Chapter Text
There is the tiniest hair of an unraveled stitch in the corner of this airline seat where the fabric has worn on the corner. Though the airliner is full, Emily is flying as alone as she's ever felt. She's done this. Thought she was done with this for a while. Thought she was done with cheap flights ushering her from one team to another. Thought she had found a family in D.C. Felt incensed at the personal betrayal the moment the Portland office number appeared on her phone.
"Emily," Coach Syd had said, "I want you to understand that being left unprotected isn't a popularity contest without a thought behind it. Sometimes. This time. Being left unprotected was a gamble. A gamble on you and a gamble on your potential."
Emily had remained silent. Was she red-faced? Were there tears of frustration gathered in her waterline? Was she breathing? Was she really even listening? Seething? Numb? Yes and no.
"We have so much talent here. And so much more coming in. Leaving you unprotected was not about whether or not we want you here. But the direction the team is going would short you an incredible opportunity. To show the entire league who you are. What you're about. What you're capable of."
She'd wanted to shove everything off every surface in the room. Wanted to run through the locker room and handcuff herself to her gays, to her rookies, and to her jerseys, to the entire system–to the team dynamic, had it been a tangible, living thing. It had been hard enough for them all to watch Sykes go. This felt…not good. On a whole different level.
Maybe that had been the foreshadowing, Slim walking out of shootout, and then walking out of the building for good. Maybe this good thing she'd happened onto was too good to be true. Maybe they weren't going to get to try for a chip together. Maybe this was the end of the band as they'd known it.
"I want you to know that being culled to Portland is not about us abandoning you. It is about seeing your full potential and hoping someone else gets the chance to capitalize on it. Emily. I can't wait to see you unleashed. You deserve to be somewhere you can be handed the keys to the castle."
It had felt so trite. He hadn't needed to say anything, really. Just offer the usual, Business is business. The draft. The plane. The air cabin pressure. An entirely different time zone. A new system. It's all just fucking business after all.
Playing to try to get any grip on the small thread, Emily can feel it grow taught between the smallest nth of her fingertips. If she had proper nails, she would try pinching it that way, but somehow, she seems to catch it, so she pulls until she can pry it free a little further.
"I know it probably doesn't mean much right now. Me saying any of this. But I want you to know it's true. As much as I don't want to see you coming down the court from the opposite end, I can't wait to see it."
Wondering who will be charged if she rips this seat cushion apart bit by bit, she continues to fidget until the free thread hangs between her legs. There is little comfort in it. The cushion doesn't actually come apart. It must be held together in more than one way. And the flight is too long to keep at it without causing real damage. Supposedly the chair is a flotation device.
As the hours pass stuck in the air, the hopeless, horrified feelings of inadequacy multiply in her gut, the resentment sitting heavy as a brick. In spite of reading and rereading Jade's apologetic and empathetic texts in her precocious accent, in spite of the worn copy of Paul Takes The Form of An Immortal Girl Stef passed onto her sitting unopened in her hoodie pocket, nothing feels right and doing nothing feels excruciating. Then a notification comes through the open skies from her agent with a short script for her from the Fire.
Oh, so she's going to be asked to perform before she's even got her legs under her. "Nope," she mutters. Shaking her head and setting her phone to airplane mode, putting her phone away, Emily digs deep to pull out the floppy paperback and open it and is thankfully stolen from this realm for a moment.
In the end, Emily isn't certain Alex Sarama isn't full of shit. The cloud of antipathy hangs around her thick as a blackout curtain. But adding to the brief conversation when he'd delivered the initial news, he tries to project some robotic kind of warmth. Says some niceish things. Doesn't set outlandish expectations for the season or bluster. Makes expressly clear what he's looking for. Promises to work just as hard as anyone else. And in the meantime, shakes her hand, claps her on the shoulder, and passes Emily off to the Fire's GM, Vanja, to get her settled into an apartment.
There is a sliver of afternoon light coming in from the eastward windows. On closer inspection, there is the suggestion of a mountain in the distance. "That is Mount Hood," Vanja offers, "Or it's a ghost. It's hard to tell some days." Too weirded out to be charmed, Emily smiles a weak, straight line of a thing and shakes Vanja's hand, thanking her for her trouble.
Alone again, she observes her space and gets to work. Untags and throws all the new practice gear in the wash with what she's wearing. Changes the sheets to her sheets. Unpacks the two bags she has. Places a single tube of lipstick on the dresser and stares at it sideways a moment before walking away. Checks the stocked fridge and orders a pizza for delivery anyway. Keeps pausing to see the faint line of a mountain slowly disappear into the night. What she does not do is kick the fake ficus in the living area. She doesn't open drawers in the kitchen and start throwing knives. She does open Instagram and start looking for a new tattoo artist. If she isn't going to start practice straight away, she's going to need something to get the ants out.
There is a dark cloud drifting out from one of the rooms in the front office.
Sarah Ashlee slides a look to her momma and her agent and passes the open door. She can practically hear a thunderclap as she watches the incredibly tight dishwater blond braids come in and out of focus in passing, hunched over a contract with a pen in one hand and her face in the other. Unable to read the tattoos over each knuckle, she at least understands who she's looking at.
She'd faced the Mystics. She'd manned that body. They'd hardly said a word to one another that wasn't entirely polite. It's a mystery that anyone wouldn't necessarily want this opportunity. Sarah didn't know Engstler, doesn't, but supposes that might be something to change in her future. Well, her present. Her present future. It is inevitable. The only decision she supposes she'll have to make is whether to approach the woman with an umbrella or a towel.
The gentle squeeze to her side comes from her momma. It's meant to say mind your business without words. The fact that Sarah trips over her feet only serves to help her realize she's slowed to gawk. Racing little half steps to catch up, Sarah Ashlee joins her momma and her agent to follow Vanja to Coach Sarama's office. They pass an assistant's desk and are redirected to Assistant Coach Fowles. Thee Sylvia freaking Fowles.
Everything goes off without a hitch. From here, she'll move into the apartment. Meet everyone present and accounted for to jump in a van and visit the Nike Hoop Summit. Then they'll start in on training first thing in the morning and begin to learn their way into some sort of team maybe. Build something shiny and new from the ashes of whatever used to exist.
Halfway through dragging her things into her apartment, Sarah Ashlee can feel the oncoming cold as the dark cloud steps off the elevator and looks up to see Sarah's momma struggling with a box of toiletries.
"Here," Emily says. "Let me get that for you."
"Oh, bless your heart." The flirtatious tone her momma singsongs narrowly sends Sarah Ashlee into a tail spin. Raising her chin, she's met with a look of surprise as her momma steps back and shrugs, impressed.
"Where can I put this?"
At first she doesn't see what she knows she sees. Gentle brown eyes, tired and red-rimmed. Perhaps from sleeplessness. Perhaps from tears. A friendly non-smile. A dangly earring. Sharp, black-clad, broad shoulders. No. She sees none of that.
"Uhhh, the bathroom? Follow me."
They move awkwardly through the front door and entryway, Sarah trying to lead Emily into one room or another without actually allowing herself to look at Emily, though they do manage to bump elbows once or twice, laughter bubbling nervously from both of them. She tries to talk Emily out of assisting them with the two or three more boxes left in the car, but Emily insists–the dark cloud growing smaller the more she can help. Their movements are shy. Quiet. There's no competition for who is stronger or more agile. It is simply kindness for kindness's sake ending in Sarah Ashlee's momma introducing herself because her baby isn't rude, she's just a bit preoccupied.
"Well, I'm Emily. Em for short, Ms. Barker."
There is a bumbling, stuttering thing that happens in Sarah's stomach at the downright dangerous sound of that. Like perhaps this Emily might be flirting right back at her momma. And then she finally dares to look up.
She sees it all then. And she sees the blustery, confident blushing pointed her momma's way masked on top of it. Her momma who is eating the attention like a mound of cool whipped cream melting down the sides of a hot cobbler. Sarah Ashlee furrows her brows just a moment, but thanks Emily on both their behalf before shooing her off.
Later, as her momma bends over the opposite side of her bed to help tuck in the top half of her fitted sheet, she asks, "What do you suppose that buzzing noise is?"
"I hadn't noticed." It is quiet, but it is audible. Almost moving. Ending almost as quickly as she recognized it. The two of them finish making the bed and Sarah's momma falls back on the comforter as Sarah folds her things and places them into the empty dresser provided.
"That Emily. Em? That Em is a charmer."
Casually rolling her eyes and a pair of socks at the same time, Sarah can recount every 80s movie her momma forced on her with some dude who looked just like the girl. It had never been her taste. Not really. "You always liked a boy with a dangly earring, Momma."
"Oh, I sure did. Kiefer Sutherland in The Lost Boys? What a dreamboat."
Snorting at that, she asks, "And Emily Engstler?"
Then her momma does the most out of character thing Sarah Ashlee Barker has maybe ever experienced. Her momma growls. Oh my god. GROWLS. Instead of placing the socks in the drawer, she pelts them at her momma's head, who is laughing uncontrollably. "Close enough."