Chapter 12 Damián
The cross comes in from the right and I rise to meet it. Forehead to leather. The snap of direction through my neck, clean, and the ball sails past the near post into the netting behind the cones.
Good. Again.
Ková? sends the next one higher. I adjust at the top of the arc, meet it where I chose before I left the ground, and the ball drops into the space.
The next comes in and I connect and the next after that and the next after that.
For twenty minutes the body and the ball are in agreement.
The pitch does this. The heat is sitting on the training ground like a second atmosphere, and none of it matters because the ball goes where I tell it to go and the telling is the only part of my life right now that works exactly the way it should.
“Vě?.” Ková? bends over, hands on his knees. “Water. Or I collapse and you’re serving to yourself.”
“One more set.”
“One more set and I’m filing a grievance. With the union. There is a union for this.”
“There’s no union for extra sessions.”
“Then I’ll start one. Ková?‘s Union for Men Being Punished by Cent erBacks Who Won’t Go Inside.”
“I’ll be your first member.”
“You’re the problem, not the membership.”
He straightens. Wipes his face with the hem of his shirt. The grass at the edge of the pitch is brown and crisp from the heat.
“You know what this is,” he says.
“Training.”
“This is you being somewhere that isn’t your head. You’ve done this since the youth team. Something goes sideways and you book extra sessions and head every ball in the city until one of them apologizes.”
“That’s not what’s happening.”
“How many headers was that?”
“I wasn’t counting.”
“Forty-seven. I was counting because I’m the one serving and my shoulder will be feeling this tomorrow.” He tips his chin at me. “Whatever it is, the balls don’t know.”
“Six more.”
“Four.”
“Five and you pick the restaurant.”
“Done.”
He sends five more and each one goes where I tell it to go.
Clean. Directed. The body doing what it does best, which is read the delivery and adjust and connect, and the connecting is work that doesn’t require explaining to anyone.
Four nights ago a different set of decisions were being made by a different part of the body, and those were also precise, and also not something I have successfully filed under any category that makes sense in the daytime.
Three times. Three separate occasions on which I have been naked with Tomá?‘s brother.
The filing system I built for the almost-kiss does not extend to this.
“Weird night” covers one night. Three times is a pattern.
A pattern being performed by a man who is absolutely about to call his agent and accept the captaincy of a Bundesliga football club.
I should be studied. Scientists should be looking into this.
The locker room is empty, everyone else at recovery or lunch. The air conditioning pushes cold against my wet skin. I check the schedule on my phone. Recovery at two. Dinner at seven.
Peter’s name is in my missed calls.
I call because the shelf life on not calling expired three weeks ago.
“Damián.” The voice of a man whose patience has been professional-grade and is approaching its limit. “I have news.”
“Tell me.”
“The club moved it’s timeline. Kessler’s retirement announcement is Thursday. They want to announce the new captain at the same event.”
“Thursday. This Thursday.”
“As in three days. If you are signing, they need confirmation by tomorrow evening, European time. They have bent over backwards to give you the time you need. They have overlooked the deadlines you continue to ignore. If you are not signing, they are calling Weber. “
“Weber cannot captain that back line.”
“I agree. Which is why the offer has your name on it. But offers expire, Damián, and this one has been expiring since March.”
I sit on the bench. The tile floor is cold under my feet.
“I will call you tomorrow.”
“Damián,” he says with a huff. “You have said tomorrow fourteen times.”
“This is a different tomorrow.”
“Explain to me how this is different?”
“It has a deadline.”
“The other’s did too, Damián.” A pause. Peter’s pauses are calculations.
I prefer them to my father’s, which are disappointments dressed as patience.
“What is going on? We’ve known each other for years.
Help me understand what you want and I can make it happen.
But until I know what you are looking for, I can’t help. ”
I stand up and pace across the locker room. How can I explain it to Peter if I don’t even understand myself.
“Five PM, European time,” Peter says when I give him nothing. “After that, Weber.”
“Understood.”
“Call me when you have an answer. Or call me when you do not have one. Either way, call.”
The captaincy. The armband. The logical result of every correction absorbed since I was nine years old.
Very straightforward. Very sensible. I should take it and call Peter and stop being a man with a search history he hasn’t cleared.
I’ve had this excellent plan for four months.
The plan has not resulted in a phone call.
I open the laptop to check the film schedule. The browser has three tabs. The team portal. The inbox. And a third tab, five days old, that I have not closed. Atlanta United MLS roster 2026. The tab of a man who is making excellent career decisions.
The restaurant is Ková?‘s choice. A barbecue place ten minutes from the hotel that Novotny found last week and Ková? has already decided to distrust.
“Ková?, the menu is in English.” Novotny, pointing. “Do you need help?”
“I read English.”
“You read English the way you read crosses. With a delay.”
“My reading of crosses is faster than your reading of anything. You took twenty minutes to order in Bucharest.”
“Bucharest was in Romanian.”
“So is this menu, apparently.”
“It’s barbecue,” I say. “Order the brisket.”
“Is brisket the one that’s pink in the middle?”
“It’s smoked. The pink is from the wood.”
“In Italy, pink in the middle means the kitchen has given up.”
“In Italy, the kitchen takes a nap between courses. Order the brisket, Ková?.”
“Vě?, I have faith in you on the pitch. My faith does not extend to American meat.”
?íma launches into a story about the team dinner in Rome that will never not be funny.
Polá?ek is adding details that may not have happened.
The table is warm and loud and familiar in the way of men who have been sitting at tables together since they were teenagers, blue-gold light holding on past eight, the street bright with World Cup foot traffic.
Two women in Ghana jerseys. A family with a flag I can’t place from here.
The tournament has turned this city into a place where flags are how people introduce themselves.
The TV above the bar is running a football talk show on mute.
I read the ticker across the bottom. Transfer rumors.
League updates. A story cycles through about a player in the Championship whose phone was hacked.
Photos leaked. The ticker keeps it clinical.
Personal life. Privacy. The word relationship inside quotation marks, the way it’s always inside quotation marks when the relationship involves two men.
“What’s that about?” Polá?ek asks, nodding at the TV.
“Some English player,” Ková? says. “Photos leaked. He’s seeing a guy.”
“Hm.” Polá?ek looks at the screen and back at his plate.
The table keeps moving. ?íma hasn’t paused.
Ková? is prodding his brisket with a fork, face concentrated.
But the ticker runs and I feel it land the way I feel a shift in a striker’s body before the run develops.
The word privacy. The word relationship in its quotation marks.
The word leaked, doing work nobody asked it to do.
The people at this table would be decent about it.
Tomá? would say something measured. Ková? would shrug.
?íma would find the joke that made it bearable.
These are good men. But the ticker is not about this table.
The ticker is about stadiums and tabloids and comment sections and dressing rooms in cities I have never played in.
The version of football that has opinions about the word inside the quotation marks.
I take a drink. The beer is cold. The room is warm.
Tomá? taps my arm. “You’re quiet.”
“Thinking about tomorrow.”
“The call?”
“The call.”
“Good.” He squeezes my shoulder. “You’re making the right move, Dami.”
“I know.”
“Will you really?” ?íma asks. “Will you actually call? Because you have said you would call tomorrow every day since we’ve been here.”
I don’t reply. I know what I want. I know what the ticker says about men who want it where anyone can see. The captaincy is louder at this table. The wanting is louder when the table goes home.
“The brisket is acceptable,” Ková? announces. “The pink has proven itself. I retract nothing, because I never admitted doubt, but the brisket is acceptable.”
“Growth,” Novotny says. “Mark the date.”
“It’s not growth. It’s evidence-based assessment.”
“Ková? has been in Italy too long,” ?íma says. “He’s turned everything into a philosophy.”
“I’ve turned everything into standards. You should try it.”
On the walk back, Tomá? talks about the film session tomorrow. Ková? decides the brisket place is acceptable but not as good as Rome. ?íma says Rome does not have brisket and Ková? says that is precisely what makes Rome superior.
“Good night,” Tomá? says in the lobby.
“Good night.”
“Call Peter.”
“I’ll call Peter.”