“It says, ‘Luciano, I’m sorry. I had to go. I can’t explain what happened, but I hope you know that I’ll never forget you’.” The woman pauses. “That was it. I’m sorry it doesn’t sound like the kind of note you were hoping for.”
Silence fills the line.
I’m close to breaking.
“Thank you,” I manage to say, and then hang up the phone.
I fall back against the fridge, slowly sliding down it until I’m on the ground, curling into a ball, my muscles screaming from the strain of last night’s game, my heart screaming from pain.
It’s over.
It’s over before it even began.
Again.
Sorrow seeps into every vein, snaking through me like poison, bringing my soul to its fucking knees.
I opened up my ribs for her.
Let her crawl into my chest, let her stay.
All the while knowing she was going to crawl right back out.
Dragging my heart behind her.
Part Three
Madrid, Spain
Seven Years Later
“While the sun is bright
Or in the darkest night
No one knows
She comes and goes”
- “Ruby Tuesday” The Rolling Stones
Eighteen
Luciano
“Luciano, are you ready?” Mateo Casalles asks me.
I glance over my shoulder at my coach, adjusting the giant silver cup in my hands. “Always am.”
“If you drop that,” our forward, Alejo Albarado, shouts over Mateo’s shoulder, “you’ll bring great shame to this country!”
“Good thing I’m from Portugal,” I tell him with a grin. I turn back around, giving the flight attendant a quick smile as she finishes opening the door of Real Madrid’s custom airplane, bright sunshine and fresh air spilling into the cabin. I take in a deep breath, then step out onto the gangway that’s been pulled up to the door.
Barajas Airport is absolutely packed. Not just with the usual airplanes, but the media has crowded around the plane, cameras and microphones as far as the eye can see. They all erupt into a cheer when I start walking down the steps, the cup in my hands. I wave and smile at the cameras, which isn’t an easy thing to do when you’re carrying a monstrous trophy and you’re trying not to take a tumble down the narrow stairs.
The squad and coaching staff follow behind me, the crowd going wild, a cheer of “Hala Madrid!” going up. I glance at the crowd again, taking in this moment, one of many that we’re about to have today.
Two nights ago, we were in Istanbul for the final game of the UEFA Champions League, playing against Juventus for the cup. To be honest, I wasn’t sure we had a chance. We fought like dogs to get to where we were in the rankings, but we were playing against Ronaldo’s new team, and we were his old team, so the game was bound to go everywhere. We started off good, Benzema getting Real Madrid our first goal, but then Juventus scored twice in a row and it looked like we might be screwed.
Thankfully, I pulled my head out of my ass and stepped up when I needed to. The entire team was counting on me and, as their captain, I had no choice but to lead them to victory. We ended up getting a penalty kick that I knew I’d have to take.
It was probably the most important kick of my life up to this point. It felt like the six years I’d been with Real Madrid, and the three years I’d put in as their captain, didn’t matter. All that mattered was the here and the now. This game. This cup.
So I kicked the ball with a special “Panenka” twist.
It went in the goal.
The world erupted.
We were back in the running.
We fought hard, fought back.
Alejo ended up scoring the winning goal, and that was it.
Real Madrid were the cup champions again.
Fuck, it’s nice to be a winner.
Anyway, the celebrations pretty much lasted through the night on the streets of Istanbul, and then all through the next day. Suffice to say, we’re all a little hungover from the non-stop partying, even though we know today is going to be a doozy.
Once we’re off the plane, posing for photos, my arms getting a workout from hoisting the cup into the air over and over again, smiling until my face gets sore, we get on our bus and head into the city. We have a whole schedule today, every hour packed, and we have to pace ourselves, even though Mateo has opened a couple of bottles of Dom Perignon and is passing it around the bus. I know I should keep my head on straight, but if Mateo is the one starting it, then I guess I can loosen up just a little.
Our first stop is Catedral de la Almudena, then we have to meet with governmental officials at the Community of Madrid headquarters and City Hall. It’s boring shit, lots of hand shaking and whatnot, lots of fawning over the cup. Even though Real Madrid has done this thirteen times in their years as a club, it doesn’t get old to any Madridista, the fans, and wherever our bus goes, thousands of them line the streets, cheering for Los Blancos and losing their minds as we go past.
There’s a moment as the bus moves past that I think I see someone in the crowd that makes my heart momentarily stop.
But then I shake my head, and the person is gone.
It was just a ghost.
It always is.
Next, we head to Plaza de Cibeles, which is usually our first stop, and a tradition whether we win the Champions League or La Liga. There’s a fountain in the middle flanked by a giant statue of a goddess in a chariot pulled by two lions. The space around the statue has been roped off for our bus to get through, keeping back the rabid Madridistas, hundreds of thousands of them all in white, moving and frothing around like a damn about to burst. Their enthusiasm knows no bounds, their chants and hollers and cries giving me goosebumps.
Fuck, man. We won.
We won!
We pile out of the bus, I’m holding the cup up high, we parade it around. Everyone goes wild.
“Hala Madrid! Hala Madrid!” they chant, over and over again.
Music to my fucking ears.
Then someone hands me the Real Madrid flag, and I go around the statue and up the ramp they’ve affixed to her. I climb over the edge and get on the goddess’s shoulders and tie the flag around her neck like a scarf.
With shaky legs I stand up on the statue and hoist that silver cup far above my head.
“Hala Madrid!” I yell, as cannons explode in the air around me, showering me in a sea of white confetti. “Gracias Madridistas!”
This is the closest I’ll ever get to Robert Plant saying “I am a golden god!”
This is my moment.
A culmination of all the moments I’ve worked for.
But then as the confetti continues to rain down on me, I put my ego in my back pocket, because even though I’m the captain of this team, I wouldn’t be a captain without my team.
I wave for Alejo to come join me.
Then Benzema.
Kroos.
Rene.
One by one everyone comes and poses with the statue and the cup, until finally the real man of the hour, Mateo Casalles, comes out.
I step back, giving him his glory.
There’s no us without him.
Mateo holds up the cup, yelling, hollering, then pulls me into an embrace as we smile for the crowd.
“This doesn’t get old, does it?” Mateo yells in my ear.
“No, it doesn’t.”
I feel a pang in my chest though, realizing that Mateo’s career as Real’s coach could keep going on, as long as he pulls in the wins.
For me, however, I’m not sure how much time I have left before I start going downhill and need to either be traded or go into retirement. I’m hoping for the latter. Even though I have no idea what I’ll do with myself, I could never be traded, not after being with this team, a team that feels like home to me. I’d rather go out in a blaze of glory than suffer on someone else’s pitch.
“Come on,” Mateo says, giving my back a ha
rd slap and handing me the cup back. “The night is just getting started.”
We walk back down the ramp to the bus, and I pass the cup off to our assistant coach, my shoulder starting to give me trouble from holding it up so much.
“How’s your shoulder?” Alejo asks as we reach the top deck, noticing that I keep stretching it.
“It’ll be fine,” I tell him, but even though I smile, I know he picks up on the uneasiness in my voice. During the game I took a hit from one of the other players, causing me to fall and tumble onto my bad shoulder, the one that still gives me trouble all these years later. Being thirty-seven, my body isn’t bouncing back as quickly as I want it to. Thank god we’re all on vacation starting now.
The bus starts up and we slowly roll past the crowd, following the parade route to Bernabéu Stadium. The sound from the sea of white is deafening. I think I’ll have hearing loss for a few days, another great thing about getting old. I glance up at Mateo as he walks past me and notice the earplugs in his ears that I used to make fun of him for. He’s not that much older than me, which means I’m looking at my future.
It’s ten pm by the time we reach the stadium for the celebrations in there with the fans, with speeches, followed by music and lasers and fireworks. Every year that Real Madrid wins, they try their hardest to outdo the last celebration.
Then it’s near midnight when we can really party.
One of the biggest clubs in Madrid has closed for us. You’d think that we’d all be exhausted after everything, but the moment we step into the club, we get our second wind. It helps that there’s food, the alcohol is free-flowing, everyone’s significant others and family are here.
I’m perpetually single, trying to take George Clooney’s place as an unrepentant bachelor, so I don’t have a wife like Mateo does, or a fiancée like Alejo. But I do have my brother Marco, who is still my agent, and he’s in this club somewhere.
“Here you boys go,” Thalia Blackwood says to Alejo and I as we stand around, looking overwhelmed by the music and the flashing lights, not sure where to go. She hands us both a bottle of beer. “I figured you were sick of champagne by now. I know if I have anymore, I’m going to hurl.”
“Hurl,” Alejo laughs, putting his arm around her. “I don’t think I know that word.”
Thalia isn’t Spanish. She’s actually from America originally, before she moved to England to work as Manchester United’s physical therapist. Last year she started working for Real Madrid, and, well, it’s a long story. Suffice it to say, that despite the fact that Thalia is forty and Alejo is twenty-four, they fell in love. It wasn’t easy—but that was more to do with the fact that she could have gotten fired for getting romantically involved with a player.
But their love story has a happy ending. Alejo just proposed to Thalia two days ago, seconds after we won the game in Istanbul. They’re ridiculously good looking and disgustingly in love, and I make fun of them for that all the time, but I’m beyond happy for them. They’re both such great people and made for each other.
Some people just find their other half and don’t let them go.
Some people try and fail.
“Where did you find the beer?” I hear a shriek from behind me as Vera, Mateo’s wife, comes sidling up to us. She raises her arms above her head and slams her ass into my hips with the music’s beat.
“Okay, how much have you had to drink?” I ask her.
Vera grins up at me and plucks the beer bottle from my hand. “Not enough!”
Then she hurries off. “I’m hoping she’s getting me a replacement beer, and not going to find Mateo,” I mutter, looking down at my empty hand.
“Comprar gato por lebre,” Thalia says to me in Portuguese, and I follow her gaze to where Vera is grabbing Mateo and practically mauling him.
“What did you just say?” Alejo asks incredulously, looking between the two of us.
I beam at Thalia. “She’s been picking up on her Portuguese. See, something good has come out of you working on my shoulder all the time”
“It means to buy a cat thinking it was a rabbit,” Thalia explains. She looks at me for my approval. I nod. In other words, Vera’s not getting me a beer.
Vera and Mateo are the opposite of Thalia and Alejo, in that their age gap goes the other way. Mateo is fifteen years older than her, and while he’s refined and charming (I mean, when he’s not yelling at us), she’s a total wild child.
She often reminds me of someone.
“They need to get a room.”
“Oh, look at Mr. Grumpy Pants,” Alejo jokes.
“I’m grumpy because I had a beer for one wonderful moment.”
Thalia sighs. “Hold on.” She turns, shaking her head as she walks over to the bar. “Bunch of helpless babies,” she says under her breath.
“See what you did?” Alejo chides me. “You made my fiancée leave me.”
I roll my eyes. “You’ll survive.”
“So,” he says to me, taking a long gulp of his beer, making makes me jealous. “Which woman here are you going home with tonight?”
“None,” I tell him.
“You haven’t even looked around yet.”
I shrug. “Alejo, you say this every time we go out.”
“Yes, and sometimes you find someone.”
“This is the same crowd as it is every time we’ve won before.”
“Sounds like you’re tired of winning.”
I jab him with my elbow. “Don’t be ridiculous. Winning is all I have these days.”
“So, what are you going to do for the summer? Are you going back to Lisbon?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You’re not going to see your stepfather, go ride some horses or whatever it is you do there?”
I laugh. “You know my insurance won’t let me.”
It’s not just my career that’s changed in the last seven years, my family life has too. When I first got transferred to Real Madrid, there was hell to pay. Tomás was furious that I was not only deserting Sporting, the team that “made me,” but that Marco would have to move to Madrid too. It was either that or I fire him, and I’m not sure what was worse to him.
So, at first Marco stayed in Lisbon, while I moved to Madrid. It worked fine. He was still doing a good job as my agent, and he was rising in the ranks with his agency.
But then my mother got breast cancer.
And then a curious thing happened. There was a strange shift in the family dynamics.
My stepfather softened before our eyes.
I say that loosely. He didn’t become a different person. I could clearly see he was the same man he always was.
But the way he treated me became…milder.
He didn’t seem to hate me so much.
If anything, sometimes he was kind.
I started being around him more because of it. I try not to let my guard down around him even now, but sometimes I can’t help but feel like perhaps I finally have a real family.
Meanwhile, Marco and his father started to drift apart.
This was all Marco’s doing. I think he realized how much control his father had over him, especially as that control tightened as my mother’s health went downhill.
Thankfully, she survived her round with cancer. It made Marco stick around for another year, to be by her side, before he moved to Madrid.
We’ve actually become so much closer now. Not just as agent and client, but as brothers. As friends. We hang out at least once a week, and if I’m ever in a crisis, he’s usually the first person I call. The same goes for him. He was married for a few years to this Spanish actress, but it ended in an ugly public divorce when she was caught cheating on him.
Which is why I’m assuming the reason I haven’t found Marco yet is because he’s found a woman somewhere. Once a player, always a player.
Thalia soon comes back with not just one beer, but two, both for me, leaving Alejo in a huff. I pound one of them back, then take my time with the second one. The
n Mateo and Vera find us and some haphazard drunken dancing starts happening.
I’m grooving along by myself, eyes closed, when Mateo says, “Oh, here comes the man with the real moves.”
I don’t even have to look to know that they’re talking about my brother, who is notorious for cutting a rug on the dancefloor like he’s just leaped out of Saturday Night Fever.
My eyes open and I see Marco coming over to me, holding two glasses of champagne. I think Thalia spoiled me, because I’m hoping both of those are for me.
“Brother,” Marco says to me, pulling me into an embrace, some of the champagne spilling onto the floor. “Congratulations. Just the man I wanted to see.”
“I’ll say the same to you if those drinks are for me,” I tell him, holding out my hands.
He hands them to me. “You’re drunk, Luciano.”
I raise both glasses and grin. “About to get drunker.”
He laughs. “Well, you better refrain for a moment because I have a surprise for you.”
I ignore his ridiculous plea and raise one glass to my lips, the bubbles going down with ease.
“What surprise?”
“You’ll never guess who is here. I wanted to tell you a few days ago, but the game was more important.”
I shrug, moving to the music, not really caring what Marco is talking about. It’s hard to care about anything right now except that we won and life is pretty good.
“Hold on, I’ll be right back,” he says, to me, giving Mateo and Alejo high fives before he disappears back into the crowd.
I continue to dance, this time creating a Thalia sandwich with Alejo, the beat pumping around us, a drunken Mateo occasionally pulling us into a sloppy embrace.
Out of the corner of my eye, just as Mateo has me in a headlock, I spot Marco at the edge of the crowd.
I watch as he walks back toward me, his arm around a woman.
I straighten up, shrugging Mateo off me.
My heart coming to a full-stop.
He’s with a woman.
Not just any woman.
A ghost.
My ghost.
The One That Got Away: A Novel Page 23
