking if she wanted to.

Ryan let out a bitter laugh and revealed, "He doesn’t know this, but the biggest reason I didn’t go to Cal was because I couldn’t bear to be there and know that Sara was on that soccer team, and that I wasn’t. It didn’t matter that I could have gotten an academic scholarship. I know this never made sense to him, but I just couldn’t be on the same campus as she was. It just hurt too badly."

"Why not Stanford, Honey?" Jamie had long wondered why her lover didn’t accept the scholarship to play soccer at Stanford.

Ryan looked at her like she was crazy. "And play Cal twice a year? See Sara in the blue and gold uniform that I’d been dreaming about since I was a kid?"

"I’m sorry, Love, I didn’t think it through. Of course you couldn’t do that."

This obviously sincere apology ameliorated Ryan’s pique and she relaxed again, the tension visibly leaving her body. "I couldn’t bear the commute either, Hon," she said softly. "And I just couldn’t leave home to live in Palo Alto right then. I needed Da and the boys too much. I just turned inward and stayed close to my family. That’s why I decided to take time off from school—It just seemed like the only way to put it behind me."

"But you haven’t really put it behind you, Baby. You’ve just stopped talking about it. That’s not the same thing." Jamie was a little afraid of setting Ryan off again, but she felt strongly about this issue, and she felt that she needed to make her views known.

Ryan nodded, realizing that her partner had a very valid point. "I’ll try to talk about it more, Jamie. Really I will. It’s much easier to talk about with you than it is with Da, and that will really help."

"Okay, Love," Jamie agreed quietly. "We don’t have to do it all at once. I just want you to feel that you can talk to me when the issue comes up."

"I do." Ryan stood, the water sluicing down her body in rivulets. She extended her hand and pulled her partner to her feet. "I’m getting lightheaded from being in here too long. Let’s go before I pass out."

"Can I interest you in a massage?" the smaller woman asked as they climbed out of the tub.

"Sure." Ryan’s grin indicated just what she would like to have massaged first.

"I mean a professional massage, you goof. I think both of us could use a little attention on our sore muscles."

"But I could…"

"I know you could, Tiger. But I can’t do a competent job on you. So just relax and let me pamper you a little bit." Without a moment to allow for argument, she grabbed a towel and went to arrange for the massages.

Have I won an argument yet?
She paused for a beat, and answered her own question, smirking to herself as she did so.
Do I care?

An hour later they were lying on fully-reclined chaises allowing the just-applied mud that coated their bodies to dry a bit. "This is too weird," the taller of the two mud-women muttered.

"But your skin feels soooo good when you wash it off," Jamie assured her.

"How could it not?" Ryan chuckled at her own joke and Jamie smiled over at her, pleased that her sense of humor was returning. They were still the only patrons in this part of the spa and when Ryan heard a pager go off, she knew it had to be hers. She got to her feet, grimacing when the mud began to audibly crack as she moved. "This is gross!"

"You’ll live," Jamie insisted. "I bet you were nearly this muddy on a daily basis when you were little."

"I wish I could disagree, but you know me too well, Sprite."

Jamie flung one of her shower sandals at her partner for using today’s favorite term of affection and was amazed to score a direct hit on her butt.

"Not bad," Ryan said absently as she retrieved her pager from the little basket where they had stored their things.

"Who is it, Babe?"

"Can I use your phone?" Ryan was already dialing, and she shot as much of a smirk as she could at her partner while the call went through. "I think I'm being recruited again. Hi," Ryan said when the call was connected. "No, I haven't made any decisions yet." After a long pause, she began to nod her head. "That probably would make me lean toward playing, but where did you get it?" A slow scowl began to form on her face. "Have you told her yet?" Pursed lips accompanied another slow nod. "Upperclassman?" Slight pause. "In state?" Another pause. "Okay. Yes, I do understand." Longer pause, more nodding. "I'd appreciate it if you didn't do anything on this yet. I'll get back to you by tomorrow afternoon. Yes, I do realize that." She was nodding thoughtfully, but there was an unreadable expression on her face that Jamie couldn’t wait to have explained.

Ryan placed the phone back in its cradle and flopped back onto the chaise. "Shit!" she muttered as she crossed her long legs at the ankle and rested her head on her linked hands.

"What's wrong, Honey?"

"Coach Greene offered me a scholarship." Her voice carried a heavy dose of bitterness.

"But I thought that's what you wanted?" Jamie asked, totally confused by Ryan's attitude.

"I do, but she's yanking it away from another player. She has a player who hasn't been contributing as much as she’d like, so she wants to kick her off the team and give me her scholarship."

"Can she do that?" Jamie asked incredulously.

"Sure. There are all sorts of restrictions on how you dole out scholarships, as you might expect. I actually called Coach because I read in the school paper that their best goalie was declared academically ineligible. When that happens, they can't reuse that scholarship, so she’s light one ride this year. But if they kick you off the team because of your performance they can award the scholarship to someone else."

"Light a ride?"

"Oh…sorry. A scholarship is sometimes called a ride…You know, like a free ride."

"Got it," Jamie said. "Okay, so she has one less than normal anyway, so she wants to make sure every one that she does have is used for the best player, right?"

"Right," Ryan agreed.

"But I'm guessing you don't feel very good about benefiting from someone else's misfortune."

"Right," she said quickly. "Been there, had that done to me."

"Do you think she would have kicked this woman off if you weren't interested?"

"I doubt it. They start practice next week and I assume her roster is set. So I'm guessing the only thing between this other woman and her scholarship is me," she replied glumly.

"What did she tell you about her?"

"She's a junior and she's from out of state. If she loses her scholarship, she'll have to pay a load for tuition. I just don't think I can accept this knowing that some other woman will probably have to drop out because of me."

"I see your dilemma, Babe, but if she really isn't cutting it, maybe she doesn't deserve the scholarship."

Ryan nodded absently and started to pick at the flaking mud on her belly. "That's probably true in the abstract, but this is a real person who will have her life turned upside down because of me. I don't think I can be responsible for that."

"Okay. I can understand that, Baby. I know this is hard, but I want you to tell me exactly why the scholarship is important to you. How much is about pride, and how much is about money."

"I was thinking about this yesterday afternoon," Ryan remarked. "I'm going to have a pretty difficult schedule this fall. If I play soccer, I'll have to practice every afternoon, run every morning and spend more time in the weight room than I do now. I don't know if I'll have the energy to do all of that and be available to you." She gave her lover a fond smile. "I figure I need to save at least two hours a day for lovemaking, so my time would really be stretched. I just don’t know if I want to have to take out loans for the privilege of running myself ragged."

"How does a scholarship fit in?"

"If they paid for my tuition, books and fees I could live on what I saved last year. It wouldn't let me have much left after the school year, but I could get by."

"I have a simple solution to your problem, Honey," Jamie said softly as she bridged the distance between them and grasped Ryan’s hand loosely.

Ryan rolled her eyes and muttered, "I was hoping to delay this conversation for another year."

Jamie sat up and rolled over onto her side, facing her lover fully. "You want to play, Ryan. Either soccer or one of your other sports-to-be-named-later. You don’t want to contribute to ruining someone else’s plans, and I admire that about you. But I don’t want you to deprive yourself of the pleasure of competition just because of money. And I don’t want you to be horrendously busy every moment of every day. Let me support you this year, Ryan. There is nothing I'd like better than for you to be able to just relax and enjoy your last year of college. It breaks my heart to think of how hard you've had to work to get this far, Honey. I would truly be grateful if you would let me help you."

Ryan gave her a bemused grin, "Grateful, huh?"

"Yes. I would be grateful that you were willing to put aside your reservations about this issue and allow me to help you. It would give me more pleasure than you can imagine to let you have another chance to fulfill some of the dreams of your youth. It would make me feel like I was helping you heal some of your wounds. I swear it means a lot to me, Baby."

Years of indoctrination flashed through her mind, and Ryan had to struggle to not immediately refuse. She didn’t want to be hardheaded, and she knew this was important to Jamie, so she gave her partner another shy grin and offered a compromise, "How about we make it a loan?"

Jamie breathed a heavy sigh, grateful that Ryan was willing to budge, but not terribly happy to be loaning her spouse money. Seeing the determined look in Ryan’s eyes, however, made her realize that this was probably the best deal she was going to get out of the negotiations. "Okay, that would work. I'll loan you the money for tuition, fees and books. I'll even have a loan agreement drawn up. I will not though, under any circumstances, put a repayment date on it. You can pay me back as slowly as you need to after you're finished with school."

"That’s fair," Ryan agreed, grateful that Jamie was allowing her to maintain her principles. "Now, I won't be able to contribute much to our household expenses if I don’t work. I want you to keep track of what we spend this year and add half of that to the loan, too."

Jamie pursed her lips and shook her head firmly. "Uh-uh. No deal," she insisted. "School is sort of optional, and I can understand that you feel like it's a big expense. But you need to eat, and you need to have some entertainment, and you need some spending money. I am your partner, Ryan. I pledged to take care of you just like you take care of me. I will not have you feel indebted to me for providing you with the essentials of life."

"You sound like me father," she said softly, lapsing into her brogue.

"Well, that makes sense, since he and I both love you dearly. But why do I sound like him specifically?"

"Because he won’t allow any of us to contribute one dime towards household expenses. He says it's a parent’s duty and honor to support the household."

"He's absolutely right. I'm in a position to provide for our financial security. Because I can do that, it's my duty to do so. So play nice, and I won't have to hurt you."

Ryan laughed at her mock threat. "You almost broke my neck last night, and that was while you were loving me. What would you do if you really wanted to hurt me?"

"You'll find out," Jamie muttered as she narrowed her eyes, the scowl looking sillier than normal because of the mud masque.

"Well, this will be an interesting experiment, Ms. Evans. It’s going to take a lot of adjustment for me to be comfortable, but I will do my best to allow you to deplete your fortune in order to keep my belly full."

"That was less than poetic, Sweet Pea, but I truly appreciate your willingness to work with me on this. Compromising like this is what being life partners is all about, Babe."

"You’re right, Hon, but I gotta tell you, most couples would trade their problems for ours in a hot minute. Most people don’t argue about having too much money."

"Good point, Ryan. I certainly hope that this is the most contentious issue we ever face."

Ryan smiled at her partner, knowing that her wish was entirely fanciful, but hoping that the inevitable problems that they would experience were a long way off.

A few minutes before seven, they drove the short distance to the Recreation and Sports Facility, where the tryout was to be held. "I think I know what sport this is," Jamie said, a confident smile on her sunny face.

"Oh, is that deductive reasoning kicking in?"

"Yep. I reason that women only play two sports at Haas, so I’ve got a pretty darned good idea what today’s sport is." Jamie had carefully attended to Ryan’s choice of attire, and the odd shoes that she wore indicated that they weren’t going for a basketball tryout. "Those funny shoes with the built-up soles don’t look like any I have, so I think I have a pretty good idea."

"You’re much too quick for me to ever pull a fast one," Ryan agreed. "I’m a little nervous about today, to tell you the truth. You heard the coach mention that I haven’t done this in a long while." She looked contemplative for a long moment, and Jamie was just about to step in to reassure her when Ryan mused, "I sure hope I don't have any trouble with the pommel horse. That's my worst event."

"Isn't that in gymnastics?" Jamie asked in a stunned voice.

"Yeah. You don't think my feet are too big for the balance beam do you?" Her blissfully innocent face didn’t prevent her from getting a hard slap to the belly, and she rubbed the spot with a dramatic flair.

"Very funny, Ryan," Jamie growled playfully. "You never tire of setting me up, do ya?"

"No, I can’t imagine getting tired of that," she happily agreed. "You are such a perfect victim—that sincere little face that just wants to believe every word I say is too easy a target to waste."

"I always thought I was missing something, growing up as an only child. Little did I know that I would marry into a whole family of teasers and comedians that would extend my childhood indefinitely."

"Yep. You’ve jumped into the O’Flaherty fountain of youth." Ryan’s smile showed just how happy she was with the chain of events that had led to Jamie’s joining the family.

"You’re only young once, Baby. But you’ve proven that you can be immature forever!" They shared a smile at that, both women silently reflecting on how much fun it was to be immature together.

Coach Placer was waiting as promised. As soon as they caught sight of him, Jamie’s guess was confirmed: Ryan was there to try out for the volleyball team. The coach had set up the net and coerced three other women to attend the early morning workout, none of them looking very happy about the early hour. His two assistant coaches were there as well, but since they were dressed in khaki shorts and Cal golf shirts, they obviously were not planning on playing. He introduced Ryan to his assistants, Ken and Erin, and to the other players, Stacy, Ashley and Anna, and they spent a few minutes warming up by just tossing the ball back and forth, all of them on the same side of the net.

When the coach decided they were sufficiently warmed up, he signaled one of the players to stay on Ryan's side and sent the other two to the opposite side. It was clear that they were going to try to play the two-person game on the big court, even though the large area was an awful lot of ground for two people to cover.

Ryan was wearing an outfit that Jamie was very fond of, and the other players were somewhat similarly dressed. She had on a pair of bright blue Lycra shorts, but they were amazingly short—Jamie guessed that the inseam was no more than two inches. Acres of long, lithe, lean leg were exposed to Jamie’s appreciative gaze, and she decided that she liked volleyball better than soccer without even seeing the ball go over the net. The other players wore similar shorts, but all three sported Tshirts. Ryan had gone for a different look and Jamie was very pleased that she had done so. She wore a print tank top with the blue of her shorts, a bright yellow and white pattern. Even this was not her usual tank—it looked more like a compression top, or even a very long sports bra. It obviously gave her a little extra support since it was so tight, and Jamie reasoned that she would be able to be very active without fear of her bra riding up.