Chapter 14
Hades
I've been staring at Lauren's name on my phone screen for twenty-two minutes, unable to press call. That's never happened to me before. Not even when we signed the divorce papers.
I tried last night. The first time it went straight to voicemail.
The second time Sofía picked up and told me Lauren was finishing homework with Nora and that I should try again tomorrow.
So here I am, in my office, my first cup of coffee already cold beside me, scared to call the woman I was married to for twelve years.
I press the button.
“Have you eaten?” she asks when she picks up.
“Does that matter?”
“Yes, because if you haven't, we're about to have a very uncomfortable conversation on an empty stomach, and with you, that never ends well.”
I smile without meaning to. There is nobody on this earth who knows me better than she does.
“Actually, I'd almost rather do this face-to-face, Diana. Can you come by this afternoon? The girls have practice at five, and they won't be back until seven. We'd have a couple of hours to talk properly.”
She hangs up without saying goodbye, the same way she used to when we were married and she was running late for a meeting.
The thing about Lauren, good or bad, depending on how you look at it, is that she reads between the lines better than anyone alive.
And she's been reading me for years, first as my partner, then as my ex sharing custody.
If she's asking me to come over this afternoon, she already knows exactly what she wants to say. Lauren doesn't wing things.
**
At five past five I ring the doorbell. Showing up five minutes late is my way of telling myself I'm not ready to face this.
The house smells like tomato sauce because Lauren cooks when she's nervous, and also because the girls get home at seven and dinner needs to be ready. My ex has zero tolerance for anything that comes out of a box.
On the living room table there's an open bottle of red wine with two glasses. She started without me. That's a bad sign. An awful sign.
“I needed a glass. Don't take it personally,” she murmurs, noticing me looking at it.
Lauren sits closer to me than usual. It's the distance she uses for hard conversations.
“Okay,” she says. “Do I start or do you?”
“You start.”
“I read the article. One of the twins' friends' mothers sent it to me as sports gossip from school.”
“Okay, and?”
“Diana. Look at me.”
“What? If there was some kind of illegal compensation in the transfer, that's Alexandra Drummond's problem, not mine.”
“Are you sleeping with Mireya Guerrero?”
She asks it flat out, holding my gaze, and my blood goes cold.
“What?”
“You heard me. Are you sleeping with one of your players?” she repeats.
I let out a long breath.
“God, Diana. Have you lost your mind? What the hell is going on with you?”
“Okay, it's not that simple; technically there hasn't been sex and—”
“Have you completely lost it? Look, I don't care. We've been divorced for five years. But this is going to end your career, and it will blow back on the girls, because it'll be in every sports outlet out there. I can't believe this, I really can't,” she says, pressing both hands to her head.
I want to say something, but the words stay stuck in my throat.
“Did this start before? Is that why you signed her?”
“No. When I signed her, I'd never spoken to her in my life. I only knew her as a player.”
“Okay. I'm going to talk to you as a lawyer now, not as your ex-wife. What exactly has happened between you two?”
“Kisses, some touching. She slept in my bed a couple of times, but she had a sprained ankle, and we decided not to go further,” I tell her.
“Does anyone know about this?”
“No.”
“Does that Mireya have enough sense not to tell anyone, or does she have a big mouth?”
“She won't tell anyone,” I say.
“Anything in writing? Messages on the spicy side, that kind of thing? Intimate videos? Naked photos?”
I take a long drink of wine.
“The usual, but you know I'm not much of a texter. No videos, no photos. From either of us. There's a note. Just four lines. I don't know if she kept it.”
“God, Diana. In your own handwriting?”
“Yes.”
“What does it say?”
“Lauren, please don't—” I start.
“Diana, I'm asking as your lawyer. What does it say?”
I close my eyes and recite it from memory.
“There are things I find hard to say out loud, even when I feel them. This is one of them. I love you,” I say, barely above a whisper.
Lauren picks up her glass. Lifts it an inch or two. Sets it back down without drinking.
“Okay.”
“Okay what?”
“Okay, give me a minute to think.”
Lauren turns toward the window and stares at the back garden, where Sofía left her jump rope lying in the grass last week and nobody's picked it up.
“When I told you years ago that I couldn't do it anymore and I wanted a divorce, you asked me why.
I said I was tired of competing with a whiteboard full of soccer diagrams because the whiteboard was always going to win.
You looked up, and you didn't fight. You didn't try to fix it.
You just accepted it, despite the girls, despite the years we'd had together.”
“I don't know where you're going with this,” I say, opening my hands.
“I'm not blaming you for any of that. We both cried about it, at least I did, but that's in the past. What I don't understand is why you're now willing to throw your entire career away for one of your players, when years ago it was the exact opposite.”
“Lauren, things are different and—”
“Do you remember how long it took you to tell me you loved me?”
I'd rather not answer. We both already know.
“Diana, it's not just the club. The league has had a specific protocol for years covering relationships between technical staff and players.
The right thing to have done was to declare it the first day and follow the procedure the rules set out.
If that journalist gets hold of proof that you're in a relationship with a player and you never disclosed it, your career is over this season.
Drummond won't be able to defend you. The league will open a formal inquiry.
You'll lose all credibility with the rest of the players, and no club will sign you after a scandal like this. Probably not her either. You know that, right?”
“Yes,” I sigh.
“Okay. First thing, I need you both to delete every single message. Both of you. And tell her to burn the note. I don't care how much it means to her. That's irrelevant. It has to go. There can't be a single trace of it left.”
“Okay.”
“Good. Second. Your house. Is there anything there?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?” she presses.
“Well, there's a blue pen of Mireya's on my nightstand. That's it.”
“God, Diana.”
“It's a pen, Lauren.”
“Does it have her initials or anything that identifies it? Has she left clothes at your place? Pajamas or anything like that, or does she sleep in the nude?”
“I lend her my 2011 World Cup jersey,” I confess.
“Your World Cup jersey,” she repeats very quietly, narrowing her eyes. “You've got it bad, haven't you?”
She takes another drink, and when she looks at me again, her eyes are a little wet.
“Now the most important thing. Does this woman love you?”
“I think so.”
“You think, or you know? Does she love you enough for both of you to risk your careers?”
“I think so.”
“Then think about it carefully. Because that's what you're both doing right now.
And if she really is as in love as you are, she doesn't deserve a halfway relationship conducted in secret.
And neither do you. You both deserve all of it or none of it, not this in-between thing you're doing. Do you hear me?”
She hugs me before I leave. Hard, the way she hasn't in years, and I feel her tears against my neck.
“God, Diana, I want you to be happy, but this is an absolute mess,” she says when she lets go.
**
The moment I get home, I pour a glass of whiskey and dial Mireya's number.
She picks up on the first ring.
“Are you okay?”
“I need to see you tonight.”
“Do you really want to see me, or is something going on? Because my ankle is almost completely healed, so we don't need to hold off anymore,” she jokes.
“Something is going on and I need to see you tonight, and it's important,” I answer, my voice coming out flatter than I'd like.
“Is everything okay?”
“No, everything is not okay. But there's still time. Come when you can, okay?”
“I'll be there at nine,” she tells me.
My head won't stop spinning. Lauren is right. She's right about all of it. Yes, I've fallen hard this time, but more than anything, Mireya doesn't deserve a relationship kept halfway hidden.
The doorbell rings fifteen minutes before nine.
“Coach, it's me.”
“What the hell are you doing here, Iris?” I say, checking the time again.
“Are you going to let me in or am I standing out here? Because it just started raining and I'm getting soaked. Also, the humidity does something to my hair and—”
“Get in,” I say, stepping aside.
“Okay, Coach. We need to talk because this is serious. I'm not judging you, okay? We'll talk it through, and we're cool.”