Bite Your Tongue

[ 5 ] Homesick

a/n: Y'all know I'm a Lennie simp... so this chap focuses on Ray, Lennie, and Jamie-Lee lol sorry not sorry

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Their first night away from Montgomery was disarming, to say the very least.

It took an hour of decompression for Joanna to realize something specific about the situation that she had never felt before. It came with the territory of being the Lieutenant's daughter—moving, traveling, rearranging and reconfiguring her life to fit around whatever new circumstances came their way. She was used to being on her toes.

Until Montgomery.

She became content to steep her life in Bradshaw. She never even considered how much she would miss the color and vibrancy of that place, and to realize that she would never again sit in English class again and just stare out the window overlooking the courtyard... She missed it. The cinematic way she could sometimes see people from her vantage point in English class all the way across to the opposite wing of the school was... movie-worthy.

Her heart always stopped, just a little, from how poetic it was to see one of their teammates in class across the courtyard, or even to make eye contact with them and pretend she wasn't positively thrilled when they smiled upon recognizing her. She'd give them the bird, and they'd turn and laugh to their friends. Usually it was Erin McAlister, the new captain of the soccer team.

She wanted to populate Bradshaw with new memories that could never happen. They weren't in Montgomery anymore and they wouldn't be for quite some time, if at all. She'd never spend hours after school on the Bradshaw soccer fields, or horsing around in the baseball field dugouts with Brynn Fox and Jamie-Lee Berry. Reading it all over again in one of Rosalie's Polaroid photo albums didn't change the fact that the album was already filled cover-to-cover. There wasn't space for anything new.

"You look pensive," Rosalie commented from the armchair in the Airbnb living room.

Joanna lifted her chin from her hand and, after a brief moment, said, "I think I'm homesick."

"Oh," she said, like she had no experience comforting anyone ever. She cleared her throat and let out a nervous laugh. "I-I mean, that's fair."

"What, bitch, do I look like the type of person who wouldn't get homesick?"

"I don't—It's not really a look, per say..." she hummed, rubbing a finger against her cheek. She pulled her long legs up onto the seat, knees slanted off to the side.

"I thought you'd be more, like, 'Fuck D.C.'," Drew said from the floor, punching a fist to the air. "'Burn it to the ground.'"

"Yeah, that's kind of what I was thinking," Rosalie agreed, all thoughtful about it.

"Well, fuck you guys," Joanna laughed, pointedly turning around in her seat so her shoulders were tilted away.

At that moment, Rosalie's phone started ringing. On the screen was Ray Hartley's face, and seeing it brought a bright smile to Rosalie's face as she gasped, "Oh! That's right—Today was Ray's first day of training!"

As far as Joanna was aware (which was more aware than Hartley knew, thanks to Rosalie being her informant), Hartley was loving it at NYU. She had moved into the dorms just last week and spent an absurd amount of time with her new teammates exploring, getting to know each other, and living their best city lives. Hartley blended in well, judging from the photos she posted on Instagram. Pittmen was in a handful of them.

As Rosalie started her call with Hartley, Joanna delved back into Pittmen's unfortunate, precarious situation. Joanna didn't talk to him much, but they had each others' numbers now, and every now and then they texted. They texted like relatives who only communicated whenever family reunions were being planned. Pittmen would text her out of the blue, "What's your ETA for Seattle?" to which Joanna would reply, "August." That always pissed Pittmen off. The guy only wanted the facts—none of Joanna's nonsense.