a little bit, sometimes
by distira
"I think everyone wanted it so bad and you know, like, losing really wasn't an option for us […] The final whistle blew and I think everyone just put their hands on top of their heads like, oh my god. We're world champs." - Alex Morgan, January 2009
"You should go," Servando tells her.
His room is messy - there's a pile of shoes in front of the door and the laundry bin is overflowing onto the floor. His desk is a mess of papers with his laptop barely visible, and his training gear is spread out over the middle of the floor, a bottle of Febreeze lying next to it. It doesn't usually bother Alex, the mess, but she's fidgety right now. She wants to clean.
Servando's arm is tight across her middle, though, so she doesn't move. "Yeah?" she asks. "I mean. Of course I want to, I'm not an idiot." He snorts, so Alex elbows his ribs. "Shut up!"
"Of course you aren't an idiot," Servando apologizes. "I have better taste than that."
Alex elbows him again. "No but like, what about the team? Not to be like, super cocky or anything, but -"
"They need you, sure," Servando says, so she doesn't have to, and Alex is grateful.
"I can't just leave them right before the tournament," Alex wails. "I don't wanna have to choose, one or the other."
"It's not choosing," Servando says, propping himself up on an elbow. Alex flips herself over to look at him. "It's like - you've played the whole season here. You've put in all the legwork here. They're your team, and they should be happy for you, that you get to go to the fucking World Cup, okay? Nobody's gonna hate you."
Alex bites her lip. "It's just the U-20s," she corrects. "Not the real World Cup."
"Whatever," Serva says. "It's a big fucking deal and they should be happy for you."
"I know," Alex says. "But. What if they aren't?"
“Hey, what are you doing? There’s a La Liga game on GolTV, give me that -“
Servando reaches across her, going for the clicker, but she holds it out of reach. “You can watch that later, it’ll rerun,” she tells him. “Right now we are watching WPS, get used to it.”
He pouts, mashing his face against her shoulder. “Why? Is it even gonna be a good game?”
She punches his arm, not lightly. “We are watching it because one day I’m gonna be playing in this league so you’re gonna have to watch it, so you might as well start now.”
“That so? Who says I’ll actually watch, though?” He’s teasing; they both know he’ll watch.
“You won’t get laid if you don’t,” Alex tells him. It annoys her that she has to spell this out for him - she wants him to care on his own, but if she has to make him, she will.
“Fine, then,” Serva grumbles, settling back against the cushions. “Turn up the volume.”
"It was so awkward!" Alex says after practice the next day, stomping into Serva's room. She flops onto his bed, face into the pillow, waiting for him to take his headphones off.
"What was?" he asks. "Practice?"
He's playing a video game. Alex doesn't know which one, because the only one she plays that isn't for the Wii is FIFA and she's terrible at it. "Yes," she says. "Yes practice. Practice was fucking awful. McGuire made me tell the team beforehand so then like, everyone was just kind of playing around me when we actually started, you know? Phasing me out or whatever."
Serva puts his headphones on his keyboard and tips back in his chair. "Well," he says slowly, "they are gonna have to figure out how to play without you for the tournament."
"Well, yeah," Alex admits, "but I still need to practice!"
Servando raises an eyebrow at her. "So do they," he says. "You'll figure it out with them. And you'll be at the training camp soon anyway. And if you really, really suck, then I guess I could practice with you." His voice lilts up at the end, just slightly.
There's a sock balled up underneath Serva's pillow. Alex throws it at him.
"Abuse!" Serva yells. "Maybe they don't wanna practice with you because you throw shit at people, ever think about that?"
"Shut up," Alex tells him. He winks at her and reaches for his headphones, and Alex spends the rest of the afternoon napping while he plays his game. He wakes her up for dinner and they go to the main dining hall, where they squeeze into a booth with A.J. and some of Serva's other teammates, and they all say congratulations to Alex, and none of her own teammates stop by. Servando puts his arm around her shoulders and keeps it there.
Berkeley is class, sleep, eat, soccer, with time thrown in for homework and parties and Servando. It's a nice balance and she's gotten used to it, having so many things going on at once. Chile is not so many things, though - Chile is one thing, and that one thing is soccer. Chile is waking up at 6 AM for runs and dozing through breakfast while prepping for tactics sessions, and talking about free kicks over lunch before heading out to the training fields and running drills and scrimmages until dinner, and then Chile is watching reruns of the '99 World Cup in hotel rooms before going to bed and dreaming about scoring goals.
Alex loves it.
"There's a legit training facility, not just a turf with a million different lines painted on," Alex says. Serva's face is blue in the light of the computer. He's lying on his bed with the computer on his chest, and the way he has to tilt his head to see the screen gives him a double chin. Alex takes a screencap to put on Facebook later. "It's amazing."
"That's awesome," Serva says, and she can tell he's happy for her but he's also tired.
"Miss you, though," she says.
"You, too," he tells her. "When's your first game?"
"Group stages start Sunday," Alex says. "I don't know if it'll be on TV, though?"
Serva shrugs. The computer bounces up and down a little bit. "I'll just stream it," he says. "No biggie."
"How are the girls doing?" Alex asks. "Tournament starts soon."
"They're good, Alex," Servando says. "They're gonna be fine, don't worry about it."
They aren't fine, though - Alex checks the scores on her phone during an evening film session, pretending to crack her neck so she can slide her phone out of her pocket and check for Serva's texts: down 1-0. tied 1-1. down 2-1. She's antsy, can't keep her legs still, because as happy as she is to be here - maybe not here in this room, looking at film of the England defensive unit, but here at the World Cup - she wants to be out there playing with her team. Her Cal team.
"Chill," Sydney whispers to her.
"Can't," Alex whispers back. "We're losing."
Sydney squeezes her elbow. Her UCLA team isn't losing, though; Alex can see 5-0 on the screen of Sydney's phone.
full time, Servando texts. Alex bites her lip to keep herself from banging her head against the back of her chair. it's not ur fault flashes across the screen of her phone, and Alex turns it over in her lap so she can't see the display anymore.
When she checks it again after the film session is over, there's a message waiting for her, but it's from Valerie, not Servando. lost 2-1, missed you out there. we'll all be watching tomorrow, get a w for us!.
Alex calls her as soon as she's back in the hotel. "I'm sorry," she says when Valerie picks up.
"Don't be," Valerie says, clearly still in captain mode. "I mean, it sucks, obviously, but. How's Chile?"
"Chile's good," Alex says. "Different, but, you know." Valerie doesn't know. She never played at any level of the national team. "It's soccer all the time, so. Pretty awesome."
"Nice," Valerie says. "Hey, I gotta go, we're doing a team pasta dinner pity party so Nkechi and I need to start cooking, but. We're all gonna watch tomorrow, okay? The men's team, too. So you'd better score."
After they hang up, Alex plugs her phone in and stays in bed, lying on top of the covers. Servando texts again, just as she's drifting off. focus on tmrrw, u can think about cal when u get back here, he says. Alex saves the text and goes to bed.
She doesn't score against England, but she scores in the final.
It's a gorgeous cross, right onto her laces, and all Alex has to do is muscle her way in front of the North Korean defender, and then -
The ball moves in a perfect volley off of her cleat into the netting, leaving the goalie bewildered. It's beautiful, and Alex takes of running, cheering, grabbing her teammates as she goes until they're all in a pile on the field because they're winning and it's the World Cup final.
When the last whistle finally goes, when it's full time and they've won, Alex doesn't really know what to do with herself. She stays on the field, they all do, with her hands on top of her head, and she can't catch her breath.
"We did it," Sydney yells, jogging over to her. "Fucking world champs, man!"
Alex can't stop smiling.
When she gets to her phone, she ignores all of the texts she has and sends one to Valerie and the rest of her team. won it for you ladies, she says. Then she taps a new one out for Servando. !!!!!!!!!!
He texts back right away. goal of the tournament. golazo! good job. when do u get back?
home soon, she says. i'll call when i'm back.
@alexmorgan13: you turned your back on us once we can and will turn our backs on you for good. you are not welcome back
@alexmorgan13: long long day. big headache, tired, frustrated. Thank you for all the support in the past few days.
-Alex Morgan via Twitter, October 2009
"Hey," Servando says when Alex sits down next to him in the dining hall nearest the practice facilities. "I heard. How're you doing?"
"Like shit," she says. She reaches for his plate and snags a French fry. It's drenched in ketchup, which kind of makes her gag, but she eats it anyway. "I mean, I know he's not even the best coach or anything but he can't just fuck off in the middle of the season!"
"Did he say why?" Servando slides the plate of fries closer to her. She eats another one.
"No," she says, mouth half-full. "Yes. Personal reasons, some bullshit."
"What're y'all gonna do?"
"Dunno," she says. She drops her head to rest on his shoulder and keeps eating the soggy fries. "I mean, we have a game this weekend, so. Play soccer, I guess."
They do play soccer. They play to a 1-1 tie against the eleventh ranked team in the country, and afterwards, all Alex can think is that they don't need McGuire. They can do it with just Lindsey and the team, because McGuire's been checked out all season, anyway. The rest of the team seems to agree, and she's full of some sort of vicious hope when she checks her email and opens one from the athletic director.
"What the fuck," she says.
“They took him back,” Alex rails. “They just took him back, no questions asked. He ‘resolved his personal issues’ or whatever the fuck. We all know he just came back because we tied, asshole. Can you believe this?”
Serva stays quiet and sympathetic, as he has through most of the past week. “Don’t know what to tell you,” he says. “I didn’t think they’d want him back.”
“They’re just gonna fucking sweep it under the carpet and pretend it never happened,” Alex continues. She’s too keyed up to sit down next to him, instead standing and fussing with the zipper of her jacket. “They’ll just pretend he had to take the week off to deal with something and then came back, like he never gave up, like he never just walked out.” She’s shaking. “I cannot believe this. And I swear to God, if this was the men’s team, this never would’ve happened. They would’ve handled this so much better, they wouldn’t just take him back, no questions asked.”
“Hey,” Servando says, raising his voice for the first time. “The fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“It means,” Alex says, “that even though we’re the better team, even though we do better for this school, the men’s team gets so much more attention that they couldn’t just hide this. You would have national attention and they wouldn’t have take him back, come on.”
“I don’t know if that’s true, Alex,” Servando says, his voice tight. He’s trying not to get too mad, she can tell, because he knows how upset she is, he’s had to deal with it for the past week, but she doesn’t care, she just keeps going.
“It is fucking true and you know it,” she snaps. “You don’t even realize how good you have it, Christ.”
Servando loses it. “How good I have it? Excuse me, Miss I-won-a-World-Cup, but I am not the one who has it good here. I’m not the team’s fucking leading scorer, All American, whatever, okay, I’m not getting call-ups to the national team, I might not even be a captain here, okay, and you didn’t even decide to care about all of this until you were fourteen. I’m the one who’s cared for my entire life and I don’t even have half of what you do, so sorry that I don’t exactly see this is me being the one who has it good.”
Alex just stares at him. “You don’t get it,” she says. “You don’t get it at all, it’s not even about that.”
“Then what’s it about, huh? You don’t even need this team, okay, you get Team USA all to yourself.”
“Stop it!” Alex yells. “Stop! You don’t get to make me feel guilty for being on the national team, okay, you don’t. That is shit I have earned and maybe you should just shut up and work harder and you’d get there too.”
“Oh, now you think I don’t work hard? Jesus Christ, Alex, you see me working hard every fucking day, what are you on, even?”
“That’s not the point!” Alex says. She zips up her jacket and goes for the door. “You get a team that people care about. And you’ll probably get the MLS, and people care about that, people go to games. So I might have all of the national team crap or whatever, but it doesn’t even matter, ‘cause nobody cares. And you can go sit on a bench on some professional team somewhere, and everyone’ll care, because that’s how it fucking is, so don’t you dare tell me I have it better.”
She feels like shit for it, but she leaves before he can reply. When she gets back to her own room, she lets herself in and then leans against the door for a few long minutes, shaking, and she starts to cry.
"I'm not sorry," Servando says when he sees her before practice the next day.
"Neither am I," she replies, stubborn.
"You aren't wrong, though, I guess," he continues. "I mean, neither am I, but."
"I am sorry, a little," she concedes. "None of this is your fault, I'm just. Hard week, you know."
"Yeah," he says. "I, uh. Gotta go to practice, but. Are there any WPS games on this weekend?"
"Maybe," Alex says. "I'll check."
She goes into her locker room and she's still not happy, probably won't be for the rest of the season, at the rate things are going, but she feels better than she has since McGuire walked out.
The Western New York Flash of Women's Professional Soccer signed first round draft pick Alex Morgan. Morgan is a 21-year-old forward from the University of California and is joining the Flash for their first season in the WPS. Morgan graduated from Cal in December, 2010. Morgan is third all time in goals scored (45) for the California Golden Bears and is now onto pursuing her professional soccer career. -January 2011
When Alex gets back to the apartment, Servando's washing dishes.
"Thanks," she says, dropping her bag and coming up behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist and hooking her chin over his shoulder. She usually does the dishes, more out of stress relief than anything, but she's glad to not have to do anything tonight.
"No problem," he says. He shrugs a little; her face bobs up and down on his shoulder. "How was the meeting?"
"Well," Alex starts. "Good. I, uh. I'm signed."
"Yeah?" Servando turns the water off and puts the last spoon on the drying rack. "That's awesome, where?"
"Western New York Flash," Alex says, trying out her new team name. Servando dries his hands off and turns to face her. He's smiling.
"That's. Alex, that's great," he tells her.
"Yeah," Alex says. "Yeah, no, it's awesome." She smiles back. She's tired, though, so she lets it fall off of her face after a few seconds. "Gotta start looking for a place in Buffalo."
Servando lets out a low whistle. "That's a long way from Seattle." He'd been drafted yesterday, second round. Seattle Sounders. When he got home, Alex had blown him in the doorway to celebrate.
"Yep," she says. She leads the migration from the kitchen to their bedroom and flops facedown onto the bed. Servando climbs on top of her, straddles the small of her back. "Remember all the Skyping when I was in Chile? It's gonna be ten times worse."
Servando doesn't say anything for a few minutes, just sits on top of her, his weight forcing a few cracks out of her spine, and rubbing her shoulders. She's starting to feel her eyelids get sleep-heavy when he says, "You don't seem very happy?"
"I am," she says. Her voice sticks a little bit in her throat. "'Course I am." She has no reason not to be - she has a professional contract. It's not something she's dreamed of since she was a little girl, but it's something she's worked hard for over the past four seasons. She hadn't thought she would've been anything but ecstatic about getting to play soccer for a living, but here she is.
"You don't sound happy," Serva says, because he knows her too well.
Alex smacks his side gently until he stands up on his knees. She rolls over onto her back and he settles back down on top of her. "I guess I'm just a little jealous," she says. She doesn't want to say it, because she hates herself for it, but Serva knows when she's lying.
"Of what?" Serva asks, and he looks so genuinely bewildered that she feels even worse. "One of the girls get a better team or something?"
"No, not of one of the girls," Alex says. She puts her hands on his hips and sighs. "You."
"That's," Serva starts, but cuts himself off and frowns. "Alex. Why?"
"Because!" she wails. It's easier than being rational. She balls her hands up into fists and punches his hipbones lightly.
"Not an answer," he says, just shy of being patronizing.
"Shut up," she tells him, dead serious.
"I just," Serva says. "I don't exactly understand why you're - upset with me, or jealous, or whatever. You're the one with the national team spot, you're the one going to the World Cup."
Alex bites down hard on her lip and doesn't bother pointing out that her roster spot for the World Cup is nowhere near guaranteed. "I'm not - I'm just," she starts. "It's like, yeah, sure, maybe I'll get the World Cup. I get to go to Germany and play and it'll be fucking amazing and the stadiums will be packed and it'll be great, but like. You get to have that all year long, you play for a team that sells out every game! And once I come back, I mean. I play for a team that's lucky to get twenty people in the stands."
It's never bothered her like this before. She'd never thought of soccer as a career, as a life, until recently, and now that she has it, now that she's a top draft pick and is house-hunting in Buffalo, the only thing she can keep thinking is, it's not fair.
Alex Morgan is arguably the most promising national team player of this generation. The Cal alumna first burst onto the scene after an electrifying performance in the final of the 2008 FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup. The U.S. won the tournament and paved the way for Morgan's inclusion in the national team. Morgan has since totaled 7 goals in 16 total national team games, and could be one of the rising stars of [the Women's World Cup]. -May 2011
"Hello?"
The room is crowded and Alex didn't even hear her phone ring over the noise, she'd only noticed it vibrating. She puts a finger in her other ear.
"This is Pia Sundhage -" Alex frantically hits the volume button on the side of her phone, trying to get it louder. "- are you free to talk for a minute?"
"Hi, yes! Of course! Hang on, one second," Alex says. She slides off of Servando's lap and fights her way out of the room into the hallway. "Hi, okay. Sorry!"
"It's okay," Pia says, and Alex can't quite believe it's her, that she's actually talking to the national team coach on the phone. The timing's a little unfortunate, because it's four in the afternoon and she's on the way to tipsy because they've been celebrating the end of two-a-days, but still. "The team -" Alex doesn't have to ask which team "-is having a friendly against Mexico in two weeks," Pia says. Alex hums her assent into the receiver, not entirely sure what to say. "We're interested in having you come up and train," Pia tells her.
Alex feels like her stomach drops out and like she could start flying, all at once. "Really?" she says, because she isn't sure what else there is to say.
Pia chuckles. "Yes, really."
"Wow, thank you so much," Alex says. "I, uh. I'm flattered, and I'm so excited!"
"I'll put you on the email list, then," Pia says. Alex can't help herself; she fist pumps.
"Yes. Great. Awesome," she says. "Thank you so much!"
When she hangs up and goes back into the room, she can't stop smiling. Servando slides an arm around her waist when she sits on the arm of his chair and offers her his beer. "What's that smile for?" he asks.
She feels like a total goofball - it's the kind of smile that makes her eyes squinty and shows her gums and makes her cheeks hurt, but she can't wipe it off her face. She takes the bottle and grins at him some more.
"You win the lottery or something?" Servando takes the beer back, since she's not actually drinking it, and takes a swig.
"Better," she tells him, and her whole body is thrumming with excitement.
"What's better than - Alex," Servando says. He sits up straighter, puts the beer down. His fingers dig into the skin above her hip. "Did you - was that -"
"Yes!" she cuts him off, and her smile gets so big that there's nothing left to do but laugh, so she does, a little bit too loudly. "For the Mexico game."
"Fuck," Servando says, "Alex, fuck!" He stands up and crushes her into a bear hug; Alex nearly topples off of the arm of the chair. She laughs some more. "Amazing," Serva says quietly, his breath tickling her ear. And then, louder, "You're amazing!" Alex turns her head into his shoulder and keeps on smiling.
"Hey, where are we going?" she asks a second later, because Serva is on the move now, one arm still around her waist, dragging her with him. All of their friends are staring at them like they're both crazy, and it's only then that Alex realizes that their conversation was probably incomprehensible to everyone else.
"We have some celebrating to do," Servando announces.
"Use protection!" Joshua hollers from in front of the TV, without looking up from the game of FIFA he's playing.
They make it back to Servando's room and onto their bed before Alex actually says it out loud. "Senior national team. Senior fucking national team!"
"Gonna be amazing," Servando says, his voice muffled because his face is pressed against her neck. His hands are on her hips and she kicks at him until he shifts and settles between her legs.
He doesn't say much after that, just pulls himself up and starts taking off her clothes, tossing her t-shirt onto the desk and letting her get rid of her bra, because he's never been able to figure out the hooks on the first try. She used to laugh at him for it, but now she just does it herself, while he works on his belt buckle and sheds his jeans. It takes her longer to wriggle out of hers, because they're tighter. She's not self-conscious about it because he's watched her jump into them in the mornings, tugging them over her muscled thighs, and she can tell he likes it.
Alex reaches for his cock, but Serva grabs her wrist and stops her. "This is your celebration," he says.
"I want to," she starts, but he doesn't let go of her wrist.
"We're celebrating you, okay, just -" he reaches down and slides a finger into her. She's wet, has been since the phone call, and it's so easy for him to slide a second finger in, start rubbing at her clit with his thumb. "- just let me, okay?"
His fingers in her feel good, so good, so she just nods, breathes out an "okay," and doesn't move to stop him.
After, after he fucks her until she's shaking around him, after he comes and lies on top of her for a few long moments, after he ties off the condom and comes back to their bed, she punches him on the shoulder.
"Why wouldn't you let me?" she asks.
"Was it not good?"
"No, shut up, it always is," she tells him, because it was good, but - "but why wouldn't you let me do anything for you?"
"Because it's your night," he tells her. He turns off the lamp and rolls over. "You got the call-up, okay, so we had to celebrate for you. If - if I get mine, then. You can do whatever you want."
Alex flies back to Buffalo once the weekend’s up and goes to a week of training, but misses the weekend’s match to go meet the national team. It’s a surreal experience, getting to the hotel and seeing Carli Lloyd hanging out in the lounge, getting onto the elevator with Hope Solo. She went to the training camp in January, but that wasn’t the same - she wasn’t there for any games, then. That was her trial and everyone knew it, and she’d been too nervous to really notice anything else.
“Welcome back,” Hope says when Alex punches the button for the 11th floor and the elevator doors slide shut, as if she’d always known Alex would be rejoining the squad. “You excited?”
“Dude,” Alex says, laughing. “You have no idea.”
Alex opens her computer mostly to listen to music while she unpacks; it signs her into Skype automatically, and Serva calls as she’s busy folding clothes in her underwear, dancing around her room to the team’s warm up mix.
“Hey!” she says, answering the call and holding a pair of running shorts in one hand.
“Hi,” Serva says. He has all the lights on in the room, for once, and his face doesn’t look blue. “Oh, I like this. I get a show without even having to ask.” He laughs and sits back in his desk chair, folds his hands behind his head.
“Yep, you get a show of me folding laundry,” Alex says, shaking the shorts in front of the screen. She turns her back to put them in her dresser and gives him a little hip shimmy, though. He catcalls.
“So, call-up was good?”
“Yeah,” she says. She leaves the dresser drawer open and sits on the edge of her bed, pulling her laptop over with her. “It was so amazing. Like, when they played the anthem? Most amazing feeling in the world.”
Servando just hums in assent. Alex enlarges the Skype window and she can see him look down at the floor for a second before looking back up and smiling.
“Sorry,” she says, guilty.
“No,” he shrugs. “Don’t be. Not your fault, or anything. My bad.”
She doesn’t really know what to say for a minute, so she reaches for her duffel and folds two pairs of sweats. “How’s Seattle? Training?”
“It’s good,” he says, smiling for real, and she lets out a breath she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding. “The team’s been great. Can’t wait to get you out here for a game sometime.”
“Back atcha,” she says. “Maybe I can try to get to the city when you play the Red Bulls?”
“Yeah, I’ll look at the schedule,” he says. “Hey - I miss you.”
It’s only been just over a week since she was out in Seattle, crashing with Serva and Joshua, but it feels like a lot longer. “Miss you too,” she says. She gives up on unpacking and lies down on the bed, tugs the laptop onto her stomach.
The conversation is derailed, as usual, into Serva nearly dropping his laptop as he tries to get his jeans off and move onto his bed at the same time. Alex laughs at him like she always does, and it’s nice that she knows exactly what he’s going to do next - land heavily on the bed, laptop bouncing, and give her a nice bodyshot with the laptop camera before letting it rest on the bed next to him - but it’s also kind of sad that she has their Skype routine memorized because they have to do this so often.
“Dude, you’re way ahead of me,” Alex complains when she sees Serva’s cock, hard in his underwear. He laughs.
"It’s your fault, answering in your underwear like that,” he tells her.
“Fuck you,” she says, and doesn’t waste anymore time, sliding her underwear down and kicking them off and then going for it right away, rubbing at her clit with two fingers.
“Better?” Serva asks, cheeky, when her mouth parts slightly and her eyes slide closed.
“Yeah,” she says, her voice breathy. “Not as good as - you know. But.” She doesn’t say any more, because she doesn’t want to ruin the mood, but when she opens her eyes, he’s nodding along with her.
"I know that I'm inspiring them just like girls like - I mean, players like - Mia Hamm inspired me when I was ten years old and watching the '99 World Cup […] It was a long buildup of excitement […] but now that we're finally here I mean, I'm obviously excited […] Any sort of media coverage is amazing for our team and we really wanna gain our fans and gain support as we go along in this tournament." -Alex Morgan, 2011
“Do you like MagicJack?” Alex asks. They’re doing position-specific work, the strikers and goalies, and Alex is hanging around the back of the goal with Hope. They both watch as A-Rod lines up a free kick against Nicole.
“Yeah, for sure,” Hope says. “Why, thinking about tryn’a transfer?”
A-Rod’s shot goes wide and Alex traps it with her chest, brings it down to the ground. She starts doing toe taps on the ball. “No,” she shrugs. “Nah, New York’s good.” She can’t quite figure out how to articulate what she wants to, but Hope’s never been one to beat around the bush, so she figures she can just spit it out. “Is it ever a letdown? Coming back from, you know.”
Hope shrugs, and then winces. Alex wonders how much her shoulder really hurts her these days, how well she hides it. “I mean, we’re always a big deal coming back from this,” she says. “It was weird for me, last time - " Alex remembers the last international tournament, remembers Hope mouthing off and getting sent home from China, so she doesn’t ask Hope what she means “ - so I’m probably not the best person to ask? But, you know. Anything would be a letdown from the World Cup.”
A-Rod takes another shot and it’s on target this time, curling towards the top corner. Nicole gets there, though, and bats it away. Pia beckons to Hope and Alex, so Alex stops doing toe taps and jogs out to the top of the box.
“You gotta deserve to be let down, though,” Hope tells her on the way. “You know? If you don’t work hard and if you don’t make those cheers for you, then you don’t have the right to be let down.” Alex frowns, because she does work hard, she works hard every day, she took time away from her team at Cal and she graduated early and she hauled ass to be here, and she’s about to tell Hope that when Hope starts talking again. “You just gotta show ‘em what you got, no matter what,” Hope says. “Someday, they’ll realize that what you got is worth watching all the time.”
Someday isn’t enough, Alex thinks, and it’s like Hope reads her mind, because she says, “We’ll never get there if we don’t,” and Alex realizes that she isn’t talking about them anymore. She’s talking bigger, bigger than the two of them and bigger than their team and bigger than the World Cup.
“But no pressure, or anything,” Alex says lightly, trying to joke, because she isn’t sure exactly how to deal with the pressure that she feels only now that she knows it’s there. It’s the weight of a country of little girls and their dreams of packed stadiums, and Alex -
Alex doesn’t know if she’s ready to carry them just yet, but when she gets to the top of the box and Pia tosses her a soccer ball, she figures it’s too late to back out now.
For a while, on the bench, even though it goes against everything every coach she's ever had has told her, Alex honest to God thinks that they're going to lose, that it'll be a repeat of four years ago, losing to Brazil - eating shit against Brazil - and crashing out early.
They don't, though - they fight their way through terrible refereeing decisions and two overtime periods that leave every last one of them exhausted and cramping. Alex feels like she might throw up during the penalty kicks, and she isn't sure if it's from nerves or exhaustion. But they make it through those, too.
"Jesus fucking Christ," she tells Serva when they Skype later that week, as soon as she has a free moment spent doing something other than napping. "How did we even make it outta that?"
"They're still replaying it on ESPN," Serva tells her.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah," he says. "Have been all week. Hang on - " his face disappears from the screen and the picture tilts, blurry, until it settles on Servando's TV. ESPN fills her laptop screen, a little grainy, but she can still make out the replay of Abby's goal. "It's one of their top ten whatever countdowns," Serva tells her. "Seriously, though, this shit's been on all week. They won't stop playing it."
"Dude," Alex says, a little in awe. "It's even more awesome to see it like that. With the close-up and everything."
"Bet it was pretty ballin' live, too," Serva says. He turns the laptop back around so she can see him again. "Wish I coulda been there."
"Like you could've gotten a ticket," Alex laughs. "Sold out, man, packed stadium."
"I know," he says, and he smiles to himself. "Must be amazing."
"It is," she says. "It so is. I never wanna leave, you know?"
Serva laughs. "Yeah? You wouldn't miss me at all?"
"You could come here, I suppose." She shrugs. "I'd get you tickets, maybe."
"Dunno if I even want them," he jokes. "Watching Pinoe's hair in high-def has been pretty sweet. They're making t-shirts of the hair, by the way, I want one for my birthday."
"T-shirts?" Alex asks.
"Yeah, t-shirts," Serva says. "There's also a billboard of you somewhere, apparently. Some of the guys were making fun of me for it yesterday."
Alex laughs. "Wait, seriously? That's so sweet!"
"You're a big fuckin' deal now, Miss Morgan," Serva tells her. "Better not say yes to any of the guys asking to marry you on Twitter, though." He drops the smile for a second to deadpan.
"I wouldn't," she protests. "You're my one and only, c'mon now." He snorts. "Seriously, though, like. I don't know if we're gonna win this thing or anything, but. Just. Thank you," she tells him.
She's not entirely sure what she's thanking him for - if it's one specific thing or if it's the past four and a half years - but he doesn't ask. "'S what I'm here for," he says. "When it's my turn, just so you know, you'd better be as amazing as I've been."
"Those are some pretty big shoes to fill," she says, smiling, but she's serious. "I got what, three years to shape up?"
"At least," Servando says, frowning.
"No at least," she tells him. "Three years. Make it happen."
"Yes, ma'am," he says, saluting her.
Someone knocks at her hotel room door. "Shit, hey, I gotta go," Alex says.
"No prob." He shrugs. "Go play some soccer."
"Love you," she says, blows a kiss into the camera.
"Love you too," he tells her, and she closes the lid of her laptop.
NOTES
1. thanks are in order for a number of people here- to nahco3 for the amazing beta/crit that made this so much better, to luxover for being my cheerleader when i needed one the most and listening to me constantly bitch about this, and then perhaps most importantly, to buyamattress and harrypotterlvr3 for providing me with endless links with info about alex, servando, them together, and basically doing my research for me. this never would've gotten off of the ground without either of them, i owe you lovely ladies big-time!
2. youtube vid taken after the US women's U-20 national team won the U-20 world cup in chile, december 2008.
3. valerie is valerie barnes, the then-captain of the uc berkeley women's soccer team. nkechi is nkechi kanu, her co-captain.
4. alex morgan had to choose between going to the u-20 world cup with team usa or playing the NCAA tournament with cal berkeley. she chose to go to the u-20 world cup, which the usa won, while her berkeley team crashed out of the NCAA tournament in the first round.
5. if you are unfamiliar with how the NCAA works, it goes something like this: every team is in a conference. think of it as a mini-league. teams play mostly within their conferences during the regular season. once the regular season ends, the conference winners and a few 'wild card' teams go to the NCAA tournament, a knockout tournament that is formatted something like the latter stages of the champions league. the winner of the tournament is the national champion.
6. the cal berkeley women's soccer coach (mcguire) walked out on his team in the fall of 2009. without a head coach, the team tied a high-ranked NCAA opponent the next week, and mcguire decided to come back. shockingly to just about everyone following DI women's soccer, the athletic department took him back, no questions asked. alex morgan decided to emulate hope solo and tweet her unedited feelings about the incident.
7. Morgan was a first round draft pick for the 2011 WPS season. Carrasco was a second round pick for the Sounders, but the MLS draft happened a few days before the WPS draft.
8. quotes from a new york times article about the USA roster for the WWC.
9. servando lives with two other guys in seattle. one of their names is joshua, but i can't for the life of me find the video where he said this, sorry!
10. quotes are from an interview morgan did after a training session in germany with the national team during the women's world cup 2011.
11. lastly, in case you didn't know, alex and servando are actually a couple! they've been together since their freshman year at berkeley and are hanging tough through the long distance. servando plays for the seattle sounders and has not received a national team call-up. his teammates do tease him about alex being more famous/really hot and he does things like have the whole team take pictures in front of billboards of her (serva is the one crouching in the front). he has admitted that he wouldn't have watched the wwc if his girlfriend hadn't been playing, so points off for him, but he's since become pretty invested.
"I think everyone wanted it so bad and you know, like, losing really wasn't an option for us […] The final whistle blew and I think everyone just put their hands on top of their heads like, oh my god. We're world champs." - Alex Morgan, January 2009
"You should go," Servando tells her.
His room is messy - there's a pile of shoes in front of the door and the laundry bin is overflowing onto the floor. His desk is a mess of papers with his laptop barely visible, and his training gear is spread out over the middle of the floor, a bottle of Febreeze lying next to it. It doesn't usually bother Alex, the mess, but she's fidgety right now. She wants to clean.
Servando's arm is tight across her middle, though, so she doesn't move. "Yeah?" she asks. "I mean. Of course I want to, I'm not an idiot." He snorts, so Alex elbows his ribs. "Shut up!"
"Of course you aren't an idiot," Servando apologizes. "I have better taste than that."
Alex elbows him again. "No but like, what about the team? Not to be like, super cocky or anything, but -"
"They need you, sure," Servando says, so she doesn't have to, and Alex is grateful.
"I can't just leave them right before the tournament," Alex wails. "I don't wanna have to choose, one or the other."
"It's not choosing," Servando says, propping himself up on an elbow. Alex flips herself over to look at him. "It's like - you've played the whole season here. You've put in all the legwork here. They're your team, and they should be happy for you, that you get to go to the fucking World Cup, okay? Nobody's gonna hate you."
Alex bites her lip. "It's just the U-20s," she corrects. "Not the real World Cup."
"Whatever," Serva says. "It's a big fucking deal and they should be happy for you."
"I know," Alex says. "But. What if they aren't?"
“Hey, what are you doing? There’s a La Liga game on GolTV, give me that -“
Servando reaches across her, going for the clicker, but she holds it out of reach. “You can watch that later, it’ll rerun,” she tells him. “Right now we are watching WPS, get used to it.”
He pouts, mashing his face against her shoulder. “Why? Is it even gonna be a good game?”
She punches his arm, not lightly. “We are watching it because one day I’m gonna be playing in this league so you’re gonna have to watch it, so you might as well start now.”
“That so? Who says I’ll actually watch, though?” He’s teasing; they both know he’ll watch.
“You won’t get laid if you don’t,” Alex tells him. It annoys her that she has to spell this out for him - she wants him to care on his own, but if she has to make him, she will.
“Fine, then,” Serva grumbles, settling back against the cushions. “Turn up the volume.”
"It was so awkward!" Alex says after practice the next day, stomping into Serva's room. She flops onto his bed, face into the pillow, waiting for him to take his headphones off.
"What was?" he asks. "Practice?"
He's playing a video game. Alex doesn't know which one, because the only one she plays that isn't for the Wii is FIFA and she's terrible at it. "Yes," she says. "Yes practice. Practice was fucking awful. McGuire made me tell the team beforehand so then like, everyone was just kind of playing around me when we actually started, you know? Phasing me out or whatever."
Serva puts his headphones on his keyboard and tips back in his chair. "Well," he says slowly, "they are gonna have to figure out how to play without you for the tournament."
"Well, yeah," Alex admits, "but I still need to practice!"
Servando raises an eyebrow at her. "So do they," he says. "You'll figure it out with them. And you'll be at the training camp soon anyway. And if you really, really suck, then I guess I could practice with you." His voice lilts up at the end, just slightly.
There's a sock balled up underneath Serva's pillow. Alex throws it at him.
"Abuse!" Serva yells. "Maybe they don't wanna practice with you because you throw shit at people, ever think about that?"
"Shut up," Alex tells him. He winks at her and reaches for his headphones, and Alex spends the rest of the afternoon napping while he plays his game. He wakes her up for dinner and they go to the main dining hall, where they squeeze into a booth with A.J. and some of Serva's other teammates, and they all say congratulations to Alex, and none of her own teammates stop by. Servando puts his arm around her shoulders and keeps it there.
Berkeley is class, sleep, eat, soccer, with time thrown in for homework and parties and Servando. It's a nice balance and she's gotten used to it, having so many things going on at once. Chile is not so many things, though - Chile is one thing, and that one thing is soccer. Chile is waking up at 6 AM for runs and dozing through breakfast while prepping for tactics sessions, and talking about free kicks over lunch before heading out to the training fields and running drills and scrimmages until dinner, and then Chile is watching reruns of the '99 World Cup in hotel rooms before going to bed and dreaming about scoring goals.
Alex loves it.
"There's a legit training facility, not just a turf with a million different lines painted on," Alex says. Serva's face is blue in the light of the computer. He's lying on his bed with the computer on his chest, and the way he has to tilt his head to see the screen gives him a double chin. Alex takes a screencap to put on Facebook later. "It's amazing."
"That's awesome," Serva says, and she can tell he's happy for her but he's also tired.
"Miss you, though," she says.
"You, too," he tells her. "When's your first game?"
"Group stages start Sunday," Alex says. "I don't know if it'll be on TV, though?"
Serva shrugs. The computer bounces up and down a little bit. "I'll just stream it," he says. "No biggie."
"How are the girls doing?" Alex asks. "Tournament starts soon."
"They're good, Alex," Servando says. "They're gonna be fine, don't worry about it."
They aren't fine, though - Alex checks the scores on her phone during an evening film session, pretending to crack her neck so she can slide her phone out of her pocket and check for Serva's texts: down 1-0. tied 1-1. down 2-1. She's antsy, can't keep her legs still, because as happy as she is to be here - maybe not here in this room, looking at film of the England defensive unit, but here at the World Cup - she wants to be out there playing with her team. Her Cal team.
"Chill," Sydney whispers to her.
"Can't," Alex whispers back. "We're losing."
Sydney squeezes her elbow. Her UCLA team isn't losing, though; Alex can see 5-0 on the screen of Sydney's phone.
full time, Servando texts. Alex bites her lip to keep herself from banging her head against the back of her chair. it's not ur fault flashes across the screen of her phone, and Alex turns it over in her lap so she can't see the display anymore.
When she checks it again after the film session is over, there's a message waiting for her, but it's from Valerie, not Servando. lost 2-1, missed you out there. we'll all be watching tomorrow, get a w for us!.
Alex calls her as soon as she's back in the hotel. "I'm sorry," she says when Valerie picks up.
"Don't be," Valerie says, clearly still in captain mode. "I mean, it sucks, obviously, but. How's Chile?"
"Chile's good," Alex says. "Different, but, you know." Valerie doesn't know. She never played at any level of the national team. "It's soccer all the time, so. Pretty awesome."
"Nice," Valerie says. "Hey, I gotta go, we're doing a team pasta dinner pity party so Nkechi and I need to start cooking, but. We're all gonna watch tomorrow, okay? The men's team, too. So you'd better score."
After they hang up, Alex plugs her phone in and stays in bed, lying on top of the covers. Servando texts again, just as she's drifting off. focus on tmrrw, u can think about cal when u get back here, he says. Alex saves the text and goes to bed.
She doesn't score against England, but she scores in the final.
It's a gorgeous cross, right onto her laces, and all Alex has to do is muscle her way in front of the North Korean defender, and then -
The ball moves in a perfect volley off of her cleat into the netting, leaving the goalie bewildered. It's beautiful, and Alex takes of running, cheering, grabbing her teammates as she goes until they're all in a pile on the field because they're winning and it's the World Cup final.
When the last whistle finally goes, when it's full time and they've won, Alex doesn't really know what to do with herself. She stays on the field, they all do, with her hands on top of her head, and she can't catch her breath.
"We did it," Sydney yells, jogging over to her. "Fucking world champs, man!"
Alex can't stop smiling.
When she gets to her phone, she ignores all of the texts she has and sends one to Valerie and the rest of her team. won it for you ladies, she says. Then she taps a new one out for Servando. !!!!!!!!!!
He texts back right away. goal of the tournament. golazo! good job. when do u get back?
home soon, she says. i'll call when i'm back.
@alexmorgan13: you turned your back on us once we can and will turn our backs on you for good. you are not welcome back
@alexmorgan13: long long day. big headache, tired, frustrated. Thank you for all the support in the past few days.
-Alex Morgan via Twitter, October 2009
"Hey," Servando says when Alex sits down next to him in the dining hall nearest the practice facilities. "I heard. How're you doing?"
"Like shit," she says. She reaches for his plate and snags a French fry. It's drenched in ketchup, which kind of makes her gag, but she eats it anyway. "I mean, I know he's not even the best coach or anything but he can't just fuck off in the middle of the season!"
"Did he say why?" Servando slides the plate of fries closer to her. She eats another one.
"No," she says, mouth half-full. "Yes. Personal reasons, some bullshit."
"What're y'all gonna do?"
"Dunno," she says. She drops her head to rest on his shoulder and keeps eating the soggy fries. "I mean, we have a game this weekend, so. Play soccer, I guess."
They do play soccer. They play to a 1-1 tie against the eleventh ranked team in the country, and afterwards, all Alex can think is that they don't need McGuire. They can do it with just Lindsey and the team, because McGuire's been checked out all season, anyway. The rest of the team seems to agree, and she's full of some sort of vicious hope when she checks her email and opens one from the athletic director.
"What the fuck," she says.
“They took him back,” Alex rails. “They just took him back, no questions asked. He ‘resolved his personal issues’ or whatever the fuck. We all know he just came back because we tied, asshole. Can you believe this?”
Serva stays quiet and sympathetic, as he has through most of the past week. “Don’t know what to tell you,” he says. “I didn’t think they’d want him back.”
“They’re just gonna fucking sweep it under the carpet and pretend it never happened,” Alex continues. She’s too keyed up to sit down next to him, instead standing and fussing with the zipper of her jacket. “They’ll just pretend he had to take the week off to deal with something and then came back, like he never gave up, like he never just walked out.” She’s shaking. “I cannot believe this. And I swear to God, if this was the men’s team, this never would’ve happened. They would’ve handled this so much better, they wouldn’t just take him back, no questions asked.”
“Hey,” Servando says, raising his voice for the first time. “The fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“It means,” Alex says, “that even though we’re the better team, even though we do better for this school, the men’s team gets so much more attention that they couldn’t just hide this. You would have national attention and they wouldn’t have take him back, come on.”
“I don’t know if that’s true, Alex,” Servando says, his voice tight. He’s trying not to get too mad, she can tell, because he knows how upset she is, he’s had to deal with it for the past week, but she doesn’t care, she just keeps going.
“It is fucking true and you know it,” she snaps. “You don’t even realize how good you have it, Christ.”
Servando loses it. “How good I have it? Excuse me, Miss I-won-a-World-Cup, but I am not the one who has it good here. I’m not the team’s fucking leading scorer, All American, whatever, okay, I’m not getting call-ups to the national team, I might not even be a captain here, okay, and you didn’t even decide to care about all of this until you were fourteen. I’m the one who’s cared for my entire life and I don’t even have half of what you do, so sorry that I don’t exactly see this is me being the one who has it good.”
Alex just stares at him. “You don’t get it,” she says. “You don’t get it at all, it’s not even about that.”
“Then what’s it about, huh? You don’t even need this team, okay, you get Team USA all to yourself.”
“Stop it!” Alex yells. “Stop! You don’t get to make me feel guilty for being on the national team, okay, you don’t. That is shit I have earned and maybe you should just shut up and work harder and you’d get there too.”
“Oh, now you think I don’t work hard? Jesus Christ, Alex, you see me working hard every fucking day, what are you on, even?”
“That’s not the point!” Alex says. She zips up her jacket and goes for the door. “You get a team that people care about. And you’ll probably get the MLS, and people care about that, people go to games. So I might have all of the national team crap or whatever, but it doesn’t even matter, ‘cause nobody cares. And you can go sit on a bench on some professional team somewhere, and everyone’ll care, because that’s how it fucking is, so don’t you dare tell me I have it better.”
She feels like shit for it, but she leaves before he can reply. When she gets back to her own room, she lets herself in and then leans against the door for a few long minutes, shaking, and she starts to cry.
"I'm not sorry," Servando says when he sees her before practice the next day.
"Neither am I," she replies, stubborn.
"You aren't wrong, though, I guess," he continues. "I mean, neither am I, but."
"I am sorry, a little," she concedes. "None of this is your fault, I'm just. Hard week, you know."
"Yeah," he says. "I, uh. Gotta go to practice, but. Are there any WPS games on this weekend?"
"Maybe," Alex says. "I'll check."
She goes into her locker room and she's still not happy, probably won't be for the rest of the season, at the rate things are going, but she feels better than she has since McGuire walked out.
The Western New York Flash of Women's Professional Soccer signed first round draft pick Alex Morgan. Morgan is a 21-year-old forward from the University of California and is joining the Flash for their first season in the WPS. Morgan graduated from Cal in December, 2010. Morgan is third all time in goals scored (45) for the California Golden Bears and is now onto pursuing her professional soccer career. -January 2011
When Alex gets back to the apartment, Servando's washing dishes.
"Thanks," she says, dropping her bag and coming up behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist and hooking her chin over his shoulder. She usually does the dishes, more out of stress relief than anything, but she's glad to not have to do anything tonight.
"No problem," he says. He shrugs a little; her face bobs up and down on his shoulder. "How was the meeting?"
"Well," Alex starts. "Good. I, uh. I'm signed."
"Yeah?" Servando turns the water off and puts the last spoon on the drying rack. "That's awesome, where?"
"Western New York Flash," Alex says, trying out her new team name. Servando dries his hands off and turns to face her. He's smiling.
"That's. Alex, that's great," he tells her.
"Yeah," Alex says. "Yeah, no, it's awesome." She smiles back. She's tired, though, so she lets it fall off of her face after a few seconds. "Gotta start looking for a place in Buffalo."
Servando lets out a low whistle. "That's a long way from Seattle." He'd been drafted yesterday, second round. Seattle Sounders. When he got home, Alex had blown him in the doorway to celebrate.
"Yep," she says. She leads the migration from the kitchen to their bedroom and flops facedown onto the bed. Servando climbs on top of her, straddles the small of her back. "Remember all the Skyping when I was in Chile? It's gonna be ten times worse."
Servando doesn't say anything for a few minutes, just sits on top of her, his weight forcing a few cracks out of her spine, and rubbing her shoulders. She's starting to feel her eyelids get sleep-heavy when he says, "You don't seem very happy?"
"I am," she says. Her voice sticks a little bit in her throat. "'Course I am." She has no reason not to be - she has a professional contract. It's not something she's dreamed of since she was a little girl, but it's something she's worked hard for over the past four seasons. She hadn't thought she would've been anything but ecstatic about getting to play soccer for a living, but here she is.
"You don't sound happy," Serva says, because he knows her too well.
Alex smacks his side gently until he stands up on his knees. She rolls over onto her back and he settles back down on top of her. "I guess I'm just a little jealous," she says. She doesn't want to say it, because she hates herself for it, but Serva knows when she's lying.
"Of what?" Serva asks, and he looks so genuinely bewildered that she feels even worse. "One of the girls get a better team or something?"
"No, not of one of the girls," Alex says. She puts her hands on his hips and sighs. "You."
"That's," Serva starts, but cuts himself off and frowns. "Alex. Why?"
"Because!" she wails. It's easier than being rational. She balls her hands up into fists and punches his hipbones lightly.
"Not an answer," he says, just shy of being patronizing.
"Shut up," she tells him, dead serious.
"I just," Serva says. "I don't exactly understand why you're - upset with me, or jealous, or whatever. You're the one with the national team spot, you're the one going to the World Cup."
Alex bites down hard on her lip and doesn't bother pointing out that her roster spot for the World Cup is nowhere near guaranteed. "I'm not - I'm just," she starts. "It's like, yeah, sure, maybe I'll get the World Cup. I get to go to Germany and play and it'll be fucking amazing and the stadiums will be packed and it'll be great, but like. You get to have that all year long, you play for a team that sells out every game! And once I come back, I mean. I play for a team that's lucky to get twenty people in the stands."
It's never bothered her like this before. She'd never thought of soccer as a career, as a life, until recently, and now that she has it, now that she's a top draft pick and is house-hunting in Buffalo, the only thing she can keep thinking is, it's not fair.
Alex Morgan is arguably the most promising national team player of this generation. The Cal alumna first burst onto the scene after an electrifying performance in the final of the 2008 FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup. The U.S. won the tournament and paved the way for Morgan's inclusion in the national team. Morgan has since totaled 7 goals in 16 total national team games, and could be one of the rising stars of [the Women's World Cup]. -May 2011
"Hello?"
The room is crowded and Alex didn't even hear her phone ring over the noise, she'd only noticed it vibrating. She puts a finger in her other ear.
"This is Pia Sundhage -" Alex frantically hits the volume button on the side of her phone, trying to get it louder. "- are you free to talk for a minute?"
"Hi, yes! Of course! Hang on, one second," Alex says. She slides off of Servando's lap and fights her way out of the room into the hallway. "Hi, okay. Sorry!"
"It's okay," Pia says, and Alex can't quite believe it's her, that she's actually talking to the national team coach on the phone. The timing's a little unfortunate, because it's four in the afternoon and she's on the way to tipsy because they've been celebrating the end of two-a-days, but still. "The team -" Alex doesn't have to ask which team "-is having a friendly against Mexico in two weeks," Pia says. Alex hums her assent into the receiver, not entirely sure what to say. "We're interested in having you come up and train," Pia tells her.
Alex feels like her stomach drops out and like she could start flying, all at once. "Really?" she says, because she isn't sure what else there is to say.
Pia chuckles. "Yes, really."
"Wow, thank you so much," Alex says. "I, uh. I'm flattered, and I'm so excited!"
"I'll put you on the email list, then," Pia says. Alex can't help herself; she fist pumps.
"Yes. Great. Awesome," she says. "Thank you so much!"
When she hangs up and goes back into the room, she can't stop smiling. Servando slides an arm around her waist when she sits on the arm of his chair and offers her his beer. "What's that smile for?" he asks.
She feels like a total goofball - it's the kind of smile that makes her eyes squinty and shows her gums and makes her cheeks hurt, but she can't wipe it off her face. She takes the bottle and grins at him some more.
"You win the lottery or something?" Servando takes the beer back, since she's not actually drinking it, and takes a swig.
"Better," she tells him, and her whole body is thrumming with excitement.
"What's better than - Alex," Servando says. He sits up straighter, puts the beer down. His fingers dig into the skin above her hip. "Did you - was that -"
"Yes!" she cuts him off, and her smile gets so big that there's nothing left to do but laugh, so she does, a little bit too loudly. "For the Mexico game."
"Fuck," Servando says, "Alex, fuck!" He stands up and crushes her into a bear hug; Alex nearly topples off of the arm of the chair. She laughs some more. "Amazing," Serva says quietly, his breath tickling her ear. And then, louder, "You're amazing!" Alex turns her head into his shoulder and keeps on smiling.
"Hey, where are we going?" she asks a second later, because Serva is on the move now, one arm still around her waist, dragging her with him. All of their friends are staring at them like they're both crazy, and it's only then that Alex realizes that their conversation was probably incomprehensible to everyone else.
"We have some celebrating to do," Servando announces.
"Use protection!" Joshua hollers from in front of the TV, without looking up from the game of FIFA he's playing.
They make it back to Servando's room and onto their bed before Alex actually says it out loud. "Senior national team. Senior fucking national team!"
"Gonna be amazing," Servando says, his voice muffled because his face is pressed against her neck. His hands are on her hips and she kicks at him until he shifts and settles between her legs.
He doesn't say much after that, just pulls himself up and starts taking off her clothes, tossing her t-shirt onto the desk and letting her get rid of her bra, because he's never been able to figure out the hooks on the first try. She used to laugh at him for it, but now she just does it herself, while he works on his belt buckle and sheds his jeans. It takes her longer to wriggle out of hers, because they're tighter. She's not self-conscious about it because he's watched her jump into them in the mornings, tugging them over her muscled thighs, and she can tell he likes it.
Alex reaches for his cock, but Serva grabs her wrist and stops her. "This is your celebration," he says.
"I want to," she starts, but he doesn't let go of her wrist.
"We're celebrating you, okay, just -" he reaches down and slides a finger into her. She's wet, has been since the phone call, and it's so easy for him to slide a second finger in, start rubbing at her clit with his thumb. "- just let me, okay?"
His fingers in her feel good, so good, so she just nods, breathes out an "okay," and doesn't move to stop him.
After, after he fucks her until she's shaking around him, after he comes and lies on top of her for a few long moments, after he ties off the condom and comes back to their bed, she punches him on the shoulder.
"Why wouldn't you let me?" she asks.
"Was it not good?"
"No, shut up, it always is," she tells him, because it was good, but - "but why wouldn't you let me do anything for you?"
"Because it's your night," he tells her. He turns off the lamp and rolls over. "You got the call-up, okay, so we had to celebrate for you. If - if I get mine, then. You can do whatever you want."
Alex flies back to Buffalo once the weekend’s up and goes to a week of training, but misses the weekend’s match to go meet the national team. It’s a surreal experience, getting to the hotel and seeing Carli Lloyd hanging out in the lounge, getting onto the elevator with Hope Solo. She went to the training camp in January, but that wasn’t the same - she wasn’t there for any games, then. That was her trial and everyone knew it, and she’d been too nervous to really notice anything else.
“Welcome back,” Hope says when Alex punches the button for the 11th floor and the elevator doors slide shut, as if she’d always known Alex would be rejoining the squad. “You excited?”
“Dude,” Alex says, laughing. “You have no idea.”
Alex opens her computer mostly to listen to music while she unpacks; it signs her into Skype automatically, and Serva calls as she’s busy folding clothes in her underwear, dancing around her room to the team’s warm up mix.
“Hey!” she says, answering the call and holding a pair of running shorts in one hand.
“Hi,” Serva says. He has all the lights on in the room, for once, and his face doesn’t look blue. “Oh, I like this. I get a show without even having to ask.” He laughs and sits back in his desk chair, folds his hands behind his head.
“Yep, you get a show of me folding laundry,” Alex says, shaking the shorts in front of the screen. She turns her back to put them in her dresser and gives him a little hip shimmy, though. He catcalls.
“So, call-up was good?”
“Yeah,” she says. She leaves the dresser drawer open and sits on the edge of her bed, pulling her laptop over with her. “It was so amazing. Like, when they played the anthem? Most amazing feeling in the world.”
Servando just hums in assent. Alex enlarges the Skype window and she can see him look down at the floor for a second before looking back up and smiling.
“Sorry,” she says, guilty.
“No,” he shrugs. “Don’t be. Not your fault, or anything. My bad.”
She doesn’t really know what to say for a minute, so she reaches for her duffel and folds two pairs of sweats. “How’s Seattle? Training?”
“It’s good,” he says, smiling for real, and she lets out a breath she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding. “The team’s been great. Can’t wait to get you out here for a game sometime.”
“Back atcha,” she says. “Maybe I can try to get to the city when you play the Red Bulls?”
“Yeah, I’ll look at the schedule,” he says. “Hey - I miss you.”
It’s only been just over a week since she was out in Seattle, crashing with Serva and Joshua, but it feels like a lot longer. “Miss you too,” she says. She gives up on unpacking and lies down on the bed, tugs the laptop onto her stomach.
The conversation is derailed, as usual, into Serva nearly dropping his laptop as he tries to get his jeans off and move onto his bed at the same time. Alex laughs at him like she always does, and it’s nice that she knows exactly what he’s going to do next - land heavily on the bed, laptop bouncing, and give her a nice bodyshot with the laptop camera before letting it rest on the bed next to him - but it’s also kind of sad that she has their Skype routine memorized because they have to do this so often.
“Dude, you’re way ahead of me,” Alex complains when she sees Serva’s cock, hard in his underwear. He laughs.
"It’s your fault, answering in your underwear like that,” he tells her.
“Fuck you,” she says, and doesn’t waste anymore time, sliding her underwear down and kicking them off and then going for it right away, rubbing at her clit with two fingers.
“Better?” Serva asks, cheeky, when her mouth parts slightly and her eyes slide closed.
“Yeah,” she says, her voice breathy. “Not as good as - you know. But.” She doesn’t say any more, because she doesn’t want to ruin the mood, but when she opens her eyes, he’s nodding along with her.
"I know that I'm inspiring them just like girls like - I mean, players like - Mia Hamm inspired me when I was ten years old and watching the '99 World Cup […] It was a long buildup of excitement […] but now that we're finally here I mean, I'm obviously excited […] Any sort of media coverage is amazing for our team and we really wanna gain our fans and gain support as we go along in this tournament." -Alex Morgan, 2011
“Do you like MagicJack?” Alex asks. They’re doing position-specific work, the strikers and goalies, and Alex is hanging around the back of the goal with Hope. They both watch as A-Rod lines up a free kick against Nicole.
“Yeah, for sure,” Hope says. “Why, thinking about tryn’a transfer?”
A-Rod’s shot goes wide and Alex traps it with her chest, brings it down to the ground. She starts doing toe taps on the ball. “No,” she shrugs. “Nah, New York’s good.” She can’t quite figure out how to articulate what she wants to, but Hope’s never been one to beat around the bush, so she figures she can just spit it out. “Is it ever a letdown? Coming back from, you know.”
Hope shrugs, and then winces. Alex wonders how much her shoulder really hurts her these days, how well she hides it. “I mean, we’re always a big deal coming back from this,” she says. “It was weird for me, last time - " Alex remembers the last international tournament, remembers Hope mouthing off and getting sent home from China, so she doesn’t ask Hope what she means “ - so I’m probably not the best person to ask? But, you know. Anything would be a letdown from the World Cup.”
A-Rod takes another shot and it’s on target this time, curling towards the top corner. Nicole gets there, though, and bats it away. Pia beckons to Hope and Alex, so Alex stops doing toe taps and jogs out to the top of the box.
“You gotta deserve to be let down, though,” Hope tells her on the way. “You know? If you don’t work hard and if you don’t make those cheers for you, then you don’t have the right to be let down.” Alex frowns, because she does work hard, she works hard every day, she took time away from her team at Cal and she graduated early and she hauled ass to be here, and she’s about to tell Hope that when Hope starts talking again. “You just gotta show ‘em what you got, no matter what,” Hope says. “Someday, they’ll realize that what you got is worth watching all the time.”
Someday isn’t enough, Alex thinks, and it’s like Hope reads her mind, because she says, “We’ll never get there if we don’t,” and Alex realizes that she isn’t talking about them anymore. She’s talking bigger, bigger than the two of them and bigger than their team and bigger than the World Cup.
“But no pressure, or anything,” Alex says lightly, trying to joke, because she isn’t sure exactly how to deal with the pressure that she feels only now that she knows it’s there. It’s the weight of a country of little girls and their dreams of packed stadiums, and Alex -
Alex doesn’t know if she’s ready to carry them just yet, but when she gets to the top of the box and Pia tosses her a soccer ball, she figures it’s too late to back out now.
For a while, on the bench, even though it goes against everything every coach she's ever had has told her, Alex honest to God thinks that they're going to lose, that it'll be a repeat of four years ago, losing to Brazil - eating shit against Brazil - and crashing out early.
They don't, though - they fight their way through terrible refereeing decisions and two overtime periods that leave every last one of them exhausted and cramping. Alex feels like she might throw up during the penalty kicks, and she isn't sure if it's from nerves or exhaustion. But they make it through those, too.
"Jesus fucking Christ," she tells Serva when they Skype later that week, as soon as she has a free moment spent doing something other than napping. "How did we even make it outta that?"
"They're still replaying it on ESPN," Serva tells her.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah," he says. "Have been all week. Hang on - " his face disappears from the screen and the picture tilts, blurry, until it settles on Servando's TV. ESPN fills her laptop screen, a little grainy, but she can still make out the replay of Abby's goal. "It's one of their top ten whatever countdowns," Serva tells her. "Seriously, though, this shit's been on all week. They won't stop playing it."
"Dude," Alex says, a little in awe. "It's even more awesome to see it like that. With the close-up and everything."
"Bet it was pretty ballin' live, too," Serva says. He turns the laptop back around so she can see him again. "Wish I coulda been there."
"Like you could've gotten a ticket," Alex laughs. "Sold out, man, packed stadium."
"I know," he says, and he smiles to himself. "Must be amazing."
"It is," she says. "It so is. I never wanna leave, you know?"
Serva laughs. "Yeah? You wouldn't miss me at all?"
"You could come here, I suppose." She shrugs. "I'd get you tickets, maybe."
"Dunno if I even want them," he jokes. "Watching Pinoe's hair in high-def has been pretty sweet. They're making t-shirts of the hair, by the way, I want one for my birthday."
"T-shirts?" Alex asks.
"Yeah, t-shirts," Serva says. "There's also a billboard of you somewhere, apparently. Some of the guys were making fun of me for it yesterday."
Alex laughs. "Wait, seriously? That's so sweet!"
"You're a big fuckin' deal now, Miss Morgan," Serva tells her. "Better not say yes to any of the guys asking to marry you on Twitter, though." He drops the smile for a second to deadpan.
"I wouldn't," she protests. "You're my one and only, c'mon now." He snorts. "Seriously, though, like. I don't know if we're gonna win this thing or anything, but. Just. Thank you," she tells him.
She's not entirely sure what she's thanking him for - if it's one specific thing or if it's the past four and a half years - but he doesn't ask. "'S what I'm here for," he says. "When it's my turn, just so you know, you'd better be as amazing as I've been."
"Those are some pretty big shoes to fill," she says, smiling, but she's serious. "I got what, three years to shape up?"
"At least," Servando says, frowning.
"No at least," she tells him. "Three years. Make it happen."
"Yes, ma'am," he says, saluting her.
Someone knocks at her hotel room door. "Shit, hey, I gotta go," Alex says.
"No prob." He shrugs. "Go play some soccer."
"Love you," she says, blows a kiss into the camera.
"Love you too," he tells her, and she closes the lid of her laptop.
NOTES
1. thanks are in order for a number of people here- to nahco3 for the amazing beta/crit that made this so much better, to luxover for being my cheerleader when i needed one the most and listening to me constantly bitch about this, and then perhaps most importantly, to buyamattress and harrypotterlvr3 for providing me with endless links with info about alex, servando, them together, and basically doing my research for me. this never would've gotten off of the ground without either of them, i owe you lovely ladies big-time!
2. youtube vid taken after the US women's U-20 national team won the U-20 world cup in chile, december 2008.
3. valerie is valerie barnes, the then-captain of the uc berkeley women's soccer team. nkechi is nkechi kanu, her co-captain.
4. alex morgan had to choose between going to the u-20 world cup with team usa or playing the NCAA tournament with cal berkeley. she chose to go to the u-20 world cup, which the usa won, while her berkeley team crashed out of the NCAA tournament in the first round.
5. if you are unfamiliar with how the NCAA works, it goes something like this: every team is in a conference. think of it as a mini-league. teams play mostly within their conferences during the regular season. once the regular season ends, the conference winners and a few 'wild card' teams go to the NCAA tournament, a knockout tournament that is formatted something like the latter stages of the champions league. the winner of the tournament is the national champion.
6. the cal berkeley women's soccer coach (mcguire) walked out on his team in the fall of 2009. without a head coach, the team tied a high-ranked NCAA opponent the next week, and mcguire decided to come back. shockingly to just about everyone following DI women's soccer, the athletic department took him back, no questions asked. alex morgan decided to emulate hope solo and tweet her unedited feelings about the incident.
7. Morgan was a first round draft pick for the 2011 WPS season. Carrasco was a second round pick for the Sounders, but the MLS draft happened a few days before the WPS draft.
8. quotes from a new york times article about the USA roster for the WWC.
9. servando lives with two other guys in seattle. one of their names is joshua, but i can't for the life of me find the video where he said this, sorry!
10. quotes are from an interview morgan did after a training session in germany with the national team during the women's world cup 2011.
11. lastly, in case you didn't know, alex and servando are actually a couple! they've been together since their freshman year at berkeley and are hanging tough through the long distance. servando plays for the seattle sounders and has not received a national team call-up. his teammates do tease him about alex being more famous/really hot and he does things like have the whole team take pictures in front of billboards of her (serva is the one crouching in the front). he has admitted that he wouldn't have watched the wwc if his girlfriend hadn't been playing, so points off for him, but he's since become pretty invested.
