Work Text:
Then:
In the dark of their shared dorm room that first night, excited, but also a little scared to be so far away from home for so long, in a country she’d never been to before, Jules said, quietly, “We’ll always play together, right?”
Jess shifted in the top bunk, then reached a hand down, squeezing when Jules reached up to take it. “Always.”
*
Now:
Jules is waiting for her mum to meet her for lunch when she checks her phone and finds the invitation waiting for her.
Santa Clara Class of 2007 Twenty Year Reunion
She’s tempted to delete it, unread. She made it to the ten year reunion, spent most of it laughing with Jess and her old team-mates, drinking too much like they were still twenty-two and wouldn’t have hangovers and long distance flights to deal with.
She missed the fifteen year reunion, her marriage to Sarah already falling apart, even though they stuck it out another eighteen months before Jules asked for a divorce. She hasn’t seen any of the girls from the team since the divorce decree was signed.
The reunion’s scheduled for August. Jules is still reading the details when a second email, from Agatha, the Broncos’ captain Jules and Jess’s senior year, drops into her inbox.
Broncos reunion, let’s go! The home opener’s that weekend, who’s down to get the team back together? We can wear our old jerseys, it’ll be great.
Jules boxed up all her old football shirts when she moved out of the flat she and Sarah bought together. They’re still in the bottom of her wardrobe, in the exact same box.
She mostly just wears her staff uniform, or one of the replica Lionesses’ shirts that everyone on staff ends up with.
She’s been tagged in a Facebook post with the rest of the team, and then in a comment from Maria: @Jules @JessB do you think you’ll make it over? Would be soooo good to see you both.
As Jules stares at it, someone thumbs ups the comment. She’s not even a little bit surprised to hover over the icon and see it was Jess.
*
Then:
“You can’t tell my parents about this,” Jess said, her breath smelling of cheap American beer when she half-fell into Jules as they made their way across campus, back to their dorm, well after midnight.
At least as drunk – maybe more – Jules hauled her up before she could completely lose it on the wet grass, and laughed at her. “You do remember we’re legally allowed to get drunk in the UK, right?”
“My parents -” Jess veered off to the right, dragging Jules with her for a second before Jules got them back in the right direction – “My parents would not care about legal.”
Jules didn’t know Jess’s parents very well – she’d met them a few times between Pinky’s wedding and the flight to California, and spoken to them a couple of times when they called the dorm room and she picked up, but she was pretty sure they still blamed her for their daughter playing football at an American university instead of training to be a solicitor in the UK, no matter how much they’d accepted it.
“Help me with my Stats homework, and you’ve got a deal,” she said, instead of bringing that up. She’d had a conditional offer to Loughborough University to study sports science before the offer from Santa Clara; the fact that she hadn’t seen the back of maths after all was the main thing she regretted about coming to America.
That, and the ridiculous drinking age.
Jules barely caught Jess the next time she slipped, ended up with Jess’s face in her boobs, her breath warm against the skin bared by Jules's low-cut top when Jess started giggling and couldn’t stop.
Jules hauled her back upright, and didn’t think about how good it had felt.
*
Now:
It’s been two weeks since the email about the reunion dropped into her inbox, and Jules still hasn’t replied to that or the Facebook invitation. She’s expecting the follow-up Zoom call from Agatha. She’s just not expecting it at eight thirty on a Sunday morning.
It makes more sense when she accepts the call and finds Agatha sitting in the baby’s nursery, the baby just visible on her chest. Agatha’s brown curls are in a messy bun on top of her head, and she looks tired, even though she’s smiling.
“She starts crying every time I try to put her down, and also when I fall asleep,” Agatha says before Jules can ask. “I’m hoping the soothing tones of your British accent will lull her to sleep.”
“I was asleep.” Jules fights her way out of the covers, tugs one curtain open, and settles in against her nest of pillows. “Can I see her?”
Baby Fiona’s definitely grown since Jules saw her at the christening a couple of months ago. She still has the tiny fingers and tiny ears that Jules finds so adorable on new babies – no matter how many she meets, it seems amazing that they can be so new and such perfectly formed tiny humans at the same time.
They chat about the baby, and Agatha’s wife, and the Lionesses’ latest victories, and Jules lets herself be lulled into a false sense that maybe Agatha really did just call to catch up while she was up with her baby.
Which is when Agatha says, “So, why haven’t you confirmed for the reunion yet? You are coming, right?”
“I don’t know if I’ll be able to take the time from work,” Jules says. She’s not really surprised when Agatha just looks at her, like she knows Jules is lying. Which is fair: Jules is lying. It won’t be great timing, but it won’t be terrible either. She’ll definitely get it approved. “You know why,” she says, when Agatha doesn’t say anything else.
Agatha rolls her eyes, her hand still smoothing up and down the baby’s back. Jules has never really wanted children, always been glad she and Sarah didn’t try, but sometimes, she looks at parents like Agatha and thinks maybe it would have been nice.
With the right woman.
Which is something else – someone else – that she and Agatha have talked about, extensively, since Jules and Sarah got divorced and Jules, lacking a built-in excuse, started ignoring Jess’s invitations to meet up as a second choice – much worse – coping mechanism.
“You’re over forty,” Agatha says, not pulling her punches at all. “It’s unbecoming of a grown woman to act like this. Especially a Bronco.”
“Unbecoming?” Jules parrots, doing her very best high class English accent.
“Shut up, Theresa got me hooked on Downton Abbey now it’s finished.” Agatha smiles, sympathetic and just a little bit pitying. “Seriously Jules – she’s your best friend. What are you even doing?”
Jules may be over forty, but she’s not too old to hide her face in her pillow and moan, “I don’t know!” like the love-sick teenager she never really was.
“Well,” Agatha says, entirely without sympathy. “Figure it out before the reunion.”
*
Then:
“Whoa,” Jess said, barely through the door to their dorm room, where she wasn’t supposed to be at eight thirty on the second Friday of the month when she inexplicably had a study group until nine. “You look really nice. Wait – is that top new?”
Jules gave up on trying to fasten her sandal while standing up, and sat down on her bed, one sandal on, one in her hand so she didn’t fiddle with the silver sequins on her strappy top – she’d already found three in the carpet, and expected to find more in her bed later. “Yes,” she said. “I went to the mall earlier.”
She put a fake California accent on “the mall” the way she and Jess always did, which made Jess laugh as she dropped her bag by her desk and puts her shoes neatly next to it before sitting down on Jules's bed.
“I thought you said you weren’t going to party tonight. Something about not wanting to be hungover for early practice?” Jess was a morning person; Jules was not. It was never more evident than in the first few weeks of the new academic year, when the combination of the early hour and the hot weather made Jules feel like she was going to die.
She looked at the bookshelf that separated the twin beds they’d graduated to as juniors, instead of meeting Jess’s eyes. “I’ve got a date.”
Jess had only broken up with Joe a couple of months ago, but that didn’t stop her from bouncing a little and saying, “Ooh, tell me about him.”
They had two copies of Psychology 202, even though neither of them were taking psychology this year. “It’s Hannah? She asked me after class on Wednesday.”
Jess went still next to her. They both knew Hannah, who’d been in most of their required general classes since they started at Santa Clara, who was into musicals and ice hockey and who had brought a girlfriend to all the parties last year then got dumped right after finals. Who was tall and a bit butch and had shaved her head over the summer, and never said no when Jules asked if she could touch the soft fuzz that was slowly growing back in.
“I didn’t know you liked her like that,” Jess said quietly. When Jules looked at her from the corner of her eye, Jess was also staring at their bookcase.
“I think I’m a lesbian,” Jules said. She didn’t think; she knew. She’d spent most of the last school year looking stuff up and thinking about boys she’d told herself she had crushes on in the past, and realising how different it felt to look at some of the girls on the team than it had ever felt to look at any boys, even the two she’d actually slept with, their first semester in America.
How she’d kidded herself into a crush on Joe because he was the kind of safe that she’d never have to act on it with, and how little that had affected how betrayed she’d felt when Jess had started seeing him.
“I haven’t really told anyone yet. Hannah said she guessed.”
Hannah had actually said that she’d been hoping, but she hadn’t seemed very surprised when Jules said yes to getting a drink at Mac’s.
“Oh,” Jess said, still quiet. Jules wasn’t expecting her to throw her arms around Jules and hug her tight, her hands warm on Jules's bare shoulders. Jules hugged her back, relieved, even though she hadn’t been worried, not really. She’d seen how Jess was with Tony and his new boyfriend, and how Jess had been working on nudging her whole extended family towards acceptance over the last two years. “I’m really proud of you,” Jess said, right in her ear.
That was definitely the only reason a shiver went down Jules's spine. Definitely.
*
Now:
Jenna, who specialises in massage therapy, declared her and Jules friends on their joint first day with the Lionesses because they both had J names, giddy and child-like because women’s football could finally afford things like masseurs, and sports therapists, and more than that, Jules and Jenna had been hired to do those very roles for their country.
At the time, Jules hadn’t seen Jess for more than a year, and Jenna had reminded her so strongly of her old friend that she’d wanted to cry.
Two years on, Jenna frowns at her over their shared table in the breakroom and says, “I don’t understand what the problem is. I thought you liked your old team?”
“I do,” Jules says, stabbing at her salad in frustration. Jenna drove her to the airport when she flew to Boston for Agatha’s baby’s christening, and pretended not to be bored when Jules spent the week after she got back showing her photos and babbling about how cool her team was and how much she missed them all.
Jess hadn’t been able to attend the christening, embroiled in the legalities of a delicate sponsorship deal for an Arsenal player she couldn’t name at the time.
Jenna just looks at her while Jules resists the urge to bang her head on the table. “Jess is going.”
Jenna keeps looking at her. Jules tries, unsuccessfully, to remember exactly what she’s ever said about Jess.
“And?” Jenna prompts when Jules doesn’t say anything.
Jules caves, like Jenna undoubtedly knew she would. “And, the last time I saw her, I was still married to Sarah.”
Jess was single at the time. Jess goes on dates, but the longest relationship she’s ever had is the two years she and Joe were together with an ocean between them. Jules knows the two of them still spend time together – Joe still plays for Mr Bhamra’s cricket team – and Jess never seems like she’s pining after him (which would be ridiculous after nearly twenty years, Jules would definitely never pine for her best friend for twenty years like the world’s saddest, most lesbian cliché), so Jules is pretty sure that’s not the reason.
She’s never asked, though. She and Jess have never talked much about their love lives.
Even if some of the people Jess has mentioned going on dates with have names that Jules is pretty sure are women’s names.
She’s never asked about that either. Just nodded, and carefully not used any pronouns, the same as Jess.
“And?” Jenna says again, drawing the vowel out obnoxiously.
“And, if I’m going to awkwardly ask her if she’d like to kiss me again, I’d prefer not to do it a transatlantic flight away from home.”
*
Then:
Jess was still packing when Jules let herself back into their dorm room, sitting cross-legged at the foot of her bed and folding shirts into her suitcase. Which was probably fair: Jules hadn’t even been gone half an hour.
“Um,” Jess said when Jules flopped down onto the bed beside her and pressed her face into Jess’s hip. “Is everything… okay?” Her hand came down to smooth over Jules's hair, like she already knew the answer.
“Hannah dumped me,” Jules said, muffled against Jess’s jeans. Maybe she’d just stay there forever, where no-one would look at her and see that she’d been crying.
Jess stroked her hair some more. “Sorry,” she said quietly. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Jules sniffed, pretending she wasn’t crying again. Her left arm was tucked awkwardly against her body, but she could get her right around Jess’s hips, something like a hug. Jess patted her arm, and kept stroking her hair.
“Do you want a proper hug?”
Jules nodded, even though she was probably smudging her mascara on Jess’s jeans – Jess always said she should buy waterproof, and Jules never listened.
They rearranged, until Jess was on her back and Jules had her head on Jess’s shoulder, Jess’s arms around her, Jules's free arm across Jess’s waist. Jess always smelled so good, even right after a game when they were sweaty and disgusting, a combination of the floral shower gel she liked and the face cream Pinky sent her.
“She said she wanted me to have time to get over it, before we have class together again after spring break,” Jules said, a little muffled.
“That’s… nice?” Jess said. She’d stopped stroking Jules's hair when they lay down, and Jules wasn’t sure how to get her to start again. “I can’t tell if you’re mad at her or not.”
“Me either,” Jules admitted. She really liked Hannah, and she’d thought things were going well. They’d had really good sex, and fun dates, and she’d even started getting into ice hockey, a little bit, just because of how much Hannah liked it.
But.
“She said I didn’t have enough time for her.”
Jess huffed. “She knew you were committed to the team,” she said. “And that we’ve both got academic conditions on our scholarships.”
“Yeah.” Jules knew it wasn’t a good idea to say the next bit, but there wasn’t anyone she could talk to the way she could talk to Jess. “She said you’re always my first choice to spend my time with, and that it should be her. At least some of the time.”
Hannah hadn’t even sounded mad when she’d said it, just disappointed. That had been worse.
Jess had gone very still. “That’s not true,” she said, doubt creeping into her words. “It’s not, is it?”
Jules shrugged, glad that Jess couldn’t see her face. “You’re my best friend,” she said, which was probably enough of an answer all on its own.
“She’s your – she was your girlfriend.” Jules couldn’t read Jess’s tone at all, didn’t know what to say. Hannah had been her girlfriend, but Jess was her best friend, the girl in the park that Jules had wanted to talk to, wanted to know, wanted to spend all her time with.
Wanted, though she hadn’t known it at the time, to hold in her arms the way she’d seen Joe hold Jess in his, when she’d told Jess that it was Joe she liked and known, even then, that on some level she was lying. That it wasn’t Jess she was jealous of, it was Joe, because Jess was her friend, and Joe was going to steal her away from Jules.
“Jules,” Jess said, very softly, and when Jules lifted her head to look at her, Jess kissed her.
It was barely more than friendly, a warm press of their mouths together. It could have been sympathy, or comfort.
Except that Jules tipped her head a little, and Jess lifted hers a little, and it became more than friendly, more than comfort, the kind of kiss Jules used to daydream about, after she realised she was gay and before she started seeing Hannah. The kind of kiss where, when Jess sighed, so soft, Jules could touch the tip of her tongue to Jess’s bottom lip, lick inside of her mouth and make the whole thing deeper, wetter, more.
More enough that Jess’s hand slipping under the same sequined top she’d worn for her first date with Hannah felt natural, like they’d been doing it forever, like the next thing to do was obviously for Jules to let her own hand wander under the hem of Jess’s t-shirt to the warm skin over the curve of her waist where it fit like they’d been made to go together.
Jules had her eyes closed. She didn’t dare look to see if Jess did as well, not even when she sat back on her heels to pull her top off. Jess made a sound at that, pleased like she did when a pass connected like she hadn’t expected, and slid her hands up Jules's back to the catch of her bra.
She fumbled a little, the same way Jules had the first time she took Hannah’s bra off, something that should have been familiar made strange by the new angle, and Jules had to open her eyes so she could reach round and cover Jess’s hands, help her out.
When she looked down, Jess was smiling, just tipping over into laughter. Jules ducked down, kissed the laughter off her lips. Shivered at the Jess’s t-shirt against her naked breasts; got a hand, gentle, into Jess’s hair so she could align their mouths even more perfectly, kiss her even deeper.
They never got all the way naked. Jess never even took her top off, not even when Jules urged her hips up, slid her jeans and underwear down just far enough to tease at the tops of Jess’s thighs and ask, “Can I go down on you?”
They’d never talked about what Jess and Joe had done together. Jules had never wanted to know. It didn’t matter, not when Jess said, “Yes,” all breathy, her hand curling around Jules's shoulder when Jules got between her legs, a little awkward with how Jess was still mostly wearing her jeans, and licked in where Jess was already wet.
Jess didn’t say anything, just made little high-pitched gasping noises, and lower, “Hmm,” sounds when Jules got it really right. She came undone slowly, and then suddenly all at once, going, “Ah, ah, ah,” as her body clenched, her thighs tightening around Jules's shoulders.
Jules kept going, brought Jess off again, and then once more when Jess said, “Don’t stop,” and pressed her closer.
After, she crawled back up Jess’s body, waited to see if Jess would kiss her again or would want her to brush her teeth first, the way Jules always wanted Hannah to and Hannah thought was weird. Jess apparently didn’t care – she dragged Jules down into a deep kiss, her other hand working its way under the skirt Jules had half-forgotten she was wearing.
She came almost the moment Jess slid her fingers over the wet cotton of her underwear, turned on from getting Jess off, from being close to her like this. Jess said, “Hmm,” the way she did when she was working on a problem set, and pushed Jules's underwear aside, slipping one finger inside of her.
Jules said, “Yes,” then, “Yes, another,” when Jess started fucking her with her fingers, two and then a third, rubbing her thumb over Jules's clit and kissing her and kissing her and kissing her until Jules didn’t even know which way was up any more, her orgasm washing over her half-unnoticed amongst the feel of Jess, under her and inside her, right there for Jules to hold the way she’d wanted to since she was seventeen.
The next morning, Jules woke up topless, still wearing her skirt, in Jess’s empty bed. Jess had left a note on the bedside table: I didn’t want to wake you when I left for my flight. Enjoy Barbados with your parents. See you after the break.
Jules turned the note over, not sure what she was looking for. Whatever it was, it wasn’t there.
She spent ten days in Barbados with her parents, unable to even text Jess, who’d gone back to London for the break, and then she flew back to Santa Clara.
Jess got back two days later, walking into their dorm room and hugging her like nothing had happened, asking how Barbados had been, and teasing Jules about the sunburn still lurking on her shoulders.
Jules hadn’t let herself hope for anything else. It didn’t explain the way her heart hurt, even with Jess’s arms around her again.
*
Then:
That summer, back in London and working at JD Sports, Jules met Sarah.
*
Now:
Jenna points out that, since Jules and Jess both live in London, there’s an obvious solution to the whole, “don’t want to ask my best friend to kiss me when we’re on the wrong side of an ocean,” thing.
Agatha asks if Jules really wants to miss out on seeing all the old team together – everyone, apparently, is going – just because she’s scared, and also if seeing her best friend is really scarier than moving to America at barely eighteen.
Her mum says that she’s always liked Jess, even when she thought Jess was the one who turned Jules gay, and Maria, their goalie for Jess and Jules's freshman year before she graduated, says that it won’t be the same without their English roses and then forwards her Jess’s flight details.
Jess doesn’t text, which Jules can’t really blame her for: the last message in their thread is four months old, from Jess, asking if Jules wants to get together on the Easter weekend. Jules never replied.
But Agatha and Jenna and Maria and her mum are right, and Jess is her best friend, even if they haven’t seen each other in person. And Jules is a grown-up.
Jules: Sorry I never replied. Maria says you’re going to the reunion? Want to get a drink before, catch up? We could fly out together.
Jess is a better person than Jules, because her answer comes through in less than a minute.
Jess: Friday at 7. She in Soho.
Jess’s office is only a couple of Tube stops away from She. Jules is pretty sure that’s not the reason Jess picked a lesbian bar.
“Be brave,” she tells herself.
Jules: I mostly go there with dates.
Jess: Me too.
Jules: Can we go there as dates?
Jess: Turn up on Friday and find out.
Jess: xxx