Simone hadn’t thought it would be a bad idea to let Adia crash on her couch until this particular possible new teammate found a place to live- assuming, of course, that Adia made the squad, and so far things looked promising, especially with a couple of early cuts and defections which had left the roster depleted.

She hadn’t realized just how prickly Adia could be, or how bitingly sarcastic, or how the ivory-skinned woman with the dark hair and sardonic face could make everything seem the exact opposite of what it was. Simone was pretty easygoing- even she knew this much- but even she was starting to get irritated by her houseguest, and that she had been the one to extend the invitation rankled even more. And Adia could sense that frustration, and did nothing about it but tease Simone all the more until Simone was seized with the uncharacteristic urge to hit something. Or hit Adia. Or possibly hit something with Adia. Or hit Adia with something. Some combination of those ideas.

This, of course, was the reason why it was two in the morning, and she wasn’t sound asleep as she would sorely like to be. Instead, she lay on her back and watched the shadows shift on her ceiling as cars passed by on the street. There weren’t that many of them, just enough to keep her distracted. But there came a stretch when no cars passed, and yet her mind was too frenetic to allow her to sleep. She had to find a way to release that energy, so she swung out of bed and grabbed her robe after a few false starts. Wrapping herself in the lightweight robe, she stumbled out of her bedroom and drifted towards the kitchen. Maybe a snack would do her good- how, she didn’t know, but it was advice her mother had occasionally seen fit to give to her, so she figured that it was worth a try.

As she came down the hallway, she heard a small noise. She thought she had imagined it, but stopped nevertheless and calmed herself to stillness and silence. She heard the sound again and recognized it this time. It was a sob- not just any sob, though, but the kind that came from someone who wanted to hide their suffering. Simone tiptoed through the hallway to the living room. The couch, being one of the convenient convertible type, was extended out into a cot that was approximately long enough to fit a basketball-playing woman. Adia lay on the bedding rigidly, her face sunk into the pillow and her arms wrapped around her body. It didn’t look like a very comfortable position, at least that was Simone’s second thought; her first thought had been that Adia had longer hair than she had suspected and that she was probably quite a sight with her hair down.

Simone thought about going over to comfort her, but quickly rejected that idea. It was probably nothing, some little matter that would clear itself up by the end of the morning. By the time she woke up in daylight, Adia would be her normal surly self, growling at anyone who tried to extend her a welcome and generally making it extremely hard for Coach Donovan to defend keeping her in camp much longer.

So she turned away and walked back to her bedroom, hung the robe back up on its hook and crawled back into bed, something bothering her.

The next night, Simone didn’t even bother going to bed. She knew that if she waited long enough, she would discover the truth. Either Adia had handled whatever the situation was, and in that case Simone had absolutely no business getting involved, or she hadn’t. There weren’t that many other options that she could think of, so she lurked in the kitchen until she heard the muffled sobbing again. She stepped out into the living room.

Adia was in the same position she had been in the other night, her face buried in the pillow, her body tense and stiff. Her nightshirt was bunched up around her torso, leaving her legs uncovered. Simone did her best not to look, but her best wasn’t enough. Besides, she rationalized, Adia’s pale skin stood out like a beacon in the total darkness of the living room, so of course any bare skin was immediately going to be a magnet for anyone’s gaze. Her conscience found this rationalization quite lacking, but her libido engaged it in a heated debate and thus took it out of circulation.

Meanwhile, Simone cautiously extended her hand towards Adia’s shoulder, ready to offer a supportive presence should Adia want it. Milliseconds after her fingertips brushed the fabric of the t-shirt, Adia untangled one arm from around her body and snatched Simone’s hand away. Rolling over slightly, she snapped at Simone, “I don’t want your fucking pity. Get lost, stop stalking me already.”

“You seem to forget that this is my house,” Simone replied testily. “I can go where I will, and you cannot stop me.”

“I’d like to think that your conscience will keep you from spying on your houseguest, but apparently I can’t trust that, now can I?”

Simone’s conscience, hearing its name, pulled out of the discussion it had been having with her libido about Adia’s legs and informed Simone that the proper thing to do would be to get the hell out of there without firing any parting shots. So Simone simply nodded curtly and returned to her room. Adia wrapped herself back up again and bit back the sadness for a good five minutes before crying herself to sleep.

Simone, on the other hand, found that she couldn’t sleep at all that night, caught up in thoughts of the situation she had gotten herself into. Great. She hates me, and all I can do is try to care about her. Oh, and think about naked parts of her body. This is not going to make things work smoothly...

The night after that, Simone prepared herself a snack in the kitchen and went to get it. While she was on her way through the breakfast nook, she heard Adia’s sobs again. Her instinct for self-preservation cried out that she should just ignore it and go on with her plantains, but that was overruled by several unusually allied parts of her mind. So once again Simone trekked to the living room. Once again Adia lay stiffly on the improvised bed with her hair down. This time her crying was a bit louder. Simone wondered what had happened- had Adia felt she could trust Simone enough to drop the pretense? Or had something else happened in addition to whatever had first spurred these nocturnal tears? Simone wished that she knew; this lack of knowledge was really starting to make her frustrated. Whatever Adia’s other qualities were, she seemed to have a unique knack for getting under Simone’s skin.

She knelt next to the couch for a few moments before reaching out to Adia. As her hand came closer, she hesitated, afraid of a repetition of the previous night’s events. That hesitation was all that Adia needed. In that second that Simone was unsure, Adia reached out, grabbed Simone’s wrist, and brought her hand down- not to her shoulder, but to her bare upper arm. “It’s okay,” she said roughly to her shell-shocked host. “I don’t bite, not when you’re such a good cook.”

“You never mentioned that,” Simone replied, unable to believe that she was engaged in non-sniping conversation with her teammate-to-be.

“Never felt the need to. It never came up. I don’t do so well with the talking to people thing, as you maybe might have noticed.” Both of them could hear the catch in her voice, the thickness, the way her words stuck in her throat, the way she was maybe only a second from another crying jag. Simone tried to embrace her, but from the way Adia stiffened even further, she knew that this probably wasn’t the right move. “Not tonight, Simone. I can’t. I don’t- I’m not- I can’t tonight, I just can’t.”

Simone nodded, then realized that the movement had probably been lost in the darkness. “I understand,” she said, miraculously able to keep her disappointment out of her voice but at the expense of any other emotion. She sounded bland and disinterested, when the truth was the exact opposite.

“No, you don’t, not yet. Maybe you will. Maybe you can. But you- you need to go. I won’t let you see me like this.” Adia still spoke from in the pillow, so her words were muffled, but Simone didn’t think that she could use that as an excuse to stay. She patted Adia’s arm tentatively before taking her hand away, stuffing her hands in her pockets, and retreating from the living room.

That night, Adia wasn’t the only one whose tears soaked her pillow and whose sobs disturbed the perfect silence of the night. Simone grieved too, for she was very afraid that she was losing her heart to the one person she doubted that she could trust it with.

On the fourth night since the drama had started, Simone gave up all pretense of doing anything but waiting for Adia, sitting patiently in the kitchen. Soon she heard those heart-rending cries and raced into the living room. There was something about Adia’s posture- if posture was the right word for someone in a horizontal position- that was different this time, though Simone would have been hard-pressed to explain the difference. Shyly, she sat down on the couch/bed and started massaging Adia’s shoulders until she could feel the muscles relaxing.

With a small wail, Adia stumbled into a semi-upright position and clung to Simone, throwing her arms around the other woman as if she would never let go. “She loved me and I loved her and she left me and I never left her and then here and she wouldn’t and I wanted to and- and-”

“Is that why you said you couldn’t? It wasn’t because of...”

Some of the familiar asperity was back in Adia’s voice with her response. “I know what I am, I know what you are, I’m only stupid half the time. It wasn’t you. God knows it wasn’t you, if there is a God. I just didn’t think that I could give anyone everything anymore, not since the last time I did that when she stomped it all flat and left me believing that I wasn’t worth it. But then I saw you and I knew that you deserved a hundred percent of a good woman, and I knew that I couldn’t give you a hundred percent because the bitch who broke my heart still has some of the pieces, but that was all right because I’m not a good woman anyway, I’m not worth what you-”

Simone held her close and stroked her long, glossy hair. “Shhh, don’t talk like that. Of course you’re a good woman, of course you’re worth everything. Did you think I’d give up this many nights to someone who wasn’t worth anything to me?”

“Of course you would, that’s what makes you so wonderful, you’ll care for anyone, no matter what they’re like. I’m a bitch, but you could care less, you just want to comfort me and make me feel better and that’s why I know I’m not worthy of you, because I wouldn’t do that for just anyone-”

Again Simone felt forced to break up Adia’s run-on sentence-cum-monologue. “I would do it for you, and you would do it for me, and I don’t really care what anyone else has to do with the equation. Except for the woman who broke your heart. Her I want to do many unpleasant things to. She didn’t deserve you. I don’t even know if I do.”

Adia laughed bitterly. “Of course you don’t. You deserve much, much better than me.”

“My bad luck that I love you then, I suppose.” Simone kept her voice light.

“You’re not kidding, are you? Are you just trying to make me feel better with a line like that?”

“Come now, do you think I’d lie to you?”

“Hmmm... no, I don’t think so.” Adia’s smile flashed brightly in the shadows. “Thank you.”

Adia’s joy soon turned to panic as Simone gently disentangled herself from the embrace. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to lie down. Could you move over a little to the right, please? Thanks. Mmmmm. You smell nice.” Simone’s voice was already thick with sleepiness, and soon she was sound asleep next to Adia.

Adia allowed herself another smile and turned to face Simone. “Night... dear.”