~ 7 ~
Lily
Three days later I was on a run, sweating buckets in the hot Greek sunshine, thinking about Rona.
I hadn’t really stopped thinking about her all week.
That moment when we danced together was now burned into my brain.
Was it really just a game to Rona, or had that been as real for her too?
Since our epic Tuesday together, we’d been with the group pretty much the whole week and hadn’t had any real time on our own, apart from bumping into one another in the hall on our floor once or twice.
All of our conversations were done in earshot of one of our friends.
They really were a tight-knit group. At night, I thought of Rona next door to me and all the things she had said that day.
While hungover on Wednesday, we’d agreed to pause our secret pact to do new and challenging stuff for a couple of days.
We both wanted to just chill at the villa.
On one hand, I was glad she was on the same wavelength as me about the need to just relax for a bit, and on the other hand, I wasn’t sure if it was Rona’s way of cooling whatever was going on between us down.
On the plus side, we did agree to think of something for the last day and go out with a bang, so there was that.
I couldn’t wait to see what we would get up to.
I finished my run with a sprint and stopped when I got to the gates to the villa. Breathing hard, I put my hands on my hips and walked around for a few minutes to cool down.
After I showered I stayed in my room checking my emails and catching up with my messages for a bit.
The big one was the email from the BBC. I had an offer to be a guest commentator on an Arsenal match next month.
I also had an email from my good friend Sam, an ex-player who was now regularly commentating with the BBC and branching into hosting.
She’d said ages ago she thought I’d be good at it and had been begging me to give it a shot for a while.
I wasn’t sure I’d like it and had been non-committal.
But the last time we’d met I’d shown a slight bit of interest. This must have encouraged her to push full steam ahead.
So here it was, an official invite from a producer at the BBC.
I read and re-read the emails before closing my laptop and mentally filing them away for until I got back to London.
It was a fantastic opportunity but there was something not feeling quite right about it.
It wasn’t nerves. More like dread. I was fine with my post-match interviews and press conferences, after a little training a few years ago.
This felt more like a high-profile cage.
Like I’d be a zoo animal on display for the public.
But I needed to figure out what I was going to do with myself and maybe commentating was the next logical step. It would be a very privileged cage.
Some voices carried up to my window from near the dining table below it. It was Rona and Bouchra. Their voices were low and hushed.
“So there is something going on between you too?” Bouchra asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe,” Rona replied.
I listened in, careful not to breathe.
“Do you want there to be?”
A pause. “Yeah. I do.”
“Do you like her?”
“I really like her. I can’t stop thinking about her or looking at her when she’s around. Is it obvious?”
There was another pause. “No,” came the slightly unconvincing reply from Bouchra.
My mouth fell open. My heart leapt. I didn’t know for sure if Rona was talking about me, but I felt there was a big chance it might be. I couldn’t believe it, but after the role-playing on the dancefloor the other night, maybe I could. There was something too real about it. And so fucking hot.
Bouchra continued. “We couldn’t come to Lesvos and not have any lesbian drama, could we?”
They must have moved on given the silence that followed. I snuck up to the window to confirm and they were gone.
I stood in my room smiling, feeling like I had scored a goal.
Finding out there was a high chance Rona was into me gave me the best feeling and this huge sense of purpose.
This trip already felt special, like there was something important about why I’d felt compelled to come out here, and maybe this was it.
Accordingly, I abandoned my laptop and phone, happier to spend my time in this amazing villa with a potential romantic interest and awesome friends rather than sit in this room and think about what I was going to do with the rest of my life now I was no longer a footballer.
When I got downstairs, everyone was hanging out by the pool.
Rona was there. My breathing became shallower and I found myself tensing my abs.
In that army green bikini laying on her sun lounger with one leg bent at the knee, she glanced at me as I came over, then looked away.
I forced my eyes away from her, trying not to stare.
Understandably, I saw Rona in a new light.
I felt a tenderness grow between us, all unspoken.
It had been building all week since Rona walked in on me lying naked on the bed.
“We were just wondering where you were,” Vicky said as I approached everyone. “If you’d gone on a run again.”
“Yep, I went running.” I sat on the edge of one of the sun loungers, facing everyone, stealing glances at Rona’s legs.
“How far did you go today?” Rona asked, turning towards me.
“Not far. About ten kilometres.” I shrugged, smiling at her warmly, trying to show off to her. Ridiculous as running used to be part of my actual job.
“Oh, wow,” Rona proclaimed.
“Pfft,” Nell said. “These smug runners.” She laughed. “Only joking, I wish I had an ounce of your motivation, Lily.”
It wasn’t motivation that made me go running.
I enjoyed it. I had this huge amount of energy I needed to use.
Always had. If I didn’t move, I would go crazy.
That’s why I struggled so much while being injured and now being retired, probably.
Not having matches every week was going to be a huge adjustment.
Moving helped clear my mind and gave me purpose.
It was more like a way of life for me rather than motivation.
But I didn’t want to get deep into it in front of everyone.
“Once an athlete always an athlete, right?” Vicky said.
“Yeah, something like that.” I laughed, hoping we might change the subject.
Mathilde angled her head up at me. “You’ll probably want some lunch then?”
I nodded enthusiastically. “Absolutely. I was thinking about making a chicken salad?”
“Perfect, I’ll help,” Mathilde said.
“No, you won’t, I’ll do it,” Vicky said to Mathilde.
“Okay, darling. Thank you.”
The group dispersed to start getting ready for lunch while Vicky and I headed to the kitchen.
“I swear to God I would do anything for that woman,” Vicky stated as we walked.
Vicky and Mathilde had made up and everything was back to normal.
Vicky and I had had a huge chat on Wednesday while everyone was out, me nursing a hangover, and Vicky on a high because they’d had the most amazing make up sex.
Apparently, Vicky and Mathilde had it out over Vicky not trying to learn German and not making enough of an effort with Mathilde’s family.
The deeper issue was Vicky not making Mathilde feel seen, heard, and understood enough.
She’d told me this, perhaps because I wasn’t as close to them as the others.
Maybe I was a safer person for her to open up to?
Listening to her talk about what it took to maintain a healthy relationship made me both in awe of them and scared at the prospect of getting back into something like that with someone again.
My ex, Jenni, and I had our share of arguments, both silent and loud, and that I did not miss.
Vicky and Mathilde didn’t bottle anything up, it seemed, which was good.
They were fiery and passionate, and not afraid to be vulnerable with each other.
Vicky had admitted she often felt inferior to Mathilde, that she wasn’t good enough for her, and that maybe she held back a little because of it.
Their frank discussion seemed to have helped anyway because they both seemed lighter.
“Honestly, I’ve never seen you so happy in yourself,” I said to Vicky while washing some lettuce. “It’s lovely.”
“I know, I’ve always had my head up my arse. Mathilde makes me want to be a better person. She makes me want to sit up all night talking about our feelings. The old me would have vomited, yet, here I am, happy as Larry.”
“That is a bit vom inducing,” I replied, smirking.
Vicky held my eye, knowing full well I knew a part of her that would have recoiled at how domesticated she had become. She laughed loudly and slapped my shoulder. “Fucking hell, it so is!”
I shrugged. “Love changes you, clearly.”
Over lunch I didn’t tell anyone about my commentating offer with the BBC when people started talking about what they were going to do when they got home.
I couldn’t believe it was already Friday.
The holiday had gone by so fast. Tomorrow was the last full day before we would all fly home to the UK on Sunday, and we had plenty of food and wine still to get through.
We were going to spend it on the beach and then go out on the town.
I didn’t want to think about going home, so I kept quiet as everyone talked.
Rona was going to be producing for the up-and-coming singer Flavia Milan when she got back. Her life sounded so cool.
“I can’t wait to meet her.” Rona twiddled the stem of her wine glass in her fingers. “Underneath all the noise, it’s clear she has real talent.”
“Do you ever hang out with the people you work with?” I asked her from across the table, wishing we were sitting next to each other like we usually did. Nell had sat down where I’d left a spot for Rona.
“Yeah, sometimes. It’s always nice to go for a drink or something after we’ve finished a record.”
“Is it quite an intimate thing, to help someone make music? I imagine you must get to know them quite well.”
“It depends on the artist and on the type of music they make but yes, it can be. They’re often talking about some of the deepest parts of themselves in their lyrics and sometimes it’s like their unconscious or shadow self is coming out.
I get to see that up close. It’s one of the things I love about being a producer. ”
The whole table was listening now. Was I too keen to know about Rona’s life? “I love that you really go there with people.”
Rona and I held eyes. It was exhilarating.
I only looked away because we were among everyone else and I didn’t want it to be weird.
It wasn’t lost on me that the others might have picked up on something between me and Rona, and of course if what Rona had said underneath my window was about me, Bouchra would know too.
I wondered what they all thought about it.
“Rona is our dark horse,” Bouchra said, affectionately. “You wouldn’t know the half of what she gets up to.”
“That’s right,” Nell agreed.
“You’re all exaggerating,” Rona replied.
“I’m not,” Nell defended. “Remember that time you stayed up all night reading reams and reams of poetry from one of your stars? And then you made that song that lives rent free in everyone’s minds? Yeah. That.”
“You’re like this hidden emotional support guru for all these pop stars,” Kaira said, thoughtfully.
Rona pulled a sceptical face, looking mildly uncomfortable at all the attention from her friends.
“And what about all those BDSM nights you got into? Can’t forget those,” Vicky said, smirking knowingly.
I was so intrigued by all this.
“Ha ha, very funny, it was just one night, and it was for research, and you know it,” Rona quipped back.
“Research for what?” I asked.
Rona shook her head. “Never mind.”
“She’ll show you later,” Vicky said.
The rest of the table erupted in laughter.
Rona and I shared a quick look, but not an awkward one.
We opened more bottles of wine and stayed there chatting all afternoon without a care in the world as the day slipped into evening.
I loved these guys and hoped to continue being friends when we got home.
It also made me miss my teammates and my friends, Nikki and Sophie.
Team sports as a professional athlete was a special thing.
You bonded with people over a shared goal.
You worked hard for them. Nikki and Sophie and I had each other’s backs in a way that made me feel safer in this world.
Like I belonged. I was getting a similar feeling with this group, which I couldn’t have been happier about.
Why couldn’t life always be about spending time with friends and doing things we truly loved?
Later that evening, after a day of delicious food, wine, and endless talking and laughing with everyone, I glanced over at Rona, the candles on the table flickering a soft light onto her lovely face.
I’d been on a high all day after overhearing Rona’s conversation with Bouchra.
If it wasn’t about me, I would be very disappointed, and that alone told me that there was something between us I had to explore.
I had butterflies in my stomach when I thought about the prospect of something happening between us.
Above all else, she was the one person I couldn’t wait to spend more time with when we got home.
It was the only real thing that made me want to go back.