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
