Luciano is a little more relaxed too. He answers my questions (though it helps that I keep them strictly about the game) and by the time we’re finishing up, he tells me that I can email him any time if I want to know more. He writes it down on the back of the restaurant’s matchbook and tosses it across the table at me. I catch it with one hand.
It’s then that a family comes into my line of sight, a little boy shuffling towards the table from the encouragement of his parents, his mother’s hands on his shoulders, guiding him. He stops in front of Luciano, who was just about to get up, and Luciano changes before my very eyes.
While he’s been nothing but kind to me, there’s been this underlying tension coming from him this whole time, making him much more serious than I had thought he’d be. But the minute he sees the little boy and crouches down to his level, talking to him in quick Portuguese, I see the Luciano everyone talks about. Charming, loose, affable.
He signs the boy’s notepad and then poses for a photo with him, then shakes the parents’ hands, happily talking to them for a few minutes before they go back to their dinner table.
After that, the three of us leave the restaurant, stepping into the cool night air.
“Well, it was a pleasure to meet you Ruby,” Luciano says to me, rather abruptly.
“Going so soon?” Marco asks. “I thought perhaps we could go to a bar.”
“I’m tired. I think I’ll go home,” Luciano says.
“At least let me drop you off.”
Luciano waves him a way. “I’ve got a car waiting.”
He meets my eyes for a moment and gives me a faint smile before he turns and walks away.
And that’s when it hits me, why I’m so strangely drawn to him.
He wears a mask.
And so do I.
I just don’t know yet which part of his personality he tries to hide.
I know I’d like to find out.
Four
Luciano
“Motherfucker,” I swear.
“Sorry,” Damien says to me. “It’s a good pain, though.”
“Don’t tell me what good pain is,” I say through grinding teeth, wincing as he pushes at my shoulder blade. “Pain is pain.”
“As your physical therapist, that’s my job,” he says. “Good pain doesn’t mean it’s enjoyable, it means that some good will come out of it, yes?”
He pushes at my muscles again and I close my eyes, trying to breathe. Even though I know these sessions have been helping me, and that I’m close to being able to start full-on practice again, my appointments with Damien are the worst parts of the week. The man gets paid to hurt me while smiling about it. Sadistic fuck.
“There, done,” he says, and I slowly sit up on the table in the complex’s physio room. Sporting didn’t make it to the Primeira Liga finals, nor did we qualify for the Champions League, so everyone’s vacation has officially started. Of course, the entire team is depressed and the Sporting fans are angry since things have been going downhill for us for a while, but there are some people out there pinning the whole thing on me and my fucking shoulder.
To put it mildly, I can’t wait to get back in the game and see if they’re right.
And for this smiling asshole to stop causing me pain on purpose.
That said, I leave the physio session feeling better than I have in ages, and I get in my BMW, heading back into Lisbon. Perhaps Damien is right and all the pain is starting to be worth it. All I know is I can’t wait to get my life back on track. Being injured has really fucked with my head, more so than my body. I haven’t felt like myself in a really long time, which makes me realize how much of my identity and who I am as a person is wrapped up in this sport. It’s obvious now that without it, I’m not sure who I am.
I’m just pulling onto Avenida da Liberdade, the street where my apartment is located, when Marco calls my cell. I answer it, putting him on speakerphone.
“Brother,” I greet him. “Aren’t you supposed to be on a plane to Paris?”
“I’m at the airport,” he says, muffled noises in the background. “Listen, I was wondering if I could do you a favor.”
That’s a way of putting things. “You want to do me a favor?”
“Yes. Look. It’s about Ruby.”
I frown. Marco and Ruby have been dating for about a month now. After the interview she did, I guess she and Marco really hit it off. I suppose that was partly my fault since I suggested she stay in Lisbon longer on Marco’s behalf, but really I can’t take the credit. They went on a lot of dates, and suddenly it was more serious than I thought it would be.
See, Marco doesn’t have a lot of long-term girlfriends. Players like him usually don’t. But with Ruby, he seems to have slowed down just a little.
Can’t say I blame him, even though she’s not his usual type. While she’s absolutely gorgeous, deeply sexy, and fun to be around (okay, perhaps I need to rein it in a bit), she’s also living in a hostel and seems a bit lost in her life, like she went out with the tide and isn’t sure how to swim back in. Marco is usually attracted to those who already have a lot of success, models and the like. He likes people who are either going places, or have already arrived.
I suppose he sees that in Ruby, her potential to go places. I read the interview she did about me and she’s very good at what she does. I
