CHAPTER 13

Aspen felt like one of those nosy neighbors her mother had always talked about. In her parents’ now-old neighborhood, there had been Ruthie and Betsy, the two old biddies, as her mother had referred to them, who had sat on one of their front porches, sipping iced tea or lemonade, depending on the day, and gossiping to one another for hours. They’d talk to the dog walkers and the people with baby strollers who moved by the porch to get their gossip, but at times, they could also be seen peering out through their blinds and watching the events of the neighborhood unfold. They’d nearly outed Aspen to her parents accidentally years ago when they’d seen Aspen and another girl in her car after a date. Aspen hadn’t come out yet. She’d still been dealing with understanding the feelings she’d had for girls and not for the boys at school, and the biddies had struck up a conversation with Aspen’s mom one day when she’d been taking groceries inside. Luckily, Aspen had been walking back out to grab more bags and had heard the start of their conversation. She’d managed to get them to change the subject, and the women had nodded their silent understanding.

Aspen worried she was now becoming one of those biddies because she’d been watching her front window all day on and off, waiting for Kendra to pull up in a car, getting back from her work trip. She wasn’t sure why it was so important for her to know that Kendra was home, but it was, so after she’d practiced and done her workout for the day, she’d rolled up her blinds, glued herself to her couch, and pretended like she was just there to watch some TV while in reality, she was there to watch the cars go by, looking for one that would stop next door.

Eventually, one did, and Aspen jumped up from the couch, spilling the water from the glass she was holding all over the carpet. She had no idea why she’d jumped. She also had no idea why she then set her glass down in the kitchen and went to her bedroom to change into a suit and throw on her tank top and a pair of shorts over it. She was even less aware of why she wanted to go to the backyard and get some more practice in right this instant, but that was what she did.

Aspen hit the ball hard against the box and caught it. Then, she repeated the action. To anyone who looked out their windows, it would look like she was just warming up her shoulder for some hitting or serving practice, but Aspen realized what she was doing by the third catch of the ball.

“Hey.”

She turned and smiled at the sight of Kendra, who had walked out onto her patio.

“Hey. You’re back?” she said as if she’d had no idea.

“Yeah, just. You decided to start practicing right when I was about to make myself some coffee? Are you hitting harder than usual? I could hear you inside from the front of the house, Aspen.”

“Uh… Not that I know of. But I have been lifting more, so maybe I’m getting bigger guns.” She held up her arm as if to show off her muscles.

Kendra looked at her arm before returning her attention to Aspen’s eyes as she walked out into the grass.

“Showing off?”

“No.” Aspen dropped her arm to her side. “Just joking. How was your trip?”

“Good. Did you watch it?”

“I did, yeah. You were quiet at first, but you got better as the night went on.”

“I think I had some bad food at lunch or something. I didn’t feel well. But I took some medicine and felt better by the third set.”

“You didn’t look sick,” Aspen noted.

“Look?”

“You were on camera twice, Kendra. I saw you. I just meant that you… didn’t look unwell or anything. You looked fine. Good, I mean.”

“Well, thank you.”

“Sure,” she said.

“I can let you get back to practice. I just thought I’d say hello.”

“I was done,” she replied. “Just wrapping up.”

“Oh,” Kendra uttered. “Good. I can have my coffee in peace, then.”

“Yeah,” Aspen let out softly, silently wishing that Kendra would invite her over to have coffee with her.

“Okay. Well, good night, I guess,” Kendra added.

“Good night,” she replied, knowing that she sounded disappointed.

She watched as Kendra walked back toward her house before she turned to go inside her own, wondering what she was going to do with the rest of her night.

“Hey, Aspen?”

Aspen turned and said, “Yeah?”

“Do you… I have decaf, if you want it.”

Aspen smiled and said, “Regular is fine.”

“Use the gate, at least?”

“Nah.” Aspen dropped the ball in her yard and jumped the fence, which she really shouldn’t be doing because it was too tall, and she risked hurting herself, but she did it anyway.

“The gate is ten feet away.” Kendra chuckled.

“I’m impatient and impulsive. I thought you knew that about me by now.” She walked up to the sliding glass door and waited for Kendra to walk in first.

“I have milk but not half and half. Is that okay?”

“I’m not picky,” she revealed.

“I’ll start it. You can sit in the living room, if you want.”

“Okay.”

Aspen walked through the kitchen into the living room and sat on the sofa, feeling like she was on a first date right now. Somehow, it really felt like they’d gone back to that date’s house, and after the goodnight kiss at the front door that had turned into an invitation inside, that date was now making her coffee because they were going to do that awkward thing where they sipped coffee and talked while they both wondered if they were going to go any further.

“Here you go.” Kendra carried a tray out and set it on the table in front of Aspen. “I just brought everything. Add what you want.”

Aspen picked up the mug in front of her and added some of the milk from the regular-looking glass.

“I’m not really that fancy in general, but I still haven’t unpacked everything. Do other adults have a creamer pourer thing? Is that what they’re called?” Kendra asked.

“I have no idea. I’ll tell you when I finally feel like I’m a real adult, and that knowledge naturally gets instilled in me. I think that’s what I imagine will happen, anyway.”

Kendra laughed and dressed her coffee.

“So, how was your practice today?” she asked.

“Good. We’re still without a coach, which is proving to be a problem, but we’re doing our best.” Aspen leaned back and brought her coffee with her.

“Not all teams have coaches, though, right?”

“No, but the best ones do. It’s not always possible for teams who aren’t winning to afford a top coach, but it’s also not always possible to win without one. When I first started out, I didn’t have one, but we had some good wins and got some attention, so I decided it was worth the investment, even though I couldn’t really afford it. My parents helped me pay for my first coach, and I told them I’d pay them back when I started making money. I did, by the way. And here I am now, so it’s worked so far.”

“I’d say it has. You just won another tournament and will probably win the rest this season.”

“Don’t put that out there. You’ll jinx us,” Aspen said with a laugh. “We go into every match believing we can win, yeah, but we’re never overconfident.”

“Probably a good philosophy,” Kendra replied and sipped her coffee. “So, how did you and DJ end up partnering together?”

“I knew her from my college days. She was at UCLA and had had some success on the beach in the league, but not much yet, and I had, so I asked her if she wanted to leave her current partner and join me instead. You know how hard it is to find a good partner. First, there’s the physical stuff. Some teams can go with the whole same height, same kind of skill thing, and it works for them when they have good communication and chemistry, but most teams go with a taller and a shorter player; one to focus on defense and passing and the other to handle the blocking and the hitting. DJ is taller than me and is a great blocker. She has an amazing hitting percentage, and she’s a good server. But on top of the physical thing, you have to get along. You don’t have to be best friends or even a couple, like Monica and Selena, but you need to have trust and solid communication. You have to know that the person you’re out there with is going to be with you every step of the way. And if you don’t have that trust, it’s not going to work.”

“You have that with DJ?”

“Yes, we’ve got that. She knows I’m always going to have her back. I know she’ll always have mine. In private, I might tell her that she played like crap because she needs to hear it and responds well to it, but I’d never do that in public. She does the same for me. We balance each other well out on the court, too.”

Kendra took another drink of her coffee, but her eyes remained on Aspen.

“Did you not have that with your first partner?” she asked. “I don’t remember her name.”

Aspen took a drink of her own coffee to stall because she hadn’t planned on talking about that tonight.

“Alex. Hard to forget that, huh? Aspen and Alex.”

“Right. Alex Bartell. I remember now. She’s on Team USA, isn’t she?”

“Yeah, she switched back to indoor years ago. I always suspected she liked playing indoor more than beach, but a few of her friends from college had decided to try their luck on the beach, so she’d joined them. We met, became partners, and now, we’re not. She’s hoping to make the team for their World Cup and the Olympics for the first time.”

“What happened, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Is this an interview or something?”

“No,” Kendra replied. “It’s just me trying to get to know you a little bit better.”

“You’re a reporter. I was told I have to specifically state that something’s off the record. I didn’t before, but you said it was fine. Do I now?”

“Aspen, if we’re sitting in my house, everything is off the record by default. If I wanted something to be on the record, I’d just ask or tell you. I’m not a sideline reporter right now, and I’m not writing an article for the New York Times on pro beach volleyball or something.”

Aspen nodded and said, “Alex and I were good. We were really good, actually; about to qualify for the Games as the second US team, potentially. I couldn’t believe it was happening much earlier than I’d expected it to, but we were good together out there.”

“Then?”

“Then, well– Please don’t say anything. I don’t mean as a reporter, either; just as a person. Can you not say anything?”

“I won’t say a word,” Kendra confirmed.

“I didn’t know that Alex was bi. We’d never really talked about that stuff,” Aspen shared. “I went on dates. She did, too. The only dates I’d ever known her to have had been with men, and she’d also had a boyfriend when we first started partnering together, so it had never dawned on me that she was interested in women. Anyway, we were playing well together and hanging out sometimes, but I was single. She was single, too, at this point, and one night, she just told me.”

“Told you?”

“That she was interested in me. She said she couldn’t keep it in anymore and needed to tell me that she was in love with me, and I didn’t know what to do. I liked Alex – I really did – but as a friend and partner, not as someone I wanted to date. I decided to just be honest with her and told her that, and she said we’d be fine. So, we played on. Like most partners, we used to room together when we traveled because it’s cheaper and you end up in each other’s rooms anyway, talking about the next match or whatever, but we stopped that when she told me. It was her request. Then, at one tournament, not all that long after, I ran into someone I’d known from before. She was someone I’d dated briefly in school. We started talking. One thing led to another, and she slept over. When we left the next morning, Alex had been leaving at the same time. I couldn’t stop the woman from kissing me in time, and Alex saw us. She looked devastated. I felt like an asshole, too, and the worst kind at that. That woman and I went nowhere. I haven’t seen her since. And Alex said she couldn’t do this anymore not long after that. I understood. I’d hurt her unintentionally. But I don’t regret telling her that I didn’t feel that way about her.”

“You shouldn’t,” Kendra replied. “It’s awful, yeah, but you shouldn’t regret it. I mean, what would’ve happened otherwise? You could’ve gone out, maybe slept with her – that would’ve been worse.”

“I know.”

“Do you talk to her at all?”

“On social media. I like some of her posts, but only the volleyball-related ones. She has a girlfriend now. They’ve been together for two years, and they look happy, so I think it all worked out for the best. She found her, and I have DJ now. She’s the partner who can get me to the Games, which is my dream.”

“What about the other stuff, though?”

“Other stuff?” Aspen asked before she sipped on her coffee.

“The personal stuff. DJ’s not into women, right?”

“No, she’s straight. I wouldn’t date a partner anyway. If I had feelings for Alex, I would’ve told her we could only date or be partners, not both. I hope it works out for Monica and Selena, but that isn’t for me.”

“Well, those two aren’t going to qualify for the Olympics, and they’re retiring after another season or two, so even if it doesn’t work, they’ll be fine. I have a feeling, they’ll put their relationship over their partnership on the beach, which is a good thing, I think.”

“Me too.”

“Really? That surprises me.”

“Why?” Aspen asked.

“Because it’s volleyball over everything else for you, right?”

“Yes, but only because I don’t have anything else competing with it. I’ve never met anyone I’ve wanted to put above it,” Aspen revealed. “But if and when I do – I love my sport, but I want to love someone so much that they’re the most important thing to me.”

Kendra nodded slowly and said, “That’s nice, Aspen.”

“Is it? Doesn’t everyone feel that way? Don’t you?” Aspen found that she really wanted to know the answer to that question.

“I hope that happens for me one day, yes,” Kendra replied.