Page 60 of Spectacular Things

When It Rains

Within six months of moving to Illinois, Cricket suffers a roach infestation in her building, tendonitis in her rotator cuff, a losing season, and an increasingly resentful long-distance girlfriend.

Yaz has tried to be supportive of Cricket’s Midwest career move, but the relationship feels as tender as Cricket’s shoulder injury.

By the end of May, the daily wear and tear of disparate schedules and missed FaceTimes has created an undeniable strain between them.

“Do you like it?” Yaz asks, emerging from Cricket’s bathroom modeling a wide-brimmed straw hat and a white one-piece bathing suit only she could pull off.

When Yaz first told Cricket she’d carved out a weeklong trip to St. Thomas with her former college roommates, Cricket burst into tears. In response, Yaz added a two-day stint in Chicago to the front end of her vacation to try to make things right. But now that she’s here, it just feels wrong.

“What do you think?” Yaz delivers a sultry pout over her shoulder meant to lure Cricket off the couch. “Cute or too much?” she fishes again, arching her back so the swimsuit strains to cover her curves.

“I don’t know,” Cricket answers, continuing to look down at her phone.

Yaz arrived this afternoon, and she leaves in twenty-six hours, not that Cricket is keeping track of the minutes (approximately 1,532).

Rain sloshes against the drafty warehouse windows by the bucketful.

Cricket still hasn’t received an invitation to the June National Team Camp, which will be the last one before Teague decides the roster for the World Cup this summer in Brazil.

“Um, hello?” Yaz says. “Eyes up here, staring at my tits, please.”

Cricket forces herself to ogle her girlfriend, who does, in fact, have perfect breasts, but then she checks her phone again to make sure she didn’t somehow put it on silent or airplane mode because Teague should have called by now.

“Are you going to be like this the whole time I’m here?” Yaz asks.

“You mean the whole time until tomorrow?”

Yaz walks over and stands in front of the TV in a starfish pose, the floppy brim of her straw hat hiding her eyes. She is adorable and sexy and abandoning Cricket for the Caribbean.

“Come on,” Cricket says, exasperated. “I’m trying to watch this.”

Yaz pushes up the brim of her hat, sticks out her chin. “Since when did you care about baseball?”

“Since that ridiculous hat.”

“Should I just leave?” Yaz asks, throwing her arms up to signal the official start to this fight. “Because not to sound like an asshole, but I don’t know why I used up my last two sick days to be here if you’re just going to sit around, hate-watching ESPN.”

Cricket checks her phone yet again, which is fully charged with the ringer on top volume and airplane mode off. Despite having given up everything to be alone in Chicago, she’s still not good enough for the National Team.

“I’m serious,” Yaz says, her voice its own ultimatum. “Why am I even here if you’re going to be like this?”

“Like what?” Cricket asks.

“Like this!”

Yaz throws her hat on the floor and paces in front of the windows, but when she glances over at Cricket, she stops.

Their fate is written all over Cricket’s face, and so Yaz walks toward her and perches on the arm of the couch, wearing an expression that is no longer belligerent so much as defeated.

“I’m just going to say what we’re both thinking. ”

“Don’t.”

“Let’s take some space,” Yaz forges on. “Then you can figure out what’s important to you, because it definitely doesn’t seem like I’m even in the running anymore.”

Cricket reaches for Yaz, but when their hands touch, she only feels inevitable disappointment.

“I’d rather quit now and keep loving you,” Yaz says quietly.

Outside, the rain pounds harder, and Cricket wants to jump through the window rather than live through this moment.

The thought of goodbye seems impossible, but maybe one goodbye is better than all the ones they’d have to suffer through in the future.

They don’t sleep. They try to talk but mostly kiss with the salt of each other’s tears on their tongues. In the morning, Yaz books an earlier flight and leaves Cricket’s apartment red-eyed and ragged, a single woman on her way to starting over in St. Thomas.

Cricket doesn’t move from her bed. She has the day off from soccer, which only makes things worse.

A whole day to drown alone in self-pity.

At some point, she googles “Saddest Movies of All Time” and sets to work with her laptop under the covers.

She’s halfway through a film about star-crossed cowboys when her phone rings.

It’s her.

“Hi there, Cricket,” she says with seasoned casualness.

The head coach of the U.S. Women’s National Team, Teague Rollins, has earned the respect of her players.

With short gray hair and wire-rimmed glasses, she presents like a college professor but runs camp like a four-star general.

Teague is clearheaded, calm, and positively cutthroat.

“So there’s no good way of saying it,” Teague says. “We’re not taking you this time.”

No June training camp.

No World Cup this summer.

Cricket has tried to prepare herself for the possibility, but she didn’t actually believe it would happen. Her trajectory has been up, up, and up, but Teague just shot her out of the sky like a hapless pheasant. In a World Cup year. After so many almosts.

“Are you sure?” Cricket hears herself say in a voice so threadbare that she envisions Teague wincing at her weakness.

A goalkeeper must remain poised, even when she’s down.

“Sorry, I didn’t, sorry—” Cricket blathers, and then, in a scramble to recover for her blunder she adds, “I mean, thank you for the opportunity.”

“It was a difficult decision,” Teague says. “But it’s the right decision for right now.” Her curt tone seems more appropriate for announcing a drone strike than a camp cut. Then again, the news that Cricket isn’t going to the World Cup does indeed feel like a missile exploding her life.

“Get in your days,” Teague says. “I’ll be checking in. Keep working.”

It takes thirty seconds on social media to find out who Teague deems more promising—Sloane, of course, who has been starting for the National Team ever since Alyssa announced her retirement, along with Emma and Des.

Her phone rings again.

“You’re better than Emma,” Sloane says. “And it’s actually insulting to me that they’re bringing Des.

” Cricket can hear the angry smack of Sloane’s gum and imagines her chewing with her mouth open.

She is the most credible and least enjoyable person to hear from at this moment.

“I’m pissed—for your sake, obviously, but also for me,” Sloane continues, barely coming up for air.

“They don’t work like we do—not because they don’t want to, but unlike us, they just don’t have that fourth gear, or the consistency, you know? Are you listening?”

“Yeah.”

“Get it together,” Sloane says. “This is only the beginning of our careers.”

“Maybe,” Cricket says. “For you.”

“Can you stop feeling sorry for yourself? Please? I’m going to need you.”

“I don’t exist to be your ego boost,” Cricket snaps.

Sloane responds with more gum smacking. “Okay, so, never in my life have you boosted my ego,” she says with contempt. “Which is fine, because that’s not why I need you.”

Sloane waits for Cricket to ask, but she doesn’t.

“I need you because we make each other better and that’s the whole fucking point, so get off your pity potty and start training like your life depends on it. Okay?”

“You realize this means I’m not going to the World Cup,” Cricket feels the need to point out. “I’m not going to Brazil.”

“Yes,” Sloane concedes. “So do you want to just quit? Or do you want to make sure you’re at the Olympics in L.A. next year?”