“Marchetti?”
“Yeah.”
“The books you gave me. At training camp. The first one and every one after.”
“Yeah.”
“I have read all of them. In most of them there is a person who is carrying a truth that would change everything if they said it out loud. I have been reading about those people for nine months. I have been studying their patterns and their courage and their mistakes.” I look at the sunflower in the glass. “I am not sure when I stopped being the reader and became the character.”
He looks at me. The man who gave me a romance novel at training camp and changed how I see things and does not know it.
“Hájek.” Quiet, which is the Marchetti equivalent of shouting. “The characters always figure it out. That’s the whole point of the books.”
“The characters are braver than I am.”
“The characters aren’t real. You are. Real is hard. Real counts more.”
He stands when I don’t say anything else and I follow him to the front door.
“Whatever it is. You don’t have to carry it by yourself. That’s what a team is.”
He reaches out and squeezes the back of my neck. Quick. Two seconds. Then he is gone.
My neck is warm where his hand was. Tomáš used to do that. When I was twelve and he was deciding whether to scold me or feed me, he’d put his hand on the back of my neck and the deciding would happen and then he’d feed me. I haven’t felt that from him since I was twenty. I’ve been missing it without knowing what I was missing.
A man who fills a glass with water for a flower. A team that notices when I am gone.
I open the soup. The first bite is warm in the plainest way, the kind that comes from broth and someone carrying it across the city because they noticed you were missing.
The sunflower is in the glass and the glass catches the morning light and the petals are open.
I pick up my phone. I open Tomáš's message.
Call me when you're ready.
I type. My hands are steady. My chest is not.
I'll come to you. Tomorrow. There are things I should've told you a long time ago.
I press send. The message goes out into the city where my brother is, somewhere in a hotel in Midtown. My brother who decided what Damián was allowed to mean to me when I was sixteen. My brother who has been wrong about it for six years.
Chapter 18: Damián
The curtain edge shows Atlanta, bright and flat, the July morning already settled into its heat. Šíma’s bed is made. Corners precise, pillow centered. He left early. He’s been leaving early since we talked, giving me space the way Šíma gives space, which is without comment and without asking how long.
I’ve been awake for an hour. My phone says seven-twelve. Recovery at ten. The laptop is on the nightstand, same as last night, same as the night before. The signature page is still in it, still blank, the cursor sitting on a line where my name is supposed to go. Five days of a cursor waiting for me to do the obvious thing. The cursor’s patience is admirable. My own is less clear.
I should sign it. I’ve been telling myself to sign it for weeks. The Bundesliga is the right level. The armband is the work of twenty-seven years of focus and determination. Peter is waiting. Dad is waiting. Munich is waiting with German efficiency and a highlighted signature block. Very persuasive. Very sensible. But sensible has not once resulted in picking up the pen.
His Instagram has been dark. I’ve checked every night.
I know why I can’t sign. I’ve been saying “I don’t want to know why” for three years, and this morning the “don’t want to” part just isn’t there. What’s left is the knowing, sitting in the room like the light through the curtain. Ordinary. Not dramatic. The most ordinary and extraordinary thing I’ve felt in three years.
My phone rings. My mother.
“Damián.” Her voice is warm saying my name.
“Mamka.”