Chapter 15 Tobík
Tomá? picks the restaurant the way Tomá? picks everything, with the confidence of a man who has never once considered that someone else might have a preference.
He chooses a place in midtown. The kind of place with good steak and enough chairs for fifteen men from two different sports who have no reason to be in the same room except that my brother decided they should be.
Marchetti arrives with ?íma, which is a friendship I didn’t predict and can’t control. They’ve been texting since the Brazilian match. ?íma taught Marchetti the Czech word for offside and Marchetti has been using it incorrectly in every context since.
“Hájek.” Marchetti drops into the chair beside me. “I told ?íma about the spoiler policy and he says in Czech football there’s no such thing as a spoiler because everyone already knows the result.”
“That is not true. Czech football has many surprises.”
“Name one.”
“Ková? once scored a goal. The entire country was surprised.”
?íma, from three seats down: “This is accurate. I was on the pitch. I thought the ball went in by accident.”
Ková?, without looking up from his menu: “It wasn’t an accident. It was destiny.”
“It was a deflection,” ?íma says.
“Destiny deflected.”
The table fills. Davis across from Marchetti.
Thompson at the far end, already reading the wine list with the focus of a man who takes alcohol as seriously as zone defense.
Novotny and Polá?ek side by side, speaking Czech too fast for anyone else to follow.
Four Firebirds players I invited at Tomá?‘s request, guys from the summer skate crew who said yes because free steak is free steak and because I asked.
Tomá? at the head. Damián to his right.
I’m across from Damián, to Tomá?‘s left.
The seating means I can see his face for the entire meal.
Two nights ago that face was on the pillow next to mine.
Two nights ago his hand was on my jaw and his mouth was slow against mine and at 5:17 in the morning he kissed my forehead and left.
Since then, three texts. Short ones. Schedule updates.
The voice that was in my apartment has gone back behind the glass.
He looks good tonight. Dark shirt, hair up, the half-smile operating at reduced volume.
He’s talking to Tomá? about the knockout match.
His English is precise when Davis asks him something about the group stage.
His Czech drops easy when Ková? leans over with a comment.
He hasn’t looked at me for more than two seconds since I sat down.
I drink my water. The restaurant is loud.
The air conditioning is losing the argument with fifteen large men and a hot summer evening.
Someone at the far end is laughing about something Thompson said.
The city outside the windows is lit up and warm and doing what Atlanta does at nine PM in summer, which is refusing to cool down.
Marchetti leans toward me. “You good?”
“I am good. Tired.”
“Tired like tired, or tired like you read until two in the morning again?”
“I have not started a new book yet. I am between books.”
“Between books.” He studies me. “That’s never happened before.”
“It is happening now.”
He lets it go. Marchetti lets things go the way a dog lets go of a stick, briefly and with the clear intention of picking it back up later.
The steak is good. The conversation has settled into the rhythm of men who don’t know each other well enough to be quiet but know each other well enough to be loud. ?íma is telling Davis about the time Ková? got lost in Prague. Davis is filming. Marchetti is adding commentary nobody requested.
Davis turns to me across the table. “Hájek, we should go to another match to watch your brother’s team play again.”
“Marchetti is now an expert in football so I guess we should.” The tables laughs.
Marchetti, from two seats down: “I AM an expert.”
“He is not an expert,” I say. “He has learned one Czech word and uses it incorrectly.”
Davis grins. “You know a lot of the Czech players coming in, right? Your brother’s team. Must be wild having them all in your city.”
“It is good. Tomá? I see more often, he was here at Christmas. Damián I had not seen in three years, so having him here has been—“
“Tobík, we should let the table talk about something else.” Damián’s voice, in English. Smooth. Careful. The half-smile. “The Firebirds’ season is more interesting than my schedule.”
The sentence lands on the table and sits there. To anyone else it sounds like humility. Damián being polite, redirecting attention, the controlled version doing what the controlled version does. Davis nods and turns to ?íma.
I hear it as something else. Damián just decided what I could say. About a topic that was mine. In front of my teammates. My friends.
The conversation moves on. I drink my water. The table keeps going. The noise fills the room. ?íma and Marchetti are competing for who can be loudest about the knockout match. Thompson has opinions about Czech defensive tactics that are surprisingly informed. Davis is still filming.
Tomá? leans toward Damián and says something about the round of sixteen. Damián responds. Then Tomá? turns to me.
“Tobík, you should come to the knockout match too. Bring some of your guys again.”
“I’d like to. I’ll check the schedule.”
Damián, in Czech, low, just for Tomá?. I hear it. “Tomá?, if his team has a thing, don’t push it.”
I set my water down. The glass meets the table without a sound.
“I can decide whether to come to a match.”
“I’m only saying you don’t have to feel obligated.” Still trying to keep it light. The half-smile barely holding.
“I don’t feel obligated. I’m an adult. I can answer my brother.”
The Czech is sharp between us now. Tomá? has noticed. His eyes are moving from Damián to me and back. The rest of the table hasn’t caught it. The dinner keeps going on either side of us like two conversations in the same room.
“Are you two okay?” Tomá? asks.
I lift my voice to normal table volume. English. “We are fine. The conversation was about whether I can attend a match. I think I can answer that question myself.”
The English is the cover. The Czech was the cut.
Damián’s jaw tightens. He looks at his plate.
I excuse myself. I tell the table I need the bathroom. I stand, navigate the chairs, walk toward the back of the restaurant and past the bathroom and through the side door into the evening.
I stand on the sidewalk with my hands in my pockets.
I’m not crying. I’m not angry in any way that has volume.
The warmth that lives in my face has gone somewhere I can’t reach.
My jaw is set. I can feel it set. Czech in my own head has gone clipped, functional, the register that Tomá? calls sulking and is not sulking.
I know what just happened. Damián decided what I could say about him. In front of my teammates. The way Tomá? has been deciding what I can do for ten years.
Two minutes. The side door opens. Damián steps out. He stands a few feet from me on the sidewalk. The streetlight catches the side of his face.
“Tobík.”
I don’t turn.
“I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Which part?”
“The interruption. Tomá?. Both.”
I turn to him. “I don’t need another person deciding what’s good for me.”
“That’s not what I—“
“It’s exactly what you did. You decided I shouldn’t finish a sentence about you in front of my teammates. You decided what I’m allowed to say.”
“I was trying to protect—“
“Protect what?” I hear my own voice and it’s level and low and every word is a door closing.
“Protect WHAT, Damián? Protect me from talking about the night three years ago that you stopped? Protect me from naming a thing that already happened? Protect yourself from being the topic of a conversation? Which one?”
He’s quiet.
“I’ve spent my entire life being managed by people who think they know what I need.
” The words come out whole. Not escalating.
Every word carrying the full weight of what I’ve been swallowing since I was twelve.
“By Tomá?. By coaches. By scouts who looked at my size and decided what position I should play before they watched me skate. By people who think because I’m quiet I don’t have answers.
I’ve built a life here, Damián. I have people in it.
I had a conversation tonight with a teammate and you put your hand on the conversation because you couldn’t handle me even saying your name in a room full of people you know. ”
“Tobík, that’s not—“
“Yes it is.”
A woman walks past us with a phone pressed to her ear, laughing at something. The city keeps going. The city always keeps going.
Damián tries again. His voice controlled now. The shoulders setting into the posture I’ve watched him hold on the pitch when the game is slipping and he’s organizing the defense by force of will.
“You’re right. I should’ve let you finish the sentence. I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry.”
The apology is real. It’s also too smooth. It’s the apology of a man who’s already putting the moment back where it can’t reach him.
“Yes. You’re sorry. Good. That’s the easy part.”
“What’s the hard part?”
“The hard part is that you did it because you can’t bear what happens to you if I say your name in a room. The hard part isn’t the interruption. The hard part is that you’re still pretending.”
His face does something. A flicker. The controlled version losing its grip for half a second before the grip comes back.
“I called Peter today.” His voice has changed. Tighter. The Czech gone careful in a way Czech shouldn’t be between us.
“And?”
“I told him I’m leaning toward signing. He’s drafting the contract. I’ll probably sign by Friday.”
I watch it happen. The shoulders squaring. The voice flattening. The man who two nights ago had his hand on my jaw retreating behind the thing he built when he was nineteen. The Tower going back up, and he’s putting every brick in place while I stand here watching.
I take one step back. Small. Visible. I need the distance. I’m not sure what I expected to happen, but him signing again with his team isn’t it.
“Okay.”
“Tobík…”
“I said okay.” The word is the last door. I’m down to single syllables because single syllables are all I have left for him tonight. “I’m going home.”
“Let me—“
“No. I’m going home. You’re going back inside. You’re going to sit next to my brother and be charming. I’m going to walk to my apartment. We’ll talk about this when you’ve decided what you want.” I stop. “Until then we should probably not...”
“Probably not what?”
“Whatever this has been. Not until you decide.”
I turn and walk down the sidewalk and don’t look back.
Eighteen blocks. The air finally cooling toward something the body can negotiate with.
The Beltline is a few blocks east, lit with joggers and couples on their evening walks.
I can hear it the way I can always hear it from this distance, the murmur of a city that doesn’t stop moving because one person in it has stopped talking.
I walk. I don’t call Mami. I don’t text anyone. I don’t take out my phone.
A decade of Tomá? deciding what’s best for me.
Coaches who saw a quiet kid and assumed quiet meant uncertain.
Scouts who measured my height and wrote their reports before I touched the puck.
Six years of being patient about being managed because my patience made everyone else’s life easier.
And now Damián, who forty-eight hours ago was breathing against my neck, is cutting me off mid-sentence at a dinner table because my mouth was about to say his name in a room full of people.
I’m not going to be patient about this one. The patience has cost me too much and what it bought was a man who apologizes with perfect posture and announces a contract in the same breath.
I take out my phone. No texts from Damián.
I put the phone away. I unlock the door. I go inside.
The apartment is dark. The city hums through the open window. I don’t turn on the lights. I stand in my kitchen. The fan in the corner is moving the air and the counter is the counter where things have happened and the bookshelf is full of stories where people eventually say the truth.
Tomorrow Bagel will be on the path. Maria will call me Tuesday. The coffee will be the same coffee. Whatever Damián decides about Friday, I’ll still be standing in this kitchen. I built it. It’s mine.