Tackle

by Holly Hart

  "You sure don't look it. Hey, do you mind if we cut this short? You're not looking too good, and I've got a big date," he said, chuckling at his own pun.

  "Fine," I mumbled once again. "I'll just finish this wine. I need a few moments to myself, anyway."

  "You sure?" he said, looking a bit concerned.

  I nodded firmly. "I'm sure."

  Tim clapped his hand on my shoulder and turned to leave. "Oh," he said, looking back at me over his shoulder, "I meant to tell you – you've got an interview lined up. Day after tomorrow."

  I shook my head, trying to clear the fog. "Who—" I said, stumbling, "who with?"

  He was almost at the steps by the time he replied, calling back down the tunnel. "Alex Rodriguez."

  17

  Alex

  "Alex. I had a great time the other night, but I'm not in the right place in my life to commit to anything serious. I hope you find who you are looking for. Sorry."

  The message flashed up on my phone screen – so unexpected I had to blink twice before processing it. A wave of inchoate grief flooded through my brain, as if I were grieving for the loss of a loved one, and I raised a finger, beckoning the waitress over. As for the phone, I flipped it over and set it down to rest on its face. I couldn't bear seeing that Dear John text for another second. Hell, I couldn't believe she'd broken up with me by text in the first place!

  Were we really dating, though?

  "Another beer," I grunted. "No – wait," I said as she nodded and turned to leave, "something stronger."

  The tired, aproned waitress shot me an unimpressed glance – the kind that said: Buddy, I've got work to do. "Wine?" she ventured.

  The suggestion brought back memories of sharing bottles of red wine with Diana in the villa's back garden, and much as I'd have liked to knock back a couple of jugs of a strong, coarse local vintage to drink away the imprint of the pretty blonde-framed face that seemed burned into my retinas, I couldn't face it. "Forget about it, just the beer," I sighed.

  "You got it."

  I looked back at my phone. I wasn't going to beg Diana to change her mind – and even if I was, I sure as hell wasn't going to do it via text. But I wanted to know why she'd suddenly thrown away everything we'd shared. I picked up the phone and began to compose a text, struggling to find the magic words that might be able to put things right.

  "Did I do something wrong?"

  The waitress startled me out of my reverie. "Five euros," she barked demandingly. I couldn't blame her, I wasn't exactly acting like a model customer. In my defense, I wasn't exactly in the right frame of mind, either.

  I pulled a brown wallet from my pocket, the supple leather aged a deep mahogany by the oils in my palm. "I don't have any cash," I said, plastering a fake smile on my face and pulling out my gold Amex card. "Can I start a tab? I'll be here a while…"

  She looked me up and down, studying the cut of my expensive shirt and checking out which brand name was stitched onto my denim jeans. She placed the glass of cold beer roughly down on the table. Once more, she barked. "Fine," she said, grabbing the card and storming off.

  I shook my head. With service like that, it's no wonder Europeans don't tip…

  I looked back at my phone screen, back at the words blinking up at me. "Did I do something wrong?"

  I deleted them in a fit of anger. I simply couldn't understand what had just happened, why Diana had changed her mind, and more than anything – why it had been so sudden, when everything felt like it was going so right.

  I raised the cold glass of beer to my lips, savoring the taste of the cool liquid as it ran down my throat. By the time I clicked it back down onto the table in front of me, I'd drunk more than half of it and was beginning to wish that I'd had the foresight to order another one ahead of time. I caught the waitress's eye and motioned for another. She looked at me haughtily before nodding.

  I looked back down the phone, putting the irritable server out of my mind. Did I do something wrong?

  It felt weak and pathetic, and for the first time in my life, I was happy to send it regardless. I needed to know why Diana was ending things – and why the hell she couldn't have done it face-to-face!

  I'd never felt like this – certainly not over a girl, and it brought back feelings I'd long repressed – memories of being abandoned to the system as a child and emotions that I never wanted to feel again.

  That was what the beer was for. I poured the rest of the glass down my throat, reflecting that it hadn't even had the chance to warm up. This wasn't me – I was normally so cool, so collected. I strictly controlled my alcohol intake, never indulging the day before training. Come to think about it, I'd also strictly controlled myself with women – keeping things physical, never getting close. Until now, of course.

  All of that – all my rules, they seemed meaningless now.

  I looked back down on my phone, fueled by liquid courage and ready to delete the text I'd rewritten – and more than that, ready to give up on Diana entirely. It buzzed against the table just as my hand hovered over it, and my stomach did a backflip, immediately marking my rash decision to rely.

  Was it Diana? Was she ringing to apologize? To make up?

  No.

  I keyed my passcode into the phone, desperate to find out. There was a text waiting for me – but from the last person I'd expected – the press officer, Roberto. And it wasn't good news. In fact, it was hard to believe that he could have picked a worse time if he’d actually tried!

  Interview with Diana Lopez – midday Thursday at the stadium. I know you – don't be late! The fans might love you, but they don't pick the team sheet. Believe me when I tell you, being there ON TIME would be a very sensible decision.

  18

  Diana

  The hardest thing about living an entire ocean-length from home, for me anyway, was not having a support network. That kind of sounds like I read it in a psychology textbook, or Moving Abroad for Dummies, but it's true… It's goddamn lonely living six thousand miles away from everyone you know and love!

  Especially when you're dealing with a breakup. Sure, I had Tim to talk to, but at the end of the day he's still very much a man – and I quickly found that his way of getting me through my misery was to make jokes, try to keep my mind occupied, and ignore the elephant in the room. Maybe it's a guy thing. Hell, it's probably even good advice. But sometimes you need to wallow in your own misery – you know? Sometimes a pint of ice cream and a week spent on the couch watching Sex and the City reruns is exactly what a girl needs to get over a man.

  So I'd called in sick for a couple of days. Easy enough to do when your office's nearest human resources staff member works seven time zones away… And in a way, I wasn't really lying – I really did feel sick as a dog. If anyone had bothered to check, all I'd have needed to do to convince them of the serious, likely even contagious nature of my affliction would be to plonk myself in front of my laptop and answer the Skype call. The sight of my red-stained, tear-blotched face appearing on their computer screen would quickly have any officious HR boss convinced. But like I said, no one checked.

  That might have been because, well, I really didn't have anything to do. The team wasn't playing until the weekend, and I'd already filmed the teaser spots that needed to go out after the nightly news. Alex was lying low, and as far as I could tell from obsessively checking the city's gossip blogs – I told myself I wasn't looking for news about him, but it was a lie – he hadn't been seen out on the town for a couple of nights, not since he was pictured stumbling around at three in the morning, three sheets to the wind and with a face like thunder.

  I'd felt terrible when I saw the picture. Still did, in fact. The breakup was entirely my doing – Alex had done nothing wrong, and I hadn't even given him the time of day. My personal cellphone hadn't stopped blowing up until almost twenty-four hours after I'd done the deed. Hell, for all I knew he might still be trying to get in touch now. I didn't know – I'd turned the damn thing off.

&n
bsp; The thing was, this wasn't just like any other breakup. It wasn't as if I could put Alex out of my mind, delete him from my contacts, block his number and simply get on with my life. Alex Rodriguez was my life! He was the guy every one of my girlfriends wanted to talk about when they called, his picture was plastered on every newsstand in the city, and most importantly, he was the entire freaking reason I was in Barcelona in the first place!

  Okay, I could probably have deleted his number and blocked him, but who's counting.

  Oh, there was one more reason this wasn't like any other breakup.

  I was supposed to be interviewing my ex. On camera. Tomorrow.

  Yeah.

  I hauled my protesting body out of bed and and bullied it into taking a shower. "You're a goddamn mess, Diana – pull yourself together. You think you're going to be able to hold it together in front of the camera looking like this?" The shamefaced look on my face in the mirror gave me the only answer I needed.

  Like, hell no.

  I flicked the faucet on and chucked my pyjamas into a messy cloth puddle on the tiled floor, checking myself out in the full-length mirror mounted on the wall in the seconds before the condensation from the steam in the air rendered me invisible. If my face already looked depressed, puffy and blotchy, then the rot hadn't quite yet managed to spread to the rest of my body, which still looked as tight, lightly tanned and – even if I had to say so myself, damn sexy, as it had before the three pints of Ben & Jerry's and more than a few glasses of cheap Spanish red wine. I’d inhaled over the past couple of days…

  "Get it together, Di," I muttered to myself over the sound of plummeting droplets of water falling out of the shower. If there was one thing that would beat – or scald – some sense into me, it'd be the pain of the hot water falling on my bare skin. There were many things that the Spanish did well – red wine, for example, or tapas, but the plumbing in these old buildings certainly wasn't one of them… I had two choices: very very very hot, or very very very cold. I'd never much liked cold water flowing down my nipples, so the choice was easy.

  As the scalding hot water continued to cascade downwards into the porcelain tub, beating down with a rhythmic quasi-drumbeat reminiscent of a tribal ceremony that seemed to hunt had me from truly conscious thought, my mind began to wander back to the one topic it had barely escaped over the past few days – Alex Rodriguez.

  Even before we'd first kissed, his had been the first face that leaped into my mind in the morning, and the last thing that crossed my mind before I slipped between the sheets at night. And that was before I'd ever even thought about him as a lover… Our short, torrid affair had only reinforced his constant presence in my thoughts, and its ending hadn't really changed things. The only difference was that now, instead of simply thinking about him in a professional capacity, or better – in a happy, flirty, almost pornographic way, now every time he sashayed into my mind, I was suddenly assailed with regret.

  My college relationships seemed like pale, lifeless imitations – no, parodies – in comparison with the breathlessly heady heights I'd so briefly attained by Alex's side. He was wild and untethered to the normal anxiety, fears and regrets that held most men back from their potential. No, he embraced the unknown, dived into things that scared him – took what he wanted. Like me.

  And yet, here I was, alone.

  I coughed, choking on the thick steam that had quickly filled the bathroom, and was quickly jolted back to reality. I looked around, surprised that I hadn't noticed it happen! The room looked more like a sauna than a bathroom, and I hadn't even noticed it happening. "Christ, Di," I muttered, turning the faucet to stem the endless flow of scalding water as best I could, "you could daydream your way through a marathon, couldn't you?"

  I stepped over the side of the bath tub into the stream of water, doing a comical little dance as I tried to acclimatize to the river of what felt like lava falling onto my skin. I hopped in and out, in and out, alternately yelping with pain and choking on the thick steam that filled the room – first sticking my head under the shower head until I felt like my brain might explode from the heat at any second, then heading in tummy first and holding it there until I felt like my breasts were in danger of actually cooking on my petite frame.

  "Enough!" I choked, less on the steam and more on a tentative the growing conviction that I'd made a terrible mistake, as I hopped out of the bath tub and swaddled myself in a thick, plush white towel. If the mirror hadn't been coated in a thick layer of condensation, I knew I'd have looked as red as a newborn baby. If Alex had just seen me shower like that, he'd have teased me until he passed out from holding in his laughter… Hell, I half looked around in expectation that he might be hiding around the corner, ready to pop out with a crap joke!

  I darted out of the bathroom, hurriedly closing the door behind me so that the stupidly-placed smoke alarm wouldn't bellow an unwanted ditty at me, and walked back to my bed, still radiating the intense heat of the shower. I sat down on it and as I pulled to the towel away from my torso to begin towelling my hair dry, the thought of how I'd once pleasured myself right here crossed my mind – and had my fingers itching to delve between my legs once more.

  I threw my head back onto the mattress and squealed with frustration. It wasn't supposed to be like this! I was supposed to be making a life for myself in the career I'd always wanted, the one I'd worked so hard to get into – not faking an illness to get out of work, all so I could wallow in a boy-related funk.

  One truth was becoming quickly, plainly and uncomfortably clear to me. As much as the rational, professional part of me wanted to stay strong, the caring, emotional half of me that had caused me to feel such guilt after ambushing Alex in that first press conference was drawing me kicking and screaming towards one inescapable conclusion - I wouldn't be getting over Alex Rodriguez any time soon…

  19

  Alex

  Christ. You could have put my blood into the space shuttle and it would have shot into orbit faster than any launch in history… My head was pounding, and I hadn't even torn my sticky, sweaty skull so much as an inch away from the sheets. If I felt this bad when I was clearly still half-drunk and lying on my back, then today was going to be a bad day. A very bad day.

  There must have been a reason I'd done this to myself, I thought, but as I lay on my bed with my eyes screwed shut and an arm clumsily probing my bedside table in the vain hope that drunk me had been kind enough to leave hungover me a glass of water and a pack of Tylenol, I couldn't think what it was. I consoled myself with the thought that at least I didn't have training today. I wasn't exactly a stranger to training hungover, but this was different. This was the kind of hangover that you hope never to have to have again, the kind of hangover that makes you swear off alcohol for weeks – the kind of hangover that I'd had about once a week at college.

  "Fucking hell, Alex," I groaned, bringing my hands to my face to protect my delicate eyelids from the onslaught of the morning – or maybe even afternoon – sun. "Why the hell do you do this to yourself?"

  As if that vocalization was exactly what my brain needed to remember the whole, unvarnished truth, the recollection of last night's events – and what had spurred them on – flooded back into my mind.

  Disjointed images of stumbling down La Rambla, Barcelona's main avenue, with a baseball cap hurriedly purchased from a street vendor pulled down low over my eyes to hide me from ever-vigilant camera phones.

  Scaring the crap out of a bunch of Chinese tourists as I drunkenly fell into their backs.

  Heading down to the empty beach at three in the morning with just a bottle of wine the company.

  And, of course – the reason I'd gone off the rails.

  That text.

  "Shit," I groaned again, "why'd she have to go and do that?"

  I couldn't call it a breakup – because we'd barely been dating, hell you couldn't even call it that, for a couple of weeks. At least, I suppose, Diana had had the balls to actually pull the trigger and n
ot just ghost me…

  The worst bit was I knew that I was only feeling what I'd caused so many women to experience over the years. Maybe turnabout really was fair play, but it sure felt crappy. I knew that Diana was to me what I'd been to so many girls – addictive, an elixir, a tonic. She'd been like a rope to a drowning man, and I'd clung on tight, opened up to her her a part myself that I'd never revealed before – not willingly, anyway. She'd seen me for what I was inside, not the image I gave after the rest of the world, even when sometimes I didn't know the difference myself. And most of all, she hadn't cared about any of it.

  And the sex. The things that girl could do with her tongue, those tight little hips. My God, the sex…

  And yet, here I was, lying in sheets soaked with my own sweat and wallowing in regret. The worst bit was – I didn't even know why.

  I tried to picture the whole scene in my mind, to get inside Diana's head and figure out how the hell she could have done this to me. The thought briefly crossed my mind that perhaps this was for the best – perhaps this very scene was the reason enough that I shouldn't let myself get entangled with women. After all, I was running at about oh for one as far as successfully opening up to a girl went. If it was going to be like this every time, my brain suggested weaselly, perhaps it wasn't worth having at all…

  But I shut that down fast. No – I knew that what I'd felt had been real. It wasn't some kind of honeymoon effect; it wasn't just a flood of hormones and serotonin caused by a passing infatuation, and it sure as hell wasn't a reason to give up.

  No, this was a speed bump, not a stop sign. Of all the challenges I'd experienced in my life, this was simultaneously the smallest – and the most imposing. But I hadn't become the most expensive American soccer signing in history by giving up the first time I kicked a ball, and I sure as hell wasn't going to start now.