Page 48 of Couple Goals

There’s a cheer from the room, various levels of enthusiasm or groaning based on the player’s usual willingness to dance to techno, but Adriana knows from experience that they’ll be there, especially if they win next weekend’s game as she hopes they will.

‘Give me your number,’ Adriana holds out her phone to Kira. ‘Oh my God, are you on the Tigresses’ group chat yet? I’m so sorry, that’s my bad, I totally forgot.’

‘No stress,’ Kira shrugs, handing it over for Adriana to type her number in. Adriana is about to add Maeve when she remembers about Kira and Maeve’s weird vibe and hesitates.Maybe she should talk to Maeve about it before she puts her on the group chat, in case Maeve doesn’t want to be pressured into coming? But maybe things have changed between them? They need to get along better stat – it’s the start of a long season and there’s no space to have tension between teammates.

‘How’s Maeve this morning?’ Adriana asks, trying to sound casual, as she types. ‘Is she showering in her secret chamber or something?’

Kira blinks rapidly. ‘I was going to ask you the same. I thought she’d have taken any chance to be training more.’

‘Oh, I assumed she was training with you.’

‘Nope… we haven’t arranged our next one yet.’

Kira coughs and looks a bit shifty.

Adriana can’t put her finger on it. Why would Kira be worried about Maeve? Maybe it’s just that Kira feels awkward about how the captaincy was handled, especially if she also wants to be closer to the rest of the team.

‘I guess she’s mad with me about the captain thing,’ Kira shrugs. ‘Fair enough I guess. But I– It’s not like it’s up to me– not like I would, what, say at the beginning of the match, oh, no thanks Serena, I’m actually just going to let this other woman be Captain because she and I are–’

Kira clenches her jaw.

Adriana is about to ask more, when she sees across the room the door open and Maeve come through. She looks like… absolute hell. Her hair is wispily falling out of her usually pristine ponytail, and she’s out of breath like she ran the whole way here,which is crazy, because often shedoesrun the whole way from her nearby flat and doesn’t skip a beat.

At the sight of Adriana and Kira stood so close and Adriana holding Kira’s phone, Maeve puts her stuff in a locker as far away from the two of them as she can. Despite trying to make things better, yet again Adriana feels like she’s made them worse.

Maeve throws her stuff into the locker, then slams it shut and heads out.

‘Jesus Christ!’ says Milo. ‘Why does everyone have a vendetta against lockers this morning?’

Chapter 16Maeve

After Maeve’s mum had left last night, Maeve had stayed rigid and still on her kitchen chair staring into space, her mother’s words echoing in her mind and feeling their heaviness sinking deep in her stomach.

Then she got to work, determined to prove herself. She’d made herself a coffee from her machine even though she knew it was a bad idea to have caffeine at that late hour.

Kira must have been plotting with Coach behind Maeve’s back, she decided. She must have said or done something to prompt getting the captaincy yesterday before the game and Maeve needed to emulate that killer instinct to win it back.

She had sat at her small, dusty desk, the office chair squeaking from under-use with her double espresso and opened up a blank spreadsheet on her laptop. She needed some way to feel aware of and in control of how she is being ranked next to Kira. She knew Coach Hoffman was always recording their stats, so maybe Maeve should be doing the same. If she monitored her performance against Kira’s, she could see where she needs to improve to get that captaincy.

She had inputted any data she could remember from hers and Kira’s training, all the goals scored by Kira or saved by Maeve, times one of them was faster or slower in drills, and times they have acted as captain. She could remember it all fluently, like she’d been revising for this exam without realising it.

It didn’t help that each time she added a column for the day of the training, she’d had vivid flashbacks to what she and Kira had done during their one-on-ones. She remembered Kira’s hands, her legs, her neck, her sweat, her mouth, her tongue. She could have had a much better evening writing a chart of all the ways they had touched each other, the unexpected and terrifying moments of closeness she had felt, in those brief, hot hookups.

Maeve had felt herself getting distracted and annoyingly turned on, then rallied herself back to her task.

She didn’t need to have any fancy formulas to see that, as far as the stats are concerned, Kira was in the lead. Way in the lead. If only she’d had more of a chance to prove herself in their first fixture, though she knew she should have been pleased that her opponents barely made it past the midfield and never really threatened goal.

Flashes of Kira celebrating on the pitch, and Kira kneeling before her, and Kira shaking hands with the other team’s captain, and Kira taking Maeve’s own hand in hers, Maeve’s fingers in Kira’s mouth raced through her mind.

Maeve had put her head in her hands. It felt like there wasn’t a way out. Kira was going to win, and Maeve was going to fail, and everything Maeve had worked so hard for for her whole career was going to fail.If she wasn’t the best in the team, then she wouldn’t be captain, let alone having a chance of getting promoted with the Tigresses, or a WSL club coming in for her. What if she has already peaked? What would her mum say then?

Then the speech that Jacob Astor had made floated back into Maeve’s mind. Being a captain wasn’t just about performance on the pitch. He’d said that he trusted Coach, so it was going to be more about whosherecommended than anything else – that was going to be hard to undo when Kira was so obviously Hoffman’s favourite, built up from years of Kira being her protegee and working with her at their previous club. But Jacob had also said the captain would have additional responsibilities. Well, she was proving she was more than willing to do anything, if only Coach seemed to care about her being more on time for training than Kira. And lastly, the team would have to vote on their agreement.

Maeve typed out three possible modes of attack:

1.Outplay Kira – unlikely

2.Convince Coach that Maeve is a better captain thanKira –unlikely

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