17. Alejandro Eighteen-Years-Old
Alejandro: Eighteen-Years-Old
I’m already dressed when Papá starts humming.
I’m sitting at the edge of my bed tying my cleats, double-knot tight, when the first few notes drift down the hall.
It’s the same song he always falls back on, half tune, half memory.
The smell of coffee follows, like always.
The house is quiet otherwise—fan ticking, a pipe somewhere clicking as it cools.
Just grab the water and go. Grab the water and go.
I stand and check my bag—shin guards, tape, an extra pair of laces, and the cheap massage ball. I pick up my water bottle from the counter and keep my eyes on the door.
“Espera,” Papá says from the kitchen. Wait.
“I’m going to be late,” I say without turning. I keep my voice even. If I look at him, I’ll soften.
“Un minuto,” he says, gentler. One minute. The bolero hum dies. “Come here.”
Grab the water and go.
My hand finds the doorknob, but I don’t turn it, looking over at him instead. He’s by the stove, mug in one hand, the other clutching the counter like he's physically trying to hold himself back.
“Siéntate,” he says, nodding at the small table, telling me to sit.
“I can’t,” I say. “Coach moved the start time up.”
That’s not true. I just need to move.
He studies me for a beat. The morning light makes every line on his face clearer. “Tell me what happened with Beatriz,” he says, careful, like the name itself might spook me.
“I told you,” I say. “I’m fine.”
He sets his mug down, wipes a ring of coffee with his thumb, and looks at me straight. “No me mientas,” he says. Don’t lie to me. “You’ve been different... distant."
“I’m the same,” I say. “I just have practice. National team. Big day.”
“And I am proud,” he says, softer. He taps the picture frame of Mamá once, as if asking my mother to back him up. “But you’re not made of stone, son. Tell me."
The pressure under my ribs spikes. I open my mouth, close it, open it again.
What am I supposed to say?
That I left the girl I’ve loved since I knew what love felt like because her father told me if I didn’t disappear, he’d make sure my father never got another contract in this city?
That he’d call his friends at the bank who smiled and stamped loan papers last month, and suddenly that stamp would mean nothing? That he’d slow-walk permits and pull gardeners from recommendations lists?
If I tell him that, he will tell me to apologize to Beatriz and to let the rest burn. He’d mean it. He’d take the hit. He’d ruin himself for me.
I can’t let him.
“I said I’m fine,” I repeat, sharper. The words land wrong in my own ear.
Papá straightens. “No me hables así,” he says. Don’t talk to me like that. His voice isn’t loud, but it lands like a line I just stepped over.
“I’m not—” My jaw locks. “I’m fine,” I say again, quieter. “It’s nothing you need to worry about.”
He exhales through his nose, sets his hands on the back of the chair like he needs the touch to keep them still. “Soy tu papá,” he says. I’m your father. “I know you."
“It’s none of your business,” I say, and the second it’s out, I hate it. It sounds like someone else’s voice using my mouth.
He flinches like I clipped him. Then he nods once, slow, like he expected the hit and took it anyway. “Está bien,” he says, even though it's not okay. It's anything but okay. “Go."
I grip the handle and turn, his voice reaches me before the door swings shut. “You don’t have to carry this alone."
But I do.
Because if I hand it to you, you’ll hand me back to her, and everything you’ve built will go to waste. I won’t be the reason it does.
I push out into the sun that is already too hot as I start to run. Not a warmup jog. A run that punishes. The bottle thumps against my palm. The laces on my right cleat bite my ankle.
Good.
I cut the corner past the bodega, cross against a light, ignore the horn.
Sweat climbs my spine in a line as my breath gets louder and I push harder.
The ache under my sternum swells a size too big for my ribs.
It’s been weeks, and it still does this—sneaks up when I’m moving and tries to rip me open mid-stride.
Her face flashes in my head the way it’s been doing—sleep-tangled hair, the way she smiled when she fell asleep on my chest like breathing finally got easy.
The next image comes without asking: the note on her pillow.
Lines that were supposed to be a shield but feel like a knife every time I picture them.
I can’t do this anymore, Beatriz. I’m sorry. It’s better this way.
Liar, I tell myself, and it’s the first time I’ve said it that plain.
I can’t do this anymore meant I can’t stand the idea of my father paying the price for me loving you.
It meant I heard your father say words that made my hands shake and I knew he could make good on every single one.
It meant I knew if I told you, you’d burn the bridge and walk toward me anyway, and then I’d have to watch the smoke reach my father’s lungs.
I hit the park path and push my legs harder.
It’s a cheap track with a couple of cracks and a pair of old men arguing about a baseball call from nineteen-seventy-something.
A mother jogs slow while her toddler rides a plastic car with the grim focus of a race driver.
I cut all of it out and stay inside the sound of my breath.
I want to tell my dad. I want to say, I did something that feels wrong and looks cruel, and I need you to tell me I’m not a monster. I want him to fix it the way he fixes everything. I want to hand him the whole story and sit at the table and let the coffee go cold while he figures it out with me.
But if I give him the truth, he will tell me to go to her and not worry about him. And he will mean it, because that's the kind of father he is.
And I'm hurting him without meaning to.
Tears show up without warning. It’s not a big, cinematic thing.
It’s a crack and then a spill, and I’m wiping my face with the heel of my hand while I keep moving, because stopping would make this worse.
My chest hurts in the dumb, simple way it does when you run too hard, and also in the specific way it does when a person-sized hole forms and can't be filled. A Beatriz-like hole.
I miss her voice calling my name from the fence. I miss her telling me to put my shoulders down. I miss the way she scolds me for not drinking enough water and then drinks mine just to make a point. I miss a future I almost had in my hands.
By the time the training center comes into view, my face is dry, my shirt is damp, and I’ve shoved everything back where it won’t show.
I slow to a jog at the gate, show my ID to the guy with the clipboard, nod when he says congrats like it’s a thing I earned and not something I’m using to keep from falling apart.
The field is bright with grass cut tight.
A handful of guys are already warming up, heads down with focus.
I clock them without trying to—numbers, movements, little tells.
The one in the black training top doing one-touch passes with a trainer moves fluidly, eyes steady, posture loose.
If I remember correctly from our first meeting, his name is Gael.
He glances up once, a quick read. No challenge, no grin, just a glance my way. We nod at the same time, then the whistle calls us in.
Coach gives us a welcome, new badges, but the same work. He states his expectations and travel dates. Then he moves on to inform us of trainers and schedules. It’s all sand through fingers when you’ve only given yourself one job: be so good no one can touch you.
I stretch while he talks. Calf, hamstring, quad, hip. The drills roll out and I love it because it just asks you to move, no thinking involved.
Gael barely speaks, but he doesn’t need to.
He knows where to be that a defender doesn't see. When I draw pressure on purpose, he reads it and is already in the gap. The first time I slide a ball between two cones and he meets it in stride like we coordinated before practice, something loosens inside me that hasn’t budged in weeks.
We switch sides. I start floating passes into that same channel to see if it was luck. It wasn’t. He's there every time. I change my run at the last second to drag a center back and then check back into my lane. The spin he puts on the ball dies right at my feet and I tap it in.
Goal.
Coach’s whistle doesn’t celebrate, but his eyebrows do. The other guys clap a few times because they have to and because it was clean. I don’t smile, not really anyway, but my mouth tries.
The scrimmage continues and by water break, my lungs are happy and angry at the same time. Gael stands beside me with sweat cutting down his face. His eyes are still on the far goal like he hasn't stopped playing in his head.
“Good ball,” he says, finally. His voice is low and even.
“You seem to see passes I don't,” I say before I can stop myself.
He huffs something like a laugh. “You keep appearing in spots where spaces appear like you know they'll be there,” he says, with a look that is almost a smile.
We drink our water quietly, but it isn’t uncomfortable, just new. I catch myself staring at the tape pattern on his wrist. He notices. “Superstition,” he says. “Same every session.”
“Same,” I say, holding up my own. He nods like this is all that needs saying.
After practice, the trainer runs us through lifts. Gael is as exact with a barbell as he is with a through ball.
“Is this your first national camp?” he asks, racking weight.
“Yeah,” I say.
He nods. “You play like it isn’t,” he says. He could mean it as a jab, but I don’t take it as one. “You local?”
“Yeah.”
He nods again. “I’m up the road,” he says. Then he wipes his face and adds, “You go all the way on that last run?”
“I did,” I say.
He points with his chin, a small concession. “Figures.”
It’s nothing. It’s also the first time I’ve laughed out loud in months. It comes out short and a little hoarse, like a muscle I forgot I had finally working.
We walk off together without planning it. It’s awkward, sure. Like two guys who can practically read each other's mind on the field but can't seem to figure out how to walk the same direction. Neither of us feel the need to fill the silence as we walk. We don’t need to.
At the curb, a van idles. He nods. “See you tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” I say. “See ya.”
The door slides shut and he’s gone.
By the time I turn out of the lot, the ache is back.
Not bigger. Not smaller. Just back. I walk because if I sit, I’ll think.
And if I think, I’ll picture her face, and if I picture her face, I’ll be back at that doorway with a note in my hand and a lifetime of apologies that won’t fix what I broke.
I text my dad instead.
Alejandro:
At practice. I’ll be late.
He texts back a thumbs-up and a plate emoji. It’s his way of saying he’ll keep food warm. It lands in my chest, because I know I've been such a jackass to him and yet he still does kind things for me.
On the sidewalk, a kid dribbles a beat-up ball and looks at me like he knows I’m the older version of whatever he’s feeling. “You play?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I say.
“You good?”
“Working on it,” I say. He grins and nutmegs me, because of course he does. I let it through. He whoops and runs on. I keep going.
The sun is lower now, ready to kiss the horizon. I pass the fence where Beatriz used to lean and yell my name like she wanted to make sure everyone knew who she was rooting for. But there’s no one there. I face forward and pick up my pace.
I could fix this, some reckless part of me screams to. I could walk into her house, tell her everything, and watch her set it all on fire out of love. I could let my father lose jobs and pride and sleep and know he’d tell me it was worth it because I wasn’t crying in the kitchen anymore.
I can’t do that to him. I won’t.
So I make myself a promise I can keep. I’ll give the game everything.
I’ll run until my legs shake. I’ll stay after and hit the same pass until the grass is worn from the path.
I’ll lift until my hands split. If my heart won’t stop hurting, then my body can join it.
Maybe if they match, I won’t notice as much.
And I’ll keep the small light I found today.
A teammate who doesn’t talk much and doesn’t need to, a rhythm that made me forget for a second.
I’ll take that. I’ll pocket it. I’ll show up tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that until the pain fades or I learn how to carry it without breaking.
At the corner, I jog again. The laces on my right cleat bite the same spot. I don’t fix it. I lean into the sting and move.