Prologue: Tobík
The phone is still warm against my ear when I say it again.
“Drafted, Mami. They drafted me.”
She’s crying. Not the quiet kind. The full kind, the kind she’ll deny tomorrow when I tease her about it. I can hear my grandfather in the background asking her to repeat what I said.
“I heard you the first time, Tobiáš, I heard you,” she says, laughing through it. “Tell me everything. Did you speak to them?”
“The call came and I didn’t move for ten seconds. Tomáš had to shove me.”
“He shoved you?”
“He said answer the phone, idiot, they’re offering you a career.”
She laughs that bright, gasping laugh she does when Tomáš is being Tomáš. “And? What did you say?”
“I said thank you. About nine times. My English wasn’t good, Mami. I think I told them I was very honor.”
“Oh, Tobiáš.”
“I think they understood.”
“Of course they understood. You could have said nothing and they would have been lucky to have you.” Her voice shifts lower. “Your father would have been the loudest one at that party. You know that.”
“I know, Mami.” I feel a lump in my throat thinking what it would have been like if my father were still alive.
“Have you eaten?”
“I’ve eaten.”
“Real food?”
“There were pierogies. I think they were pierogies. Tomáš made them or someone made them. They were pierogie-adjacent.”
“Tobiáš.”
“They had filling and were warm. I’m not asking more questions.”
She laughs. My grandfather says something in the background, and she relays it. “He says he’s not crying.”
“Tell him I can hear him not crying.”
“He says go celebrate. Call tomorrow. Call every day.”
“I will.”
“You’re going to be wonderful.”
“I love you, Mami.”
I close my eyes and lean against the hallway wall. Drafted. The word keeps tasting new. I say it again, and I can feel the shape of my life changing.
I walk back into the living room and Damián’s there. He must have arrived while I was on the phone. He’s standing in the doorway with Šíma and two other guys from the national team, beer in hand. When I come around the corner, he glances at me, and I see the double-take. He hasn’t seen me in a couple of years. Years when I have grown taller and bigger. He lifts his beer toward me. Not a toast. Just acknowledgment, but his eyes stay on me a beat longer than the gesture requires.
Then Tomáš grabs me.
He lifts me off the ground. Not a hug. A lift. My feet leave the floor. The room cheers. I’m laughing, the kind where my ribs hurt. For a second, I’m twelve again and he’s seventeen and the tallest person in the world.