Chapter 16: Damián
The contract is in my inbox.
Peter sent the formal version last night while I was at the restaurant watching Tobík walk away from a table I ruined. The signature block is highlighted in yellow. The salary numbers are large. The clauses about media obligations and image rights run six pages in dense German. Everything is what I expected and what my father expected and what Peter expected and what the club has been expecting for ninety days while I produced a great many polite sentences about timing.
I read the first page. I get halfway through the second. I am sitting in a hotel room in Atlanta with the best offer of my career open on a screen and I do nothing with it.
I close the laptop.
The Atlanta morning through the window is already warm. Eight thirty and the skyline has that copper-glass look it gets before the heat settles in for the day, the buildings catching light in a way Munich buildings don’t because Munich is not built for this kind of sun. Somewhere across the city, a man walked home alone last night because I interrupted him at a dinner table infront of his teammates. In front of my teammates. He hasn’t texted. I haven’t texted. The conversation that needs to happen is sitting between two phones that are not making sounds.
I drink water from the bottle on the desk. I open the curtains the rest of the way. I sit back down. The contract is still in the email. I don’t open it again.
Šíma walks in with a coffee in each hand. He gives me one without asking if I want it.
“You didn’t come down for breakfast.”
“I wasn’t hungry.”
He sits on the edge of his own bed. He takes the lid off his coffee. He blows on it. He does the thing Šíma does, which is be present in a room without filling it with talk. I’ve roomed with him on three continents. He can sit in silence longer than anyone I’ve ever met and make you believe he’s doing it for your benefit.
“Vež.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m going to ask you a question. You’re going to give me a real answer. We’ve known each other for almost fifteen years and I’m not going to ask twice.”
Šíma in serious mode is rare. I’ve seen it once or twice in fifteen years, like the time he sat a young player down about a drinking problem. Šíma can be light because he chooses to be light.
“Ask.”
“What’s going on with you and Tobík?”
The question lands. My coffee is halfway to my mouth. I set it down.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Vež.”
“He’s Tomáš‘s brother. There’s no ‘what’s going on.’”
Šíma takes a slow drink of his coffee. He looks at me. He does the thing where he just looks. Fifteen years of friendship and I have never once won against the look.
“Last night, I watched him leave. I watched you follow then walk back to the table and not eat. I watched Tomáš ask you twice if you were okay and I watched you say yes.” He pauses. “You think I haven’t been watching since we’ve been here, but I have.”
I have apparently been broadcasting from the back line for days, and the only person who didn’t receive the signal was me.
“Šíma…”
“I’m still asking. What’s going on with you and Tobík?”
The silence.
“Šíma, I don’t know what to say.”
“Give me the truth. That’s the only thing you’ve ever had to say to me.”
A long pause.