Chapter 3 Tobík
Iturn with my coffee and he’s there.
Damián. At my table by the window, cortado in front of him, golden hair up in the bun, fitted dark shirt I haven’t seen before. The blue of his eyes catches the light from across the room in a way no photo has ever quite managed.
My face goes before my brain does. The grin arrives, the warmth floods up through my chest, everything wide and open and obvious. By the time I try to pull it back he’s already seen it. So has Jordan.
“Tobík.” He says my name the way he’s always said it. “I didn’t know you came here.”
“Damián.” My voice does something on the second syllable I would rather it hadn’t. “You’re here.”
He stands. He crosses the distance between his table and where I’m holding an americano I’ve forgotten about, and his arms are around me.
The hug arrives the way hugs arrive between men who’ve known each other for ten years, natural and automatic, his hand on the back of my neck the way Damián has always touched people.
Except it holds. A beat past when it should end. His chin is near my temple and I can smell the soap that’s just him. My chest presses against his. The americano survives. I survive. Then he steps back and sits down like the extra second didn’t happen.
“The hotel is close,” he says. “I walked.”
“That is a kilometer and a half. That is not close.”
“I like walking.”
The Czech is already flowing between us. His mouth shapes the words the way it always has, fast and easy, and nobody in this coffee shop understands us.
I sit across from him at the small table. His knee is near mine underneath it and I can feel the heat of his body so close.
“Atlanta suits you, Tobík.” The half-smile. The one that hasn’t changed since we first met.
“Thank you. You look well too.” I take a sip of my coffee to give my hands something to do. “How was the flight? You got in yesterday?”
“Yesterday, yes. Long flight. Ková? looks like he hasn’t moved since November. We may be in trouble on the pitch.”
“You say that about Ková? every time according to Tomá?.”
“Because it’s true every time. He shows up to camp looking like someone’s uncle and then runs ninety minutes and I don’t understand his body.”
“Hockey has the same. Mueller eats pasta every game day. Every single game. He says it’s tradition. The nutritionist says it’s a problem but he plays well. Mueller says the nutritionist doesn’t understand tradition.”
Damián laughs. Short, surprised. His laugh hasn’t changed either. Of course it hasn’t. Why would it have?
“Footballers are worse. ?íma tapes his left boot before his right or he won’t play. He says it’s not superstition. He says it’s science.”
“And is it science?”
“It is absolutely not science,” he laughs, then glances around the small space we’re in. “How long have you been coming here?”
“Since October. This is the part of the Beltline that I walk.”
“So you come here every day?”
“Most days. If I’m not traveling, I’m here. Jordan knows my order before I ask.”
“That’s a good sign.”
“It means I’m predictable. I’m not sure that’s the same as good.”
“Predictable is underrated.” He takes a sip of the cortado. “In Germany, nobody knows where I get coffee. I’ve been there four years.”
“That’s because you don’t let them know you.”
I didn’t mean to say it. It’s true in response to Germany. But I’m not talking about coffee and we both know it.
“Maybe,” he says. The half-smile doesn’t move. “Maybe I don’t.”
I glance around at the handful of people sitting around the shop. “It’s strange, speaking Czech in here. Nobody understands us.”
“Is that strange?”
“It’s private. Like a secret room inside here.” I smile, one I can’t contain. “Do you have a routine in Germany? Beyond the coffee nobody knows about?”
“Training. Recovery. Match. Training. Recovery. Match.”
“That’s not a routine. That’s a schedule.”
“What’s the difference?”
“A routine has parts that are yours. A schedule has parts someone built for you.”
He looks at me when I say this. His eyes stay on mine a beat too long, and the blue goes focused in a way I’ve seen exactly once before.
“Are you ready for the group stage?” I ask, because I need the look to stop before it does something to me in a coffee shop with five other customers and a barista who is already grinning too much. “Brazil is first?”
“The eighteenth. We’ve been watching film. Their striker is quick. Pulls wide and cuts back.” He shifts into the football register I’ve heard him use with Tomá? a hundred times, and the focused look softens. “Tomá? thinks we match up well. I think Tomá? hasn’t watched enough tape.”
“He watches plenty. He just watches differently than you.”
“He watches it like an attacker. I watch it like a center back. One of us is correct.”
“You both think you’re correct.”
“I am correct.”
I laugh. He smiles. A woman walks past the window with a Denmark flag draped over her shoulders. I love this city.
“Tomá? says you’ve been showing people around. The places they should go.”
“Tomá? exaggerates. I show them the Beltline. The Beltline does the rest.”
“You should show me.”
He says it fast. Not the way Damián says things. This came out unplanned, and I can see the moment he hears himself, the flicker crossing his face that he smooths over before it finishes arriving.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’d like that. I know all the good spots.”
“Good.” He finishes his cortado. Stands. “I should get back. Recovery session this morning.”
“Of course.”
He hugs me again. Standing, by the table, his hand on the back of my neck one more time. Briefer than the first. The right length for two old friends saying goodbye after coffee. I tell myself this. I also notice his thumb moves once against my neck, just above the collar, before he lets go.
“It was good to see you, Tobík.”
“You too, Damián.”
He walks out into the heat. I sit at the table with my americano going cold and watch him through the window until he turns the corner. Jordan appears with a cloth.
“Friend of yours?”
“An old friend. Yes.”
“Cute old friend.”
“Yes.” Lying about Damián being beautiful would require a level of dishonesty my body has never managed.
Jordan grins down at me. “Regular has layers. Who knew?”
“I do not have layers. I have a friend who drinks cortados.”
“Uh huh.” She picks up his cup. “He sat here for ten minutes before you showed up, by the way. Stared at that door until you walked in.”
She walks back to the counter. I sit with that information.
He waited. He came early and he waited. He walked a kilometer and a half and sat at my coffee shop and said I didn’t know you came here. The lie was smooth.
I pick up my phone and open his contact, the number Tomá? gave me the other day. My thumbs hover over the keyboard and the sentence forms before I can stop it: Did you come here because of my posts? Did you come to my coffee shop because of me?
I stare at the words. I don’t hit send and instead delete the message.
The group chat has been going since nine. They’re arguing about the heroine in the book we’re all reading. She’s been keeping a secret from the hero for a hundred pages.
Marchetti
She needs to TELL HIM. It's been four chapters. He's standing RIGHT THERE.
Thompson
The secret is the structure. She can't tell him because telling him changes what they are.
Mueller
I don't understand why she doesn't just say it.
Marchetti
THANK YOU MUELLER. For once we agree.
Thompson
Mueller agreeing with you should make you question your position.
I type without thinking.
She is not keeping the secret to protect herself. She is keeping it because telling the truth would change the relationship she depends on. The secret is not about the information. It is about what happens to the structure if the information gets out.
Three dots. Disappear. Appear.
Thompson
Hájek you just ended the debate again.
Marchetti
...damn.
Mueller
Wait I need to reread that.
Marchetti
No, he's right. That's exactly it. She's not scared of the truth. She's scared of what the truth costs.
Thompson
Hájek asking the real questions as usual.
Damián came on purpose. He watched and he came and he said show me your city and his thumb moved once against my collar. Yesterday I'd have called that the answer to a question I'd stopped asking.