You’ve become dependent on her because she can heal you. She’s become necessary to you.”
“And I’m necessary to her. She needs me to prove herself.”
“Okay,” he says gently. He smiles. “I’m not arguing with you, Alejo. You know yourself and what kind of situation you’re in better than I do. I’m just trying to give you some advice, as unwarranted and out of touch as it may be.”
“I don’t think it’s out of touch,” I tell him. “You must have had someone break your heart at some point.”
He gives me a funny look. “What makes you say that?”
“Because you’re old and you’re single.”
His eyes narrow. “Que te jodan.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I. Fuck you.” But he’s laughing. “Okay, fine. Yes, when I was younger there was someone who broke my heart. Only she never knew that she broke my heart. She was a sports journalist. She was dating my brother.”
“Oh.”
“Yes. So you can see it already starts off badly. She was dating my brother and I think I fell in love with her without knowing. They broke up. She left to do her journalism elsewhere. To get away from him and the memories. Okay? Then she came back once to Lisbon, when I was with Sporting, before I joined Real Madrid, and we had a beautiful week together. And then the next day she left. She told me she was staying, but then she was gone and I don’t know what happened. But she was definitely the one that got away.”
“And that’s why you’re single?” I ask. I find that hard to believe since the media is always fawning over Luciano. Almost more than they fawn over me.
“No, I just…I’m happy being alone. It’s easy. If I want to get laid, I go get laid. If I need someone to talk to, I have you. I have friends. Family. I’m just fine the way I am.”
“You don’t want your own family? Children?”
Luciano shakes his head, even if he looks a little sad. “No.”
I decide not to press him anymore.
So we sit there in the club, and we drink. Eventually some people we know find us and start chatting away about the team, and Luciano comes alive again, acting like the captain with a plan.
But I’m locked in my head.
I have to figure out what to do about Thalia.
The lines that were crossed last night.
I had tried for two weeks to ignore that incident in my room.
I thought I did a very good job of it.
Every sordid thought, every primal urge, every inappropriate remark, I found a way to bury it deep inside me. I managed to push through it and do what was right for the both of us.
But when we did that yoga session, everything fell apart.
The resolve I had built up, the steel I wrapped myself in to keep it all together, that dissolved and disappeared.
For the first time in my life, for reasons I can’t even explain, I was on that moonlit football pitch, beneath stars and airplanes, and I was vulnerable. I opened myself up to someone as I had never done before.
I talked about my father. About his suicide. That night.
I felt the things I tried to hide for so many years.
Everything came forward.
All because I was with her.
Because I trusted her.
Because I thought I could wrap up all the dark and ugly bits I’ve carried with me, present them to her like a wound I was hoping she could fix.
She can fix my body.
Why not my soul?
And it was in those barest moments that she came over to me and she held me.
I can’t remember the last time I was held like that, held by someone who accepts your pain and wants to help you. My mother and brother don’t count. My teammates don’t count.
Kissing her was inevitable.
My head was so fucked up.
My soul bare, a raw nerve, exposed for her to see.
My heart heavy with the horrors of my past.
What else could I do but try and express it?
But it doesn’t matter now. I can try and spin it every which way in my head, try and come up with the reasons why I did it.
I did it because I wanted to.
Because I want her.
And I’m fucking terrified that this feeling isn’t going to go away.
That I’m going to see her, and it’s going to be hell because all I’m going to think about is kissing her again and again and again.
But maybe, when it comes down to it, there’s no use even fighting