Epilogue
Natalia
The hum of the air conditioning is always the same.
I recognize it before I open my eyes. S?o Paulo, Lyon, Manchester, New York. The same low hum in the same hotel room as last year.
Holland sleeps face down beside me, one arm hanging off the bed. In the next room, connected to ours by a door, Lina sleeps. Even my parents have signed on for the Florida preseason like they got a contract with the club.
A year ago, right about now, I’d been with the team three days and didn’t know half the names.
Now I know them all, because they’ve become my family.
I know Tina snores with her mouth open on the plane, that Jade goes out running before dawn, that Zoe likes chocolate muffins, and that Iris… is Iris.
I grab the phone off the nightstand when I feel it buzz, and I can hardly believe it.
Bianca has been called up to the Brazilian national team too; next month we’ll play together again.
“I slept eight hours straight, can you believe it? Eight,” her message says.
Last year, in this same hotel, I was the one calling her every night to ask if she was okay, and now she sleeps right through.
***
The team dinner is on the same terrace as always, with the long tables and the view of the pool.
Alexandra Drummond stands up with her glass and her four-minutes-flat speech: project, legacy, high standards. Titles. The same words as last year. But at the end she drops a line nobody expected.
“We’ve completed the signing of an English player who’s going to be talked about a lot.”
She says nothing more, despite several of my teammates trying.
When Drummond sits, Iris gets up without anyone asking her to, glass raised.
“One quick little thing,” she warns. “I want to toast the two players who’ve given me the most assists this season.”
Laughter at the table. From the other end, Mireya points her glass at me.
“Man, the press spent the whole year selling that these two hated each other to death,” Iris goes on. “And it turns out they’re super friends, the best signings this team has made since I got here, which is saying something, huh?, because I’m amazing and very humble. So, to Brazil and to Mireya.”
“To many more years together,” Mireya says, lifting herself a few inches off her chair. “Or so I hope. Well, this year I’m taking a break,” she adds, rubbing the belly that’s starting to show a little.
At the head of the table, Hades smiles, and that’s already a lot. She’s calmer these days, barely yells at anyone in practice. Iris says it’s because of the wedding. In spring, at Aura Valley, with the whole team invited, she’s getting married.
The kids eat at the far end of the table. At some point I hear one of the waitresses ask Wesley if Lina is like a sister to him.
He’s turned five now and can say almost everything clearly.
He says “ball,” “thank you,” even says “Mireya” without swallowing half the name.
He still calls me Nata, same as the first day I met him, when he tried to hand me a squashed banana.
He calls Iris Iwis and Hades Hadez. Those three names don’t change.
“She’s not like a sistew,” he answers the waitress, very serious. “She’s my sistew.”
And he stays perfectly calm. Lina, next to him, pretends to roll her eyes, but she throws an arm over his shoulders without looking at him. I have to turn my gaze to the pool for a second so the tears don’t spill.
Later, when Tina puts reggaeton on a speaker and half the roster dances barefoot at the water’s edge, Iris sits back down next to me with two beers and hands me one.
“Hey,” she says, lowering her voice. “That English girl they signed is going to land in Seattle totally alone, lost, because she hasn’t done the preseason.
It’d be a good thing if we threw her a welcome party, you know,” she adds, pausing to take a big sip.
“I also told Drummond that Jordan should have a few sessions with her, because it’s her first contract outside her own country. ”
And, just like that, she gets up and starts dancing with Paula and Tina.
***
I stay outside when almost everyone’s gone to bed.
From the terrace you can see the empty pool, blue and still, and the black sea beyond.
Iris is talking Tina into sneaking off to party, and tomorrow they’ll regret it at practice.
Hades walks hand in hand with Mireya toward the beach, for a stroll in the moonlight.
Farther off, my father has found the only Brazilian waiter in the hotel and they’ve spent half an hour arguing about a World Cup final they lost years ago.
Holland comes out in a hoodie, because even though we’re in Florida, tonight it’s a little cold.
“What are you thinking about?” she says as she sits down next to me.
“That a year ago, at this hour, I was alone. And the worst part is that it seemed normal to me.”
She doesn’t answer with words; she just takes my hand in both of hers and squeezes it. Then she turns her head, smiles, and wipes away with her thumb something sliding down my cheek that I’m slow to admit is a tear.
I’ve spent eleven years boarding planes so I wouldn’t settle anywhere.
And it turns out what I was looking for has nothing to do with maps, or even with bigger contracts.
It was a woman who brings me a hoodie before I tell her I’m cold.
A girl who adopted me without asking permission and who one day, half asleep, called me mommy.
A boy who on the first day decided he liked me and changed my name to Nata.
Iris and Tina sneaking off to party. Hades and Mireya walking hand in hand on the beach.
Eleven years looking for somewhere to stop, and now I’ve found a family.