She’s right. I hate it. I hate it so fucking much but she’s right.
“And he said there would be hell to pay. Whatever that means. But, fuck, Ruby, that guy is like the fucking mob or something. He’s not right in the head. Vittu perkele, I would have thrown a beer in his face too.”
“But if I don’t tell Luciano, then he’s going to think I just…left.”
“Then that’s what he has to think. Believe me, it sucks all around but you don’t have much choice here. You could make things bad for him for a bit, but he’ll get over you and move on.”
Fucking hell, why is she telling me this?
I don’t want him to move on.
I feel like my heart isn’t breaking into pieces, it’s shattering into smithereens, so small and sharp I’ll inhale them and they will kill me slowly.
I can’t think.
It hurts.
Everything hurts so fucking much that my lungs and my heart are squeezing, shrinking in on themselves, threatening to turn me into a black hole.
I stop walking and collapse to the ground in the stadium parking lot, bent over in pain, my head resting against a tire. The tears that I’ve held back for years are coming and I know there’s a chance I’ll drown.
“Ruby,” Elena whispers, crouching down beside me, putting her arms around me as the rain pours, mixing with my tears. “It’s going to be okay. We’ll drive to my aunt’s tomorrow. We’ll be out of Lisbon, you’ll have time to think. You will get over this, I promise you will. You’ll get over it and move on. It’s going to take time, but it will happen.”
But I don’t want to get over him.
I don’t want him to get over me.
I want to rewind time and bring everything back to the way it was before I got those beers, before I made the biggest mistake of my life by acting on my fucking impulse, that shit that always gets me in trouble. I dug my own grave this time.
“I’m in love with him,” I say to her, sobs wracking my throat. “Doesn’t that mean something?”
She gives me a sad smile. “It just means that everything is going to hurt more. That’s what love is. You open up, you let it in, you take the risk of getting hurt. Then your heart is either hardened or softened by your suffering.”
Hardened, I think.
How could my heart not turn to steel after this?
Why would anyone let it grow soft, just so it can hurt again?
“Come on, we’re getting wet,” she says to me. She stands up and helps me to my feet. “I have a bottle of vodka back at the hotel with your name on it.”
She puts her arm around my shoulder and leads me off through the parking lot to the train.
I’m leaving Luciano Ribeiro behind.
Seventeen
Luciano
This game is garbage.
No matter what I fucking do, I can’t get the ball in the goal. None of us can. I’d like to say that Nacional’s goalie is just being exceptional today, and perhaps that’s how some of the media and fans will spin it, if they don’t feel like hating on us. But the truth is, we’re lacking the focus today. There’s no skill in our passes, no confidence in our kicks. If we rose up to be the better team then we’d have a chance. But we didn’t rise.
On the other hand, they didn’t rise either. They never got past our goalie and I did manage to intercept a few of the balls. So there’s that.
But to have five minutes left in the game with both of us tied at zero, well, that doesn’t instill a lot of hope in me. At least the fans still have hope. No one has left early, they’re all just waiting to see if we can work some magic and get a goal at the last second. One goal is all it will take.
I glance up at the stands where I know Ruby is, but to my surprise, the seats are empty.
What the fuck?
Concentrate on the game, I tell myself. That’s all that matters right now.
Even so, that stings. Did she leave because she was bored? Because she knew we weren’t going to win? She had seemed so enthusiastic, was even wearing my jersey, which honestly was the sweetest thing anyone had ever done for me, and yet now she left?
It makes no sense.
I try to forget it for now, to concentrate on the game, but time flies and even though I’m trying to do my job, scrambling to score a goal, the game comes to an end with a tie being called.
No one is happy. A tie isn’t much better than losing, and a zero tie does nothing to help with the points. The silver lining is that the other team has nothing to gloat about. You both suck.
I exhale, running my hands over my face. Fucking hell, I wish I had given Ruby a good game, not one that was so bad she left.
Maybe she went to get a beer. Maybe she went to the washroom.
With Elena too?
“That was a bag of dicks,” Benedito says to me, as we walk off the pitch.
“Tell me about it.”
I make the mistake of looking at my father when we passed by his seats. I tried to ignore him the whole game, but I’m not sure it worked as well as it did last time.
And now, well of course my father is happy.
He’s grinning at me, rather maliciously, and giving me two thumbs up.
That asshole. Always happy when I lose.
We do the usual song and dance of giving soundbites to the media, and I
