"What are you even saying?"
The disbelief tore out instantly, loud enough to spike the mics, and in the small studio of Box2Box, a football podcast that had been climbing the charts faster than anyone behind the desk could quite believe, three of the four hosts turned to look at the fourth.
Varvar, the one the screaming was aimed at, just laughed. He let it roll through him, leaning back in his chair, hands up.
"What? I'm just saying what I saw."
"You are saying rubbish."
Mili didn't even let him finish. He had the tired, hunted look of a man who knew he was being baited and could not, physically could not, stop himself from biting.
Across the desk, Pala and Ferms were already cracking up.
"Wow," Pala said, to no one.
"Okay, okay, maybe we all cool down a bit." Ferms was laughing too hard to mean it, one hand patting the air. "Let's just. Let's bring the temperature down a little."
Varvar said nothing. He sat there with a small, smug smile, perfectly content, the smile of a man who had thrown a rock into a pond and was now enjoying the ripples.
He was rage-baiting. Everyone in the room knew he was rage-baiting. That had never once stopped it from working.
The four of them, Varvar, Mili, Pala, and Ferms, had started this thing as friends who wanted to do the only thing they ever really did when they were together anyway, which was argue about football. Now people paid them for it. They were living the exact life that millions of kids dreamed about without ever saying it out loud. Talking ball with your mates and getting paid. That was the dream. That was the whole dream.
Today's segment was the league champions.
The first three went fast. Manchester City, Inter Milan, Bayern Munich, all done, all wrapped up, each of them sitting double digits clear of second with games to spare. The Bundesliga was mathematically finished at thirty-four games. The other two technically had a fixture left but the trophy was already engraved. Nobody had anything to argue about, so nobody bothered.
The first real flare-up came over France.
The farmers' league, they all still called it, out of habit and to wind each other up. But this season Ligue 1 had actually delivered something, the title race breathing all the way down to the final matchday with a single point between the top two. And the reason was one man. After PSG had crashed out of the Champions League early, something had switched on in Kylian Mbappé. Since that night he had been averaging 1.8 goals or assists a game, dragging his league tally past thirty-one goals and eleven assists in thirty-three matches, carrying his side into the final day with a one-point lead. The Box2Box guys had backed PSG. Easy. Bet on the man on fire.
La Liga was where it fell apart.
"Okay, so here's the thing," Varvar started, and you could hear the others already groaning before he got going. "I watched that game. The Madrid game. And I'm sorry, it wasn't that impressive. They struggled. A lot. They struggled in that game and you all know it." He spread his hands. "And we all know the satanic football Simeone is about to play. Don't forget, Atléti don't even need to win the last one. They just need a draw. A draw, at home, and they lift the league in their own stadium." He started laughing before he even got the rest out. "Bro. The harem ball we are about to witness. The satanic game we would see. Eleven men in a phone box. They're gonna park so many buses there'll be a traffic jam. That game is gonna be talked about for years how evil it is."
"They won four-one." Mili was leaning forward now. "Four. One. How is that not an impressive game?"
"I'm just saying"
"No, no." Mili held up a finger, and a slow grin was spreading across his face. "You must be rage-baiting me. You have to be. Because I know, I know you are not exactly the sharpest tool in the box."
Pala wheezed. Ferms put his head down on the desk.
"But this," Mili went on. "This is a new level even for you."
Varvar was grinning, completely unbothered. "I'm serious though." He waited for the laughter to die down. "I just think the night isn't gonna go the way everyone expects. This game, and even the Champions League final. I'm telling you."
"Oh, come on."
"I'm talking facts, bro." Varvar pointed at him. "Barcelona, as a whole, historically, repeatedly, they suffer against teams like this. Look at the Milan games. Chelsea of those years. they always struggle against teams like this. Madrid played them physical for like twenty minutes and watch how much they struggled."
"THEY WON FOUR ONE, BRO. WHAT?"
The whole studio went up, all four of them, Pala slapping the desk, Ferms gone completely, Varvar sitting in the middle of it with that same smug little smile, having achieved exactly what he came for.
And the thing was, the argument never really ended, because the whole football world was having it.
With the season closing out, everybody was talking. The double, the league and the Champions League both still live, the Clásico still fresh in every memory, all of it had put Barcelona at the dead center of the conversation. Pundits, podcasters, streamers, anyone who had ever held a microphone near the sport had said their name more than once that week. The ones who wanted them to crash and burn, to bottle two trophies in two weeks and be laughed out of the building. The ones who wanted them to win it all. The fans, the haters, the neutrals who pretended they didn't care and watched every minute anyway. It was a waiting period, all of it, the whole sport holding its position before the final push.
And the thing everyone was waiting on was Barcelona.
Meanwhile, at the Camp Nou.
"Hahaha. No, no, the pleasure was ours." Laporta was walking the man toward the door, all warmth and presidential polish, one hand on his shoulder. "Thank you again, Mr. Rodrigues."
"Ha, President, please." The director shook his hand, smiling. "Just call me David."
"David." Laporta laughed, gripping the handshake. "David."
Behind them two crew members edged past with a camera rig and a tangle of cabling, carrying it out toward the corridor. Laporta watched them go, then turned back.
"So. That's everything?"
David glanced over his shoulder at his guys hauling the last of the gear out. "Yes, we're done for now." He turned back, and there was a glint in it. "Although. We'd love to get one more sit-down after the league game. And another after the Champions League final. Once the results are actually in."
He said it the way a man says something he already knows he wants very badly.
Laporta smiled, taking his hand again. "Then I hope," he said, "we meet in a good mood."
The car pulled out of the Camp Nou car park and into the afternoon traffic, and in the front two of David's people were already going at it.
"I'm telling you, it has to be Messi." The one in the passenger seat had twisted halfway around in his seat. "You cannot. You cannot make a Barcelona documentary and not center it on Messi. It's Messi. It's his club, it's his city, it's his everything. The man is the spine of the whole institution. Center it on anyone else and people will laugh at us."
"I know." The one driving kept his eyes on the road, but his hands were doing half the talking. "I know, I know, I hear you. But man." He shook his head. "Listen to the other story. Just listen to it. Because it writes itself. It literally writes itself."
He took a breath, and his voice dropped into something cinematic.
"Middle of the season. The club's drowning. Two-nil down in a game, the whole campaign slipping away in front of their eyes. And on comes a sub. A kid. A local kid, hometown boy, grew up in the stands watching this exact club. And he scores a hat-trick. He turns the whole thing around with his bare hands. And from that night, it just doesn't stop. Game after game unbeaten. New star is born. And now, now, he's about to maybe win the two biggest trophies in the sport for the club he loved before he could walk." He smacked the wheel lightly. "Come on. That's not a story you write. That's a story somebody hands you. God put that on a plate and slid it across the table. No way we don't use it."
"Okay, but." The passenger turned further. "What about this."
He set it up the same way, theatrical, building it.
"Messi. The whole arc. Started untouchable. Won everything, the biggest there is, on top of the world, can't be beaten. And then. Disaster. Friends leaving the club one by one. The fights. The struggle. A promise, to the people, to the place that built him, I will not abandon this. And then it's fighting and fighting, losing and losing, heartache, more loss, more loss, more and more and more. A man getting dragged through it for years. And then he gets back up. He falls again. He gets back up again. A story of perseverance. Of never folding. And after everything, after all of it, he reaches the summit one more time. A changed man." He sat back. "That has weight, bro. That has actual weight behind it. It flows. It moves. People will feel that one in their chest."
In the back seat, David wasn't listening to either of them. Not really.
He had his tablet up, earbuds in, and he was watching a clip they'd pulled from the Real Sociedad match. The two of them had spotted it in the raw footage and flagged it without quite knowing why.
It was Mateo. He'd just had something happen to him in the game, a bad moment, a missed chance, his head dropping. And Messi had come over. The footage caught it clean from a low angle, the two of them close, Messi's hand on the back of Mateo's neck, his mouth moving, saying something nobody had a recording of. And then Mateo's face changing. The drop lifting out of it. A smile pulling at the corner of his mouth, reluctant at first and then real, and Messi's own face breaking into one to match it, and the two of them turning back toward the pitch together, shoulder to shoulder, the older one and the young one, lit up gold in the late sun. Then the clip went towards that moment Mateo on Messi back as both of them were smiling , eveyrthing just clicked
David watched it once. Then he dragged the bar back and watched it again.
He chewed at the edge of his thumbnail, the argument up front rolling on without him, and then he spoke, not loud, but loud enough that both of them stopped.
"What if," he said, "we do both."
...
Back at the restaurant.
"Hahaha. I've got a little time. I had to lie to the gaffer just to escape, so." Suarez was settled across the table from Messi now, the two of them in the empty dining room, the late light slanting in across the cloth.
Manuela came out from the kitchen carrying a plate, steam still rising off it.
"This," she announced, setting it down in front of Suarez, "is for you." It was good Spanish home cooking, grilled fish, greens, a little rice, nothing heavy. "Perfect for tonight. But don't eat too full, you have a match."
"Oh, Manuela." Suarez pressed a hand to his chest, twisting to look up at her. "I have missed your cooking so, so much." He took the second plate from her hands and helped her set it straight on the table. "When are you finally going to leave that old man and run away with me, eh? Then I could eat like this every single day."
Francisco did not look up from his newspaper.
"Shush, you." Manuela was laughing, swatting the air near him. "Give him a few more years. Then I'm all yours."
The whole room broke up, Suarez loudest of all, and Messi shook his head and took his plate from her with both hands.
"Thank you."
Manuela squeezed his shoulder on her way past and went back to the kitchen.
Messi turned back to the table.
Suarez was already rubbing his hands together over the food. "You don't understand. The club won't let me eat like this. It's all weighed portions and grilled chicken with no salt and these sad little piles of steamed nothing." He picked up his fork. "I dream about this."
He dug in.
Messi watched him a moment, smiling. "I'm glad you're enjoying yourself."
"Oh," Luis said around a mouthful, "you don't know the half of it."
Messi laughed. "No, not that." He waited for Luis to look up. "I mean Atléti. It looks like you're having a good time there. I'm glad."
Luis chewed slowly, looking at him.
"Hmm." He swallowed. "Well. It's no Barcelona, I guess." He shrugged and went back to the plate. "But they trusted me. That's the thing. Simeone, the club, the lads in that dressing room. They looked at me and they didn't see someone who was finished. They believed there was still something there." He stabbed at the fish. "They believed in me."
Messi smiled at that.
Then Suarez added, without looking up, "Which is more than I can say for Barcelona."
The smile went off Messi's face.
"Luis." He set his fork down. "You know I never..."
"Oh, no, no, no." Luis waved his hand, cutting across him. "Don't get me wrong. I know you didn't give up on me." He pointed his fork loosely in Messi's direction. "I know you fought the board for me. I know that. And I appreciate it, man, I do. I really do." He met his eyes. "I know it was Koeman. The board. Not you."
Messi just looked at him.
Luis went back to the food. Then, lower, with something bitter under it, "But I guess they weren't entirely wrong, were they."
He looked up.
"The new kid."
Messi blinked. "Mateo?"
"Who else?" Luis gave a short laugh. "Wasn't he my replacement? The number nine they brought through to fill the hole." He shook his head, grinning, but the grin didn't quite reach. "Hah. Who would've thought."
Messi was quiet for a second.
"He's a good kid," he said. He sat back, and a real smile came over him, fond. "A bit like Ney, actually. Very playful, that one. Drives the staff up the wall." He turned his glass slowly on the cloth. "But his heart's in the right place. It really is."
Suarez watched him say it.
He watched the whole thing. Messi's face softening as he talked about the boy, the easy warmth filling it, the smile that came without being asked for. He kept eating, but his eyes had gone somewhere else, something raw moving behind them, complicated, his jaw working slower than the food required...
At the entrance of the resturant
"Are you two leaving already?"
Manuela was back in the doorway.
"Yeah, I've got to get back to the team," Luis said, pushing his chair out. "Prepare for tonight."
"Anto and the kids are waiting for me," Messi said.
"Okay." Manuela nodded, then turned toward the back. "Let me just wake the little ones so they can"
"Oh, no, no." Luis was on his feet, hand up. "There's no need for that."
"Yes, let them sleep," Messi said.
"Okay, okay." She came over instead and pulled them each into a hug, one after the other. When she got to Messi she held his face a moment. "Greet Antonella and the children for me."
"I will."
"And bring them to visit when the season's over. All of them. I mean it."
"No problem," Messi said, smiling.
She turned to Suarez and wrapped him up tight. "Good luck tonight." She pulled back and patted his cheek. "I packed you a little extra. So you have some flavour over there in that sad kitchen of yours."
"Last chance." He raised his eyebrows. "We can still run away together."
"You." She laughed and smacked his arm, then turned back toward the kitchen.
"Bye, old man," Suarez called.
"Bye, Francisco," Messi added.
Francisco lifted one hand off the newspaper, waved it once without looking up, and went back to reading.
The two of them stepped out into the late afternoon.
Suarez laughed as the door swung shut behind them. "He doesn't change, does he."
"Francisco?" Messi shook his head, smiling. "Same since the academy days. Exactly the same."
They both laughed at that.
"Oh, man." Luis exhaled, looking up at the sky. "I've missed this. I'm so glad I called you out today." He clapped Messi on the shoulder. "When the season's done, we have to do something proper. Sofía and the kids have been missing Antonella and yours."
"No issues at all," Messi said.
His phone buzzed. He glanced at it, then back up. "It's already getting late. I promised the family I'd play with them today, so. Let me start heading off."
"Ah, okay, okay."
"Let me drop you somewhere."
"No, no." Luis waved it off. "I drove over."
They started walking toward the cars together, unhurried, the silence between them easy, both of them with the loose half-smiles of two people who didn't need to fill it.
Then Luis spoke.
"You remember, some time ago." He glanced over. Messi looked at him. "When we talked about facing each other. The two of us."
The smile slipped off Messi's face.
Luis scoffed, a short laugh with no humour in it. "Well. I guess nothing's stopping this one this time."
Messi just looked at him.
Luis stopped walking. He looked up, out at the street, at nothing. then it came out
"I want to win."
Messi stopped too.
Luis was still looking away, and then he looked down at his own hand, and he closed it slowly into a fist, knuckles tightening, and when he spoke his voice had gone low and serious and completely without the joke.
"I want to win. I want to take that league off them. I want to stand on that pitch and prove to every single person who wrote me off, who said I was done, who shipped me out like an old piece of furniture." His fist squeezed harder. "No. Not them. Myself. I want to prove to myself that I'm still..."
He stopped.
He didn't finish it.
"That I'm still."
Messi stood there, watching him, and said nothing.
Then Luis let his hand fall open. He turned to face Messi, and he forced the laugh back up out of himself, dragging the lightness back over the top of it.
"Hah. Don't worry about all that. Ignore me." He shook his head, grinning again. "Tell Nella I'm sorry, eh? For dragging you out here and wrecking your plans like this." He looked at Messi, and for a second the grin softened into something honest. "I'm really glad we did this."
They shook hands, gripping it.
"Go on, then. Let me not hold you up any longer." Luis released him and started backing toward his car, lifting a hand. "See you soon, yeah?" He laughed at that, like there was a joke buried in it only he could hear. "See you soon."
He turned and walked off across the lot.
Messi stayed where he was, standing by his car, watching him go. And as he watched, the years came up behind his eyes, all of them at once. The two of them young and stupid and unbeatable. The goals, the celebrations, the dinners, the trophies held up between them. The friend who had stood beside him through the worst of it. Walking away now across a car park in the late sun, toward a different shirt, a different city, a different team he was going to try and beat tonight.
"Luis."
Messi called it out, loud across the lot.
Suarez stopped and looked back.
Messi smiled.
"No one can replace you."
...
Messi wasn't the only one from the Barcelona side deep in his feelings around this time.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
"Whooo! WHOOO! HAHAHA!"
Aina stood in the middle of her family's living room with confetti raining down over her hair and her shoulders, her hands pressed to her face, laughing so hard she could barely stay upright. Streamers caught in the light. A party popper kept going somewhere behind her.
"When did you even get all this?" she managed, spinning to take it in.
David came toward her through the falling confetti, smiling, and pulled her into a hug. "Congratulations, dear. We're so proud of you."
"Thank you, sir." She was beaming.
"MIT." Isabella came barreling in from the side, grabbed both of Aina's hands, and the two of them just screamed, foreheads together, jumping on the spot. "MIT! MIT!"
"AHHHH!"
Off to the side, Mateo, Pedri, and Olivia stood watching her, all three of them grinning.
The message had been the acceptance. That was what it was. Aina had gotten into MIT, and the scream that ripped out of the apartment when she opened it had been loud enough that Pedri heard it from the next room. After a flurry of calls and one half-coherent explanation, they'd all piled into cars and come out to Oriol's farmhouse, where the family had gathered and the celebration had not stopped since.
Isabella finally let her go, holding her out at arm's length to look at her properly. "I am so happy for you, mi amor. So happy."
Aina's eyes had gone glassy. "Thank you, aunty."
They hugged again.
"Okay, okay." Grandma Nuria came shuffling across the room, one hand out. "Don't monopolise her, the rest of us want a turn."
"Grandma." Aina pulled out of Isabella's arms, already reaching for her, worried. "Why are you up? You shouldn't be stressing yourself."
"What stress?" Nuria waved her off with a flap of the hand. "My grandbaby just got into ET. You think I'm going to sit in a chair for that?"
"Grandma," Mateo called from the side. "It's MIT."
"ET, MIT." Nuria flicked her fingers without turning around. "Same thing. Same thing."
The whole room cracked up.
Nuria reached her granddaughter and took both of Aina's hands in her own, the old fingers wrapping around the young ones, and looked up at her face.
"Mi niña lista," she said softly. My clever girl.
Aina steadied her by the elbows, the laughter fading into something gentler, the two of them just holding on to each other in the middle of the room.
"You know," Nuria started, and her voice had already begun to waver, "I used to watch you do your sums at that kitchen table. This small. Legs not even reaching the floor. And you would get so angry when you couldn't get one, you'd bite your little lip and go again, and again, and again." Her chin was trembling now. "And I would think. This one. This one is going to go somewhere none of us have ever been."
"Nana." Aina's eyes were filling.
"And now look." A tear slipped loose and ran down into the creases of Nuria's face. "Look at you. Going across the whole ocean. All the way to America to study." Her voice broke completely. "My little girl."
She was crying properly now, and Aina was crying with her, gathering the old woman in, the two of them holding each other up.
"Nana, don't, please, you'll set me off worse,"
"I can't help it." Nuria pressed her face into Aina's shoulder. "I'm an old woman. Let me cry."
Oriol came over and slid an arm around his mother, easing her gently toward the sofa. "Okay, Mama. Okay. Come, come sit down before you fall down, eh? Come."
He got her settled into the cushions, Isabella crouching beside her, rubbing her back.
"She didn't cry like that when I made the team," Mateo said from the side, lower lip pushed out.
Pedri elbowed him in the ribs. "Dude."
Olivia put a hand over her mouth, shoulders shaking.
Nuria was still going on the sofa, dabbing at her eyes with the edge of her sleeve while Isabella murmured to her. "Mama, breathe, breathe."
"I'm breathing," Nuria sniffed. "Leave me."
Oriol straightened up. He shook his head, smiling, and stepped back from the huddle around his mother, and as he turned he found his daughter standing there looking at him.
"Dad."
He stopped.
He just looked at her, and for a second he wasn't seeing the young woman in front of him at all.
He was seeing a little girl with a front tooth missing, tearing across this same farm with her hair flying behind her, dragging a smaller, stumbling boy along by the wrist. Mateo, four years old and a half-step too slow, falling over his own feet trying to keep up.
"You're so slow," little Aina was shouting, hauling him onward. "Come on!"
And Oriol, younger himself, chasing the two of them across the grass with his arms out wide and a monster's roar in his throat, the both of them shrieking with laughter, scattering chickens, Aina cutting left and right to lose him as little Mateo ran towards his grandma laps.
He caught her. Swept her clean off her feet around the middle, and she howled and kicked, wriggling, laughing too hard to escape.
"Got you! I've got you!"
"NOOO! Let me go!"
"Never."
"When I grow up," she gasped between laughs, "I'm going to go to the moon, and then you can't catch me!"
Oriol had stopped at that. Looked at his daughter dangling in his arms, her face lit up with the absolute certainty of a child who had decided something.
"The moon, eh?" He'd grinned. "Then let me help you get a head start."
And he'd turned her around, lined her up, and launched her up into the air, both hands under her, calling out as she went up squealing against the blue.
"To the stars!"
The little girl came down laughing.
The memory faded, and the young woman was standing in front of him again, and Oriol felt his eyes sting.
He crossed the last few steps and pulled her into him, one hand cradling the back of her head.
"You're going to be great, baby," he said into her hair, his voice thick. "You're going to be so great." He pulled back just enough to look at her, and his mouth pulled into a smile even as his eyes spilled over. "To the stars. Remember? To the stars."
Aina's face crumpled.
She grabbed fistfuls of the back of his shirt and buried her face in his chest, her whole body shaking with it, and the only word she could get out came broken and small.
"Dad."
He held her.
Off to the side, Nora stood watching her husband and her daughter wrapped around each other, and her own eyes were brimming, one hand pressed flat against her mouth.
Then Oriol broke, the way he always broke, into noise and joy. He pulled back, scrubbed a hand down his wet face, and threw his arms wide.
"MIT! My little princess is going to MIT!" He boomed it at the ceiling. "That's it. I'm telling everybody. The whole Community. Everyone gets the day off, we're throwing a party, today, right now!"
"Dad!" Aina was giggling through her tears.
He scooped her up off her feet, exactly the way he had on the grass twenty years ago, and swung her around once while she shrieked his name, and set her back down dizzy and laughing.
And as she came down, steadying herself, still half-laughing, her eyes caught her mother's across the room.
"Mom?"
Nora was already turning away.
"Mom?" Aina's smile faltered.
Without a word, Nora walked out of the living room.
The others exchanged looks, Mateo glancing at His mom, Olivia's brow creasing. Only Oriol stood there with a quiet, knowing smile, watching the doorway his wife had gone through.
A moment later Nora came back.
She was carrying a box. Plain, a little worn at the corners, the kind of thing that has been sitting somewhere waiting a long time.
The room went still.
Nora crossed to her daughter and held it out.
Aina took it, glancing up at her mother once, then lifted the lid.
She gasped.
"What is it?" Isabella leaned in. "What is it?"
Aina reached inside and drew it out slowly. A hoodie. Deep red, worn soft, with three letters across the chest.
MIT.
She held it up, her hands shaking. "It's MIT merch." She turned it over, looking at it, looking at her mother. "How? How do you have this?"
Nora's voice was already unsteady. "When you told me. Years ago. That this was the school. The one you wanted, the one you'd set your heart on and applied to." She swallowed. "I went looking for it."
"It took her over two weeks," Oriol said softly from behind. "Drove all the way out past Girona. Three hours each way. Found it in a tiny little shop in the end, run by some American family. She wouldn't stop until she had it."
Aina stared at the hoodie, then at her mother, stricken. "But I hadn't even started anything yet. Mom, I hadn't even, I might not have even gotten in, why would you"
"Because I knew."
Nora said it simply, and stepped closer, taking her daughter's face in both hands.
"I have watched you my whole life, Aina. I watched you teach yourself things no one in this family even understood. I watched you stay up at that desk until the sun came up and then go to school like you'd slept. I watched you get knocked down and get back up so many times I lost count, and never once, not once, did I see you quit anything you decided you wanted., when you were a little kid and you decided to move to another continent for your dreams , YOU DID ALL THAT." Her voice was breaking now, tears running freely down her face. "You are the most stubborn, hardworking, brilliant person I have ever known in my life. There was never a single doubt in me. Not one. I bought it the day after you told me because I already knew it belonged to you."
Aina was sobbing openly now, both hands over her mouth, and Oriol's eyes were red and streaming behind her, and Isabella had given up entirely and was crying into Nuria's shoulder while Nuria patted her and wept too.
Nora pressed her forehead to her daughter's, and finished it in a whisper.
"I love you."
...
Oriol had not been joking about the party.
He gave everyone who worked the farm the rest of the day off, and then, with their help and David's and Mateo's and Pedri's, a canopy went up in the yard, tables came out, and something that started as a few drinks and a speaker turned into a full celebration. The hours slid by like that. By the time the light started going amber and then blue, the party had moved indoors.
"Uncle Hugo! You made it!"
Oriol's voice carried clear across the yard as a car door shut, and Hugo came up the path smiling, a wrapped bottle under his arm.
"How could I not?" Hugo clasped his hand, looking around at the lights strung up, the noise spilling out of the house. "Where's the college girl, then? The famous one."
"Inside. With her mother." Oriol waved a loose hand toward the house and laughed. "They're discussing something. Crying, probably. I don't know. Women things. Every five minutes somebody starts crying again."
Hugo caught his arm as he swayed slightly. "Hey, hey. I know it's a big day. But maybe ease off the bottle a little, eh, big man?"
Oriol drew himself up and snapped a sloppy salute. "Aye aye, captain."
Hugo laughed and steered him gently toward a chair before heading inside.
He stepped through the door into the warmth and the noise.
"AHHH!"
"OOOH, no, no, NO!"
His head turned toward the shout. Over by the television a knot of guys was crowded around the screen, five or six of them, drinks in hand, all groaning at once at whatever had just happened. Among them he picked out Mateo, who he'd known since the boy was in nappies, and Pedri, who he'd met just a few weeks back when the kids came through his shop.
Hugo smiled and made his way over.
"Mateo. Mateo."
Mateo was standing with one hand pressed flat to the top of his head, staring at the screen in disgust. He turned at his name, and his face changed.
"Uncle Hugo?" His eyes went wide. "What are you doing here?"
"Your uncle called me." Hugo grinned. "Said Aina got herself into some big fancy college over in the States. So I came to wish her well."
"Oh." Mateo laughed, the surprise melting into a grin, and pulled him into a quick hug. "She's inside. The terrace area, with her mom."
Hugo nodded, then jerked his chin at the TV. "What's the score?"
Mateo sighed. "One-nil. Atléti just scored."
Hugo's whole face fell. "Argh."
The game had been running past eighty minutes, Atlético Madrid against Espanyol. It had sat at nil-nil for an age, and even at that, even level, Atléti stayed a point clear of Barcelona on the table. But there had been a small comfort in the deadlock. Nobody likes watching the team they're chasing pull away. A draw was at least a draw.
That little comfort had been ripped away in the eighty-sixth minute. Luis Suárez.
The man who'd sat across a restaurant table that very afternoon saying I want to win, had gone out and put Atlético ahead with a crazy shot that resemble his iconic goal against PSG that year.
"Well." Hugo clapped a hand on Mateo's shoulder. "You lot took care of your business last week, eh? Four-one." He smiled. "Now you just have to finish the job yourselves."
Mateo's grin came back, certain. "For sure. It's still ours."
"That's the spirit." Hugo gave the shoulder a squeeze. "Let me go find Aina."
"Okay, Uncle."
Hugo moved off toward the terrace, and Mateo turned back to the screen just as the Atlético players were still wheeling away celebrating, and groaned, sinking down onto the arm of the sofa.
"Argh."
Around him the room kept talking over the match. One of Oriol's farmhands, a wiry young skinny guy nursing a beer, shook his head at the lot of them.
"I will never understand what you people see in this sport."
"Oh, here we go." Another worker dropped his head back. "Not this again."
"I'm serious. Twenty-two grown men chasing one ball." He took a sip. "Why don't you go and watch your tennis somewhere quiet, eh?" The other one had retorted.
"Argh, I wish, the final was tomorrow." The first one perked right up. "There's this new kid, I'm telling you, he's insane. Reached the semi finals on his first ever appearance at an Open. Only problem is he's drawn Nadal."
"Dude," said the other, flat. "Nobody cares."
Before it could go further, Oriol came swaying in from the yard, grinning ear to ear, two people lightly hovering at his elbows in case he tipped over.
"Boss, you're in a good mood," one of them laughed.
"In a good mood?" Oriol spread his arms, beaming, nearly catching someone in the face. "My daughter. My little girl." He pressed a hand to his chest. "Going to be a scientist. A real one. Over there with the Americans and the rockets."
He dropped heavily onto the sofa beside Mateo, slung an arm around him, ...and pointed a finger vaguely at the room, a drunk man with wisdom coming whether you wanted it or not.
"You know what the thing is. The thing about all of it." He waved the finger. "Everybody, everybody, sits around waiting for the right time. The right moment. When I have more money, then. When I'm a bit older, then. When things settle down, then." He scoffed, shaking his head. "There's no such thing. There's no right moment waiting out there for you. You think my Aina waited for the right time? No. She wanted it, so she went and took it. With her own two hands. She started working in the states all alone by herself as a little girl in the show business all for this to earn money for her tuition" His voice sad at the ending.
He leaned in closer to Mateo, breath thick with wine, eyes surprisingly clear for a second.
"You want something in this life, kid? You go and you get it. Today. Now. Because the perfect moment is a lie people tell themselves so they never have to be brave." He patted Mateo's cheek twice. "Hm? You hear me?"
Mateo looked at him.
"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I hear you."
Oriol nodded, satisfied, and turned back to the television just in time to see something else go wrong for Barcelona's cause as Espanyol missed a sitter, and the whole room groaned again, and the moment broke apart into noise.
But the words stayed where they'd landed.
Mateo sat with them for a minute. Then he leaned over and tapped Pedri's knee.
"Dude. I'm gonna step out. Get some air."
Pedri nodded at him.
Mateo got up. Oriol caught his wrist as he passed and gave it a squeeze without looking away from the screen, and Mateo smiled down at the top of his head, then made his way through the warmth and the bodies and out the back door.
The night met him cool and clean.
After the heat of the house it was like stepping into water. The air had that farmland softness to it, grass and earth and something faintly sweet, and out past the canopy the fields ran off black into the dark. The party lights swung gently on their wire. The chairs sat empty and scattered where people had abandoned them, and beyond the reach of the bulbs the sky had opened all the way up, more stars than the city ever let you see.
Mateo wandered out from under the canopy, hands in his pockets, the noise of the house dropping away behind him. Oriol's voice was still going in his head. You go and you get it. Today. He let out a slow breath and tipped his head back to look up at all of it.
"Hey, you."
He turned.
Olivia was standing a little way off, half in the light and half out of it, arms wrapped loosely around herself against the cool. She'd taken her shoes off at some point and was holding them by the straps in one hand. The lights caught in her hair and the dark did the rest, and something in Mateo's chest did a small, quiet thing he chose not to examine.
He smiled.
"Hey, you."
She drifted over and fell into step beside him, the two of them moving out along the edge of the yard with no particular place to go. They talked about nothing. The party, Oriol's salute to Hugo, Nuria calling it ET, and Olivia tipped her head back and laughed at something he said, a real one, loud in the quiet, and the sound of it carried out over the fields.
She was swaying as she walked, a little loose, light on her bare feet, turning circles in the dark like she couldn't quite hold still. The moon had come up over the far line of trees and it was catching her every time she turned, silvering the edge of her, and Mateo was watching her do it, and at some point his own laugh just stopped in his throat.
She caught him at it.
She laughed again, softer. "You're so silly."
He looked away, smiling, scrubbing a hand over the back of his neck. "So, hey. How's the, uh." He cleared his throat. "How's your duet coming? With, ehm."
She turned, looking at him sideways, amused and confused at once. "With who?"
"Taylor Swift.?"
"Taylor." He burst out laughing. "Yes, yes, her."
"It's not a duet, you dummy." She was grinning at him, shaking her head. "I'm doing a reaction. To her song. I sit there and I react to it on camera." She looked off across the fields. "It's already scheduled, actually. All ready to go, i just need to be there." her voice trailing off at the ending as she looked away.
Mateo went quiet for a second.
"When are you leaving?"
The question dropped into the dark between them and just sat there.
Olivia stopped turning. She looked out at the black line of the fields, and the playfulness went out of her, slow.
"May thirty-first," she said. "Tickets are already booked."
Mateo didn't say anything. He came and stood near her, close, the two of them looking out at the same dark.
She turned to face him. He smiled at her. She smiled back, smaller.
"I'm really gonna miss this," she said.
"The party?"
"No." She shook her head, looking down for a second, then back up at him. "All of this. Spain. The whole. I don't know." Her voice dropped, almost lost in the night. "The people."
Mateo looked at her saying it.
"Hey, they're all right here," he said, nudging her, trying to lift it. "And, look, you're gonna be massive, right? Huge star. And when you are, you can come back and do a whole concert out here in the field. Sold out. Cows in the back row."
She laughed despite herself.
"I'm serious. I'll help." He warmed to it, grinning. "I'll be your security. Stand right by the stage. Anyone rushes you, boom, gone."
"Oh, that's a great plan." She was laughing properly now. "Keep the crazy fans away by standing the most famous teenage golden boy in Spain next to me. Very subtle, Mateo."
"Hey, it'd work."
She shook her head, smiling, and the laughter eased back down between them until there was nothing left of it but the quiet.
Then he said it, low and real, the joke gone out of his voice.
"For real, though." He looked at her. "You're going to go chase the biggest thing you've ever wanted. You should never feel bad about that. Not for one second." He paused. "That's a good thing, Liv. It's a really good thing."
Olivia didn't say anything for a moment.
"Yeah," she said softly.
She looked up at the sky.
And Mateo stood there and looked at the side of her face. The moon along her cheek. Her bare feet in the cool grass. How still she'd gone, how far away, here and already leaving. And out of nowhere, with no warning at all, Oriol's voice was in his chest, finishing its sentence.
You want something in this life? You go and you get it. Today. Now. Because the perfect moment is a lie.
His heart was going hard against his ribs.
He opened his mouth.
He wasn't deciding anything. He wasn't sure he had ever decided anything in his life less than he was deciding this. The words just lifted up out of him before any part of him could reach out and catch them, and they came easy, and they came clean, and they were already in the air before he understood they were his.
I like you.
A/N
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