Page 37 of Couple Goals

‘I’ve heard everything I need to hear. I was a fool.’

‘But– but–’ Adriana gapes.

He throws down a twenty pound note on their table. Adriana stands too, confused and disorientated, trying to hand it back to him, mainly to try to get him to stay.

‘But I don’t– Jacob, it’s on the house, and–’

‘If you wanted this to just be a business meeting, then shouldn’t the boss pay?’ he says icily.

He swings his jacket over his broad arms.

‘I really thought you asked me here to… I thought you were struggling with our agreement to stay professional. I thought you had changed your mind about your feelings towards me, and that this was… a real date.’ He shakes his head, tutting to himself. ‘My mistake. I apologise.’

He abruptly strides to the exit.

‘Jacob? Jacob!’

He holds a hand up to her, stopping her in her tracks to follow him. She sits back down and watches him leave. Adriana holds back tears. She can’t believe she doesn’t even have the appetite to finish her brownie.

‘Oh, honey-bun.’ Emily bustles over and puts a protective hand on her shoulder, and eyeing up their half-finished pastries. ‘Lover’s tiff?’

Adriana swallows, shakes her head and sniffs, but knows that it simply looks like she’s in denial. The worst thing is – maybe she is.

Chapter 12Maeve

On Monday morning, Maeve is nauseous with nerves. Under Coach’s suggestions, Kira and Maeve had agreed to do some additional one-on-one alone, before the others join them for training, and Maeve’s been building anxiety about it all weekend. It’s just going to be her and Kira this morning, no coach to lighten the tension between them or force professionalism.

She’s arrived at the facilities early, constantly smoothing her pristine ponytail. She even wore make-up this morning, taking extra care with the mascara she barely ever uses, plucking her eyebrows and nicking her legs when she’d shaved. But it’s stupid that she cares, when, of course, it’s not like they’re going to ever kiss again. It’s not like Kira will even look at her, now that Maeve so thoroughly stated their rivalry after Kira had literallyjusthooked up with her.

‘Oh God,’ Maeve mumbles aloud to herself, her stomach twisting again at the thought of what a mess she’s made, as she approaches the entrance doors of the training facilities.

The worst of it is that she hasn’t even been able to speak to Adriana about it.

This past weekend was the first weekend Maeve and Adriana hadn’t seen each other at least once inages. Months, probably. Usually the only reason they don’t is if one of them is visiting their family or is on holiday, but even then, they’d be texting constantly, Adriana sending photos and Maeve a constant source of listening and calming her ups and downs of emotions. Now it’s Maeve who needs the soothing, but Maeve found herself unable to bring herself to tell Adriana about what happened with Kira.

She tried, several times over the weekend, drafting different texts in her notes app, or her thumb hovering over calling her, or suggesting that they meet up for dinner instead because she did really want to tell her. But then her stomach would twist at the thought of all Adriana’s questions, and her inevitable excitement about the prospect of Maeve and Kira as a ‘thing’ when that felt very much far from the case. Maybe that was what was really stopping Maeve – not the thought of Adriana judging her for hooking up with her new teammate and rival on the pitch, but the liability of Adriana letting slip to the rest of the team in her giddy excitement at the thought of Maeve and Kira getting ‘officially together’.

Despite Adriana professing to not want ‘love’ herself, and that casual is the best and only kind of relationship she ever wants to be in, she always obsesses with her friends’ love lives. It’s always been particularly feral with Maeve, perhaps because it happens so rarely. Look at how Adriana behaved when she had the faintest hint that Kira and Maeve had a flirty energy that day – if she found out she had been right she would probably explode.Adriana wouldn’t be able to stop herself from trying to get the two of them into a relationship, no matter how Maeve might protest that it wasn’t like that, and there would be no faster route to interminable awkwardness between Maeve and Kira.

And God, what if Hoffman found out? Not only would it feel awkward, like a parent discovering sex toys in your drawer, but she would presumably stop encouraging them from having one-on-one training together, and their unprofessionalism could result in not only the captaincy being permanently taken away from Maeve but maybe her being put on the transfer list. Would Coach want to discourage her protegee getting distracted, and think moving Maeve on would be the easy solution?

So Maeve had decided to keep it to herself, just until she had the opportunity to confirm things were settled down between her and Kira. Once things were back to normal (whatever that meant), she could reveal it to Adriana casually, safe in the knowledge it was already over.

But, even though Maeve does believe this is the most sensible thing to do, it still doesn’t feel good to keep something from her best friend. And she doesn’t have anyone else she can confide in.

So now Maeve paces the foyer, sipping and biting her nails to the quick, because Kira is late, and she worries she might not show.

Maybe Kira doesn’t care about it at all. Maybe she’s a player, used to hooking up with strangers and leaving chaos in her wake.Maybe she genuinely has no fear of catching feelings and just sees it as another satisfying thing to do with bodies, like playing football. Maeve wishes she could be like that, care less about these things.

But the doors slide open, and there’s Kira. Her short hair’s messier than ever on top, and as Kira’s amber eyes meet hers she pushes it back from her forehead with a breeziness at odds with Maeve’s tension.

‘Murphy.’ She says coolly.

‘Choksi.’

Maeve and Kira give each other a curt nod, as per their ritual, like nothing else at all happened between them since the last time they were alone together.

‘Good weekend?’ asks Kira.

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