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“I agree. Which is why the offer has your name on it. But offers expire, Damián, and this one has been expiring since March.”
I sit on the bench. The tile floor is cold under my feet.
“I will call you tomorrow.”
“Damián,” he says with a huff. “You have said tomorrow fourteen times.”
“This is a different tomorrow.”
“Explain to me how this is different?”
“It has a deadline.”
“The other’s did too, Damián.” A pause. Peter’s pauses are calculations. I prefer them to my father’s, which are disappointments dressed as patience. “What is going on? We’ve known each other for years. Help me understand what you want and I can make it happen. But until I know what you are looking for, I can’t help.”
I stand up and pace across the locker room. How can I explain it to Peter if I don’t even understand myself.
“Five PM, European time,” Peter says when I give him nothing. “After that, Weber.”
“Understood.”
“Call me when you have an answer. Or call me when you do not have one. Either way, call.”
The captaincy. The armband. The logical result of every correction absorbed since I was nine years old. Very straightforward. Very sensible. I should take it and call Peter and stop being a man with a search history he hasn’t cleared. I’ve had this excellent plan for four months. The plan has not resulted in a phone call.
I open the laptop to check the film schedule. The browser has three tabs. The team portal. The inbox. And a third tab, five days old, that I have not closed. Atlanta United MLS roster 2026. The tab of a man who is making excellent career decisions.
The restaurant is Kovár‘s choice. A barbecue place ten minutes from the hotel that Novotný found last week and Kovár has already decided to distrust.
“Kovár, the menu is in English.” Novotný, pointing. “Do you need help?”
“I read English.”
“You read English the way you read crosses. With a delay.”
“My reading of crosses is faster than your reading of anything. You took twenty minutes to order in Bucharest.”
“Bucharest was in Romanian.”
“So is this menu, apparently.”
“It’s barbecue,” I say. “Order the brisket.”
“Is brisket the one that’s pink in the middle?”
“It’s smoked. The pink is from the wood.”
“In Italy, pink in the middle means the kitchen has given up.”
“In Italy, the kitchen takes a nap between courses. Order the brisket, Kovár.”
“Vež, I have faith in you on the pitch. My faith does not extend to American meat.”
Šíma launches into a story about the team dinner in Rome that will never not be funny. Polášek is adding details that may not have happened. The table is warm and loud and familiar in the way of men who have been sitting at tables together since they were teenagers, blue-gold light holding on past eight, the street bright with World Cup foot traffic. Two women in Ghana jerseys. A family with a flag I can’t place from here. The tournament has turned this city into a place where flags are how people introduce themselves.
The TV above the bar is running a football talk show on mute. I read the ticker across the bottom. Transfer rumors. League updates. A story cycles through about a player in the Championship whose phone was hacked. Photos leaked. The ticker keeps it clinical. Personal life. Privacy. The word relationship inside quotation marks, the way it’s always inside quotation marks when the relationship involves two men.
“What’s that about?” Polášek asks, nodding at the TV.
