CHAPTER 29

They’d made it as far as the final, but then lost to a great team from Norway in a match that no one could’ve predicted. Aspen’s serves were off. DJ struggled at the net, with hitting errors all over the place, and they had no excuse. The wind wasn’t bad. The rest of the weather was fine. They had no injuries to speak of. They just had a bad match. As the highest-ranking American team in the tournament, they’d done what they needed to do, but the win would’ve been nice. It was next to impossible for them not to make the Olympic team now since they would be really hard to overtake, but there would be three other American teams vying for the automatic bid in Berlin. The team that won the whole thing would get it, so if that was one of the other US teams and not Aspen and DJ, they’d go down to the number two American team in qualification. That meant there was still a chance another team could win a tournament or two and take them out of the running, so while it felt good to walk away with the high likelihood that they’d make it, it also sucked not knowing.

“We have to win,” DJ said as they sat next to each other on the plane. “Berlin. We can’t come in second. We have to win.”

“I know,” she agreed. “I’m sorry for my part of this morning. I don’t know what happened. I just didn’t have it.” Aspen shook her head.

“Neither did I. I had more hitting errors than you did serving, and I couldn’t set you up worth a damn.”

“My sets weren’t great, either. And my passes were barely there.”

“What do you think it was?” DJ asked.

“I have no idea. I felt good in warm-ups.”

“Me too.”

“And they were good, but far from the best team we’ve ever faced. Brazil was better.”

“We had three tough matches leading up to it,” DJ suggested. “Brazil was in two sets, but they were tough. Australia took us to three sets, and they were all close until the end. Then, Argentina almost beat us yesterday. Three sets to two points at the end of each of them.”

“Think we’re tired?” she asked.

“I think we better get it together before Berlin. It’s our one chance to qualify outright, and whoever wins, gets it, Aspen. If that’s Brazil, they’re in. Norway, and they’re in. It’s not just about being the highest on the podium for US teams.”

“Yeah, I know,” Aspen replied.

“Let’s talk about something else because rehashing this right now, when we’re both tired, isn’t going to help us. Are you going to Kendra’s tonight?”

“No, she’s in Kentucky, covering the NWSL tonight. And she doesn’t get home for a couple of days. She’s covering two indoor matches in Minneapolis the next two nights.”

“You miss her, huh?”

“I do, yeah. We got to video chat a few times, and that was nice, but I miss having her there, you know?”

“Where? At a match?”

“She covers the US tour, so I get used to her being there, but when we go abroad, she’s not, and I want her to be.”

“Didn’t you say she doesn’t really like her job?”

“She does. It’s just not the thing she wanted to do. She landed in it, and it’s worked out. I don’t know if she’ll stay in it forever, though.”

“Why not? She’s good at it. Everyone on tour likes her.”

“How do you know that?”

DJ blushed.

“Let me guess… Mark?”

“He and I…”

“No!” Aspen turned in her window seat to face her. “When?”

“I was going to tell you… But you got worried about me dating, and I didn’t want you to blame me for losing today.”

“Last night?”

“We didn’t sleep together,” DJ said quickly. “He and Chase lost in the quarterfinals, but he knew you and I were still in it, so he just stayed over; we didn’t do anything. I mean, we did stuff, but not that.”

“Stuff? Do I want to know?”

“No, you don’t.” DJ laughed. “But I swear, I was asleep by eleven. And when I woke up, he made me coffee. He’s great, Aspen. I really like him. We’re going out tomorrow night, I think. If not, the night after. I told him no for tonight because I’ll be too tired and need sleep.”

“And you don’t expect to get sleep with him around?” Aspen quirked an eyebrow at her.

“I’m hoping not.” DJ chuckled. “He’s so sweet, and he’s not like Chase at all. Mark doesn’t come from money. He has a second job as an indoor coach at a high school, and his apartment is a small studio. I’ve not been there yet, obviously, but he told me he wanted to make sure that I knew that he wasn’t like Chase in both the good ways and the bad ways. He’s just, like, this down-to-earth guy who likes me.”

“That’s great, DJ,” she said.

“We talked for a few hours last night, and I feel like he wants what I want, you know? A real relationship, with the possibility of it becoming something more.”

“What? Marriage?”

“One day, yeah. You don’t want that?” DJ asked, probably picking up on Aspen’s tone.

“No, I do. But you’ve not even gone out with him yet. I guess you have, or you stayed in, technically, but you’re already talking about all that stuff?”

“Not all of it. And not like we’re going to do it, but just that we both want it. You haven’t talked about it with Kendra yet?”

“We haven’t even been on a date yet.”

“You’re calling each other ‘babe,’ Aspen.”

“I know. And we’re going to talk when I get back. Well, when she gets back now because she’s not home. We both want to pursue whatever this is. She scared me the other day, though.”

“How?”

“She said she had something that she wanted me to know before we go any further and that she wanted to talk about in person. So, we haven’t gotten to it on video, and I’m nervous.”

“What do you think it is? Is she married, separated, working on a divorce or something?”

“No, she’s not. But…” Aspen wanted to talk to her friend about what she thought it might be related to, but she couldn’t because that was Kendra’s story to tell. “I’m just worried. She acts like she wants us, and not like whatever it is will be the end of the world, but I don’t know.”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” DJ said.

“I hope so.”

“I feel like you two are basically already together. You just need to make it official. You talk to Kendra more than I’ve seen other players talk to their spouses when we travel.”

“It feels like that for me, too. So much so, that I now worry that maybe we’ve wasted time when we could’ve been official.”

“Nah. It doesn’t work like that. You’ve been into her since she moved in next door, and you’ve been building up to calling it what it has been all along. It’s not like you’ve been with or even thought of anyone else. I assume she hasn’t, either?”

“No, she hasn’t. She even got a little jealous about the masseuse this week. I got the impression that she didn’t like the idea of a Brazilian masseuse giving me a massage.”

“Oh, yeah?” DJ laughed.

“I picked on her a little when we were video chatting. She’s really, really cute when she’s jealous. Her eyes go all serious, and she scrunches her nose up. Is it wrong that I like her jealous?”

“No. I myself wouldn’t mind it if Mark got jealous of someone.”

“DJ, we both have to be careful here. And this isn’t me telling you not to date someone again. It’s just that we’re so close.”

“I know.”

“And I know that I don’t want to wait with Kendra anymore, either. I want to ask her out. That means things will get busier for me, and if you’re with Mark, it’ll be the same for you. Players manage having actual personal lives all the time, so I know it shouldn’t be a big deal, but my dating history is short. It’s basically a tweet. I’m not sure that I know how to balance it all. I might be bad at it, and that scares me.”

“You’re going to be fine. We both will be. We’ll just make sure we take care of ourselves. We’ll get good sleep, keep eating right, show up for practice – and I mean, really show up, just like we do now – and if we’re having any problems, we talk, okay?”

“I’ve never…”

“Never what?”

“I’ve put volleyball first for my entire life. It’s always been volleyball for me. I mean, I’ve dated, yeah, and had brief relationships, but volleyball came first. And I thought it always would until I retired. My mom kept telling me that I was silly to put a sport over the possibility of something else, but she was a player, too. I think she gets it deep down. Then, for the first time in my life, I didn’t want to play volleyball. When Kendra told me she had something she wanted us to talk about in person, I felt like I wanted to be on a plane, flying back to her, more than I wanted to be on a court, and I’ve never felt that before.”

“She really matters to you, Aspen. That makes sense.”

“I know we have a coach interview tomorrow, and this might sound ridiculous because she’ll be home soon, but–”

“You want to fly to her, don’t you?” DJ asked with a smile.

“Not tonight. I want to do the coach thing first. We need to figure that out, and it’s too important to mess up. Lord knows, we could use one right now. We’re getting to that point where not having one is causing problems. We should have won today, and we didn’t.”

“Yeah, tell me about it.”

“I was thinking about leaving after, though. I want to book a flight to Minneapolis to surprise her. The match is a late afternoon one, so I thought I’d show up with flowers and finally ask her out. I know she’s flying back the next day and that it’s silly, but I’ve got all these frequent-flyer miles. I might as well use some of them, right? Plus, I think she’d like the surprise.”

“You’re not worried about getting all the way there, her telling you whatever she needs to tell you, and it’s bad news that ruins it all?”

“I’ll get a hotel room just in case, but I’m hoping that she hasn’t been leading me on this whole time. I got the impression that it’s just something she thinks I’m going to have to deal with or accept, and I can’t think of anything she could tell me that would make me not want to be with her.”

“Then, I say go for it.”

“If it goes well, I’ll stay there until she flies home. I’ll just try to get on her flight if I can. That’s a couple days of practice missed… and we have another USPBV tourney this weekend. I know I shouldn’t miss practice, especially after what we’ve just said about making sure to show up for practice, but I need to know, DJ.”

“I get it. We’re okay for this weekend. But after that is Berlin, Aspen.”

“I know. I won’t miss anything after this. And if she’d talked to me about it on the phone, I wouldn’t even go, but I’m ready, you know? I’m ready to finally be with someone. And I want it to be her, so if she’s worried about something, I want to know what it is so I can tell her that it’s okay and so we can finally start.”

“Then, go get your girl, Ashley.” DJ winked at Aspen.

◆◆◆

“Hey,” she greeted when Kendra called hours later, right after Aspen got home.

“Hey. Are you home?”

“Yeah. Where are you?” Aspen asked when she heard a lot of background noise.

“It’s one of the players’ birthday, and they invited me and the crew out for the party with everyone. I didn’t want to say no because she invited all of us and was really nice about it.”

“You’re at a birthday party?” Aspen sat on the bed and kicked off her shoes.

“Yeah. And to be honest with you, I’ve had a couple of drinks.”

“Oh?” Aspen asked with a little laugh. “How many is a couple?”

“A couple is two. A couple is still two, right?”

“Are you asking me?” Aspen laughed again, moving to lie back against her pillow.

“I’ve had two drinks.”

“Okay. Well, someone’s going to take you back to the hotel, yeah?”

“Yes, I will be okay. Louisville won today. It was a great game.”

“Sounds like you’ve had a good day.”

“I have. But I miss you.”

“I miss you, too,” Aspen replied and thought about booking that flight to Minneapolis as soon as she got off the phone with Kendra.

“I’m a little tipsy.”

“I can tell. I wish I could see your face right now.”

“I can’t video chat. There are so many people here.”

“I’ll wait until I see you, then,” she said, knowing it would be sooner than Kendra thought.

“I called because I probably won’t be able to call and talk for a long time when I get back because it’ll be so late.”

“That’s okay. Can you just text me when you get back to your room so that I know you’re safe?”

“Yeah. Hey, what happened in that match?”

“God, I don’t want to talk about that. We were having a good conversation.”

“Are you and DJ okay?”

“We’re good. We had an off day, but we talked on the flight back. We’re okay.”

“Maybe I can come to a practice when I get back?”

“I’d love that. You give great strategic advice.”

“I give great other things, too,” Kendra told her.

Aspen’s eyes went wide.

“You do, huh?”

“I can’t believe I just said that. I’m in public, and we’re not… We haven’t had that talk, and–”

“Too late. You can’t take it back now. It’s out there, so I expect you to deliver, Kendra Bowie. And, preferably, deliver and deliver and deliver.”

“Aspen…”

“What?”

“I’m in public.”

“You started it.” Aspen laughed.

“God, I did. But you’re so hot, babe. I have to watch you walk around in a bikini all the time. You even wear it in the backyard. Do you know how hard that’s been for me?”

“I do now.”

“You’re mean, you know that?” Kendra laughed a little.

“I just practice how I play. I can’t help it that that’s the uniform. They just started letting us wear pants a few years ago.”

“I think that second drink is starting to hit me because I never get like this.”

“Like what?” Aspen asked.

“Telling someone I want them how I want you.”

“I wish you were back in your room.”

“No, you don’t,” Kendra replied.

“Yes, I do.”

“No, you don’t, because you don’t want us to do that. You want us to go out.”

“I do, yeah,” Aspen confirmed.

“So, I should go get some water and then take a car back to the hotel. We can talk about that when I get back.”

“No, I like you tipsy. I want to keep talking.”

“I can’t. I’m being rude, but I… I should go. I just wanted to hear your voice.”

“I’ll see you in a couple of days.”

“Night, Aspen.”

“Good night. Text me when–”

“I will,” Kendra interrupted. “I promise.”