Page 25 of Try Hard

Eve

M um laughed when she found me sitting on the living room floor, sweats on over my kit for the match, and cradling Hercules like he was a giant baby.

“You’re spoiling him again,” she said, maneuvering around us to sit on the sofa with her mug of tea.

“He deserves it, don’t you, Herc?” I asked before grinning up at her. “I’m only here occasionally, so he’ll be fine.”

She studied me. “You’re ready early.”

“It’s a long ride,” I said, teasingly noncommittal.

“I’m sure it will be with you driving about five miles an hour.”

I laughed. “I wouldn’t do that.”

“Because you’d get bored?”

“Well, probably, honestly, but that’s not the reason.”

“Driving so far below the speed limit would put you in danger.” She paused to look at me over her tea. “Which would put Fia in danger.”

“Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner! Come on down and claim your prize.”

“What does she see in you?” she laughed.

“Hell if I know.”

“Hey,” Mum said instantly, frowning deeply. “I was kidding. I can think of a million things she must see in you.”

“Aside from the fact that she’s a million times better than me, I can’t think of one, but I’ll take whatever it is. Of course, I don’t know that she’s interested, just that she gives me the time of day.”

Mum scowled at me and even Herc bopped me with his paw, both of them effectively conveying that they didn’t agree with my take on things.

“Okay, okay,” I said, holding my hands in the air and earning another wallop and an attempted lick to the face from Herc that I managed to gracefully avoid. “I know I have my own qualities. I’m just saying I like hers better.”

“Have you told her that this time?”

“Ah. Nope.” I ran my hands through Herc’s soft fur, taking comfort from it.

“Eve,” Mum said, not chastising, not disappointed, just… gutted for me. “From what I know of her, Fia doesn’t give you the time of day if she doesn’t really like you.”

I shrugged one shoulder. “She’s not outgoing, sure, but she cares about things, you know? She cares about people even if she keeps them at a distance.”

“Doesn’t seem like she’s keeping you at a distance. It seems like she’s going to watch rugby for you.”

“Yeah, well, she watched planes for her dad, so I don’t know if that means anything.”

Mum shook her head, laughing into her tea as she blew on it to cool it. “I’m pretty sure she likes her dad, Eve. Not the same way she likes you, but still, that’s actually a good sign.”

“Maybe.” I considered her for a moment, thinking over every second with Ophelia and how excited I was to go pick her up—so excited I’d gotten ready a whole hour early. “How did you know, with Terrance? That he liked you, I mean.”

“Oh, that was easy. The man just told me. Walked right over and gave a whole speech about how he’d never forgive himself if we didn’t cross paths again and he hadn’t taken the chance to tell me he thought I had the most beautiful laugh in the world and desperately wanted to get to know me better.”

“Damn. Terrance is smooth,” I laughed, impressed.

“He is indeed. Perhaps you should take a leaf out of his book.”

I shot her a look. “I don’t think it will work the same way if I say that to Fia, Mum. I already know she’s got the world’s best laugh, and I know the woman behind it.”

“You know what I mean. You’re just being stubborn to try to protect yourself, but you don’t need to. Stay soft, darling. Let Fia see those parts of you.”

I snuggled Herc tighter again. The last thing I needed was to be late picking Ophelia up because I had a breakdown on the living room floor over how perfect she was.

Mum sighed sympathetically. “I know you’ve historically not wanted to talk about it, but you and I both know that Ophelia Pendrick is the benchmark you’ve held everyone you’ve ever dated to, constantly waiting for it to feel like it did when you wanted her.”

“Yes, well, that was hardly fair to them or her. It wasn’t like we’d dated or been particularly close. Sure, I knew her well enough, but it’s like holding people to a ghost, isn’t it?”

“You were young and naive, and holding onto your first experience of love. We’ve all been there.”

I eyed her. When Soph and I had been younger, she and Dad had worked hard to keep us out of their problems. We’d grown up thinking we had the best, happiest parents in the world.

When the cracks started to show, and we’d been adults, they’d both still been reluctant to share much.

They were desperate to keep us out of their relationship problems. Of course, we’d picked up more, understood more as adults, but they both respected each other too much to do or say anything that might tarnish our view of the other parent.

“Was it like that meeting Terrance?” I asked her, trying to convey that I was ready to hear the answer, that it wouldn’t change my impression of her or Dad.

She considered me for a long time before she tilted her head to the side.

“A little. More that it felt like I was cheating on your dad. We’d been together for so long and that life was all I knew.

Every time Terrance showed me the kind of love I’d been wanting, I felt guilty.

Of course, that’s all in the past now, but feelings are complicated. ”

I nodded, suddenly looking through her as I thought about Ophelia and the version of her I’d spent my twenties dreaming of, comparing everyone I met to. “I like Fia in real life even more than I liked the memory of her.”

“Then you’re on the right track. Sure, you’d built up a version of her in your head, but, so long as you’re not holding her to that version, you’ll be okay.”

“Yeah…”

The first woman I’d dated at uni—someone I’d met at the gym—had called me emotionally unavailable.

She’d asked over and over again if I’d left a girlfriend back home or something.

I hadn’t realised what was going on until she’d pointed it out.

It felt terrible, but I’d finally put the pieces together and realised I’d been waiting for Ophelia to walk through the door.

I’d wanted someone who made me feel the way she did when she looked at me.

Even then, I’d known it was foolish, and, now, I knew that teenage emotions and first crushes and their associated hormones had impacted all of that, but, knowing it was a thing hadn’t meant it went away.

So I never dated seriously. It wasn’t hard.

I was busy, on the road, and making a name for myself, and, in truth, I hadn’t been ready to settle down.

The thoughts of doing so had only kicked in over the last year or so.

I’d been late to the party, but I’d made it in my own time.

And now, here was Ophelia again, someone I wanted to come home to.

I looked back at Mum, thinking of the time I’d fallen apart on the phone to her, crying from my tiny room in halls about how some girl with red hair had asked me out but she wasn’t Ophelia.

I’d talked about Ophelia before that; Soph had talked about her constantly.

I’d never admitted to having feelings for her, though.

And I’d begged my mum not to tell Dad or Soph.

Mum shook her head. “I never told anyone,” she said, reading my mind.

“Your dad would have forgotten to keep it a secret and Sophie… I love her, but she’d have made some crude joke about picturing Fia while you slept with someone else or something.

” She shuddered, clearly not wanting to hear her daughter make such a joke or think about her child in bed with someone.

I laughed. “Actually, it turns out, she might not.”

She watched me, seeing through the forced levity of my statement. “Explain.”

“Oof. Are you sure you want me to?”

“There’s really nothing you girls can say that will shock me anymore, Eve. I’ve been around the block. And you should hear some of the things my friends come out with. Book club has never looked so saucy.”

I couldn’t help laughing. Herc shook from the force of it, his head lolling about happily. “Noted.”

“Hm. Don’t let it get out, though. Irene, at least, is trying to maintain the image of being respectable.”

I shook my head. Irene was one of the most uptight women Mum knew. Perhaps that was why she needed such an outlet. “I don’t think your youngest daughter was going for a similar level of respectability when she told me she… thought about Ophelia.”

Despite the distaste on her face from fully catching my drift, Mum didn’t miss the way I defaulted to Ophelia’s whole name. I’d let my guard down in my jealousy.

Thankfully, she didn’t comment on it.

“Perhaps we should give Fia a trophy of some kind,” she suggested. “I don’t think the two of you have ever fancied the same woman before.”

“Fia wouldn’t want that trophy.”

Mum laughed. “Smart woman. But, let me guess, now, you’re getting all up in your head, worrying about being with her when Sophie liked her too.”

“ Likes , maybe? When we ran into her at Dad’s she told Ophelia she looked incredible.” Which she did, but that was beside the point.

“I’m sure you loved that,” she muttered darkly, her voice half hidden in a sip of tea.

I decided to rise above and ignore the comment. “So, yeah, it’s a little complicated, to say the least.”

“Trying to figure out that the woman you like likes you too while desperately hoping Sophie doesn’t want her?”

“Ugh.” I pressed my face into the top of Herc’s head. “I guess? It feels like I’m messing things up for Soph if I’m into Ophelia.”

“You are into her.”

“Thank you,” I deadpanned.

“You’re welcome,” she shot back with a smirk.

Where had my sweet, sympathetic mum gone? As if I hadn’t known this side of her all my life.

“But, what if Ophelia’s into Soph? I wouldn’t want to get in the way.”

“Fia was Sophie’s mentor,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t think she ever once entertained the idea of being with her.”

“Well, she’s not her mentor now.”

“True, but Sophie’s not the one she’s spending most of her time with. And it’s not like Sophie is difficult to find. You don’t have to know Fia well to know she’s a go-getter. If she wanted to see Sophie, she would.”

I chewed my lip, Herc’s soft scent filling my nose.

I didn’t know if that was true in interpersonal relationships but, for everything else, it was.

Ophelia knew what she wanted and she worked hard for it, never letting it go.

She’d always been like that. So focused and dedicated.

It was one of the reasons I’d been right when I told her our teachers loved having her in class.

“Besides,” Mum said, her voice a little more aloof, “it’s not like Sophie is hurting for prospects.”

“And I am?” I laughed.

She looked at me with narrowed eyes. “I think you’re hurting even less than she is, but you don’t want them. You want Fia.”

“Right,” I sighed. “Just got to hope she wants me too.”

“She’s going to watch rugby for you. The last time I saw her at one of your games, she seemed pretty smitten to me.”

I blinked rapidly, my brain spinning. “What? When did you see her at a game?”

Mum smiled in that mercurial way she sometimes did that told me she’d been keeping something from me for a long time.

“One of your last matches in year thirteen, a couple of months before you headed off to university. Mr. Albenoch was chatting to us beforehand and Fia walked by with a friend. He stopped her and introduced us briefly because she was Sophie’s peer mentor.

Embarrassed the poor girl by pointing out how much everyone would miss her and how much she’d helped Sophie. ”

“So… you just watched her instead of my match?” I asked, feeling dizzy.

I hadn’t known Ophelia attended any of the games.

I’d seen her out in the yard sometimes in the mornings, loosely observing practice as she chatted with her friends and drank her mint hot chocolate, but I hadn’t thought she’d been interested.

The fact that she watched me play was… revolutionary.

Mum laughed, clearly amused by the world-changing revelation I was experiencing. “No, I watched the game, but she was sitting in my line of sight—kind of—and I noticed how rapt her attention was when you were on the pitch.”

“And you never told me that?”

“I didn’t know it was relevant at the time,” she laughed, apparently unclear on just how vital that piece of information had been.

“I just thought she was one of your first smitten fans. It was cute. I remember knowing that day that your time was coming, that the stands would one day be filled with people swooning over you exactly the way she was. And I was right.”

I let out a strangled breath. The latter part was sweet, and I could tell how much that moment had meant to her, how much she’d believed in me, even back then—hell, she’d been believing in me my whole life, no matter how many people told her women’s sports weren’t a career, or how I’d never get anywhere real with it, that she should have put me in ballet instead. But she’d always believed.

That, however, did not detract from the fact that she’d known Ophelia was there and, apparently, she’d been watching me like she was… smitten ?

“Why didn’t you tell me when I called you crying about having missed my shot with her?” I asked, a little outraged.

She gave me a doubtful look. “How on earth would that have helped? You were distraught over the poor girl. Pointing out that you really had missed your shot because she’d had a little crush on you too wouldn’t have been productive.”

I froze, my mouth open to reply, when I realised she was right.

I hadn’t had an easy way to contact Ophelia then.

It would have been achievable but it would have come off as creepy and desperate.

And we’d both moved on from Eddlesworth with our lives.

I’d assumed she was happy and thriving at uni.

She hadn’t needed to hear from some random girl from her secondary school.

“Argh,” I whined. “I cannot believe this.”

“Well,” Mum said, sounding more than a little smug, “the good news is that, now, you have another shot. So, stop worrying about whether Sophie wants her, get up off your arse, and go get your girl.”

I laughed, finally releasing Hercu as I fell to the floor, my arms over my face so he couldn’t lick me in demand for more snuggles. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”

“I’m telling you now.” She coughed. “So, don’t be late. It makes a bad impression, even when the woman is already smitten.”