Bite Your Tongue

[ 1 ] Courting Rosalie

There were plenty of things that kept Rosalie Mason's person tied to her hometown, but none of them were quite as convincing as the look of mutiny on Joanna Spencer's face. Her life was calling to her from across the country—a life beyond the stationary, simplistic atmosphere she was raised with. She had steeped in comfort long enough, and Joanna's interruption to the Montgomery County stasis was more than refreshing.

And the baggage Joanna brought with her felt like a worthy investment in Rosalie's time, especially if it meant gaining a ticket to the audacious future she saw for herself. Seattle was her next step into a world of professional competitive sports. Once they left the Montgomery County line, she couldn't look back.

She refused to revel in the wonders of high school shenanigans.

Collegiate soccer won't be anything like the Bradshaw Knights, she thought as she stepped back from the mantle above her mother's unused fireplace. Her mother never frequented the living room, and now that Rosalie was bound for Seattle, she likely wouldn't linger there unless she had company.

"There," Rosalie said, hands on her hips. "They aren't pretty anymore, but..."

"It gives them character," her mom said.

Rosalie glanced back at her mom, who was lounging back on the sofa with a glass of wine in her hand and her eyes focused on the twin soccer balls Rosalie had mounted on wooden stands above the fireplace. The stands were hand-crafted with attempted carvings in the Bradshaw High woodworking lab and were ultimately the reluctant, combined effort of two of her favorite people.

Considering the size of the vehicle she'd be taking across the country, she didn't want to bother with unnecessary equipment, but she was sentimental. If she couldn't keep her high school soccer balls with her, the very least she could do was display them in an honorary position.

So the mantle made sense.

"Tomorrow," her mom said, setting the glass aside. She leant her elbows against her knees, her cold, I-mean-business face entirely unappealing for the mood but entirely expected that night. Rosalie steeled herself for the inevitable. "I am sitting myself in the passenger's seat of that person's car and staying there until your two travel buddies take my driving test."

Her mother had threatened it earlier that summer. Granted, the summer hadn't been long for her in the slightest. In fact, it had only been a month and Rosalie was already due to start summer training in Seattle in a little over three weeks. And now, with her trip planned to embark the following morning, she and Joanna Spencer were due to drive a car neither of them had laid eyes on before.

Drew Mendoza's vehicle.

It wasn't the ideal option, but it was a option. Rosalie had her license thanks to Prom when she and Jamie-Lee Berry—a good friend of her's from high school—tag-teamed driver's ed so they wouldn't have to endure it alone. With her driving skills still fresh, she didn't have a car and had no plans on getting one. Joanna, on the other hand, owned a moped. Aside from that, she borrowed her mother's car on occasion, but it made no sense whatsoever to borrow the Lieutenant's car for a one-way trip to Seattle.

Drew Mendoza, however, would be staying in Seattle with them as a fellow teammate of the Seattle Huskies. They had a car and planned on getting it to Seattle one way or another.

Rosalie recalled that when Drew suggested that the three of them carpooled, her immediate thought was, Joanna's going to rip them to shreds. Drew Mendoza had exposed a personal part of Joanna's history that uprooted everything Rosalie knew about her girlfriend.