It's a Wonderful Wife Ch 2

Gritting her teeth, Riley slogs into the icy wind. The correct thing to do would be to practice the kind of mature thinking that she attempts when she knows that she’s in a losing match. Acceptance. Instead, she torments herself by thinking about warm things as she enters the relative dark of the woods. She realizes that she doesn’t even have the flashlight on her phone because she put it down in the house and never picked it back up. She needs to call Ingrid and tell her what’s going on, but she doesn’t want to go back.

“Delly?” Her voice comes out wobbly.

Starbucks. Starbucks is the first thing that she thinks about. One sip from a red cup right now would give her so much strength. But she can’t pussy out; she’s a professional athlete. Her body is more than strong enough to do this, and although it feels like antarctica, that’s only the case because she’s from Florida. The temperature is in the low thirties. Real northern people, Ingrid included, aren’t even slightly impressed by this weather.

The beach, and everything that goes with it. She brings that up in her mind. Hot loungers, the smell of suntan lotion, bikinis, and condensation on glasses. She relishes the thought of the sun baking her skin.

Her foot snags and she stumbles. With quick reflexes hindered by her body feeling frozen and clumsy, she falls to her hands and knees without too much drama, and no injury. It’s fine. She takes worse spills than this when she’s practicing.

“Delly!” She picks herself up and keeps going.

Oppressive heat is one of the problems with central Florida in summer. She thinks about the old days at the first FUTA campus for those first two seasons. Dripping sweat, sticky T-shirts, crowded showers full of steam. Ingrid had been twenty-one when Riley first laid eyes on her.

“Augh!” Deep shadows hide a deceptive slope and Riley slips and tumbles. She manages to roll and land safely, but snow is everywhere, including down her shirt, and her arm hurts. She sits up, shivering. Her butt is wet and cold now too. She rubs her sore arm and peers around for a moment, fighting an inner battle that she ultimately wins, choosing not to feel sorry for herself.

Saunas. Saunas are hot. Her young self would have found being crammed in a sauna with the rest of the Washington Spirit stressful. These days, that’s just Thursday, although it’s not as though she’s grown out of enjoying opportunities to admire certain things. But nobody on the team compares to her wife, the same wife who will be devastated if Riley doesn’t find this stupid dog.

Riley drops the bag of treats as she pulls it out of her pocket. The plan was to shake it now that the wind has died down a bit. Adella likes that noise. But Riley’s fingers don’t want to move, and she can’t feel her ears.