“It’s already done,” he replied.
The team’s shocked murmurs swept around me like a sea, but I stood fast, an anchor in the currents.
David raised his voice to agree with Simon. “He’s already turned in his resignation. I wasn’t sure it was a great idea, but it’s his job and his call. You kids gotta respect that.”
I refrained from rolling my eyes, and replied, “We’re not kids, and he’s resigning because he thinks that if he doesn’t, my scholarship would be at risk.”
“Is that true, Simon?” David asked. “I thought you were worried about Title IX.”
“Well, that too,” I interrupted. “But mostly, it’s my scholarship. He thinks that if he stays here, I’ll get in trouble for, um, being involved with a coach, and that I’ll be kicked off the team before word gets out and ULA gets in trouble. That you will martyr me to save him. And Simon doesn’t want to let that happen.”
I looked over to where Simon was standing, his long body casting shadows in the afternoon light. His face, torn as it was by diverging emotions, looked like that of a tortured statue, a stone man who only wanted love and was instead met by war. I could see that he’d tried to protect me, that he’d whipped out his sword just to fall on it, and that I was spoiling his big plan to keep me safe.
To him, to my stone man, I said, “Simon, you don’t get to be the only one here who makes big sacrifices. You’ve got to leave enough heroism to go around.”
Prompted by my joke, a small smile crossed his face, but quickly dispersed. He replied, “Please, love, don’t—”
“Love. I’m doing this for love,” I responded.
The team was breathing heavily behind me, on tenterhooks, excited to see where this went. I swiveled in David’s direction, forcibly tearing myself from Simon’s scared but affectionate gaze.
I summon my courage, and announced to David, “Sir, if Simon has to quit this job, I’ll stop playing for the Stallions.”
The girls hadn’t known I was going to do that. In fairness, I probably should’ve warned them, but I was going more for drama than practicality.
“You’ll do what?!” Simon shouted.
David added, “You can’t do that.”
And all the girls behind me exclaimed, in different wording but with ultimately the same intention, “No, you fucking won’t!”
I waited for the storm to pass around me — for Simon to lift his face from his hands, for David’s frown to turn a somewhat friendlier direction, for the team’s noises to die down. It was a full thirty seconds of all-out confusion, but I withstood it, confident for once that I was doing the right thing. If I’m being honest, the outcry did give me one second of self-doubt, but then I looked at Simon, and that was all I needed. His very presence gave me the strength to be better than I was. And wasn’t that what love is?
The room grew silent once more, and it was clear that people were expecting me to respond, and hoping that that response would be something along the lines of, ‘Oh gosh, you sure are right, whatever was I thinking?’
Instead, I said, “I love this school, I love this team, and I love soccer. Honestly, it would break my heart to quit playing for ULA. But—” and here, I crossed the room to stand in front of Simon, and force him to look in my eyes. “I love Simon more than all of that.”
The girls, unable to help themselves, let out a round of ‘awws,’ like a soap opera mixed with a Greek chorus.
Simon, in contrast, just shook his head, and under his breath, whispered, “Catya, I’m begging you, please. Don’t do this.”
I ignored him, and turning to David, said, “I’m sorry to do this, but I have no choice. If Simon goes, so do I. We’re a package deal. And I know that I’m ULA’s star player.”
For a moment, I wondered if that was too arrogant of me to say, and turned to apologize to the team, but then the women behind me all nodded in vigorous agreement.
With their vote, I continued, declaring, “If I leave, the soccer season is in trouble. Not because this isn’t a great team, but because they need a captain.”
“Yeah,” affirmed Beth, and several other girls repeated her ‘yeah.’
“And,” I said, “if the season is bad, ULA loses all the money it’s poured into soccer, and the donors will get upset, and you’ll have a fiscal crisis on your hands.”
Okay, so that part… that part I was kind of making up on the fly. I wasn’t wrong — see, colleges in the US, private ones that is, are almost entirely dependent on alumni donations, and at schools like ULA, those donations are mostly generated from alumni who still have ‘school spirit’ for the institution’s sports teams.
