Chapter 16 Damián
The contract is in my inbox.
Peter sent the formal version last night while I was at the restaurant watching Tobík walk away from a table I ruined.
The signature block is highlighted in yellow.
The salary numbers are large. The clauses about media obligations and image rights run six pages in dense German.
Everything is what I expected and what my father expected and what Peter expected and what the club has been expecting for ninety days while I produced a great many polite sentences about timing.
I read the first page. I get halfway through the second. I am sitting in a hotel room in Atlanta with the best offer of my career open on a screen and I do nothing with it.
I close the laptop.
The Atlanta morning through the window is already warm.
Eight thirty and the skyline has that copper-glass look it gets before the heat settles in for the day, the buildings catching light in a way Munich buildings don’t because Munich is not built for this kind of sun.
Somewhere across the city, a man walked home alone last night because I interrupted him at a dinner table in front of his teammates.
In front of my teammates. He hasn’t texted.
I haven’t texted. The conversation that needs to happen is sitting between two phones that are not making sounds.
I drink water from the bottle on the desk. I open the curtains the rest of the way. I sit back down. The contract is still in the email. I don’t open it again.
?íma walks in with a coffee in each hand. He gives me one without asking if I want it.
“You didn’t come down for breakfast.”
“I wasn’t hungry.”
He sits on the edge of his own bed. He takes the lid off his coffee.
He blows on it. He does the thing ?íma does, which is be present in a room without filling it with talk.
I’ve roomed with him on three continents.
He can sit in silence longer than anyone I’ve ever met and make you believe he’s doing it for your benefit.
“Vě?.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m going to ask you a question. You’re going to give me a real answer. We’ve known each other for almost fifteen years and I’m not going to ask twice.”
?íma in serious mode is rare. I’ve seen it once or twice in fifteen years, like the time he sat a young player down about a drinking problem. ?íma can be light because he chooses to be light.
“Ask.”
“What’s going on with you and Tobík?”
The question lands. My coffee is halfway to my mouth. I set it down.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Vě?.”
“He’s Tomá?‘s brother. There’s no ‘what’s going on.’”
?íma takes a slow drink of his coffee. He looks at me. He does the thing where he just looks. Fifteen years of friendship and I have never once won against the look.
“Last night, I watched him leave. I watched you follow then walk back to the table and not eat. I watched Tomá? ask you twice if you were okay and I watched you say yes.” He pauses. “You think I haven’t been watching since we’ve been here, but I have.”
I have apparently been broadcasting from the back line for days, and the only person who didn’t receive the signal was me.
“?íma…”
“I’m still asking. What’s going on with you and Tobík?”
The silence.
“?íma, I don’t know what to say.”
“Give me the truth. That’s the only thing you’ve ever had to say to me.”
A long pause.
“I think I’ve been in love with him for three years.”
The words come out. I don’t believe I said them out loud until I hear them in the room. They are the first true sentence I’ve said about this to another human being and they came out in a hotel room in Georgia to a man who tapes his left boot before his right.
“Okay.”
“Just okay?”
“Did you think I was going to be surprised.”
“I thought—“
“Vě?. I’ve seen your phone screen by accident and noticed which account is open more often than any other.
How you react when his name comes up. I’m not surprised.
” He drinks his coffee. Sets it down. “I’m asking you what’s happening NOW.
Because last night was a dinner where something happened between you, and I want to know if you’re okay. ”
I put my face in my hands. “I don’t know if I’m okay.”
“I know you don’t.”
“Do you remember the draft party for Tobík?
Three years ago. Tomá?‘s place. Tobík was nineteen and already taller than everyone in the room except me. Something almost happened that night. But after the party, I went home and called it a weird night. I called it a weird night for three years, ?íma. Every day for three years I ignore that night and call it a weird night.”
?íma doesn’t move. He sits on the edge of his bed with his elbows on his knees and his coffee in both hands and he listens.
“But it wasn’t a weird night. It was the night I found out something about myself and then I spent three years trying to ignore it every single day.
In Munich I have a system. The same café every morning, the same physio at the same hour, the same route to the training ground.
I’ve walked it for four years. It works.
It’s clean. And every night at one in the morning I’m in my apartment in Munich looking at a man’s Instagram account.
His walking route. The golden retriever that sits on his foot.
The woman at the flower stand who gives him sunflowers.
Three years of knowing every corner of a life I wasn’t in. ”
He takes a breath. He waits.
“And then I came here. And I walked to a coffee shop I’d never been to because I knew he’d be there because I’d memorized his schedule from social media like a person who’s fine. Then he walked in and his face opened up and I felt it in my whole body.”
“Then you spent time with him,” ?íma says.
“He showed me the city. In nine months he walked himself into a city and the city knows his name. In four years in Munich I don’t think the man at my café knows mine. He knows my order. That’s a different thing.”
?íma is still watching me.
“I think I knew before the Beltline. I knew at the coffee shop. I maybe even knew at the draft party three years ago that there was the start of something.”
?íma is quiet and let’s that sit in the air between us.
“The contract’s been sitting in my inbox for three months.
Kessler’s retiring. The captaincy’s right there.
Everyone I know has the same explanation for why I’m stalling and none of them are right and all of them sound reasonable.
And the reasonable is what’s insane about it.
Because the reason I haven’t signed is a man who has made Atlanta his home.
The reason is standing in a coffee shop on Moreland Avenue. ”
“And last night?”
“Last night I cut him off at a dinner table. He was talking about me to his teammates. He was saying my name in a room and I couldn’t take it.
I interrupted him. In front of his friends.
And he left. He walked out. He stood on the sidewalk and told me I was managing him the way Tomá? manages him and he was right.
He was right about that and that gutted me.
And I watched him walk away and I didn’t go after him because going after him would’ve meant admitting what I’ve been trying to not admit to myself at one in the morning for three years. ”
My voice has been steady the whole time. It is not steady anymore.
“He walked home alone, ?íma. Eighteen blocks. I know it’s eighteen because I know where his apartment is because I’ve been in to his place. And I let him go.”
?íma doesn’t move. When I finish, the room is quiet for a long time. The coffee in my hand is cold. I don’t remember when it went cold.
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes you do.”
“I’m going to sign the contract. I’m going to call Peter today. I’m going to tell Tobík it was a poor decision.”
“Damián.”
“What?”
“That’s the program talking. The program says reasonable things in reasonable sentences and the reasonable sentences add up to a life you’re not actually living. You’re about to do it again.”
“What else am I supposed to do?”
“I can’t tell you that. I’m only telling you what I’m hearing right now is what everyone else wants you to do.”
Mid-sentence, a knock at the door. Three sharp raps.
We look at each other.
“It’s Tomá?,” I say.
“How do you know?”
“Because Tomá? knocks like a man who’s already decided what he’s going to say before the door opens. He’s been doing it for ten years.”
I get up and open the door.
Tomá?. His face is the face of a man who has been awake for hours putting pieces together. He looks past me and sees ?íma.
“We need to talk,” he says.
I look back at ?íma. He stands and picks up his coffee. “I’ll get more coffee.”
He walks toward the door. He passes Tomá? and stops. His hand finds Tomá?‘s shoulder and stays there for two seconds. Tomá?‘s hand comes up briefly and covers ?íma’s. Then ?íma is past him and the door closes.
Tomá? walks into the room. He doesn’t sit down. He stands in the middle of the room between the two beds with his arms at his sides and looks at me.
“How long?”
“Tomá?...”
“How long? Damián. I’m asking.”
“I don’t know what—“
“Stop. I watched you last night. I watched you follow him out. I watched your face when you came back to the table. I’ve been awake since four this morning going through every dinner and every visit and every time you’ve asked about him and I need you to tell me how long.”
“One week.” I catch myself because that’s not true. “Actually, three years. Since the draft party.”
“What happened three years ago?”
“We almost kissed.”
“You almost kissed my brother? In my house?” He is glaring at me as he spits the words out.
“Yes.”
“And then?”
“And then nothing. For three years. We didn’t speak about it. Then he came to Atlanta and now I'm here in Atlanta and we’ve been….”
“What? You’ve been WHAT?”
I’m quiet.
“You’ve been sleeping with him.”
“Yes.”
“Christ. Christ, Damián.” He’s pacing across the tiny room now, and the pain in his voice is real. It fills the room. This is a man whose version of reality just broke.
Tomá? sits on ?íma’s bed. He puts his face in his hands. He stays like that. Five seconds. Ten. When he looks up his eyes are wet.
“Do you understand what you’ve done. He’s twenty-two. He just made the league. He just built a life in this city. He’s been so happy here and I thought it was the city and it was you. It’s been you. While I was sitting at dinners not knowing my brother was…Christ, Damián.”
And there it is. The voice I’ve been hearing for twenty-seven years. Not the sensible version. Not the operating system running its reasonable calculations. My father’s voice. Clear and direct and familiar in a way that sits in my chest like something I swallowed years ago that never dissolved.
The voice says: this is what happens. This is what the discipline prevents.
You had a career and a structure and a life that worked and you let it go offline for a man who pets dogs and has dinners with friends he posts about and you are watching everything dissolve because you wanted something you were told was off-limits.
The captaincy. The Bundesliga. Twenty-seven years.
What else is there? What else was there ever going to be?
“Tomá?. I made a mistake.”
He looks up.
“It was a poor decision. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have started it. It’s over.”
“It’s over?”
“Yes.”
“When did you decide it’s over?”
“Last night. After the restaurant. I’m signing the contract today. I’m calling Peter this morning. I’m leaving Atlanta when the tournament ends. He and I won’t see each other after that.”
“Does he know?”
“Not yet.”
“But you’re going to tell him?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Today.”
“Damián, look at me.”
I look at him.
“If you’re going to do this, you do it cleanly. You don’t leave it open. You don’t text him ‘we should talk’ and disappear. You give him the answer and you let him have what comes after.”
“I know.”
“He’s my brother.”
“I know, Tomá?.”
The silence.
Tomá? stands. He looks at me for a long beat.
His face is doing something I’ve known him ten years and haven’t seen.
The anger is there. The hurt is there. And underneath both, something else.
Something like the recognition that the man standing in front of him is his best friend of a decade and his best friend is suffering too, and this is not just a covenant broken but a thing with three people in it and all three of them are losing.
“I don’t know what we are after this,” he says finally. “You and me. I need to figure that out. He needs to figure it out. You need to figure it out. Right now I can’t be in this room with you anymore.”
He turns and leaves. The door closes behind him.
I pick up my phone.
I open the message thread. The last text from Tobík is from a couple of days ago. A photo of the Beltline at sunset. No caption. Just the path and the light and the city he built. I scroll past it.
I type.
Tobík. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have started this. It was a poor decision. I’m signing with Munich. The captaincy is the right answer. From now on I’m just Tomá?‘s friend. Take care of yourself.
I read it twice. I hit send.
The checkmark appears. Then the second checkmark. Delivered. Read.
The three dots don’t appear. They won’t appear. Some things the body reads before the mind catches up.
I put the phone down on the desk and open the laptop. The contract is still in the email. I click the signature link. The signature line is blank and stares back at me. I close the laptop.
Training at noon. The body knows how to do training. The body has been doing training since I was six years old. The body is a machine that runs on the schedule and the schedule has shape and the shape will hold me the way it has always held me.
I go to the closet. I pull out the training kit. Shirt, shorts, the bag I’ve packed a thousand times. I get dressed. I drink the cold coffee. I put the cup next to the phone.
I pick up the bag and walk to the door. The hallway is quiet. Somewhere downstairs ?íma is getting more coffee and the tournament goes on. There is a match to prepare for and a flight back to Germany after that and a captaincy waiting.
I close the door behind me and walk toward the elevator.