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I join her, laying next to her at an angle.
“You really are good.” She says.
I smile quietly, satisfied.
“I can feel your smug smile from here.” She tells me without looking at me.
“It is one of my more powerful smiles, so I’m not surprised.”
She laughs softly in return. “How’d you get into soccer anyway?”
My throat dries up, momentarily choking me. I have to clear it loudly to get it rehydrated.
We’re getting into the kind of territory I avoid at all costs, preferring to keep it locked away inside me rather than out in the open where I fear it might destroy me.
“My mum and dad.” I tell her and try to leave it there.
“I assumed,” She says dryly, “Were they fans?”
“Yes.” I reply, not expanding any further.
She slowly flips until she’s lying on her stomach, holding her weight up on her forearms as she looks at me.
“I know what happened to them,” She says, “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to pry, I was just wondering what your soccer story was. We all have one. We don’t have to talk about it if you’re not comfortable though.”
She lays back down and we sit in companionable silence for a couple of minutes, still catching our breaths.
I don’t know if it’s the company or the backdrop of having dusk set in the great big sky above us, but either way it opens a sliver of vulnerability within me.
“They met at a match.”
“Did they?” She asks, clearly ready to adapt to me as I lead the way in this conversation.
“Yeah, an Arsenal match. Both of them were generational fans. They met in the stands and it was love at first sight. They never spent a moment apart after that.”
“After they got married, they were thrilled when they became pregnant with me – these are my mother’s words by the way, not mine. I’m telling you exactly as she used to tell everyone this story – they knew they’d secured the next generation of Gooners.”
“From the moment I knew how to walk, they put me in football classes and summer camps. And I loved it. It was something we could bond over my entire life, you know? It wasn’t a chore or something I dragged my feet to when I was a kid. I loved going to practice and coming back to tell them about every tackle, every pass, every goal. They listened like I was talking about the Premier League and not youth football.”
She stays quiet, listening to me intently.
“And then it so happened that I was good. Really good. I think unexpectedly good. I kept pushing myself and I got even better. The family business definitely isn’t football, but it became the most obvious career path for me and they were over the moon about it. Talk about the perfect story – you meet at a game, fall in love, get married, have a son, and your son turns out to be a football star with hopes to play for Arsenal one day.”
“My parents were pretty fucking amazing people and they were at their best, at their happiest when they saw me play. And they always prioritized seeing me play, whether it was practices or matches, because that’s also the type of parents they were.”
“They built their entire lives around me, including their holidays. With me away at boarding school, they rarely took a holiday that didn’t include visiting me in some way. So, two years ago they decided to do a road trip starting in London, going through France and ending in Switzerland where they’d come to watch one of our big rivalry games.”
“On the border between France and Switzerland and two days before they were due to come see me play, their car spun out of control in the rain and hit a tree. They both died on impact.”
“The last time I talked to them, they FaceTimed me from Dijon. They were doing a mustard tasting of all things, laughing and enjoying themselves. I wish I’d told them how much I loved them, but I didn’t. I wished I’d gotten to tell them goodbye.”
She inhales sharply, finally turning her head to look at me. There’s moisture in her eyes but I can tell she works to smother it.
“That’s my football story. Plus a little more.”
She reaches a hand out and squeezes mine once, hard, before releasing it.
“I’ve already told you how sorry I am so I won’t repeat it because I’m sure that’s not what you want to hear right now, but I just want to say they sound like they were really amazing parents. You were lucky to have them.”
