Chapter 6
Holland
I kissed her back and I can’t get it out of my head. Because it’s not just that she kissed me, that I closed my eyes, that I took too long to react. It’s that I kissed her back.
The mistake wasn’t letting it happen. The mistake was that I wanted it to happen.
I turn it over again and again, because I admit I’m a little obsessive. Or maybe I want to find a crack of doubt, something to tell me it could work out, something to hold on to so I can be optimistic.
But that doesn’t exist. Natalia has a contract and a clause and an agent who maps out her seasons. She’s been in a lot of different places. She’s a player who doesn’t put down roots.
And the main problem is that Lina’s starting to get attached, and I know exactly how this can end.
It’s not about me anymore. It’s about her, I have to keep her from getting hurt, because I know this story by heart; I lived it four years ago, when someone who slept beside me decided the life we’d built was too small for her and went off to Virginia to find another one.
I hurt, my daughter hurt even though she was very little, but I learned my lesson.
I’m not going to make the same mistake twice.
So I decide to do the most sensible thing and the most cowardly thing, which in this case are one and the same.
I decide to do nothing.
***
Tuesday, as the girls trickle in, I start setting up the cones, and when I see Natalia’s car parked, all of a sudden I get very focused on a backpack that has nothing special about it and therefore needs nobody focusing on it.
Natalia gets out, says hi to the kids, and takes a spot on one wing. I greet her with the cool politeness I’d use with a mom who never comes to practice.
All our interactions are more or less like this. Correct, and nothing more. She notices, she’s good at that, I guess it comes from having to adapt to a new team almost every year; she’s learned to read people fast. She doesn’t say anything, but she notices.
Practice goes well. The girls don’t catch on to anything, or so I think, and Natalia does her job with a professionalism that stings worse than a slap.
When I finish cleaning up, I feel a little sorry, I look up to say something to her, even if I don’t quite know what, but she’s gone.
She left without saying goodbye, and the worst part is that I’ve earned it.
“Natalia was sad today,” my daughter blurts in the car, still looking out the window.
“You think?” I play dumb, flipping on the blinker to turn right. “She looked normal to me.”
“She was sad. You could tell. Did you two fight?”
I choose not to answer, and I hate myself for it. When my ex and I were happy together, we talked a lot about how we wouldn’t hide things from Lina, how we’d talk to her like a little adult to help her grow. Now I’m the first one to break that rule.
Thursday afternoon Iris shows up. She comes on her motorcycle, no warning, with the excuse that it was on her way.
I don’t know why she insists on telling me that every time she comes, when we both know it isn’t true.
She sits on the bench next to me while I pretend to check the play notebook and Natalia teaches the girls a drill.
“Man, the deep freeze you and Brazil are throwing off, huh? I set foot on this field and about froze,” she says, staring at me.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but if you want to do something, you could help Natalia coach these kids.”
“Holland,” she murmurs, pointing at me with her index finger way too close to my face.
“You don’t fool me. The easiest thing in the world is to push someone away before they get close to you.
Before I met Paula, I was an Olympic champion at that, boss lady.
They gave me medals and everything, or they should have. ”
She doesn’t say anything else, points at me again while she raises her eyebrows, says bye to Natalia and the girls, and takes off on the motorcycle, leaving me a whole lot worse than I was when she got here.
At the end of practice, when most of the kids are gone, Natalia plants herself in front of me with a ball under her arm, like it’s a talisman.
“I’m not going to chase someone who wants nothing at all,” she explains, lowering her voice. It doesn’t sound like a reproach, I think life has taught her the hard way. “If you think the kiss at your place was a mistake, just say so. I’m a big girl, I’m not going to start crying or anything.”
She offers me a clean way out. It’s exactly what I need. All I have to say is: “Right, it was a mistake, you shouldn’t have kissed me, and I shouldn’t have kissed you. It can’t happen again. Period.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to, Natalia,” I confess, letting out a long, resigned breath. “It’s that I can’t.”
She goes very still and raises her eyebrows, waiting for me to explain more. And I do, because I’m tired of not speaking plainly.
“Look, I have no idea what your intentions are, and under normal circumstances maybe I wouldn’t even care.
I guess you’re just looking to have a good time and I’m within reach, maybe you’ve even got someone else within reach too.
And, hell, even if it were only that, it could be fine, I’ll admit it.
The problem is I have a kid who’s gotten attached to you and a life it took me four years to rebuild piece by piece after the whole thing collapsed on me.
And you, in a few months, when the season ends, you’ve got a plane.
It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s that I know exactly how much it’s going to hurt and, above all, the harm I could do my daughter over a fling. ”
She doesn’t answer right away. She stays thoughtful for a second, even works her jaw like she’s about to say something, though in the end she doesn’t. She nods, slow, and picks up her bag.
“Okay,” she says, just like that. “I respect it.”
And she leaves. This time I watch her go all the way, to the car, until she pulls out of the lot and I can’t see the taillights anymore.
That “I respect it” was exactly what I wanted to hear.
Something clean, something that lets us cut off this madness before it starts to grow.
It’s what’s best for both of us. It doesn’t hurt.
At least, not much. But it leaves an emptiness inside me the size of a soccer field.
I don’t know if today I protected Lina.
Or if I only protected myself, and gave it my daughter’s name so it would sound like courage.