Between

Sometimes she thinks she should just disappear. It would be so easy for everyone: a simple solution to the backup point guard minutes, an answer to the constant complaints coming from her home, the best way to stop inflicting guilt on her friend and compatriot. Maybe if she rips up her contract, changes her name, grows out her hair, and flees to Canada, none of them will ever find her; maybe then Jan and Mike will be relieved of their tough decisions, and somewhere Jamie and Renae can breathe sighs of relief, and somewhere Jenn and Laura can melt together.

But that's the easy way out, a cheat for all of them to use, and she's a little scrapper, always fighting for the slightest bit of advantage. She won't give up anything that she thinks is hers: not her position as an Opal, not her minutes behind Lindsay, and not Laura. Never Laura.

If she were a better person, she would recognise the ache that twists and strains Laura's face and the dullness in her eyes (except when they talk about the Phoenix game, when her eyes light up and her lips part), realise Jenn's victory, and cede the battle. She isn't that generous. She's selfish enough to still want Laura to be hers, to be the woman Laura dreams of and enfolds in her arms at night, and to have Jenn be nothing but a memory and a might-have-been.

She has a world of potential. All-Star, All-Star Five, they say. Starter, Olympic starter, they say. But there always seems to be a catch, some obstacle between her and her goal. For national pride, it's her idiotic coach, blindly loyal to the old guard even when it's clear that their time has long since proud. For the honour of her stateside team, it's Lindsay, who would rather play half-healthy and help her team lose than sit out and let someone else help them win. And for Laura… her heart breaks a little more every time she thinks of the only kiss, when Laura's hands squeezed her hips, trying to make her someone else; when Laura kissed the bridge of her nose, between her eyebrows, until she had to take Laura's chin in her hand and bring their lips together; when, in short, she had had exactly what she wanted… except that she didn't have it at all, and the perceived having of it was the proof it didn't exist.

People have wondered, and will keep wondering, why she hawks Jenn so fiercely, plays her so rough, even more physically than she plays any other guard in this league. They'll keep wondering, because she'll never tell them why. She'll never tell anyone, especially Laura, that she wants to find out what's so fascinating about Jenn, what it is the solemn-looking New Yorker has that she doesn't.

More than that, though, she wants to destroy Jenn, bring her down, humiliate her, show all her flaws to Laura so plainly that they can't be missed, and thus remove what stands between.

The Devil

The devil's in the details, they say, but for her the details were the only way she could be good. She abided by dietary laws and customs of clothing in order to keep her body pure so that she would not tempt others into sin (although, if pressed, she would admit that she was an unlikely candidate to inflame anybody's lust, no matter what she wore). She served her faith whenever and wherever she could without complaint.

The big things were what gave her problems. Commandments, for example: more than once she had taken the Lord's name in vain, she had racked up more than a few steals in her playing days, and she had profaned the court with her sweat and blood on the Sabbath. Once or twice, she had even dared to doubt the word, and even the existence, of God, and that bothered her, no matter how many times people told her that it was normal to have such feelings at one time or another.

None of them, though… none of them knew the struggle she had faced ever since coming to New York. For the first time, the forbidden emotions she had kept buried through the years had come to the fore, brought forth by a woman she had told herself could only be a friend. There was a time when even that would have been forbidden; Kristen would have been considered unclean, cursed descendent of a heinous sinner, because of the rich caramel of her skin. Times and teachings had changed, allowing her to seek out Kristen's friendship, but that wasn't enough for her impure heart; she had longed to lie with Kristen as she would with a man, though she knew it to be abomination. The sin in her mind would not damn her- that was one thing they had bettered the Catholics on, allowing for human weakness in the mind- but she had to be ever vigilant to ensure that the thoughts never escaped. It wasn't easy, not when they were constantly together and all too familiar with each other's bodies.

Looking back, she was certain that Kristen had been a test, a reminder of what she was supposed to be and what she could destroy if she let the temptation take her over: devout, honest, committed to her faith, her duty, and her man. She hadn't been sure at the time, so she had prayed for God to remove the temptation from her so that she could be a worthy friend. But "the Lord works in mysterious ways", and by the end of 2005 training camp, the temptation was removed: Kristen was gone.

She had thought it would be enough, and it shook her to the core when she encountered an even greater trial midway through that year. Everything that Kristen had been, Kristen's replacement was and more: just as strong, just as fast, just as caramel-colored, just as steady in her belief, and thus just as much a temptation.

But where Kristen had had a boyfriend to serve as a shield, the woman who followed in her footsteps had nothing but a warm smile and a casual ease about her sexuality. Kristen had been untouchable in two ways, but this other was not; if anything, she seemed to demand contact. She was a woman who wanted to be loved, and her friendship seemed to be only the first step further along a road it was death to follow- a road Kristen would never have led her down.

This, she was certain, was temptation, a trick of the Devil's devising to encourage her to cave in to the weakness Kristen had caused in her; surely there was no other way that Kristen's departure could be so quickly followed by the arrival of someone who had so many of the qualities she… valued… in Kristen without some of the barriers that kept her from coming closer. Surely God would not test her twice in such rapid succession, or so she thought all through that first year.

By the second year, she found that she was ceasing to care whether it was a test or a temptation, as she became willing to give in. Part of her began to wonder if this meeting were fated; if she prayed for this temptation to be removed, would another one simply come to replace it, as this one had replaced Kristen? Closer and closer she edged, heedless of the warnings against this behavior, until at last she went over. If she had failed the test, if she had fallen prey to the devil's wiles, she no longer cared. She did what felt like the right thing to do, fallen in love, and maybe for love she would be forgiven.

The Deep Blue Sea

Kayte had been captivated by her eyes all those years ago, staring for what seemed like hours into their azure depths with a hunger intense enough to destroy both of them. Her younger teammate had dreamily described them as like the ocean, and she supposed Kayte had a point. She had stood on the cliffs of three continents and stared down at the waves crashing against the shore, beautiful and destructive, alluring and dangerous. For their sake, she had set aside a year of her career, hoping that there was some answer hidden in the sapphire depths of the ocean.

But the peace she found while mastering the waves on her surfboard never translated to her life on land, and she found that she couldn't run away. Not that she hadn't tried- that was why she had left the team, finished her senior year at an NAIA school where everyone around her knew better than to be tempted. If she had stayed, she would have dragged Kayte down with her- not out of any desire, but simply because of her golden hair, sparkling blue eyes, and dazzling smile. She had had to remind herself of the way things were supposed to be, and in the meantime hope that Kayte had learned the same.

She didn't tend to think about things; what would be, would be, and it was in God's hands, not hers. Her decisions were spur-of-the-moment and often whimsical. She couldn't say that she'd done badly by that method; after all, she had a championship ring and some awesome memories from overseas. She'd rarely strayed, and repented for it afterwards without fail. She had done everything in her power to make sure that the mistake she had made with Kayte was never repeated- no one else would fall the way Kayte had fallen, and maybe in that way she could make up for her foolish collegiate days. Maybe she'd even discover that Kayte had come to her senses.

But time passed, and when she came back from her travels a wiser, tanner, and happier woman, her hair brightened by foreign suns and her spirit lightened by awareness of her path, she saw that the change she had hoped for hadn't come to pass. Instead of coming to her senses, Kayte had fallen deeper into the trap; there was no way she and Kristen were "just friends", not with the way their hands strayed when they thought no one was looking, not with the way they kept companionship when it clearly wasn't necessary. Running away hadn't solved the problem; if anything, she'd made it easier for Kristen to worm her way into Kayte's heart and there subvert her. In trying to save the girl who had fallen in love with her, she had only doomed the woman.

And too late, too late, she understood why she had run, that it wasn't Kayte's falling in love she feared as much as her own falling in love with Kayte. She couldn't be sure if it had happened or not, but part of her had always known that the potential was there, and it was that from which she had tried to flee. She could throw herself into basketball harder than she ever had, channel her passion into a game that could do nothing, but there was no way to escape the truth that could not make her free: that dreadful self-knowledge was what Kayte had seen all those years ago, hidden in the depths of her eyes as blue as the ocean waves.