"Fuckkk. These guys are so fucked."
Inside Mateo's former room at La Masia, four boys were crowded around a single phone.
Gavi. Casadó. Balde. Fermín López. Mateo's friends, his former teammates, the ones who had come up through the same corridors and eaten in the same cafeteria and slept behind the same doors as him. They had been watching the press conference live, and just like almost everybody else who had watched it, they all had something to say about it.
It was just that what they had to say was a little more unique.
Balde, who had started the shouting, was not finished.
"Oh, man. Chelsea are so fucked, bro. So fucked."
The other three, hearing him, did not stop laughing. If anything they joined in harder.
Fermín, wiping his eye, got it out through the laughter.
"But no, seriously, this is insane. I do not think I have ever seen Messi talk like that before. Ever. Damn." He shook his head, still laughing. "He really means business."
Balde turned and looked at him.
"Dude." He was giving him the strangest look. "The fuck do you mean, means business?"
He started laughing again, harder now.
"He said, tomorrow the promise will be fulfilled." Balde spread both hands. "Bro. That is way more than meaning business. HAHAHA. That is way, way more."
The room went with him.
Casadó, a smile all over his face, shook his head.
"But that was surprising as fuck, though. Messi talking like that was a shocker."
Fermín and Gavi both nodded.
"Yeah," Fermín said. "I have never seen that from him before."
"Dude, I like it." Balde sat forward. "There are times you should be prideful like that."
He paused.
"Is it even prideful?"
He thought about it for about half a second, then shrugged.
"Whatever. It is needed. The morale that is going to give the team, and the fans, that is going to be immense."
Casadó lifted a hand.
"Oh, it is not that I have a problem with it. I like it too. I mean, come on. We are the favourites to win tomorrow. There is nothing wrong with anything he said."
He shrugged.
"I was just shocked it came out of Messi's mouth."
Gavi, who had been quiet through all of it, finally spoke.
"Why are you all so shocked he talked like that, honestly?"
The other three turned to look at him.
Gavi was just smiling. He tipped his chin at the phone in the middle of them, still playing the press conference.
"Did you guys not see who he is sitting beside?"
All three of them turned back to the screen. And there it was, the camera holding on the table, Messi and Mateo beside each other, the two of them exchanging a look and a small nod, both of them smiling.
Gavi started laughing.
"I would not even be shocked if Mateo told him to say it. HAHAHAHA."
And the rest of them, having spent years of their lives with Mateo King, did not doubt that for a single second.
The room went up.
"Mateo being a bad influence on Messi." Casadó was doubled over. "I never would have thought. HAHAHA."
"That is true, though." Fermín was laughing so hard he had to hold his own ribs. "That is exactly the kind of thing that troublemaker would say."
"I saw a tweet the other day." Gavi was wheezing now. "Someone was saying Messi should just hand Mateo his phone for one day and let him run his social media. HAHAHA."
"Did you guys hear what he said about the women's team?" Balde said.
Gavi's head went back.
"This is the SECOND time he has said that. HAHAHA."
"Dude is trying to trend," Balde said.
"HAHAHAHA."
"HAHAHA, no, he actually is."
The four of them were gone, the room a mess of noise, the phone still playing to nobody.
Fermín was the first one to come down out of it, the others still going around him. He wiped at his face and let out a long breath.
"But, man." He shook his head. "Mateo is insane, I cannot lie."
Balde whistled, low and long.
"Dude. Tell me. He is about to play in a Champions League final." He said it slowly, like he was testing whether the sentence was real. "A fucking Champions League final."
Casadó sat back against the wall.
"Football is wild, bro." He shook his head, slow. "All of us started this year in the same team. All of us. In this same building. And now."
He did not finish it.
He just kept shaking his head.
The room got a little more serious after that. But the smiles stayed on all four of their faces, every one of them, because underneath the jokes and the shouting and the noise, they were all genuinely, completely happy for their friend.
Gavi was still smiling. He looked back down at the screen, and the broadcast, as if it had been waiting for exactly that moment, cut to Mateo at the table, laughing at something one of the reporters had said.
Gavi looked at him.
"Yeah," he muttered.
"I just wish we could be there," Balde said. "Watching the match. In the stadium."
Fermín laughed a little.
"With the way almost every Barcelona game has gone this season, you already know it is going to be an absolute cinema of a match."
They all laughed again at that.
Casadó groaned and let his head fall back against the wall.
"Argh. Now I really wish we were there."
Gavi laughed with them.
And then he looked back down at the phone.
At Mateo, on the screen, in a Barcelona jacket, at a table with Lionel Messi on one side of him and a wall of the world's cameras on the other.
And he said it low, almost to himself.
"I wish we were there playing, also."
While the La Masia boys were reacting to the video, so was the rest of the footballing world.
Plenty of people had come out to say things not far off what the boys had said. The timeline filled up fast.
"Chelshit is so fucked"
"i love this new messi"
"Messi PLEASE just say 'I am the best in the world' and leave the rest to me. please messi do this for me 😭😭😭"
"someone needs to get Mateo away from my Goat now now 😂😂"
The Barcelona fans and everybody friendly to them were loving every second of that press conference.
But for every single person loving it, there were just as many on the other side, the rivals and the haters, and their comments were flooding in at exactly the same rate.
"lol messi not even pretending with the humble gimmick anymore"
"told people for YEARS that messi was always just pretending. at least we get to see his true colours now 😂"
"Mateo still talking about the women's team game as if its meant to be relevant "
"oh FUCK I want Chelsea to beat these guys so badly they are so prideful its insane. so badly man fuck."
And while the Barcelona press conference was the only thing anybody was talking about, in a team bus, right now, Mateo was heading back to the hotel.
...
"Sigh."
Inside the team bus, Mateo let out a long breath through his nose, his head turned to the window.
He was looking outside. But he was not seeing anything.
The banners went past. The billboards went past. Groups of fans in shirts, walking in the road, drinking, singing, whole families of them in blue and red and blue and white. All of it slid across the glass in front of him and none of it registered at all.
Because despite the confidence at the press conference, and despite the way his friends had always described him, as if the boy had never been nervous a single day in his life, the truth right now was something else entirely.
The confident personality was just that.
A personality.
I mean. This is the Champions League final.
The Champions League final.
The pinnacle of club football. The competition so many greats of the game had gone their entire careers without ever reaching, some of the best men to ever kick a ball retiring having never once stood in the tunnel before one of these. There was absolutely no way he was not nervous.
For the past few days it was all he had been able to think about.
He closed his eyes.
"Huuuh."
The breath came out of him big, all at once, and he carried his eyes away from the window and glanced around the bus.
The bus was empty. Well. Not empty. But much emptier than usual.
Only Messi and Mateo had been needed for the press conference, so the rest of the squad had gone back to the hotel earlier. Messi, Mateo, Koeman, a handful of staff and the assistant coaches. That was all that had gone. And that was all that was on this bus.
Mateo looked around.
Messi was sitting not far from him, almost directly opposite, phone to his ear, deep in a call, his voice low and easy.
Messi glanced over.
He caught Mateo looking, and he smiled and gave him a small nod.
Mateo gave a small smile back and carried his eyes away.
He really is different.
He looked at the seat in front of him.
I mean, I get why. He has played almost everything there is to play already.
He let out a breath.
Fuck. I wish I could be like that. These nerves are killing me here.
He looked toward the front of the bus. Koeman was up there, turned around in his seat, deep in conversation with two of the staff and one of the assistants, hands moving, a folder open across somebody's knees.
Mateo sighed again and looked away.
He brought out his phone.
He was restless. Properly restless, the kind where your body will not settle no matter what you do with it. He thought about texting Olivia, and then did not really feel like it, and then did not know why he did not feel like it, and then just.
He opened Twitter. He closed it. He opened Instagram, scrolled about four posts without taking in a single one of them, and closed that too. He checked his messages. Nothing new. He locked the phone. He unlocked it again ten seconds later and opened the same apps in the same order.
He had already spoken to Olivia this morning, when she landed with the rest of the family.
And it was the rest of the family. Every single one of them had made the trip for this. Every one. Even grandma Núria, who had not left the country in years, who had not been on a plane in longer than that, and who had apparently complained about the seats for the entire flight. Nobody was missing this match. Not one of them.
From what they had said the last time they spoke, they had all arrived at a place they had rented about twenty-five minutes from the stadium, where they would stay tonight before coming to the match tomorrow.
And speaking of Olivia.
Since their date at Manuela and old man Francisco's restaurant, the two of them had gotten way, way closer. He thought about the last few days. The messages that went on until two in the morning. The way she had started calling him instead of texting. The way she said his name.
A small smile came onto his lips.
And then, just as he had finally calmed himself down, those few minutes went past in an instant and the thoughts of the match came flooding straight back in.
It was not that the confidence at the press conference had been fake. It had not been. Deep down he genuinely believed Barcelona were better than Chelsea. He believed they were going to win. There was no way, after everything they had gone through to get here, after every single hurdle, that they were going to lose now.
He would not let that happen.
But.
The problem was always the but.
Because even with all of those beliefs sitting inside him, Mateo was still nervous. He was still scared. Because tomorrow's match was going to decide whether this entire season went down as a massive success or a massive bust. Sure, they had won the league. They had won the league. Nobody could take that away from them. But if they lost tomorrow, then every single conversation about this season for the next ten years would have a but sitting in the middle of it, and he knew it, and he could not stop thinking about it.
We won the league, though. That is already.
That is already enough. That is already a season.
No. No, it is not. Not after coming this far. Not after PSG. Not after Bayern. Not after City.
We are better than them. We are. Everyone says it. The odds say it.
Everyone said things before too.
Shut up.
What if I do not score.
What if I do not touch the ball.
What if I have the worst game of my life in the biggest match of my life.
Argh.
He groaned. Not out loud. Just in his own head, a long, exhausted sound that nobody else in the bus could hear.
He turned the phone off and put it face down on his leg and looked back out of the window.
The banners went past again. He did not see them again either.
Still somewhere inside his own head, the bus finally reached its destination a few minutes later.
The InterContinental Porto. Another five-star hotel, and the base for the FC Barcelona men's team.
It did not take long to get inside, through the fans pressed at the edges of the road, past the paparazzi, the escorts moving them along, the bus pulling straight into the private parking area beneath the building.
Mateo, his mind still somewhere else entirely, followed Koeman, who had told them to come with him.
They went through a hallway that was quietly, extravagantly luxurious, and then Mateo and Messi walked into a hall that was more luxurious still.
And inside, waiting for them, were the others.
Right now, in this private meeting room of a five-star hotel in Porto, sat the entire coaching staff and every single member of the FC Barcelona men's team.
The team that, in twenty-four hours, would play a Champions League final.
...
"Okay, guys. Settle down. Settle down."
Koeman was moving to the middle of the room, both hands going, trying to bring the noise down.
Mateo drifted over toward Pedri and dropped into the seat beside him.
They shook hands.
"What's up."
"Hey."
That was the whole exchange. That was all it needed to be.
"Okay. Okay. Let's settle."
The room, all thirty-six of them, finally came down.
And yes, there were around thirty-six people in that room. And that was not even all of it. That was only the players, the coaching staff, the kit managers, and a few of the team liaisons. The real size of the FC Barcelona delegation for this trip was closer to sixty-four. Nutritionists, chefs, equipment staff, doctors, physios, security, media staff, and a great deal more, all of them scattered across the city right now, doing their own jobs.
But for Koeman, these were the people who mattered. These were the ones he wanted in front of him.
He looked around the room. And he smiled.
"Great training today, guys."
He nodded, taking them all in.
"Really. Great session. I was impressed. Everybody looked sharp, everybody looked awake, the intensity was where I wanted it. That was exactly what I wanted to see the day before."
He put his hands together.
"So. I hope at this stage I do not still need to explain what our plan for today is."
He tilted his head.
"Although, knowing we have some troublemakers in this room."
"Mateo." Piqué's voice cut clean across the whole room. "Are you hearing this?"
Mateo rolled his eyes as the entire room went up.
Koeman did not miss a beat.
"I was referring to you, Piqué."
The room detonated. Mateo was laughing hardest of anyone, half-doubled over, and even Messi, sitting in the corner, was smiling into his hand.
Piqué spread his arms wide at the injustice of it, which only made it worse.
"Okay. Okay." Koeman was still smiling. "Serious now. Serious."
He waited for it to settle.
"Nobody leaves the hotel. Nobody. I do not care how short a walk it is, I do not care who is asking, nobody leaves this building today. You eat what is on the menu the nutritionists have set. Nothing outside it. Not one thing. If you are hungry at eleven at night, you call the kitchen and you eat what they give you."
He started counting it off on his fingers.
"Hydrate. All day. I want to see bottles in hands. Not one bottle in the morning and then nothing until dinner, all day."
"Rest. Properly rest. Nothing strenuous. If you are bored, and you will be bored, that is what today is, there is table tennis downstairs. You can use the pool. You can sit around and talk rubbish to each other, which I know most of you will do anyway."
He raised a finger.
"But no basketball. No padel. Nothing where somebody is jumping, or landing, or turning sharp on a hard floor. I am not losing a player tomorrow because two of you decided to get competitive over a basketball hoop the night before a Champions League final. Eh?"
A few of them laughed.
"I am serious. I have seen it happen. I have seen a man miss a final for a five-a-side in a car park."
"Massages are available from three o'clock. Take them. Sleep early. If you cannot sleep, do not lie there fighting it and getting angry with yourself, come and find one of the staff, that is what they are here for."
He looked around the room again.
"Team meal at eight. Tactical walkthrough tomorrow morning after breakfast. That is when we talk about them. Not today."
He let that sit.
"Today you are not thinking about Chelsea."
Then his voice shifted.
"Tomo."
He stopped.
He started again.
"Tomorrow."
He paused, properly this time, and he looked around at all of them. At every single face in that room, one at a time, taking his time about it.
And then he smiled.
"Tomorrow, just be yourselves."
He let it land. And when he spoke again his voice had come all the way down, quiet, certain, almost gentle.
"That will be enough."
"Dude. I am going to kill my brother."
Koeman had let them go, and now Mateo and Pedri were up in their shared room, sorting through their bags.
"HAHAHA."
Mateo was laughing into a backpack. He was crouched over it, pulling things out, laying them on the bed. Toothbrush. Toothpaste. Phone charger. A second phone charger, because he had lost enough of them by now to have learned. Headphones. A rosary his mother had put in his bag without telling him. Two pairs of socks he did not remember packing.
He turned toward Pedri, still laughing.
"So let me get this straight."
He laughed again before he could even finish the sentence.
"Your mum wants to meet Aina?"
Pedri, doing the same thing on the other bed, groaned from somewhere deep in his chest.
"My brother went and told her I am seeing someone. Just told her. Out of nowhere. And now she is insisting that I introduce Aina to her after the game tomorrow."
"HAHAHA." Mateo dropped a sock. "I need to see that. I NEED to see that."
He straightened up.
"Have you even told her yet?"
Pedri groaned again.
"I am about to tell her now."
He picked up his phone, then paused, and looked over.
"She should be free by now, right?"
Mateo shrugged.
Pedri shifted back onto his bed, propped himself against the headboard, and started typing.
Meanwhile, Mateo had gone quiet.
His hand had found something at the bottom of the bag.
He knew what it was before he even got it out.
Why did I even bring it?
He pulled it out.
The envelope. The same envelope. His grandfather's letter, the paper a little softer at the corners now from being moved from bag to drawer to bag again, and still, after all these weeks, completely unopened.
He looked at it.
He groaned, low, and set the envelope down on the bedside table beside him.
Then he dropped the bag on the floor, shifted back onto the bed, and put his phone down next to him.
"Dude." He was already closing his eyes. "I am going to take a nap. Just wake me up when it is time for supper."
Pedri gave him a thumbs up without looking away from his phone.
And like that, the day went.
If you had walked around the InterContinental Porto that afternoon you would have found the FC Barcelona men's team scattered through every corner of it.
Four of them at the table tennis in the games room, two playing, two more waiting and shouting, a rally going on far longer than it had any right to. A group down at the pool, half of them actually swimming, most of them just floating around at the shallow end talking. In one of the common halls a loose circle had formed, six or seven of them passing a ball between their feet, nothing serious, no drills, just the oldest thing footballers do when they cannot sit still, keeping a ball off the ground and off the walls and giving each other grief every time somebody let it drop. Two of the older ones sat in armchairs by a window playing cards. Somebody was asleep in a lounge chair with a towel over his face.
Everybody doing something.
Everybody doing anything.
And every single one of them, no matter what their hands were busy with, no matter how loud they were laughing, had the exact same thing sitting at the back of their minds the entire time.
The day passed like that, all the way through, until it was time to sleep.
"She just wants to see you. It is nothing serious."
Pedri was lying back on his bed with his phone propped up in front of him, laughing, on a video call.
"You." Aina's voice came out of the speaker, and she was groaning. "Argh."
"What?"
"You could have told me this! I would have done my hair!"
"But." Pedri was smiling. "I mean, you two were always going to meet tomorrow anyway. You are both going to the same match."
"Yeah, but that is different!" Aina's voice went up. "We would have just jammed. Just, you know, ran into each other and said hello and that was that. But NOW she has ASKED for me."
Pedri's face scrunched, still smiling.
"What? How is that."
Across the room, on his own bed, Mateo was on a call of his own.
"I am telling you." Olivia was completely serious about this. "He wore it. All day. The entire day."
"HAHAHAHA."
Mateo was gone, his head back against the pillow, laughing at the ceiling.
Olivia stopped.
"What is the time?"
She said it half to herself, and then he saw her eyes flick to the corner of her screen.
"Oh."
Mateo lifted his head.
"What is wrong?"
Olivia groaned. When she said it, she said it reluctantly, the way you say a thing you would very much rather not be true.
"I am supposed to be on a meeting call with my manager at eight."
Mateo checked his own screen.
"And it is 7:59 now."
"Yeah," Olivia said softly.
Mateo laughed.
"Okay, then." He was smiling at her. "Go. Go to your meeting."
Olivia pouted at the camera.
"Hmm."
"I need to sleep anyway." He shrugged. "You know. Busy day tomorrow."
She laughed at that. Properly laughed.
Then her face went softer.
"I cannot wait to see you tomorrow."
Mateo smiled.
"Me too."
Olivia looked at him for a second.
"You are going to be great tomorrow. I know you are."
Mateo did not say anything. He just smiled at her.
"Goodnight," she said.
"Goodnight, dear."
And then Olivia stayed there. She did not hang up. Her thumb was near the button and it did not press it, and something moved across her face, something she was deciding whether or not to say.
"I."
It broke off.
"Bye," she said softly.
Mateo laughed.
"Byeee. Go to your meeting."
She laughed too, and shook her head at him.
"Bye."
And the call ended.
Mateo stayed exactly where he was, still smiling at a screen that had gone dark.
He put the phone down on his chest.
He lay back and looked at the ceiling, and the smile was still on him, and across the room he could hear Pedri and Aina still going, the two of them laughing at something, her voice small and tinny out of the phone speaker.
He lay there.
He lay there some more.
Sleep was not coming.
He sat up.
Pedri glanced over at him.
"I am coming," Mateo said. "I need a bit of fresh air."
...
"Haaaah."
Mateo groaned the second the door shut behind him.
He dragged a hand down his face, hard, from his forehead to his chin.
What is wrong with me.
He stood there in the corridor for a second with his hand still over his mouth.
Let me just go and get this fresh air. Then I really need to sleep. I need to get my head straight. I cannot be like this tomorrow.
He groaned again, quieter, and started walking.
The corridor was long and warm and carpeted and completely silent. His footsteps did not make any sound at all.
He got about halfway down it before a door opened ahead of him and one of the staff stepped out, saw him, and stopped dead.
"Mateo?"
Mateo looked up.
The man's face had gone straight to worry.
"Mateo, it is."
"I know, I know." Mateo laughed and put a hand up. "It is late, I know. I just need some fresh air. That is all. I will be back in the room soon, ten minutes, I promise."
"Yes, but you are supposed to."
"Thank you."
And he was already moving past him, already going, before the man could get the rest of it out.
He pushed through the door onto the balcony and the air hit him.
It was cool, and it moved, and it smelled faintly of the river and of a city that had been outside all day in the sun. He took a full breath of it, the first proper one he had taken in about six hours, and felt some of the tightness in his chest come loose.
Porto lay out in front of him.
The hills of it, stacked and uneven, orange rooftops going down toward the water in the dark. The lights along the far bank, doubled and shivering where they hit the river. The old bridge strung out across it, lit up in a long iron curve. Somewhere below, a long way below, there was music, and voices, and every so often the specific ragged sound of a group of men singing a football song out of tune, drifting up and then away again.
The whole city was still awake for tomorrow.
Mateo exhaled, long and slow, and let his forearms come down onto the railing.
He stayed like that.
And then, without really deciding to, he started turning the thing in his right hand. Over. And over. Corner to corner between his fingers.
He looked down at it.
The envelope.
He did not remember picking it up. He genuinely did not. He had stood up off the bed and said he needed air and walked out of that room and somewhere in the middle of all of that his hand had gone to the bedside table and taken it, and he had carried it down a corridor and out onto a balcony without once noticing it was in his hand.
He turned it over again.
His name was on the front. In pen. In handwriting he had known his entire life.
"Are you good?"
Mateo jumped.
He spun around, and his hand came off the railing.
"Messi?"
Lionel Messi was standing a few yards behind him with his hands in his pockets and a small smile on his face.
"I was heading back to my room. After talking with the gaffer."
He tilted his head slightly.
"Then I saw you come out here."
He walked over, unhurried, and came to the railing beside Mateo and put his own forearms down on it. He looked out at the city for a moment.
Then he turned his head.
"Are you good?"
"Yeah." Mateo said it instantly, laughing, the answer out of his mouth before the question had finished. "Yeah, for sure, I am good. I just came out for some air because Pedri has been laughing his head off in the room for about an hour."
He waved a hand at the door.
"Non-stop. Cannot hear myself think."
Messi just stood there.
He did not say anything. He did not push. He just smiled a little and looked back out at the lights, and let the silence sit exactly where it was.
And Mateo looked at him, at the side of his face, at the fact that he had not moved and was not going to.
Mateo's own smile went.
"Well." He turned back to the view. "I am not sure."
He let out a breath.
"Hmm," Messi said.
A moment passed.
"Is it the match?"
Mateo did not answer.
"Are you nervous? Because that is completely normal, everyone gets."
"No."
Mateo stopped.
"Yes."
He shook his head at himself.
"No. Well. Not exactly."
He was still facing outward, still looking at the water. And then he lifted his right hand off the railing, and held up the envelope, and looked at it rather than at Messi.
"This is a letter from my grandfather."
"Okay," Messi said.
"He died a few years back."
"Oh."
"An illness."
Mateo smiled. It was not a good smile. It was the small, flat, apologetic kind people make when they are handing you something heavy and want you to know they are fine to carry it.
"It is not like I am still grieving, or anything like that. I have had time."
His voice came down.
"I have dealt with that."
He turned the envelope over once in his fingers.
"It is just." He shook his head. "It is just with the game tomorrow."
He laughed, and it came out wrong, and he shook his head again.
"He would have been. Man." He blew out a breath. "He would have been so happy. You do not understand. He would have been unbearable. He would have told the entire neighbourhood. He would have told people in the street who did not ask. He would have been standing outside that stadium tomorrow with a scarf on telling complete strangers that is my grandson, that one there, number thirty-six, that is mine."
He was smiling properly now, and his eyes had started to shine at the edges.
"I mean, look at it. Look at where I am." He gestured out at the city with the envelope, at the lights, at all of it. "I am playing a Champions League final. Tomorrow. Me."
The smile stayed on his face.
And then, very softly:
"But he will not see it."
The words went out over the railing and off into the dark and nothing came back.
Mateo looked up at the sky.
"All he ever wanted." He stopped. He started again. "All he ever wanted was for me to do it. To be a footballer. That was it. That was the whole thing. He used to say it to me when I was small, before anybody thought I was going to be anything, when I was just a kid who was decent at his local club. He never once talked about it like it was a maybe."
His eyes were wet now and he did not wipe them.
"And I am. I actually am. Everything the two of us ever wanted, I am standing inside it right now."
He looked back down at his hand.
At the envelope.
"And all I have got is this."
He scoffed, one short breath through his nose, and shook his head at it.
Messi did not say anything.
He had not said anything for a long time. He was just standing there beside him with his arms on the railing, listening, the way a man listens when he has decided that the most useful thing he can do is not talk.
Mateo shook his head one more time and straightened up.
"Well. It does not matter now."
He turned to face Messi properly, and something came back into his face, hardening it.
"Do not worry about it. I am fine. This is not going to stop anything tomorrow. The promise between the two of us." He held Messi's eye. "I am telling you now. That is happening. I assure you of that."
Messi looked at him.
And he smiled.
"I know."
Mateo nodded once and turned back to the railing.
"For your grandfather," Messi said.
Mateo let out a small laugh.
"Oh. That." He waved the envelope loosely. "Do not worry about that, it is nothing, honestly I should not have even."
"I understand."
Mateo stopped.
He turned his head.
Messi was not looking at him. He was looking out at the river, at the lights on the water, and his face had gone somewhere else entirely.
"When I was small," Messi said, "I had mine too."
He paused.
"My grandmother."
Mateo did not say anything.
"Celia." Messi smiled at the name. "Nobody believed I was going to play. Nobody. And I do not mean that in the way people say it afterwards to sound good. I mean nobody. I was the smallest boy in every single team I was ever in, by a long way. Coaches used to look at me on the pitch and then look at my father like they were being asked to do him a favour."
He shook his head slowly.
"They said I was too small. Every one of them. Some of them said it to my face, some of them said it to my parents when they thought I could not hear, and I could always hear."
He turned his hand over on the railing.
"Even my parents. They worried. Not because they did not love me. Because they did. Because they could see what I was going to be up against, and they did not want to watch me get hurt by it."
He was quiet a second.
"She did not care about any of that."
Mateo was completely still.
"She was the one who took me. She would take me to training. She would argue with the coaches. There was one man who did not want to put me on, and she stood there and told him he was going to put me on, and he put me on." Messi laughed under his breath. "She fought with my parents about letting me play. She fought with the club. She fought with anybody who suggested that a boy that size had no business out there."
His voice softened.
"She never once said I might make it. She said I would. To her it was not a question that had two answers. It only had one."
He was quiet again for a moment.
"She died when I was ten."
Mateo's chest went tight.
"Ten years old." Messi nodded slowly at the water. "And I did not become anything until long after that. Everything I have ever done, every trophy, every goal, all of it. She was not there for a single one of them."
He turned his head, and he looked at Mateo, and his eyes were shining now too.
"And I am sure she knows."
He said it without any doubt in it at all.
"I know she knows I became a footballer."
Mateo stared at him.
Messi lifted a hand off the railing and pressed it flat against his own chest.
"Because she is still with me. Here."
He tapped it, twice.
"She has been here the whole time. Every match. Every single one."
He held Mateo's eyes.
"And I am sure your grandfather is exactly the same."
Mateo's throat had closed up. He could not have spoken if he had wanted to.
"I am sure he is so proud of you," Messi said. "Not tomorrow. Not if you win. Now. Right now, standing here."
He nodded at the envelope in Mateo's hand.
"So. That letter."
Mateo looked down at it.
"That might be the last words he left for you."
Messi paused.
"But it is not the last thing he left you."
Mateo lifted his head.
"You are the last thing he left." Messi's voice was quiet and completely certain. "Everything he wanted, everything he believed, he put it in you and then he ran out of time. And you are still here carrying it. Every time you walk out onto a pitch, he goes out with you. That is not a poem, Mateo. That is just what it is. That is how it works."
He looked at him.
"You have not lost him. You are what he left behind."
The air moved across the balcony.
Somewhere far below, that group of men was singing again, badly, happily, a long way off.
Messi reached out and put his hand flat on Mateo's back, between his shoulder blades.
"He already got what he wanted," he said. "You just have not read it yet."
He gave two small pats, the way you would to a younger brother.
"I am going inside."
And he took his hand back, and he turned, and he walked toward the door, unhurried, hands going back into his pockets.
The door opened.
The door closed.
And Mateo was alone on the balcony.
He stayed at the railing for a long time.
He looked out at the city, at the lights doubling on the black water, at the bridge, at the hills of orange rooftops going down toward the river, at the whole of Porto sitting up all night waiting for tomorrow.
He did not move.
Then he looked down at his hands.
At the envelope. At his own name on the front of it, in that handwriting.
His thumb found the corner of the flap.
And Mateo King opened his grandfather's letter.
A/N
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