Chapter 11
Natalia
The ball flies into the top corner and the opposing team’s stadium goes quiet, like it needs to double-check that it really happened.
It’s my fourth goal in the last three games, but I don’t even notice as I run to celebrate; Iris yells it at me while she hangs off my neck.
We come off the field soaked and with that goofy laugh you get when everything goes right and you’re not quite sure why.
I open my phone when I reach the locker room and I’ve got almost ninety messages. Almost all of them are congratulations, but one of them grabs my attention right away.
“You’ve been called up for the next international. Call me,” my agent writes.
I have to read it several times with my jersey still stuck to my back. Two years without anyone from the national team mentioning my name and, out of nowhere, one line of text in the steam of the showers almost makes me cry. I wasn’t expecting it.
I call from the parking lot, the moment I manage to be alone.
“About time, huh?” my agent says, dry. “They want you for both official games in June. Oh, and there’s another thing,” he adds.
“Two clubs from Europe have asked about you. For now they’re feeler calls, but both are top-flight clubs and the contract numbers would be very interesting.
They want to know if you’d be open to hearing the offer. ”
I take a deep breath when he lays out the money. Real money and a multi-year deal, terms they rarely offer a player like me at thirty-one. I’d be closer to…
I cut the thought off before it finishes forming. Lyon is fairly close to one of those clubs, but I don’t want to go back down that road.
“Don’t close anything, keep both doors open, all right?” I remind him, though I don’t need to, because we’ve been through this many times.
When I hang up, I stand there staring at the parking lot lights like a fool.
I’m not going to tell Holland about this, at least not for now, because there’s still nothing to tell.
We’ll celebrate the call-up with the national team.
I’ll take her and Lina out to their favorite restaurant.
As for playing in Europe next season, like my grandmother would say, we’ll see.
***
The message comes three days later, at eleven at night, while Holland sleeps beside me and I stare at the ceiling.
It’s not a message as such, it’s just a link Iris sends me, no text, only the link. Iris never types a single word. For all she talks, she doesn’t like to write.
The article is bylined Hale. “What Natalia Costa Oliveira Still Won’t Say.
” I read the whole thing, the glow of the screen lighting up my face.
It doesn’t say anything specific, that’s the man’s hidden talent.
He hints at things, plants doubts, but never gets his fingers caught.
He doesn’t mention Bianca directly, but anyone who follows the league knows he’s talking about her.
The young player, out for personal reasons, traded to a team in her own country.
It’s very easy to tie together the threads Hale left loose on purpose.
I grip the phone until my thumb hurts. I’m about to wake Holland, but instead I go out to the living room and dial Bianca’s number even though in Belo Horizonte it’s the middle of the night.
She picks up on the first ring, which already tells me a lot.
“Did you see it?” I ask.
“I’ve been thinking about it for six months.”
“No, please, Bianca, don’t do it.”
“I want to tell it. I just want all this to be over once and for all. I’d rather explain it in my own words before someone else does it in pieces and their own way.”
“Bianca, listen to me,” I cut in as I sit on the living room floor with my back against the couch. “Wait. Wait a little, okay? Not right now. Let me think about how we can do it, because there’s a chance it doesn’t end, it just gets bigger. A lot of people might want to see what happened.”
She goes quiet. I know her, and I know that silence isn’t her agreeing with me, it’s just that she’s learned not to push.
“Okay,” she sighs. “I’ll wait a little, but I can’t keep going like this.”
I hang up and stay a while with my forehead pressed to my knees. I think I’m protecting her. I think I know what I’m doing, but the truth is I’m not sure at all.
When I go back to the bedroom, the light is on.
“Are you okay?” Holland asks.
I sit on the edge of the bed, take in a big breath, and let it out little by little.
“I’m going to tell you something,” I announce. “And it’s long.”
And I tell her. For the first time, the whole thing and out loud.
I tell her about Bianca arriving at the club having just turned twenty, all legs and fear, but with a hunger to take on the world that was almost scary.
About someone who stole photos off her phone, private photos, of her and Julia.
About how they turned up where they shouldn’t have.
I tell her about the club, which knew and looked the other way, because they didn’t want problems that would distract the rest of the locker room in the final stretch of the league.
I tell her I went to talk to the reporter who had them when I saw him in the mixed zone after a game.
That he let out a laugh and I gave him a shove that knocked him into an advertising board.
“That’s the part the cameras caught, right? The assault. That’s why they suspended you and traded you to Seattle,” she sighs.
I nod slow and keep telling her. Bianca out for personal reasons without anyone at the club asking why, because that was easier to explain than depression. The contract termination, the return to Brazil with Julia and a twenty-two-year-old who now barely sleeps because of a bastard.
When I finish, I realize I’ve been talking with my eyes on my hands the whole time.
“You did the right thing,” she assures me.
She doesn’t add anything else. She doesn’t tell me she’s sorry, doesn’t tilt her head with pity. She just hugs me hard and kisses my temple again and again.
We stay like that for forty minutes, maybe more.
Then she goes to the kitchen and comes back with two glasses of water that we drink without talking much.
My leg ends up pressed to hers under the blanket.
The clock on the nightstand pushes past one, but neither of us is sleepy.
So we talk about silly things, about the nerves of the call-up, because it’s been two years since they called me, about the face Lina made when I told her I was going to play for Brazil.
And at some point, almost without noticing, we’re both naked in bed, kissing, touching, moving against each other.
“Tell me what you want me to do to you,” I whisper against her skin, because today she deserves everything.
And she tells me exactly what she wants and where, and I obey. She takes control and I let her. She asks for more and I give it to her.
Later, with the light off again and her breathing slowly coming back to normal, I rest my head on her shoulder and it slips out.
“Eu te amo,” I say very quietly.
Holland stirs a little.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing. Go to sleep.”
And I pretend to be asleep before she can ask again.