Chapter 16 Otto
OTTO
Juliette looks the same as the last time I saw her—watching from a window as she climbed into the back seat of a chauffeured car while the driver loaded her luggage. I spot her instantly, willowy and blonde, as soon as I step inside the upscale restaurant she suggested we eat at.
I’ve contemplated canceling this dinner more than once the past few weeks.
I even wound up with a good excuse, thanks to my last-minute return to Kluvberg.
But the scheduled flights ended up aligning perfectly for me to fly back to the States via New York, then take a train back to Boston early tomorrow morning.
If I’d flown into Logan directly, I would have missed tomorrow morning’s practice.
Maybe I took the seamless logistics as a sign that this night was meant to happen.
Mostly, I’m looking for a distraction from the woman who occupied my thoughts while I sat in a waiting room for two hours.
After a surgeon informed me Opa’s procedure had gone smoothly and I could see him soon.
As I dumped all the liquor in his cabinet down the kitchen sink. On the drive to the airport.
I can’t stop thinking about Claire, and I need to.
“Otto!” Juliette trills my name, rising from her chair with swan-like elegance as the ma?tre d’ leads me over to a corner table situated right by the windows.
This is not a restaurant I would have chosen.
I might have the money necessary to eat at a place like this, but I’m a boy from Tannfeld beneath it all.
I can already tell, walking past some tables that have already received their food, that I’ll have to order room service once I’m back at the hotel.
Most of the portions are smaller than my fist.
“Juliette,” I greet, brushing my mouth against each cheek in the expected greeting.
The fragrance she’s wearing fits this setting. Floral and bubbly, like orchids and champagne.
“New perfume?”
She steps away, lips pursing as she reaches for the flute of sparkling wine set next to her plate. “No.”
I force a smile. “It’s nice.”
Juliette never appreciated my abject lack of interest in fashion or beauty when we were together, and that doesn’t appear to have changed since we broke up.
I take the chair across from her, accepting a menu from the ma?tre d’. I make eye contact with a woman seated one table over, and she quickly stops staring. I can still feel other eyes on us.
They likely recognize Juliette, not me. I’m a German goalkeeper who’s not even an active player at the moment. She’s plastered on billboards across the city. I passed two on the drive from the airport to the hotel.
“It’s so wonderful to see you.” She smiles, and it’s poised, like everything else about her.
I thought living with Juliette—planning to marry her—might reveal another side. That escalating the seriousness of our relationship would lead to moments between us that were more messy or vulnerable. Real.
But we never moved past the stage of playing parts. Even our breakup was amicable. I went to practice the following morning; she flew to Milan for a fitting.
“You too,” I tell her. “You look beautiful.”
She always does, even if it’s an icy, reserved sort of ethereal. Attraction was never an issue between us, but intimacy sure was.
Juliette preens with pleasure at the compliment.
“You’re in New York for a shoot?” I reiterate what she already told me, trying to spark some neutral conversation.
I’m not sure what I want out of this evening. We’ve barely spoken since we broke up, but it doesn’t feel like there’s a lack of closure.
I’m not sure what Juliette’s expecting. Even after a relationship that lasted a year and a half, I have a hard time reading her intentions.
“Yes,” she confirms, tapping her manicured fingers on the leather-bound menu. “For Chanel.”
“Congratulations,” I say, knowing that’s a collaboration she coveted for a while.
The crème de la crème, she always called it.
“Thank you.” Her fingernails tap the side of the champagne flute now. “I was sorry to hear about your season.”
“Were you?” I ask wryly.
Juliette was never a football fan. I appreciated our diverse interests at first, liked that she didn’t give a shit what I did for a living.
We met toward the end of a brutal season, when the spotlight was bright and expectations were high.
Being around Juliette was an oasis from the attention and speculation and pressure.
But she also didn’t like being isolated at my house outside the city. Didn’t like attending football-related events with me either.
Diverse interests started to feel a lot more like a lack of support. Like disdain of the sport I’d dedicated most of my life to.
“I was sorry you got hurt,” she clarifies, which is sincere.
I nod. “Thanks.”
No matter what she says, Juliette endorsed anything that drew my attention away from football. An injury serious enough to make me sit out the remainder of a season? If that had happened when we were engaged, there might have been a wedding.
Even if we had gotten married, we wouldn’t still be together now. I’m certain of that, suddenly.
I wasn’t nervous to see her. I didn’t plan out what I was going to say tonight on the eight-hour flight to New York. I watched the Siege lose to Chicago and then game footage of Atlanta—the team’s next opponent.
I know what it’s like to see an ex and realize old feelings are still there.
This? This isn’t what it’s like.
Juliette calls my name, and my attention jerks back to her. There’s a new tightness in the corners of her smile that tells me that wasn’t the first time she tried to get my attention.
“Sorry,” I say, reaching for my water glass. “Long flight.”
She nods, accepting the excuse, but that’s exactly what it is. I used to blame football—I was tired from practice, or I was focused on an upcoming match.
Football was only one of the issues in our relationship, and that’s especially obvious now that it’s a non-factor.
She tilts her head. “Why did you fly back to Kluvberg?”
“Meetings.” The lie exits easily before I can even consider telling the truth.
Juliette knows I have a strained relationship with my grandfather.
She never met Opa. Never asked to and I never suggested it.
If our engagement had ended with a wedding rather than a mutual return to work, I have no idea if my grandfather would have shown up to the ceremony.
Juliette used to say he wasn’t my responsibility, that Opa was fully capable of making his own choices.
Which is true, but I’m certainly not blameless in our estrangement.
He was there for me when no one else was, and then I walked away at the first opportunity.
But I don’t want to discuss any of that with Juliette, and she’s not interested enough in my job to ask for details about work meetings.
“How long are you in New York for?” I question, turning the conversation back to her.
And as Juliette starts talking about the various campaigns she’s working on, something occurs to me that I probably should have realized a lot sooner.
When we met, I didn’t like that Juliette had no interest in football.
I liked that she didn’t remind me of Claire.