The Perfect Match

by Adiba Jaigirdar

Genres: Sports Romance; Workplace Romance

Synopsis

'Sweet and fun the whole way through!' Nisha Sharma, author of Dating Dr. Dil

'Fans of Jaigirdar's debut sapphic adult romance will stamp and cheer like Dina and Maya's #1 fan' Lillie Vale, USA Today bestselling author of Wrapped with a Beau and The Shaadi Set-Up

'This sapphic sports romance should be on everyone's radar! I truly couldn't put it down' Anam Iqbal, author of The Exes


All is fair in love and rivalry...

Dina is done. She's burn out after years in corporate London and now is working in her family's struggling Bangladeshi restaurant. The last thing she expects is to be roped into coaching a football team of disadvantaged amateur players - or to say yes.

Maya is back. She could have had a brilliant career, but it all went...well wrong. Now she's back home, back in her childhood bedroom. Her only escape is agreeing to coach her old secondary school's team.

It doesn't take long for them to bump into each other again and for as long as anyone can remember, Dina and Maya were rivals. But will the very game that tore them apart bring them back together?

An enemies-to-lovers and angsty queer Bend it like Beckham meets Cross the Line jampacked with quirky side characters who cannot help but intervene to push their uptight managers together.

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 320

Sample

There’s an electric energy around Snapdragon Stadium. The Vikings vs the Red Stars. The score still 1-1. This is still anybody’s match. But I’ll be damned if the Vikings lose now. Today.

It’s the last minute of the game and the Red Stars have the ball. I try to keep up, but it’s hard to drown out all the noise. My heart is beating too fast in my chest, and I can hear the rush of blood in my ears. Our team captain, Stacey, gives me a concerned look as she races past me to get back to defend. She’s counting on me – the whole team is. The roar of the fans reminds me that they are too.

The referee blows the whistle, but the noise from the crowd doesn’t stop. I slow down, take a deep breath. I can feel them looking at me. When I missed the goal earlier, they were booing me, and I can already imagine their comments online.

Maya Alam didn’t seem like she was on top form today, did she?

The Vikings lost because Maya couldn’t get her shit together.

Maya Alam let the team down. Again.

‘Hey, you OK?’ Stacey’s hands are at my elbow, her bright blue eyes peering down at me.

‘Yeah. I just can’t believe we’re still tied.’ I sigh, trying to catch my breath.

She gives me a sympathetic smile. ‘We can still pull it off. We’ve got extra time.’ She gives me an encouraging pat on the back before she heads off to speak to the other girls on the team.

We’ve got fifteen minutes to turn things around.

I jog up to the field, taking my position for the final kick-off of the match. I close my eyes for just a moment, trying to tune everything else out. I have to be here, in this moment. In the match, thinking about the game. I can’t be worrying about what comes next.

You’re Maya bloody Alam. If anyone can do this, it’s you.

The words are like a balm.

My eyes flicker open as the referee blows his whistle. I head straight for the ball, almost running into one of the players from the opposing team. I manage to get it before her, dribbling it in front of me, past the other players. Right towards the goal.

I’m laser-focused, sharp-eyed. I’m not going to miss this time. I race forward with the ball at my feet, dodging other Red Stars players around me. And then, the goalie is in front of me, shifting from one side to the other, hands outstretched, waiting for me to mess this up.

I drive my foot forward through the ball. It flies through the air and I watch with bated breath as it moves right past the goalie and bounces into the net.

The crowd around the stadium erupts into cheers, just as the final whistle sounds.

Game over – 2-1 to the Vikings.

Around me, the blue-uniformed Vikings – my teammates – are jumping and clapping, hugging each other happily, but I can barely muster a smile.

All the adrenaline that has carried me through the game is gone now and all I’m left with is this empty, deflated feeling.

Because this was my last win. My last match. It’s the last time I’ll ever be in a stadium like this, surrounded by my teammates and the cheering crowd.

When I go back to the changing rooms, I’ll change out of my kit for the very last time and that will be it. I’ll no longer be a Viking.

I’ll just be Maya Alam. Retired footballer.

Not a winner, but a failure. And in light of all of that, I can’t bring myself to celebrate the win, even though I was the one who scored the winning goal.

My teammates clap me on the back, tell me how great a job I did, but I just nod and plaster on a practised fake smile that slips away too easily.

All too soon, I’ll be boarding the flight back to London.

Back to my old life.

And back to Dina Chowdhury, the girl who broke my heart.

‘Reading smutty fan fiction again?’

I nearly jump out of my chair at the sound of the door opening and quickly slam my laptop shut before anyone can get a look at what’s on there.

Deen sets down the dish that he has come armed with. The spicy scent of chicken biryani makes my stomach gurgle with hunger. I hadn’t even realised that it was way past time for lunch.

We’re not really supposed to eat in the restaurant’s office – it’s reserved for business meetings. But nobody else comes in here except for me and Deen these days, so there’s no one to bust us for breaking the rules. It’s not like Baba’s around, pretending to be annoyed at us running into the office during rush hour to play hide-and-seek, or doodling all over his envelopes full of overdue bills.

‘I don’t read fan fiction; I’m pretty sure that’s you,’ I accuse teasingly, though, in truth, we both know who reads the smutty fan fiction in our family. Putting my laptop back into my bag, I eagerly accept a plate of the steaming-hot biryani from Deen.

‘It’s an old Bengali recipe,’ Deen says, as he sits down at the other end of the table with his own plate. ‘Apparently, it was derived from the Mughal era, and they used to serve this in an old Dhaka restaurant back in the day.’

‘Where do you even find out this crap?’ I ask, while digging into the rice and chicken. Of course, it’s the best biryani that I’ve ever had in my life. Somehow, Deen has the ability to make anything he touches taste like God’s gift to humanity. I’m not envious of his gift, considering I would rather eat my own arm off than spend all my day in the kitchen, but I am a little envious of the fact that he’s so damn talented at what he does.

‘A little research goes a long way,’ Deen says with a grin. ‘So … what were you looking at then?’ He nods to the laptop peeking out from my backpack under the desk.

I don’t want to talk about it, but I know Deen won’t let it go.

‘Job applications,’ I admit, reluctantly. ‘It’s grim out there, did you know that?’ I don’t admit that it’s less about the prospect of jobs and more about how little I want to actually do any of those jobs. There are plenty of HR positions going, but the financial firm that I worked at before felt like it was sucking my soul dry. I’d applied to other HR positions, and a few had even invited me to interview, but they all had the same putrid smell of corporate greed behind their sheen of fancy office buildings. I didn’t quit only to jump back into the corporate world again, no matter how well it paid. The depression was not worth it.

It’s not like things are much better now. I’ve been doing a few waitressing jobs here and there to make ends meet, but that’s not exactly the pinnacle of my dreams. It truly sucks to be trying to start over at twenty-eight, when I thought I’d have my life all figured out by now.

‘You’ll find something,’ Deen says with uncharacteristic optimism as he shovels biryani into his mouth.

‘This is good,’ I say, nodding at the half-full bowl still on the desk between us. ‘You should put this on the menu. We could have an old-Bengali cuisine theme. Go back to the world of the Mughals. I bet people will be intrigued by that, huh?’

‘Yeah, I can imagine it.’ Deen nods along, and I note the familiar glint in his eyes. ‘We could redo the walls and ceilings with that Mughal flair, get some paintings from that era.’ Deen quirks his head at me, as if he is thinking it through. ‘Hm, it’ll be mood lighting, romantic and sophisticated. But it’ll still have that cosy, homey feel at the same time. So that people who come here can feel, you know … like this is their place. A home away from their own homes.’

He pauses, and I can almost see the restaurant the way that he’s described it, instead of the one on the other side of the office door, with chipped paint and furniture that creaks every time someone uses it, which is rare these days.

‘We could get some old-timey chairs and tables, some kerosene lamps,’ I suggest, noticing how Deen comes to life when he talks about the restaurant. About his dream. ‘You know Mustafa Uncle? Ma told me he has a new place at Whitechapel Market, selling second-hand furniture. We could go sometime.’

‘Maybe someday,’ Deen says with a sigh.

Just like that, we snap out of the dream and see it how it is. He has big dreams about the restaurant but has yet to bring up any of them with our mum. She’s never been one for shiny new ideas. She likes the fact that the restaurant’s menu hasn’t changed in decades. She likes that she hasn’t updated the decor; that the chairs squeak when you sit on them, and that the tables wobble whenever you set down a dish. She likes that all the customers are regulars and that we never get busy enough to need more than one person running the place.

Or, at least, she pretends that she likes all of those things, and she won’t hear a single word about updating anything.

‘Why put more money into a money pit?’ is her tried-and-tested mantra.

By the time Deen and I finish with our lunch, it’s time to prepare for the dinner rush. If you can call our slow trickle of customers a dinner rush.

Deen grabs the bowl of leftover biryani, while I gather our plates, and the two of us make it out of the office, through the deserted restaurant, and into the kitchen.

‘Maybe you could serve the biryani as a chef’s special,’ I suggest while I scrub the dishes, and Deen gathers cauliflowers and carrots from the fridge.

‘Maybe,’ Deen mumbles, though we both know that he won’t. Despite his teenage years of rebellion, which earned him quite the reputation, Deen has the utmost respect for our parents, especially when it comes to the restaurant. It might be dilapidated and a money pit now, but it’s still what’s kept us afloat for all of our lives. The restaurant and our parents’ hard work are the clothes on our back, and the food on our plate.

Besides, it’s Ma who taught Deen how to cook, when he got suspended from school for smoking weed in the bathrooms. She forced him to make dinner for the family for a whole month as punishment, birthing his lifelong love for cooking. So, if Ma doesn’t want Deen to serve his food here and change up the menu, then he won’t.

No matter how much he wants to.

I leave Deen to his cooking, since I would probably only help set the kitchen on fire, and start making my way back to the office, pondering whether I should even bother to go back to LinkedIn or if I should spend the rest of my day hiding in the office and binge watching whatever I can find on Netflix. But then the restaurant door opens, and in comes a horde of teenage girls, along with their buzz of talk and laughter. They’re led in by a woman who looks strangely familiar.

‘OK, guys, grab a table, and I’ll go up to the—’ The woman’s voice is drowned out by the increasing sounds from the group of girls, who are now rushing to the empty tables by the corner, pushing them together until they make one long line.

I look back towards the kitchen door, expecting that Deen will come back out, ready to wrangle the kids, but when he doesn’t, I march towards the woman in charge of the group with a frown.

‘Sorry, they really shouldn’t be rearranging the furniture like that,’ I say, though I can’t muster up enough energy to actually be frustrated. The girls have drawn up their chairs to the tables now, sitting elbow to elbow as they grab at the menus and shout over each other to be heard.

‘Dina?’ the woman asks.

When I turn to look at her – really look at her – I place her immediately.

‘Jen?’

Jen smiles, and it almost feels like I’m suddenly transported back to school. Back to the football field, where Jen’s encouraging smile led me to every victory that I ever had. It’s been so many years since I saw her – too many years – but somehow, she looks almost exactly the same. Only her brown hair is a little shorter, and she looks a little older, like age and experience have settled into her youthful face.

‘It’s so good to see you,’ Jen says, extending her arms out towards me. I wrap my arms around her too, almost out of instinct.

‘You too. What … what are you doing here?’ I ask. ‘Those … aren’t all your kids, are they?’ I ask with a hesitant laugh, nodding at the group of girls that are still shouting to be heard by each other, despite the fact that the rest of the restaurant is completely deserted.

Jen chuckles. ‘No. Not my kids. I’m coaching a football team for the local council, and we just had training.’

‘Wow.’ Now that I look at the girls a little closer, it’s easy to see that they’re wearing what could almost constitute football attire. They’re not decked out in matching jerseys and football boots, but there’s an array of loose T-shirts, shorts and brow-beaten trainers.

‘Yeah, I’m sorry they’re … a little excitable,’ Jen says. ‘I’ll try to get them to calm down, and I can have them put the tables back if—’

‘No, no. It’s fine,’ I say, shaking my head. It’s not like any other customers are going to use those tables anyway. ‘It’s good to see that you’re still coaching.’

‘I like doing it.’ Jen shrugs. ‘I had to step away from the school to take care of family, but honestly, I had kind of missed coaching.’

I glance at the girls from her team again, and wonder what she missed about it. It couldn’t have been dealing with teenage girls all day.

‘Well, you were good at it. I bet the school misses you.’ I still remember all the times she cheered me on from the touchline, and how she always fought for the school to fund the girls’ football team when it was often only interested in the boys’ team.

Jen rolls her eyes in good humour. ‘Please. I don’t think sports teachers are that hard to come by and I wasn’t trained in coaching football teams. Besides, I was still learning the ropes back then.’

‘It never felt like that to me,’ I say. Jen had seemed like someone who had been coaching football her whole life. She knew how to get the best out of us by caring about us. Each and every one of us.

‘You made it easy,’ Jen says. ‘You were already so good at football.’

A bloom of pride warms me. I can’t remember the last time someone complimented me on doing something well. But my high comes crashing down as fast as it came when I remember her. It’s like I can’t even think about football without her face appearing in my memory.

‘Well, I’m glad another team gets to experience your amazing coaching,’ I say, trying to shake my memories off.

Jen’s smile wavers a little. ‘Thanks, Dina. Though, truthfully, this coaching job is a little different from when I was doing it at school. I mean, back then, it was part of my job, and I was younger and had so much energy. Now, I always have a million things on my plate. Sometimes, I feel like I can barely fit coaching into my schedule, so it falls to the wayside. Which is pretty unfair on the team.’ She pauses, looking at me closely. ‘I’m actually looking for an assistant coach to help me out. The council finally managed to find some funding for a part-time position, but I’ve had no luck with finding someone so far.’

The way she’s looking at me makes me think for a second that she’s considering me for the position.

‘Well, a sedentary office job doesn’t really qualify one for an assistant coach position.’ I chuckle. ‘I’m sure you’ll find someone soon.’

‘Yeah, I hope so,’ Jen says. ‘I shouldn’t be talking your ear off about all of this anyway. How have things been with you?’

‘Things have been … good, yeah,’ I say, nodding, though the last thing I want to get into is details about my life. Being unemployed and having no future prospects is not the kind of thing you want to share with your former mentor. ‘I should, um, get you some water and then take your orders. Why don’t you take a seat and I’ll be right back?’

I turn around and almost run right into Deen, who is already heading to the table with a jug of water and a stack of metal cups.

‘Whoa, careful there,’ he says, weaving around me. He greets Jen and the girls with a grin, serving them their water and taking their orders with his signature charm.

Jen flashes me a smile as Deen leaves the table, and it’s clear that she wants to catch up some more, but catching up would require me having to share things about my life too. And I’m definitely not ready for that. So, I give her a small wave, before retreating back to the office and closing the door behind me.

‘So … that was your old coach, right? What was her name again? Anne?’ Deen asks later as we’re closing up the restaurant.

‘Jen,’ I say, clearing up the area where the girls had been sitting. They made a total mess of things: the tablecloth is half off the table; rice and curry stains all over it. I pull it off the table and toss it aside. It will have to go in the wash, and even then, I’m not sure if those stains will come off.

‘It’s nice that she’s still coaching,’ Deen comments.

‘Yeah, a rowdy bunch of teenagers,’ I grumble. ‘She said it’s part of her work for the council.’

‘And she said she was looking for an assistant coach …’ Deen raises an eyebrow at me, and even though he doesn’t say it outright, I know what he means.

‘No. No way,’ I say.

‘Why not? You were her star football player, if I remember correctly,’ Deen says.

‘Yeah, an entire lifetime ago. And it’s not like it led anywhere …’ I almost think back to those days.

To her.

I shake my head, clearing my mind of those thoughts. ‘That was my past, and in case you don’t remember, I didn’t exactly have success in football. So, why would I be a good coach? All I can teach those girls is failure.’

‘That’s dramatic,’ Deen mumbles, before turning to me with a determined look in his eyes. ‘You didn’t fail, Dina. Plus, having someone who has life experience as a coach can be good. I mean, it’s not like Jen was a mega-successful football star. Did that make her any less important to you as a mentor?’

When Deen puts it like that, it almost makes sense. But no, there is no way I am going to go back to football. Not after it chewed me up and spat me out.

‘I’m not doing it. She would have tried to convince me to take the job if she wanted me, but she didn’t, so obviously she doesn’t think I’m good enough either.’

‘Or … she remembers what happened and she didn’t want to ask outright in case you were still sensitive about it,’ Deen points out. ‘Which, in case you were wondering, you are.’

‘I’m not sensitive about it,’ I say darkly, which probably isn’t helping prove my point. Maybe I am a little sensitive about it, but I’ve earned the right to be.

‘Look, Dina. Dreams die in our family. Ma’s dreams of being an actress failed. Baba’s dreams of this restaurant died with him. But you still have time to make something of your dreams,’ Deen says. And I realise that he’s being extremely serious about all of this from the way he holds my gaze. He really thinks that, somehow, I’m the member of our family who can go out there and achieve my dreams; end our cycle of settling for a life that we’re ultimately unhappy with.

‘What about you?’ I ask.

‘Me?’ Deen asks, as if he has never even factored himself into this equation.

‘What about your dreams of the restaurant? The new menu? The new decorations? Sprucing it up, bringing in new customers? Really doing the cooking thing?’

‘That was just … talk.’ Deen waves his hand dismissively.

‘You talk to Ma about the menu, and … maybe I’ll apply for the coach position.’ I shrug, going back to clearing the tables. I expect that to be the end of the matter, because there is no way that Deen will actually brave that conversation with our mother.

‘You know those two things are not the same,’ Deen says after a moment. ‘But … I’ll consider talking to her.’ I stop mid-cleaning and turn to Deen.

‘Seriously?’

Deen shrugs, acting as if the idea of talking to Ma is not a big deal, and not something he’s been avoiding for months and months now.

I stand up straight, looking Deen square in the eye. He seems sincere in his intentions. Maybe he will seriously think about it. Maybe he’ll actually do it.

But knowing Deen, and knowing our family, I don’t have much hope.

‘OK. Then I’ll think about applying to be a coach,’ I say.

Deen’s face breaks out into a grin. He knows this is the most he can hope for, and I know that it most likely won’t amount to anything.

But at least the two of us are happy living in our denial.

The dinner table is almost completely silent, save for the sound of chewing and the occasional scrape of cutlery. When I look up from staring down at my plate, I realise that Amma and Abba are exchanging meaningful glances between each other, like they’re having a silent conversation.

Probably one that’s about me.

I have to stop myself from physically recoiling. I miss the times when our dinner tables were filled with lively discussions and debates. When I was in on the meaningful glances, and not the object of them.

‘So, Maya. How was your day today? You went out, right?’ Amma asks when she notices me looking at her. The smile on her face is completely fake, and I can see the worry behind her eyes.

‘It was fine,’ I say. I wish I had something to offer, but I can’t tell them that I spent the day scrolling through online hate about myself while lying in bed. Exactly as I have done every single day since I got home.

It doesn’t help that in the first week of my return, journalists had hounded me, trying to get the scoop on why I had really retired. Some of them had even found out my parents’ address, ambushing Amma and Abba with questions. Things had since died down, but the news articles full of pure speculation hadn’t stopped.

Worse, the Bangladeshi aunties and uncles had been calling my parents nonstop, trying to find out exactly what had happened with me and my career. I’m sure they’re not loving having to field that line of questioning. Even though it’s mostly just morbid curiosity that’ll fade soon.

‘Did you do some unpacking?’ Abba asks, a little too casually.

‘No, not yet.’ My voice comes out sharper than I intend it to. It’s been two whole weeks since I’ve come back home and I’m fast running out of underwear, but the idea of unpacking feels overwhelming. It feels like admitting defeat.

‘We can help you unpack if you need us to,’ Amma says gently. The kindness in her voice makes me feel more angry than soothed.

‘I don’t need help unpacking, Amma. I’m a grown woman who can unpack on her own,’ I say. A grown woman who has no job and has moved back into her parents’ house, I think to myself. A grown woman who is somehow right where she was as a teenager.

‘OK. Just … offering.’ Amma and Abba exchange another glance across the table, and that’s about all I can take for one dinnertime conversation.

With a sigh, I stand, despite my half-full plate. I’m not even that hungry, if I’m being honest with myself. I have missed Amma’s cooking over the past few years – obviously – but the taste of it now reminds me less of home and more of my failure.

‘I think I’ve lost my appetite. I’m feeling a little sick,’ I mumble, grabbing my plate and walking over to the compost bin to dump the rest of it out. I toss the plate itself in the sink before hurrying up the stairs. All the while, my parents say no. . .