Page 12

Maeve showers in water so hot it scalds her.

The only person she has told about this locker room on the second floor is Adriana, which she slightly regretted at first, but thankfully her friend understood that it’s important to Maeve to have her own space sometimes.

Adriana hasn’t shared it with anyone else, or even followed her here before.

Maeve’s safe, for a short time, alone with her thoughts.

She aims the boiling water at the aching muscles in her shoulders, her back, her neck. She still keeps replaying her humiliation, Coach Hoffman telling her to go and cool off. Kira smirking.

She pumps some of the provided shampoo through her hair, and remembers her mum, when she was only a child, young enough even that she hadn’t started playing competitive football yet, washing her hair in the sink.

The smell of the rose Herbal Essences bottle that seemed to last for years.

It had been a rare moment of physical contact between them.

Maeve couldn’t relax properly, even then.

Maeve remembered noticing her mother’s fingers with their nails bitten down to the quick.

It was the one thing her strict mother couldn’t really tell Maeve off about, since biting her nails was a habit she had been unable to control in herself.

Later, when Maeve’s mum moved her whole legal practice with her to Manchester to be closer to Maeve’s football academy, her mum started getting manicures again, long fake nails, covering the bitten scraggles underneath with a shiny perfect layer.

Maeve jumps at a sound. The cubicle is so steamy now that she wouldn’t see someone unless they literally came into the shower with her.

Her mind leaps wildly into the image of Kira doing just that.

In her imagination, for some reason, Kira’s still in her sports kit when she walks into the shower, like she won’t even let herself picture her naked body, that would be too far.

She remembers the way Kira had looked up at her when Maeve had landed on top of her on the pitch.

The foul that had got her punished by Coach.

This brings Maeve suddenly back to reality. What is she doing ? Fantasising about her rival, who goaded her, and who is likely going to steal her captaincy too.

Maeve’s been in here for too long now, she’s starting to feel faint.

Maeve turns the shower suddenly off but stands in the quiet steam for a moment, avoiding the reality of having to leave the privacy of this room.

She rests her head against the tiles of the shower.

Should she go and apologise to Coach? She cringes.

Coach probably wouldn’t respect that. Should she speak to Adriana?

The thought of admitting she was jealous over her quickly formed bond with Kira makes her feel pathetic.

She even wonders if she should apologise to Kira?

It would be an excuse to see her… but no, it was her fault she was in this mess in the first place!

Apologising to her would just make her smug, and, even though Maeve has only known Kira for one day, she can’t imagine her accepting an apology gracefully. She’d just rub it in.

She sighs. One thing at a time. One foot in front of the other. First, just try to leave the shower.

She wraps a towel around her body, and turns the corner of the showers back into the changing room.

She nearly jumps out of her skin.

There, sat with her back to the shower room, is Kira.

Maeve considers stepping backwards back into the shower, but Kira turns round to face her.

‘Hey,’ Kira says casually, as if Maeve being in a towel in her presence is completely normal. ‘I came to check if you’re okay.’

For once, Kira isn’t smug, she isn’t cocky, she seems to be just genuinely concerned.

Maeve’s whole body is hot and red from the shower, and now from this. This confusing, infuriating woman. She feels strangely aware of her wet hair, hanging loosely down to her shoulders, making her feel even more naked somehow.

All she can manage to stutter is, ‘I… Why?’

‘Well,’ says Kira. ‘You were holding your wrist when you left the pitch, and I suspected you might have grazed your arm, but I know you didn’t go towards the medics so–’ Kira holds up a first aid kit and a bag of ice. ‘I brought you some stuff in case you wanted to do it yourself.’

Maeve is probably gaping like a fish, she can’t help it. She can’t compute. Why is Kira being… nice to her?

‘You seemed like when Coach told you to cool off it really got to you so, I dunno, I just guessed you might be beating yourself up about it, or something else stupid.’

‘I– are you calling me stupid ?’

‘Yeah. Stupid,’ says Kira, neutrally. ‘Because you were defending really well, and Serena was really impressed.’

Kira looks right back for a moment, her expression unreadable.

‘Murphy, I…’ Kira pauses. ‘Do you want to put some clothes on?’

Maeve’s body heats again, and she’s not sure if it’s in shame or in pleasure.

‘Right. Right. Yes, absolutely–’

‘I mean, only if you want to– I just thought you– I mean, if you want to stay in your towel that’s fine by–, I just, it’s not–’

Maeve gestures to the bench next to Kira, feeling like there’s a force field that she couldn’t go too close to her herself.

‘My clothes are just–’

Kira hands her the neat pile of Maeve’s folded fresh kit. With one hand Maeve clutches her towel closed as if her life depends on it, and with her other reaches over for the pile, her hand grazing Kira’s.

Maeve feels supremely awkward, wishing she could unaffectedly strip and dry and put her clothes on like she does with the other players in her team.

There was something about training daily with her team which had made it all so completely asexual, just practical unclothed bodies, a different thing entirely from a naked body in a bedroom.

In Kira’s presence, her unclothed body suddenly felt very, very much like a naked body in a bedroom.

It’s like she’s thirteen again, puberty hitting, and suddenly scared to change in front of her friends, doing elaborate tricks with hoodies and towels to avoid anyone seeing anything they might judge her for.

If she did see her body… would Kira like her body the way Maeve likes Kira’s?

Kira has the sense to look tactfully away, to the back corner of the changing room.

‘It’s okay, you know, losing your head in the heat of a game,’ Kira says, her back still turned to her. ‘Even in a match. Getting a card isn’t always a bad thing. I’ve racked up so many I could start my own gift shop.’

Maeve barks with laughter, completely caught off guard by this joke.

Maeve quickly pulls on her pants, her sports bra, her t-shirt, and then, feeling safer now, her trousers.

‘Serena respected it, today,’ Kira carries on. ‘She liked seeing you have the ability to be aggressive. And it was just unfortunate. It wasn’t in your control that we fell like… that.’

Maeve is pulling her hoodie on, lost in her own thoughts but she thinks she hears Kira say, ‘Not that I was complaining.’ But she must be wrong.

She takes a deep breath, and faces Kira’s back – her firm shoulders and the sharply cut short hairs at the nape of her neck.

Maeve wonders what it would feel like to the touch, and her fingers tingle as she imagines running her fingers through that bristle.

‘You can– You can turn around now,’ Maeve mumbles awkwardly, feeling like a woman showing her prom dress to her date. She feels aware of her hair still loosely round her shoulders, making her hood a little damp round her neck.

Kira looks back, smiles ever so slightly. Then she seems to remember something.

‘Ah,’ she says, and picks up the first aid kit. She comes towards her, gesturing at her arm. Maeve’s wound from earlier is already bleeding through again, slightly staining.

‘Oh,’ says Maeve. Since Kira’s appearance, she had not been aware of the pain at all.

She rolls up her sleeve to see that her graze has actually started bleeding, and has in fact stained her hoodie.

As she looks at the blood, it starts stinging like hell.

It’s a surface-level wound, but one of those broad grazes which bleeds like a bitch.

The side of her forearm has been scraped away, whether by the ground or Kira’s boot.

‘Ouch,’ whistles Kira, in the knowing tone of someone used to getting their own cuts and grazes.

And indeed, as Maeve looks now at Kira’s knees and legs, bare under her shorts, she can see hers are covered in a patchwork of new and old cuts, scars, and bruises; the proof of someone unafraid to throw herself around for the good of the game.

Kira reaches towards Maeve’s arm, and, in order to study the wound, unexpectedly lays her hand around Maeve’s hand.

A jolt races up all through her. Maeve’s cheeks flare. She twitches her arm away and reaches towards the first aid kit.

‘Oh, I can– I can do it myself.’

‘I know you can,’ says Kira, her warm hand reaching gently again for Maeve’s arm. ‘But I think it’ll be easier if I help you. Please can I?’

Maeve feels disarmed. She’s so unused to someone trying to help her. Normally they take her independence at face value and if anything she’s the one helping others as club captain. It’s only usually Adriana who insists on helping her even when Maeve pretends she’s fine.

Maeve feels incredibly vulnerable. But it’s not a bad kind of vulnerable. In fact, it feels kind of… nice?

Quietly, Kira carefully applies disinfectant to her arm. Maeve tries to hide her flinches, and Kira keeps on, unwrapping the bandage from its packet, wrapping it smoothly round.

‘Coach isn’t going to hold it against you,’ Kira reassures her. ‘That’s not the kind of thing she holds records about.’

‘But I’ll know. It’s on my own record,’ says Maeve quietly.