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“I know.”
“You knew?”
“I know now.” The corner of his mouth moves. Not a grin yet. Close.
“Can I see you tonight?”
“Yes. Come to my apartment. After you’ve done the things you need to do. The post-match press. The team. Šíma yelling at you for two hours. Come when you can.”
He drops his hand. He steps back. Not away. Back, giving me the space to be seen by my team.
Marchetti, from twenty feet down the corridor: “Hájek? We good?”
“We are good.” Tobík’s English, careful and measured, every word given its weight. “Give me a minute.”
He turns back to me. The grin breaks through, small and real. Czech again. “Go finish your night. There’s going to be a press scrum. There’s going to be Tomáš needing to talk. Come to my apartment when you can.”
“Tobík? Thank you for being here.”
He nods then turns and walks toward Marchetti and Thompson. He doesn’t look back.
I stand in the tunnel. The team is behind me. The press is ahead. I’m going to live here. As soon as the tournament ends, I’m going to wake up in this city. I’m going to walk the Beltline that Tobík walks every morning. I’m going to learn what other tacos Maria makes and whether Bagel sits on my foot too.
I walk back toward the locker room. Šíma is going to have questions. Tomáš is going to need to talk. The press is going to want quotes about the signing and the match and the header and the quarterfinal. The next several hours are going to be loud and full and mine.
Then I have a place to be tonight. I have a place to be when the summer ends.
Chapter 21: Tobík
I’m standing at the kitchen counter eating a peach over the sink. The last time I stood at this counter eating a peach over the sink, Damián texted about Šíma being loud in his hotel room, and I sent my address before the consequential part of my brain caught up with my thumbs. That was the night everything started. Tonight everything is starting again, except this time it started when a man said I love you without rehearsing it first.
My apartment is clean. I am not nervous. Or at least I’m doing a very convincing impression of a person who isn’t nervous, which is a different thing.
I hear his footsteps in the stairwell. Not two at a time. Not the rushing pace from the stolen Sunday. Even footsteps. The pace of a person who isn’t afraid of what’s behind the door.
Damián is standing there when I open the door. Hair down, curls damp from the shower at the stadium. A clean shirt, dark, simple. His face is doing something I haven't seen before. Something new. He looks like a man who walked here because he wanted to walk here and doesn’t have a secondary explanation prepared.
“Hi,” he says. “I’m late. The press took forty-five minutes. Šíma and Kovár cornered me about the signing.”
“You’re here now.”
“I’m here now.” He smiles at me and steps inside.
He crosses to the kitchen and stops at the window. His hands on the sill. He looks out at the skyline. His shoulders are loose. His reflection in the glass is a version of him I haven’t seen, the expression quiet and new.
“You’re looking at the skyline,” I say.
“I’m looking at my city.” He turns. The small smile, real, costs him nothing. “That’s the first time I’ve said that.”
“How does it sound?”
“Terrifying. Good. A bit of both.”
He turns to me.
“Tobík.” His voice drops. “The text I sent you. I knew it was cruel when I was writing it and I sent it anyway because Tomáš was in my head and my father’s voice was louder than mine.”
“The Damián who sent that text is a different version than I know,” I say. “I’ve been looking at the actual person for six years. I know the difference.”
