Page 41 of Spectacular Things

The Drawbridge

The bridge isup.

Of course itis.

Mia takes a breath to reset. It’s just an informational interview she intentionally scheduled while Cricket is at training camp. Everything will be fine. She snaps the hair tie on her wrist and reaches for her thermos.

The sudden knock on her passenger-side window scares Mia so badly that she jumps and spills a significant amount of coffee down the front of her blouse.

“Oh shit!” Oliver yells through the glass. “I’m so sorry!”

He opens the door and he’s shirtless and the coffee burning Mia’s skin is just confusing because the hot feels like cold, and the cold feels like hot, and who looks that good without a shirt on in real life?

“Are you okay?” Oliver asks. “I didn’t mean to—sorry, I was on a run, and I spotted your van, but I’m so sorry about—” They both blush as he gestures to her coffee-soaked blouse, the stain spreading across her chest. “Give it to me and I’ll dry-clean it—not now, obviously, but—shit, where are you going? ”

“USM,” Mia says. She can’t believe she’s running this late or that he’s right here, just an arm’s length away.

Ever since their phone call four months ago, Mia has intentionally avoided him.

She stays in the car when picking up or dropping off Cricket at practice.

At matches, she arrives just in time for the first whistle and books it back to the parking lot after the final play.

When Cricket asks why Mia didn’t hang out after the game with the other parents, she says she was editing her UCLA application.

She’s never mentioned Coach, and Cricket has never suspected anything because there isn’t anything. It’s nothing.

“Do you want to sit down?” Mia asks through the passenger-side window, and before she can remove her notebook from the seat, Oliver is next to her and facing forward as they sit idling in the shadow of the lifted drawbridge.

“How are you doing without Cricket this week?” he asks, still breathing heavily from his run. Mia tries not to ogle his stomach, the faint trail of hair below his belly button, the insulin pump clipped to his shorts, the bead of sweat rolling down the side of his neck.

“I could ask you the same thing,” Mia says.

“Our reserve keeper is definitely getting some good exposure and learning some tough lessons,” Oliver says in his professional voice.

His smile makes Mia swallow hard. She’s suddenly aware that she’s envious of the Stallions’ backup goalkeeper, a high school sophomore named Alice with terrible acne and the SATs still looming ahead of her.

But Alice gets to spend time with Oliver.

Mia’s own interactions have been limited to a dozen hey there s and see-ya s yelled from afar.

But even from across a soccer field, Mia has felt the pulse of connection between them, and now, sitting so close to him, it isn’t a faint thrum like it was on the bleachers all summer but the same urgent, almost violent anxiety she experiences while watching Cricket in goal during penalty kicks.

“What are you doing there?” Oliver asks. At Mia’s blank look, he clarifies. “At the University of Southern Maine?”

“I’m not convinced I’ll get into UCLA,” Mia admits. “Or that even if I do, the financial package won’t be”—she pauses, self-consciously—“what it needs to be.”

“I hear that.”

“So I figured I should look into USM,” Mia continues, bolstered by his sympathy. “I could take classes but live at home, still work.”

Oliver nods, considering this strategy. “Cricket would be okay going to California without you?”

“She’d have to be,” Mia says, sounding more defensive than she intended. “Even if it means sitting her down and showing her the numbers in our bank account.”

“Right,” Oliver answers supportively. And then, this alternative reality dawning on him in real time, he folds his hands in his lap and adds, “Interesting.”

The bridge begins to lower, and with it, Mia’s heart sinks because she doesn’t want him to get out of the car. Not yet. Not after so many months of nothing. “Please don’t leave,” she says, surprised by her own impulsiveness.

“Mia,” he says slowly, giving her goosebumps and red cheeks and a restless tongue.

“You’re not my coach,” she argues. “And you’re not going to be Cricket’s coach—”

“I’m hearing things about the Yates Report,” Oliver says. “It won’t officially come out until October, but there have been some leaks already, and it’s disgusting—all the abuse that’s just run rampant through every level of women’s soccer, and I just don’t—I don’t want to be part of the problem.”

“But you’re not part of the problem,” Mia says. The drawbridge security system dings and the sea of red taillights disappears as traffic begins to flow forward. “Don’t you—or am I just—”

“No,” he interrupts, looking over at her. “You’re never just.”

“What?”

“You’re never ‘just’ anything,” he emphasizes. “You’re the opposite of that.”

The car in front of them moves so Mia releases her foot from the brake and Oliver buckles up. Together, they drive off the bridge and into the city of Portland. Mia pulls over on the first available side street and puts the van in park before examining the coffee stain down her front.

“I need to cancel this informational interview,” she says, picking up her phone and rapidly typing an email.

“I’m sorry about the coffee,” Oliver says. “And everything else.”

Mia presses Send and stares through the windshield, thinking of what she’d like to say, what she might say to change his mind without it sounding desperate.

“You’re twenty-two and I’ll be thirty this winter,” Oliver says as if his math proves a point. “That’s a huge age gap even without power dynamics—”

“I’m well aware of our age difference,” Mia snips, agitated.

For months, before and after every Stallions soccer game that she simultaneously dreaded and tried on multiple outfits for, Mia ran the numbers.

They are seven and a half years apart, and still young enough that every year between them feels institutionally significant—collegiate years, and postgrad years, and then the not-so-young adult years.

Mia has tried to add and subtract what she knows to see if she can change the equation, but just as crushes bend logic, they also defy math.

For example, how does one quantify the value of a man who brings extra hats and gloves to winter practices?

Who can take a game so seriously but never himself?

Who believes in grounding and visualization, but also alien conspiracy theories?

Who talks with his hands and smiles with his eyes and, try as he might, cannot for the life of him, despite yoga four times a week, touch his toes?

Who once took the entire team to an arcade in Maryland after their tournament was rained out, won a stuffed animal tiger from the claw crane, named it Carol Burnett, and now keeps Carol in his soccer bag at all times because he swears she’s his good luck charm?

Whose triceps are a triumph among men? Who regularly helps out the high-maintenance Miss Bits and her sociopathic puppy, Trevor?

Who is a card-carrying member of Costco because his players swear Kirkland brand makes the best peanut butter pretzels?

Who speaks to the Stallions about prioritizing joy and promotes tools for boosting mental health?

Who knew Mia’s mother—loved Mia’s mother—and has learned to navigate life without his own parents?

“We are not the same age,” Mia says now, regaining her composure. “But you are not my coach, and you hold no power over me.”

Oliver laughs to himself as he runs a hand through his hair just like he does when the Stallions are down a goal. “But you’ve got power over me,” he says to Mia with those sea-glass green eyes. “I know that sounds like a lame pickup line, but it’s—”

With her seatbelt still fastened, Mia leans over and grabs Oliver’s face with both hands.

She kisses him because she’ll die if she doesn’t.

She kisses him like she’s needed to ever since she watched his mesh sneakers get soaked in the snow on that highway median.

She kisses him until he gives up on his unfinished sentence.

It’s both satisfying and not enough after so many months of want.

“Mia,” Oliver says when she finally pulls back. His eyes are still closed, lips hoping for more.

“Yes?” She likes how her name sounds when he says it, like there has never been a Mia before her, Hamm be damned.

Oliver’s eyes flutter open as he laughs nervously, the tops of his ears prickling pink. He traces her bottom lip with his thumb. “This,” he says dreamily. “Can we just—never stop?”

Over the next five days, while Cricket is away with the National Team, Mia and Oliver engage in their own intense training camp—bonding as teammates and learning to communicate as they become more themselves in each other’s company.

In Mia’s childhood bedroom, they test their stamina in minimal clothing.

During full recovery sessions, they hydrate, refuel, and stretch the limitations of new intimacy.

Mia tells Oliver about the summer Q came to town, and her mother’s impromptu New Year’s Eve polar plunges, and Mia’s discovery in the archival library her first year of college.

She tells him about the magical trip to Paris, and trying to give her mother a budget, and realizing only recently that her childhood felt like an adult partnership with a woman who was still a kid herself.

Oliver confides in Mia about becoming an angry teenager—first when he rebelled against his parents’ evangelical beliefs, and then again when he was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes and they said it was a sign from God.

After they encouraged him to meet with their church’s youth pastor rather than seek medical treatment, Oliver moved out, living at a teammate’s house for the rest of high school before earning a full athletic scholarship for college.

“I literally shipped up to Boston and never told my parents,” Oliver says, twirling one of Mia’s ringlets around his finger, just as her mother used to do.

But the anger followed him to New England, he tells her, and after getting called a hothead and earning enough red cards to put him on team probation, Oliver started therapy.

“Dr. Eiseman has really helped me,” Oliver says.

“And even though I only speak to my parents through birthday cards,” he continues, “at least I’m no longer angry at them. ”

“You still yell a lot,” Mia points out, propping herself up on a pillow.

“I’ll stop now,” Oliver says. “I was just trying to get your attention.”

“By shouting at teenage girls?”

“Encouraging them!” Oliver insists. “And look!” he shouts with self-mockery. “It works!” he bellows over Mia’s laughter. “Don’t you feel encouraged?”

One morning at dawn, Oliver admits he initially resented coaching girls, but now he’ll never go back to the men’s side of the game.

“Girls are just, I don’t know,” he says, searching for his socks and the right words.

“More dynamic?” He then suggests they walk to the bakery so he can try the croissants that Mia claims are the best in the state.

It’s the happiest Mia has felt since her mother died, which seems like enough justification to not tell her sister what’s developed in her absence.

Mia knows from the daily calls and texts she receives from California that Cricket is also thriving.

She’s competing against the best players in the country and having fun doing it.

She is not only outperforming Sloane but also bonding with her, which Mia loves to hear.

What neither of them says out loud is that Sloane is the first friend Cricket has made since November ninth.

And so three thousand miles apart, each Lowe sister flies high on the euphoria of self-discovery. They are sweating out grief. Having endured the worst few years of their lives, they are allowing themselves to revel in the 360-degree bliss of being exactly where they want tobe.