It definitely peaked when Cheryl came to pick them up for a shopping excursion and found Ruth’s bra on Swin’s doorknob and Swin on top of Ruth. That was the turning point, where a completely cherry red Ruth discovered that Cheryl hadn’t gotten all the information that a girl of her age usually had, and she and Swin had to explain the entire situation very slowly and carefully. Neither of them was completely certain that Cheryl really understood everything, but Swin had put a stop to the conversation because if Ruth blushed anymore things would get awkward.

It definitely ended the first time Swin was the dumper instead of the dumpee, breaking it off when she realized that there wasn’t enough passion between them to fill a thimble. Even years later, she would remember the hunted look in Ruth’s stunning eyes, the betrayal though they both knew that this wasn’t right for them and maybe never had been. She understood how she had looked when Tamika had said goodbye, when Shea had said it was no longer working, and for the first time, her heart went out to the woman that Tamika had left her for.

But when did it start? That question haunted both of them even after the end. Was there a starting point that they could focus on? Was there one spot that they could point to and say that this was where it had all begun? Or did it just grow out of nothing much at all?

Maybe it had been during All-Star weekend, when they were both bored out of their minds and more than a little loose and giddy from downing a couple of drinks each. It had started as a shopping trip, but they had gotten very bored very quickly, so they went to Swin’s. Ruth had been surprised that Swin even kept alcohol; Swin didn’t mention that Shea had left it there the last time she was in Detroit. The Tigers were on one of the local channels, and the alcohol had seemed like an appropriate accompaniment to the sports. All things considered, the booze tasted fine; soon, they were each into their second can.

It had seemed natural for Swin to lean against Ruth; she was tired and Ruth was conveniently broad enough in frame for her to have plenty of room. And Ruth couldn’t summon up the will to do anything about it, since she really didn’t object, and she was tired too, and thought that Swin felt nice against her anyway. They were well into what could be defined as cuddling before they knew it. It took Swin’s hand on Ruth’s chest for either of them to notice anything, and even then it was in the vaguest of ways. “’ey, Swin, how’d your hand get there?” she asked.

Swin thought about it for a moment, then shrugged, her shoulder poking Ruth in a way that would have been called a foul during a game. “Dunno,” she mumbled. “Does it matter? You’re soft.”

“Don’t say that. Coach will never forgive either of us. I’m not soft. I’m hard. Grrrr.” The growl sent both of them into spasms of laughter.

“Nuh-uh. You’re soft. Kinda cuddly, even.” To illustrate, Swin poked Ruth somewhere highly inappropriate. Ruth giggled. Swin looked at her oddly; a six-four center giggling was a strange sight in any situation. “See? Cuddly.”

“Bet your girlfriend would be jealous, you callin’ me cuddly,” Ruth said.

“Don’ have a girlfriend, ‘member?” Swin muttered, her eyes turning to photos of her with Tamika, her with Shea. “Prob’ly why I think you’re cuddly, haven’t had any cuddles for a- a looooong while.”

“C’m’ere.”

“Hunh?”

“You said you hadn’t had any cuddles, right? C’m’ere.” Ruth pulled her closer and stroked her hair. It was an oddly maternal gesture; the kissing and making out that shortly followed it, however, were anything but.

Two or three innings later, the Tigers had only gotten as far as first base, but Swin and Ruth were already around second and heading for third.

Maybe it had been the night Shea broke up with Swin, when Swin had broken down upon being rejected again. She had run from the thought that she wasn’t good enough, no matter how good she thought she was. In that moment of crisis, she had reverted to a child’s mindset and hidden away so that she couldn’t see the problem and it couldn’t see her. She didn’t know if she would have ever come back out of there if she hadn’t been forced to.

But she had been forced- wasn’t that the point of questioning? It had been Ruth who had found her and talked sense into her, who had accidentally discovered her secret and really didn’t seem to mind all that much. Ruth’s quiet words and common sense had convinced her that this wasn’t going to help matters one bit, and she had decided that she could deal with the world. As she picked herself up off the floor, Ruth had aided her...

...and then kissed her, no two ways about it. It had been just a gentle, motherly kiss on the forehead, and Ruth pulled back quickly, a sputtering apology already forming on her lips. Her words made it clear that she didn’t mean anything more than friendship by it, but Swin suspected something else. Then again, she always did; UConn had made her painfully sensitive to who meant what, made her able to tell who was lying and who was for real in a world where everyone she knew had to wear a mask.

“You don’t have to be afraid,” she had said to Ruth, causing that red, red blush to climb up the other girl’s face. “If you’re-”

“I’m not, you know that, I didn’t mean that by it,” Ruth had interrupted. But she hadn’t met Swin’s eyes through the whole thing, and Swin suspected that Ruth was hiding something. So she did the only thing she could think of to do- kissed Ruth back, in similarly friendly fashion, and gauged the reaction. Embarrassment, confusion, shame; she had seen all these emotions before, the day she had first kissed Tamika. That had been different, in more ways than one.

“Ruth, if you ever want to talk about it...”

“I don’t think I will.” The cold, harsh tone in Ruth’s voice was unfamiliar to either of them. She stalked away quickly, wounded pride radiating from her. She would never admit that she might have liked the faintly cinnamon taste of her teammate’s skin or the scent of the perfume she wore. It didn’t seem right to her. She knew that she liked guys. Why then was she attracted to one of the few players she knew who wasn’t masculine in any way? Perplexed, she did what she could to push Swin away and duck the problem.

Maybe it was when Ruth saw Swin coming back from the league’s photo shoots, pictures in hand and a foul look on her face. Swin had barely acknowledged anyone as she stalked into the Palace, throwing the envelope of test shots onto the bench in the locker room. She had looked like she wanted to get rid of everything involved in the events of that day as long as she could practice. Ruth had barely been introduced to the rest of her teammates, though she knew most of them well enough to match a name to a face. She had been surprised to not see Swin with the rest of the group until someone had explained the situation. Then she wasn’t surprised anymore; she knew that Swin had the cachet that the league was looking for in its poster girls.

Still, she had at least expected Swin to say hello to her, since they had seen each other often enough in Big East play. “She don’t deal well with playing dress-up on someone else’s terms,” Deanna explained, catching Ruth’s confusion. “She can be all girlie on her own terms, but when someone else tells her what to wear and what to do, she gets real touchy. Shoulda seen her face when she saw the new unis; she was ‘bout ready to throw a fit that she couldn’t tuck it in. I don’t think ya should talk to her ‘til she’s calmed down.”

“I know how she is, I played against her in college, remember? She doesn’t seem to have changed that much,” Ruth reminded the other girl. She had gone into the locker room anyway, not sure if she was looking for Swin or not. Whatever the case might have been, she didn’t find Swin, just the envelope of photos. Her curiosity was piqued, and she opened the envelope.

The first few photos showed Swin in overalls and nothing else, her hair frizzed out. In most of the photos she looked displeased; one was captioned ‘it would have helped if they FIT!’. The next couple showed her smiling in the same outfit, her eyes bright. Ruth could see hints of bra underneath the overalls, and beyond that the contours of Swin’s dark body. She put those down in a hurry, a crimson tint shading her skin.

The next batch had Swin in a red dress with fringe along... Ruth caught herself quickly and substituted front for... the other words she had been thinking of. It clung to her in ways that didn’t seem quite appropriate for a basketball league’s commercial and accented parts that were quite... accentable, for lack of a better word. Ruth was having trouble finding a better word, or even a word at all. The dress demonstrated that there were curves underneath the uniform that Ruth had never imagined any basketball player having. She didn’t know if she should be jealous or not. Some of the pictures had her with another player that Ruth recognized vaguely from that UConn team. Not Jones from the Mystics, but the other one that she always mixed up with Jones and Cash. It took a moment for her to remember the name; it finally came to her: Tamika Williams.

There was one at the bottom that looked older. Now Ruth had the feeling that she shouldn’t be going through this, not when it showed far more of Swin than she thought she was supposed to see. A scrawled note was paper-clipped to it. ‘Tay,’ it read, ‘Svet found this in the 39-0 box. She was kinda pissed that I kept it. It’s better for all of us if you keep it, since it is kinda you, anyway. I know Shay-shay doesn’t care so much... and that she hates the nickname, but she broke my girl’s heart, so she gets no mercy from me. Anyway. Tammy- and yes, you’re still the only one who can call me that, Sveta tried it and I almost pulled an AJ move on her so she’d shut up. Not good when dealing with your best girl.’

The implications made Ruth’s head spin. She looked up in time to see Swin, coldly angry, seize the envelope from her hand. “Keep out of my stuff, Riley,” Swin snapped before walking away. Ruth was surprised by the ferocity of the reaction... or she would have been, if the afterimage of that last photo hadn’t been still dancing about in her mind. There were suggestions that she never thought she’d be thinking of.

It took her a while to banish them, even temporarily.

Maybe it even started in college, when they were just Big East rivals, banging on the blocks a few times a year, strength against strength and bodies flying all over the place. Maybe that was when Swin and Ruth first became conscious of each other as women, with women’s bodies. They were all grown up underneath their uniforms. Swin already knew that she wasn’t like ninety or so percent of girls by the time she was on her first national championship team. Ruth never questioned that she was anything but.

Swin’s first impression of the center from Notre Dame was the eyes, wide and innocent as if she wasn’t sure what she had gotten herself into and she was already into her second year of college and she was supposed to be *finished* with all this confusion already. The second thing she had noticed about Ruth was the discomfort that the broad-shouldered girl seemed to feel within her body, as if she were afraid that she would break something every time that she moved. Unfortunately, the third thing that she noticed was that the girl would clean up really well if she stopped acting like she was afraid of everything and anything in the gym. Since she and Tamika had only been in the first month of their relationship at that point, this was not a good observation to make. Besides, everyone “knew” that the Notre Dame girls were so straight that someone could mark inch lines on them and use them as rulers. “Heck of a ruler,” Schuey had said about Ruth Riley when Shea had come out with that remark. Swin was forced to agree.

They’d known each other too long for a true starting point to be ascertained. Maybe it had just come out of nowhere in the humid July air when Swin’s last fan had died of heat death and the alcohol had gone to their heads. But maybe it had been aborning before that, just waiting for egress. Maybe it was meant to be, even if it wasn’t meant to be forever.