Page 49 of Couple Goals

3.Convince the rest of the team that she is best forcaptain –…?

Maeve had stared at the last one for a while. Shethoughtshe was liked and respected as Captain by the rest of her teammates, but it’s not as if anyone had exactly given her a feedback form. She also worried that her approach of being a solid, safe pair of hands wasn’t exactly the most rallying cry for support. She’d always worried she was most connected to the rest of the team through her friendship with Adriana – the friendship which Maeve knew had been disorientingly wobbly recently.Maeve blamed herself, that hiding her confusing relationship with Kira from Adriana was causing them to drift apart. But it wasn’t that Maeve thinks the rest of the teamdislikeher without being Adriana’s best friend. Maeve doesn’t tend to rub people up the wrong way – unlike cocky, insensitive, stranger Kira.

It had been about 2 a.m. when Maeve had looked at the blinking cursor, and had a brain wave.

4.Convince the rest of the team that Kirais not suitable for captain – possible.

But when she arrives at training, Maeve’s master plan doesn’t get off to a good start.

She hears Adriana laughing at some joke Kira said under her breath, and fumes. Not content with taking her captaincy, was Kira trying to steal away Maeve’s best friend too?

‘Hey,’ Kira claps too hard on Maeve’s shoulder. ‘Didn’t hear from you all weekend. We haven’t organised our next one-on-one session, Murphy. What happened to you being a teacher’s pet?’

Maeve winces. She makes sure only Kira will hear.

‘It’s not like we’d have been training anyway,’ she mutters. But Kira doesn’t even fumble.

‘So, you decided to give up?’ Kira asks carelessly. ‘Thanks for making my job even easier.’

Maeve snaps. She whirls around.

‘Do you have to be such a dickhead?’

Kira blinks in surprise.

‘Woah. I thought I was meant to be the fiery one.’ She laughs.

Maeve grits her teeth. She’s meant to be making Kira seem unlikeable to the team, not being awful herself. But when Maeve herself is always so terrified of not being good enough, Kira’s relentless self-assurance rubs her up the wrong way.

‘You know, I do know of a few good ways to relieve stress,’ Kira stretches her lithe arms over her head, the muscles of her arms flexing.

Maeve catches her golden eyes, and for a moment, all she wants is to say yes. To hook up in their secret shower room. To be able to flirt lightly back, casual, unaffected. If only she could be like that. But Maeve must remember what’smoreimportant in life. She can’t let a confusing crush sabotage her entire career.

Instead, Maeve shakes her head, and spends the rest of the recovery session trying to avoid her.

Coach Fernandez used to give them two days off after a match, but Coach Hoffman says they need to keep up the momentum, and brings them in on the Monday for a ‘light’ session which turns out to be a lot of particularly mind-numbing drills. The team mutter about it to themselves in the breaks,but Maeve tries to push herself, mentally keeping her tally on her pace compared to Kira’s.

It doesn’t help with Maeve’s performance though. Maybe she’s just too tired, or maybe her obsession with monitoring Kira is making her fall more behind. Other names are called out for praise from Coach, including Zuri and Elisa. But praised most of all, is Adriana.

Adriana is glowing on the pitch, her face only falling when it accidentally meets Maeve. Noticing this makes Maeve’s chest ache. But she’ll fix everything with Adriana once she’s got the captaincy. One thing at a time.

It all seemed to make sense to Maeve when she was making that spreadsheet to try to make the team hate Kira, but in reality, she doesn’t know how to make this happen.

Fortunately, fate intervenes. At break, Maeve overhears Milo complaining about how their calves ache from the drills they’ve been doing today.

‘We should have had more recovery time after the match,’ they grumble. ‘I hate these kind of exercises anyway.’

‘Yeah,’ Maeve agrees. ‘Apparently they’re to help Kira.’

‘Why do we all have to do stuff just for Kira?’ says Milo.

‘She’s such a teacher’s pet,’ says Maeve, feeling guilty even as the words are coming out of her mouth.

Milo makes sounds of agreement, and Maeve feels like she’s maybe succeeded. But then Nat glances over.

‘You’ve been having extra training with Coach too though, right? You’re kinda teacher’s pet number two.’

Maeve can’t tell if Nat is saying this jokily or sassily, but it doesn’t feel great.

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