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i.
The first time Kelley falls for a teammate she's twenty two, and has just met Alex Morgan. Alex is objectively beautiful, anybody could see that, but Kelley spends two weeks at camp with her and that's when Alex becomes more than just a pretty face.
As with every crush Kelley's ever had, it's hard to tell exactly what it is to begin with. When Kelley tackles the ball from Tobin during practice and earns herself a laugh from Alex her chest swells, and she plays twice as well.
It's a young crush, and a full week into camp she still doesn't know if she wants Alex's approval or wants to make out with her.
She figures it out with two days left, when she's hanging out in her room with Alex and Tobin, and Alex throws her head back in laughter over something Kelley's said. Kelley's stomach constricts painfully and she excuses herself to the bathroom, where she sits on the closed toilet seat and cradles her head in her hands and accepts what's happened. A crush on a straight girl.
Still, she stands up a second later, looks in the mirror and whispers, "You got this."
Kelley's always been a fighter. This is just one more challenge.
It's a challenge that Kelley fights through, the same way she fights through not playing a key role in the World Cup. She accepts what she can get and thrives on it. When Alex and Tobin move into an apartment with her in LA, she relishes the moments of domesticity and pretends Alex's relationship with Servando doesn't bother her at all.
The latter part stops being an issue right before the World Cup, when Alex ends it, and confides to Kelley, eyes watering, that she might like girls.
Kelley is naive enough to get her hopes up, but in the next breath Alex mentions that she might like one girl in particular, and that girl might be their third roommate.
Kelley smiles and hugs Alex and tells her it'll all be ok, then cries herself to sleep.
Alex does something about her little crush a week after the World Cup ends, and before Kelley knows it they're moving out of the apartment to go to Jersey, and three bedrooms is too much space to be alone in, so Kelley rents somewhere smaller. At their next camp Kelley doesn't feel the butterflies as strongly around Alex, and she knows its a good sign.
She's moving on.
ii.
The second time Kelley falls for a teammate, things go a little further. Ashlyn turns up on her doorstep in late November, when she's living in a one bedroomed apartment in LA, eyes red from crying and Kelley brings her inside without a second thought. Ashlyn, who was always attractive to Kelley, who was always charming and funny and everything she looked for in a relationship, but also taken indefinitely by Ali.
Except now Ali's broken things off with her and kicked her out, and Ashlyn came crying to Kelley first.
Kelley, for a long selfish minute, allows herself to feel what she's suppressed since they met as she holds Ashlyn. She closes her eyes and pretends their circumstances are different. Ashlyn stays, on the sofa for the first week, until Kelley says its going to hurt her back and tells her to take her bed instead. Ashlyn tells Kelley not to be ridiculous and in the end they settle on sharing the bed.
Kelley's tense at first, because she's sharing a bed with an attractive woman, but Ashlyn doesn't seem to notice (or if she does she doesn't comment) and that in itself helps.
It takes less than three days for Kelley to realise that Ashlyn's a cuddly sleeper, and on the fourth morning she wakes up to Ashlyn's head on her chest and one leg wrapped over hers. She plays with Ashlyn's hair absentmindedly and when Ashlyn wakes she presses a lazy kiss to the corner of Kelley's mouth, mumbling a groggy, "Morning, babe."
Ashlyn couldn't be more sorry when she wakes up a little more and realises she's wrapped around someone smaller, with lighter hair and more freckles, and she backtracks as hard as she can. She backtracks until Kelley tells her not to be silly and it's ok and that maybe she didn't mind it all that much. They're tired and their minds haven't fully woken up yet, so it seems perfectly rational for both of them when Ashlyn leans in again and presses their lips together fully.
From then it's all limbs fitting together awkwardly and moans and Ashlyn's name echoing off the walls of Kelley's apartment.
It becomes the first of many times, and Kelley thinks they've got something, no matter how unofficial it is.
So maybe they don't go out on dates and they don't show affection in public, but behind closed doors Kelley gets to experience a part of Ashlyn she never thought she would, and that's enough for her. She assumes they'll talk about it sometime.
Except Ali tears her ACL and sometime turns into "Sorry Kelley, I'm going to DC to be with Ali," and Kelley's alone in her apartment again.
When she thinks about it three years later at their wedding, she knows Ashlyn's heart only ever belonged to Ali, and she had no place trying to take it.
iii.
The third time Kelley falls for a teammate, she falls harder than ever before. The third time she falls for a teammate is also the first time she falls in love with a teammate.
Hope's different from Alex, in that she's more defined physically, but she's also more blunt, less easy going. She's different from Ashlyn, because it takes a lot more to get under her skin, to get her to trust you.
Kelley loves a challenge.
They room together during the Olympics, and by this stage Kelley's already accepted her growing attraction to the keeper. Kelley's always had a way of making people open up, and Hope may be more reluctant to do so, but that doesn't stop her.
She does it by admitting things about herself, prompting Hope to do the same. Kelley says she likes girls exclusively and Hope replies with how she likes both and somewhere late into the night Kelley says she finds Hope attractive and would probably date her, and Hope laughs, but offers nothing in return. Nothing until later that night in the dark of the hotel room, when Kelley's breathing is just seconds away from evening out, and she replies with, "I wouldn't say no, if you asked me on a date."
Kelley can't reply, or she'll break the trust Hope has placed in the night, so she settles for falling asleep with a smile on her face.
Kelley steals a kiss the next night, and Hope obliges, but they go no further than kissing. They do go further on their last night in London, and Kelley accidentally let's an "I love you," slip past her lips as she comes undone. Kelley knows she's said too much too soon when Hope rejects the kiss she offers, instead rolling over and climbing into her own bed. Hope speaks in short, clipped sentences the next morning, and avoids Kelley as much as she can.
They fly home, and Hope stops responding to Kelley's texts. Finally she cracks, and sends Hope one last desperate message, 'I meant it when I said it. I love you. Please just tell me you feel anything for me.'
Hope answers her by publicly announcing her engagement to Jerramy the next day.
iv.
The fourth time Kelley falls for a teammate is completely different from the first three.
It's different because it's Christen, her best friend since college, and because she hasn't always felt an attraction to her. It's different because it comes over her all of a sudden, when she's watching her play in Sweden via live stream from halfway across the world. She knows what the feeling is right away, and she wants to kick herself for it. She's out with an ankle injury, so running so hard she forgets everything but the burn in her legs isn't an option. Instead she settles for getting drunk, and looking back on it, that was the worst thing she could have done.
Drunk Kelley is naturally less rational than sober Kelley and has a habit of doing stupid things.
This drunk Kelley in particular texts Christen and tells her how pretty she is and how glad she is they're friends. In the morning after she groans and thanks God that's all he said.
Christen replies with a 'haha' at the end so Kelley knows she's taken it lightly.
She ignores the feelings bubbling up inside her for months, until her ankle is fully recovered and she's back in camp and Christen's there as well, and then everything hits her at once. They play truth or dare like seventh graders in Ashlyn's room one night, and Kelley's dared to kiss the prettiest girl in the room. She's got half a beer in her already and all it does is give her the confidence to lean into Christen until their lips meet.
It's brief, far too brief for Kelley's liking, and once it ends she can't keep her eyes off Christen all night.
Three days later Christen corners Kelley in an empty hallway and kisses her again, slowly this time, and for longer, but Kelley pulls away first.
She needs confirmation that this is real, that its not a cruel joke to make her trust another person who's only going to break her heart.
Christen links her fingers with Kelley's and whispers how she's loved her for so long, whispers "I promise," and seals it with another kiss when Kelley begs her not to hurt her again.
The fourth time Kelley falls for a teammate, she's caught before she hits the ground.