knew it would have pushed things over the end. I knew I could have lost you. So I didn’t do it.”
He lets his hands drop. “I wish you hadn’t made me tell the truth.”
Then he walks off again.
And I let him go.
Standing on the middle of the field, I watch him go, his form growing bright as he enters the lights of the building and disappears.
Around me another plane takes off into the starry sky, but my heart is beating louder than the jet engines. I don’t hear it.
He kissed me and my world started over.
A blank slate.
Erasing the past.
Creating a future.
A future in which I am totally and utterly fucked.
Chapter 10
Alejo
The day after always has an ominous tone, and for a good reason.
It’s the day after I kissed Thalia, and I’m so fucking beside myself, I don’t know what to do.
It’s also the night of the Real Madrid versus Real Sociedad match.
To be more specific, it’s right after the game.
We lost.
Again.
So there’s really no choice on a night like tonight but to get utterly and completely wasted.
I skipped my therapy that morning and went on the bus with the guys, to watch the game from the sidelines, to get back into that headspace and to put as much distance between Thalia and I as possible.
Childish? Perhaps. But I couldn’t deal with seeing her again, and the game seemed like the biggest distraction.
Now, Luciano and I need to get distracted.
We’re in the back of a private car, ordering the driver to take us to The Last Resort, the only bar we would be remotely safe in tonight.
“There are going to be angry mobs everywhere,” Luciano says in a daze, staring out the windows as we drive through downtown Madrid. Thank god people can’t see in because there are a ton of them on the street and they’d probably rock the car.
Madridistas are a wild bunch. They’ll boo you on the field if you fuck up too much. They’ll whistle when they’re unhappy. If they see you on the street after a few losses, they might try to get a punch in. They take the game very seriously, almost as much as we do, so on nights like tonight, we have to be sharp.
Luckily, the bar, even though it’s crowded, knows us and knows to leave us alone. We’re led to the VIP area with bodyguards and I tell the waiter to keep the champagne coming.
“No champagne,” Luciano barks. “There’s nothing to celebrate.”
“Beers, then,” I tell the waiter, and he walks off, giving us both a sympathetic smile. I’m not sure which is worse, the pity or the anger.
“Mateo won’t be too happy about beer,” Luciano says.
“Well, the manager isn’t here, is he? And as far as I’m concerned, it can’t really hurt at this point, can it?”
“We lost three games in a row, Alejo,” Luciano says. He’s staring straight ahead, hunched over, rocking one knee up and down. “This isn’t good.”
“As soon as I’m back in, we’ll be winning,” I tell him.
He gives me a quick glance. “Uh huh. And what if that doesn’t work? Alejo, you saw tonight. You’ve watched the games. It’s not just that you’re not there to score a goal or two. We have other players to score goals. I should be scoring fucking goals. We couldn’t even get the team to the place where we could shoot. It’s like we lost all ability to play as a team.” He shakes his head. “Unreal.”
I know it’s my job to try and make him feel better, but I’m not sure how because what he’s saying is all true. “I guess we just need to focus on our errors. Watch feedback of the game. Make sure we know what we’re lacking.”
Luciano raises a brow at me. “Don’t tell me you’re after my job.”
I slap him on the back. “You’re El Capitán. I just want to score goals. I just want to play.”
“You will,” he says with a sigh. The waiter comes by and drops off a bucket of beer, knowing we’ll be through them all pretty quick. “How is it coming anyway?” Luciano asks. “Mateo said it’s been slow?”
I nod, not sure how much I want to say. “Slow, yes, but it’s getting better.”
“Has Thalia been a help?”
See, I didn’t want to talk about Thalia. She’s the last thing I want to talk about, and the only person I can think about.
“She has been.”
Luciano studies me and then gestures to the beer bottle. “What’s this?”