Bowling a Maiden Over

"Save some of that strokeplay for out there."

She looked up to see Ellie watching on with an amused expression. Her bowling figures, while not ideal, were still the best for the team. It put to rest any notion that she was past her prime.

"I'm not qualified to give batting advice, but I'll tell you one thing my first coach told me," she said. "Your natural game is your best game. Forget about the occasion and remember why you picked up the ball, or bat in your case, all those years ago."

Chantal looked at her. She came over and hugged Chantal. All at once, Chantal was enveloped in that same comforting warmth that had grown on her.

"People like us don't spend our teens practising ten hours a day unless we really like what we do. Think about the first time you picked up a bat and made the boys jealous by how much better you were than them. Think about your century in London which got a standing ovation from the entire Lord's crowd. Think about how good it's going to feel when you kick ass out there."

All those moments flashed before Chantal's eyes, but the image that stayed was seeing herself on the big screen dropping a catch. It felt like fire had been lit inside her and only her bat could quell it.

A few minutes later, Chantal and her opening partner strode out bat in hand to loud applause. The partisan home crowd could smell blood. Especially when they saw the debutant taking her stance against the experienced New Zealand bowler, Maddie Kasparek.

The crowd cheered her run up and first ball. They were considerably quieter when Chantal stepped down the wicket and whacked it straight back over the bowler's head and into the twentieth row of spectator seats.

Maddie looked stunned. She tried a fuller ball and Chantal stayed back in her crease this time. It gave her an extra second which she used to deposit the ball beyond the cover boundary. The next ball met a similar fate as Chantal teed off in an arc like a golf swing.

The Sydney captain and vice captain held an urgent meeting with the bowler, who looked clearly shell shocked herself. The next ball was a waist high full toss which sailed into the grandstand over deep midwicket.

Four balls. Four sixes to different parts of the crowd. There was stunned silence around the ground. A silence that was more eloquent than any of the raucous cheering from before. This was not in the script -- the rookie tearing apart the pro.

Chantal was in the zone. Even as she saw Maddie run in, she knew it was going to be a bouncer. It was how fast bowlers liked to remind batters of their place. It was more intimidation than anything else but it usually worked.

Sure enough, the ball landed half way down the pitch and reared up towards her shoulder. Chantal calmly stepped back and angled her bat upwards like a ramp. The ball skidded off the sweet spot of her bat. She turned her head and watched it land on the other side of the boundary rope behind her.

Five balls. Thirty runs. All of a sudden, that towering Sydney total looked attainable. There was a longer discussion within the Sydney team. Maddie emerged from the huddle and walked back to the start of her run up.

The crowd were at the edge of their seats. Six sixes in an over had never happened in women's cricket before. Chantal took a step down the wicket even before the ball had left the bowler's hand.

In a fraction of a second, she knew it was the wrong decision. Maddie had predicted she would come down the track and bowled a low full toss. Chantal jammed her bat down, but she knew she had messed up. Even before her bat was all the way down, she closed her eyes and heard the tell-tale sound of her stumps being uprooted.

She did not even look back to confirm what had happened. The crowd suddenly found their voice again and several Sydney players ran over to congratulate Maddie. Chantal kept her head firmly downwards and walked off the field with her bat under her arm.

Thirty runs in six balls. Not even close to being even and there was nothing more she could do. The rest of the match was out of her control.

She just wanted to be off the ground, out of the stadium and back to her hotel room. She did not want to see Ellie, not because she feared seeing disappointment, but because she could not bear to have her try to convince her everything was okay.

* *

"Congratulations all around to the Sydney Sixers for winning their opening match, but by God, it was much closer than any of us imagined."

"Especially at the innings break, mate. I was sure the Perth Scorchers were going to crash and burn for less than half the total."

"Did you see that rookie? Chantal Ferreira. Her selection for such a high-pressure game did raise quite a few eyebrows and then she dropped a regulation catch while fielding."

"But did you see her with the bat, Marty? Those five balls are the stuff of YouTube videos. I have never seen an SCG crowd as quiet as in that first over. It was a shame she got out on the sixth ball."

"For sure. Like a highlight reel. Her innings may have lasted as long as the average Aussie PM, but boy was it entertaining."

"I'm hoping she manages to bat for longer in her next match. I can't wait to see what she can do."

"Damn straight, Glenn. The Perth Scorchers might just have the most exciting player this season."

Chantal turned off the television. It was the next day and she was back in Perth. Ideally, she would have wanted to start preparing for their next match, but she could not find it within her.

Her six ball firecracker had gotten half a million views overnight and her Twitter followers had jumped from fifty to fifteen thousand in the same time. She even had a blue tick now.

Six balls of utter mayhem and suddenly the world wanted to know more about this relatively unknown player. She even had male cricketers sharing her innings on their feeds.

All of it was poor succour for her. The only part of the match she remembered was Ellie looking at her and the dropped catch.

"Chantal," Sumi knocked on her hotel door from outside. "Are you all right in there? Your Dad wants to talk to you."

"I'll call him back later," she said. "I need some time alone."

"Okay, but I'll come back to check on you soon. I'm worried about you."

She checked her phone. A few brands had sent exploratory missives to her agency. Turns out hitting five sixes in a row made her qualified enough to lie about some bank or SUV on screen. She took a shower, hoping it would calm her nerves.

Once again, the image of Ellie ghosted in front of her, but not the bowler in the jersey from the last night.

This was the Ellie she had stumbled upon in the locker room the week before. Ellie fresh from seeing the final nail hammered into the coffin of her marriage. Ellie with eyes red from crying. Ellie who she embraced and comforted after her own near miss with concussion.

Ellie who she had let down when it mattered the most.

She was putting on fresh clothes and trying to will herself to go for a practice net when there was another knock on the door.

"I'm just getting ready, Sumi."

"Please open the door."

Chantal opened the door, revealing Ellie in her full training kit. She immediately took a couple of steps inside.

"Are you all right? You haven't spoken to me since the match yesterday. When you missed early morning practice today, I knew something had to be wrong. It's the first time in two weeks that I have not seen you at the nets before dawn."

"I'm sorry. I was just thinking about the match and how we could have won."

"We'll win the next one and don't forget that the Sixers have to play here too. You'll get your chance to get back at them."

"It's not that... I wish I had held onto that catch. Dani went on to get the highest score. If I had caught better than our target would have been much less and we would have won."

"We barely lost by five runs as it is."

"But we did," Chantal insisted. "And it's because I took my eye of the ball. Literally."

"Honey, you're going to drop catches if you play cricket at any level. Even the best of us do."

"I cost you a wicket."

"So what?" Ellie shrugged off. "I've barely thought about it since."

"After all you've done for me, I let you down."

Ellie was taken aback by the desperate earnestness in her voice. She leaned forward and put both hands on the young batter's shoulders.

"You didn't let me down, Chantal. You dropped a catch."

Their faces were very close now. Chantal could see those grey eyes looking at her with a dash of confusion intermixed with concern.

"You've been my friend. In fact, the reason I even showed up in Sydney is because you talked me out of retirement. You have seen me at my worst and not told anyone. How could I possibly hold one dropped catch against you?"

The more she made sense, the less Chantal actually heard. It was white noise to her now. Her hearing had long ceded to her other senses which were in hyper awareness. She could feel the rough calloused fingers on her shoulder. She could see the perfect arch of her eyebrow over her kind eyes. She could even smell the faint remnants of the morning's practice on her combined with the organic breakfast. Maybe if she tilted her face, she could lean in and press her lips against...

"You'll be okay, right?"

The words cruelly broke her trance. Ellie patted her on the shoulder and stepped back.

"Josh Spurlock called me personally to tell me how much he enjoyed your batting last night. He's checking with your board if he can offer you a long term contract at the end of the season. It took you just five balls to convince-"

"No."

Ellie stopped mid sentence. Chantal could not so much as look her in the eye, her gaze remaining firmly on the carpeted floor. Blood pounded in her ears, rendering any other sound irrelevant.

"I didn't catch what you said."

"I said no. I will not be okay, Ellie."

"What's wrong?" said Ellie, her tone markedly more concerned.

Chantal felt like she was about to explode. The last frayed nerve holding her sanity intact was about to snap. She was a pressure cooker set to boil and forgotten. A volcano which had smoked for thousands of years unnoticed. A time bomb with the LED counter hurtling inexorably to zero.

She finally looked up at her idol, not able to see clearly because her eyes were brimming with tears. It was all too much for her. It was unfair that she had been left completely unprepared for this moment.

Before the years of middle class morality entrenched in her could hold her back, she leaned forward and pressed her lips to Ellie's. She kissed her gently and prodded her tongue with hers. There was no response. Ellie's mouth was paralysed. She pulled back to see her looking at her with a bewildered expression.

"I will not be okay," she squeezed out of her throat in between two sobs. "I will not be okay because I am in love with you and I don't know how to deal with it."

Ellie could not get a word out before Chantal rushed out of the room. She almost knocked over a housekeeper's cart on her way down the stairs. The lobby, the occasional head she turned, the street were dim recollections. All she needed to do was get as far away as she could.

The dam within her had finally broken and the deluge of emotions was overwhelming.

* *

The night sky lent a haunting quality to the sea. During the day, the sea mirrored the sky to various shades of blue giving way to a dull golden hue at sunset. On a full moon night, the sea was black and pitched and rolled like a Lovecraftian horror trying to escape to land.

It was a cloudless, moonlit night when Chantal found herself back on the rock face at the far side of the secluded beach behind Ellie's cabin. The last few hours had been a complete blur. She vaguely remembered paying a cabbie an exorbitant amount to bring her here.

She sat, dangling her legs off the edge. The moon cast a solitary line of white reflection down the middle of the turbulent waters. Turbulent was an apt description of her state of mind. A maddening maelstrom of thoughts coursed through her. She had finally done it. She had told Ellie how she felt. None of them could ever deny it again. Her personal event horizon had been crossed.

The cost? A budding friendship, mentorship and working relationship had been left dangling uncertainly. The more she thought about it, the more she concluded that Ellie would not reciprocate her feelings.

How could she? Just off the acrimonious breakdown of a long-term relationship, the last thing she would have in mind was the awkward fumblings of an eighteen year old virgin still in the closet. What Julia could not have, Chantal wished she had not dreamt of.

Maybe her parents' advice was not aimed at keeping her shackled but keeping her from chasing women she could never get. Maybe they were right after all.

Chantal was not entirely sure how long she spent wallowing in the misery brought on by her sobering realisations. She was going to go back and apologise for her behaviour and ask to resign from the team immediately if Ellie was not comfortable having her around.

She picked up a small rock and threw it at the sea. It bounced twice before being swallowed by the waters.

"Room for one more?"

Chantal looked back to see Ellie in a loose shirt and pants standing expectantly behind her.

"How did you know I'd be here?"

"The only places you've seen in Perth have been with me. I checked all of them. This was the last one."

Chantal scooted to her left and Ellie sat down beside her. The shirt was loose enough that the opening for the head stretched as far as her shoulder. Chantal could make out more of her tattoo in the moonlight.

"Why did you leave?"

Chantal did not answer. She did not even look at her, her gaze remaining on the water.

"I'm sorry," she finally squeezed out.

"Sorry you told me how you felt or sorry you left me standing there?"

"Both."

"You don't have to feel sorry for telling me how you feel," Ellie said evenly. "It happens. We train together, play together, stay together. We see each other every day. Add to that you're young and still figuring out who you are and who you like. Two players from the South African national team got married recently. Your feelings are nothing to be ashamed of."

Chantal gulped hard and tasted the bitterness of the bile that had risen to her throat. She would rather be anywhere else than there in that moment.

"But I do wish you had stayed and let us have an adult conversation about it. You told me how you felt, you kissed me and then you... left."

A particularly large wave crashed into the rocks below them and showered them in a fine mist of water.

"Everybody I care about leaves me, Chantal. First my parents. Then Eve. Then Julia. Now you."

Chantal clenched her eyes shut. The accusation felt like a gut shot.

"Do you really have feelings for me?"

"I do," Chantal nodded tersely. "I can't deny it any longer."

"We've just known each other for two weeks, Chantal."

She turned to see Chantal looking at her. Her eyes were larger than over. Half of her face was obscured in darkness. The more she saw the expression writ large on the young batter, the clearer a realisation became.

"How long have you felt this way?"

"Since the first time I saw you on TV. I didn't know what it was back then. I do now."

"All this time. Every time we trained. Every time we played together."

"It was all I could do not to hold you in my arms and kiss you."

"And when we were at the beach house the last time?"

"I'd rather not talk about it," Chantal said, looking down. Suddenly, she felt Ellie's hand at her chin tilting her face upwards. She loomed over her, a stoic, expressionless look on her face. Before Chantal could say anything, Ellie pressed her lips to her own. Her lips felt soft, inviting even as Chantal pushed forward into the kiss. Before she could lean further into the kiss, Ellie drew back and got up.

"I'm old enough to be your Mum, Chantal. Don't you want to be with someone your age?"

"I want you," she said, standing up and taking a decisive step towards her idol.

Ellie could not come up with any words. They all got lost in transit somewhere between her throat and her mouth. Chantal bit her lip and held Ellie's hand, looking at her expectantly to make the next move. Ellie led her across the beach and into the house.

Chantal sat down on the table as Ellie lit the fireplace and then approached her. The only lighting in the room was the crackling fire and the moonlight streaming in through the window.

It was in this moment that Ellie took off her shirt and dropped it to the floor. Chantal felt like time had stopped as her eyes roamed over the naked torso before her.

It was different from what she had imagined the last time. Being an elite athlete still meant a firm chest and washboard stomach, but her breasts sagged with age. They were hardly more than a handful, each topped by a pale pink nipple. Her eyes were drawn especially to the thin scar slightly to the left of her sternum. The surgery had left a faint ghost.

"Someone I have known and loved since I was your age told me I was not good enough for her any more. How can you possibly want me?"

Chantal got up from her chair and walked to where Ellie was standing. She lowered her head and planted her lips right on the scar. Once. Twice. Then she ran her tongue along the length.

"You're beautiful and you're mine now."

She raised her head and they kissed properly for the first time. It was everything a first kiss should be. There was no rush or haste. Ellie tenderly let her tongue explore the corners of Chantal's mouth while the rookie's tongue slowly learnt her part in the duet. She copied each move she felt from the older woman's tongue -- each twist, each sweep from cheek to cheek. Their lips remained firmly locked and their tongues explored each other tenderly.

Ellie drew back to catch her breath. Chantal tasted of fruits and sweets and everything that was good about the world. In that moment, she seemed to want nothing more than to claim Chantal's mouth again.

And she did. Only this time, both women threw their trepidation out of the window. The second time they kissed properly, there was a rawness to it. A hunger that refused to be sated. Chantal leaned forward on her toes to partake in the passionate lip lock as an equal. Ellie embraced her and continued their sloppy kiss.

"Climb up and put your legs around me."

Barely breaking the kiss, Chantal boosted herself and wrapped her legs around Ellie's waist. The taller woman carried her effortlessly. They kissed again and again, unable to get enough of each other's taste.

Ellie took a few steps to the table and lay Chantal on her back on the clean table cloth. Chantal had already taken the hint and was busy undoing her buttons. Ellie helped her with the last few before she parted the two halves of her shirt. Chantal hurriedly undid her flimsy bra, the last barrier to unfettered access to her breasts.

For a long moment, neither of them said anything. Ellie let her eyes roam appraisingly over the denuded form before her. Chantal's breasts were larger than hers and had the colour and texture of a caramel pudding. She cupped one in her left hand and gently pressed down. It was not hard, but elicited a soft moan from the other woman. Ellie tried again, giving her breast an experimental squeeze.

"You can press harder."

"Are you sure?" said Ellie. "This is your first time."

"When you've wanted something as much as I have wanted this, you're sure."

Taking cue, Ellie squeezed her breasts harder now. She wrapped her fingers around both of them and pressed them together, making her nipples pop out.

Chantal closed her eyes and let her other senses take over. Ellie pulled her hands apart and pushed them closer together until the younger woman's nipples stared her in the face. She bowed her head down and took one of the hard buds between her lips.