Page 44 of Try Hard
Or maybe it was just being away from a large crowd. Maybe both.
“And now your mum has Terrance?”
I grinned. “Yeah. He’s a good one. He’d like you.”
She laughed. “Are you sure about that?”
“Very. He’s an easy-going guy, likes people. He knows I like you, so he’d like you too.” I paused. “And that Soph likes you.”
“Sophie doesn’t know me.”
My heart leapt at the idea that maybe that meant I did. At least a little. “I don’t know, you two spent a lot of time together.”
“Yeah, twenty years ago. And I was her peer mentor. It’s not like we were just hanging out.”
“Oh?”
She glanced my way again, probably from the oddly strangled tone in my voice that even one, solitary word couldn’t hide. “Yeah. I mean, I liked her and we got along, but it was, by design, a fairly one-sided dynamic. Those mentoring relationships aren’t really about the mentor, you know? You’ve done mentoring stuff with kids, you know.”
I couldn’t stop the massive grin that spread across my face. “You really have been keeping up with me.”
“Oh, my god,” she complained, but she didn’t deny it.
I laughed, playing with her phone even though I was no longer looking at it. “I think that was a little different. I was an adult when that happened. You were Soph’speer.”
“I’ve been told I can be exacting. Guess it makes sense you can too.”
“How so?” I asked, studying her with narrowed eyes.
“Because I don’t think you get to the level of success you achieved without being a little exacting.”
“Oh.” My heart thumped harder in my chest. Just like it did every time she complimented me. Some of her compliments were more obvious than others—like when I’d almost exploded at her saying critics were wrong about my body—but every time, the fact that she had anything flattering to say felt like the best thing ever. “Thank you.”
She laughed again. “You’re surprised people think you work hard and pay attention to detail? You think everyone is just winning that many trophies—orOlympic medals?”
“Ah,” I said, trying to sound rueful as I choked back a laugh, “but it’s not gold, is it? Could be better.”
“Don’t even try that,” she replied, almost stern. “I’ve seen multiple interviews with you where you were very clear on how amazing winninganymedal was.”
I couldn’t hold my laughter back. “Yeah, okay, you got me.”
She sent me a knowing, victorious look, and I couldn’t help thinking, again, just how beautiful she was. The fact that I frequently got hit on clearly bothered her, but it baffled me that she wasn’t dealing with the same thing. People should have been throwing themselves at her. It was easy to understand the motivations of someone like Sammy when she wasn’t also throwing herself at Ophelia like she should have been.
“Is the…” She trailed off, faltering. It was unusual from her and it caused my brow to furrow. “Was the divorce the reason you came home?”
“Oh.” That was easy to answer. “No, not really. I mean, it ended up being good timing, at least from that perspective, butno. I’d taken a hit in a game and ended up with a petty rough concussion. The latest in a long line of injuries.”
She winced like she was experiencing them herself and I wondered if she’d seen any of them, if she’d ever seen me play.
“I’m okay,” I promised. “But, with that one, my doctors ended up having some pretty serious conversations with me, with each other, with the team… At the end of the day, I didn’t want to lose everything, you know? Retiring was hard, but it was better than the alternative.”
She looked emotional as she nodded, like she understood what it had taken for me to give professional rugby up. Some people thought it was silly to be so upset about a game, but not her. Not Ophelia.
“Do you regret stopping?” she asked.
I smirked. “Well, I play in a community team now, just for fun. So, while I don’t regret the decision I made, I guess I couldn’t quite give it up entirely.”
“What about injuries?”
