The First Move #2
“Let’s see, Clara. When you set your sights on a soccer player for health reasons, you don’t leave her alone until she follows the treatment to the letter.
I’ve experienced it firsthand, and we’ve all seen it here at the club,” she blurts out, stating a truth as clear as day.
“But I know that, in this case, it’s not just a technical matter.
I know you all too well. And that look you were giving her a second ago…
it wasn’t the look of the head of the medical team observing a player ignoring her recommendations. ”
I grip the coffee cup tightly between my hands, feeling the heat from the ceramic seep through the skin of my fingers.
“You’re blowing things out of proportion.”
“I’m not. I’m just analyzing you. It’s not my fault you’re so transparent when you like someone, Clara.”
I fall into a deathly silence, staring at the bottom of my cup. The big downside of having people around who really know you is that, no matter how hard you try to craft a perfect lie, they’ll never believe a single word you say.
Because yes, Alicia Puertas worries me so much that she keeps me up at night.
Yes, I’ve crossed a massive red line with her that puts my job at risk.
And yes, what happened the other day in the first team’s private showers was a textbook, monumental mistake.
A major one. One that, rationally speaking, I should regret every single day—and yet, at the same time, I can’t stop daydreaming about it every time I walk into that part of the locker room, longing to do it all over again, even more intensely.
Lara sets her empty cup down on the table with the utmost gentleness and gives me a smile so full of tenderness and understanding that it melts me inside.
“Look, I’m not going to ask you a single thing you don’t want to answer voluntarily. But let me tell you one thing as a friend: the emotions we try hardest to control with an iron fist are often precisely the ones that end up throwing us off balance.”
I smile bitterly, without a shred of genuine humor.
“Wow, what an inspiring speech. Seriously, you should quit journalism and start selling motivational quotes for wall calendars.”
“And you should stop acting like a fucking idiot, as if having feelings for someone were the equivalent of committing a red-card foul in the penalty box,” she replies with immense sweetness.
“You’ve built an impressive wall around yourself ever since the Charlotte incident, and in case you don’t know, even the tallest walls eventually come crashing down if you hit them in the right spot.
And from what I can see out this window, that stubborn, beautiful, talented forward has already started doing just that. ”
Her words remain seared into my mind long after Lara leaves the facility.
As the sports complex begins to empty out and evening suddenly falls, I head upstairs to wait for Alicia in one of the electrostimulation and recovery rooms. But I realize right away, as I look out the hallway window, that she’s not coming to see me willingly.
She’s still downstairs, running frantically in circles around the main field.
She runs as if she wants to punish the grass—or as if she’s trying to punish herself in the process for some tantrum I can’t quite understand.
And, to top it all off, she’s now doing it in a fine, uncomfortable rain that’s starting to pick up.
I stand completely still by the window, clutching the medical folder in my hand. For a second, my mind goes blank. The next, all I feel is an overwhelming urge to go downstairs and kill her with my own hands.
“She’s unbearable, seriously…” I mutter into the emptiness of the hallway.
My first gut reaction is to stride downstairs, plant myself in the middle of the field, and force her to stop.
The second, much colder and more rational, is to remind myself that I can’t keep functioning like this around her.
That this has already crossed too many lines.
That having wild sex with a player under my supervision was a stupid, impulsive decision—and exactly the kind of colossal mistake I promised myself I’d never make again in my life after the Charlotte disaster.
Although it’s abundantly clear that I haven’t learned my lesson at all; I keep mixing the professional with the personal and getting everything so muddled that I lose control of my own life.
Despite all my mental warnings, I stand there frozen, watching her run.
It’s right at that moment that Alicia comes to a sudden stop next to the bench area.
She leans forward slightly, her face contorted in pain, and rubs her left knee with one hand, trying to ease that sharp twinge that only appears when the workload becomes physically unbearable.
Something in my stomach churns, and I let myself be swept away by the purest form of worry.
I set the folder down on the office desk, grab a large umbrella from the umbrella stand and one of my warm club jackets from the coat rack, and rush down the stairs, not allowing myself to think for even a single second about the consequences of what I’m about to do.
I cross the field with the umbrella open, feeling the soaked grass give way beneath my sneakers, while Alicia stands there motionless, with her back to me, breathing with obvious difficulty from the physical exertion.
I make no noise as I approach. I simply stand right beside her, hold the umbrella over her to shield her from the raindrops, and hold out the jacket to her.
“The only thing we needed this week was for our star player to catch pneumonia out of sheer stubbornness.”
Alicia turns her head, startled by my presence.
Catching Alicia Puertas off guard is, in and of itself, a true miracle of nature.
For a full second, she says nothing, staring at me with wide eyes.
Then she regains her composure and flashes that smile laced with biting irony she always hides behind whenever she feels cornered or more vulnerable than she’s willing to admit to anyone.
“Well, Doctor… How sweet of you. I swear, for a moment there, I thought you were coming to bring me a house arrest order,” she replies, though I can clearly tell her voice sounds hoarse and tired.
I insistently hold out the jacket to her, tapping her on the arm.
“Put it on right now. Don’t make me repeat myself.”
She does. Slowly, sliding her arms into the sleeves without taking her dark eyes off me for a single moment.
The scene suddenly becomes ridiculously intimate, sensual, and intense in the middle of nowhere.
The rain beats hard against the umbrella’s fabric; the training field is completely deserted at this hour, and we’re unnervingly close, breathing the same air.
“You shouldn’t be running like that,” I remind her, softening my tone. “Your knee isn’t up to this kind of physical strain, Alicia. Every time you push yourself beyond what the rehabilitation protocol allows, you risk everything you’ve worked so hard to achieve to get this far.”
Alicia tucks the edges of the jacket snugly around her shoulders. It’s mine—it belongs to me; my name is printed on the inside label—and that subtle detail makes seeing her dressed in my clothes feel like an unbearable aesthetic provocation to my senses.
“And you shouldn’t be smiling at anyone that way in the hallways,” she murmurs suddenly, looking away in annoyance toward the main office building.