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Sophia nods. “She’s like a sister.”
I get up and grab two more beers, concerned she’s going to ask about my family next. I’d need to be way drunker than I am now to willingly wade into that mess. If she thinks my relationship with my former teammates is dysfunctional…
“What about you?” I ask once I’ve cracked a new bottle open.
Sophia raises an eyebrow. “What about me? Anything you want to know, you could just look up online.”
“Well, I didn’t. Where did you grow up?”
“Here. Close to Kluvberg. My parents have an estate outside the city.”
An estate. Jesus.
“My dad played for FC Kluvberg. My mom played for the nearest women’s team. The same one Saylor is on now.” She studies me closely as she takes another bite of pizza, like she’s testing my reaction to that information.
“I heard they played,” I tell her. “I didn’t know where.”
“I almost went to university somewhere else. You know, just to…get away from it all. The attention’s not just here, especially since Adler went through his fuckboy phase.”
I cover my smile with my beer, imagining my stoic captain’s reaction to his little sister talking about his fuckboy phase. “Why didn’t you?”
“I don’t know. I like Kluvberg. It’s home. All my friends were staying here. There was nowhere else I really wanted to go. So…I stayed.”
“Photographers work all over the world. You could still go.”
“I’ve thought about it. I’m in my last semester before I graduate. But I’m hoping to get a position at the paper I’m interning at right now. If I do, I’ll stay.”
“Even though you’ll still have to deal with the attention?”
Sophia picks at the damp label on her bottle. “I don’t know if it’s the attention I hate. I hate how it makes me an outsider in my own family, I guess. Like there’s some secret club I’m not a part of. A secret club I don’t want to be a part of. I never would have been as famous as Adler is since the women’s league doesn’t receive the same attention as the men’s. But I could have played, and people always want to know why I didn’t. It’s like I had this identity forced on me, and I’m forever getting judged for not accepting it. And it’s my name. Not something I can easily separate from. When I go to the bank or the post office or meet with a professor, it always comes up. So, I either have to lie, then wonder if they look up pictures of me afterward and realize I did, or accept it and talk about it. It’s just…” She sighs. “It’s exhausting.”
“Is that why you started taking photos? Because someone else is the center of attention?”
Sophia’s eyebrows rise before she takes a drink from her beer. Somehow, she manages to make sitting cross-legged on a mattress, eating greasy pizza, look classy. “I never thought of it that way. But, yeah, maybe. It took me a while to decide what to study at university. I’d gotten a Polaroid camera for my tenth birthday and loved it. I don’t—I don’t do great with change. So, I guess I like the idea of knowing a moment is captured forever, that you can always look back at it.”
“That is cool,” I agree.
We continue talking, finishing the pizza and our second beers. Sophia tells me more about her university classes and stories from her childhood, casually dropping names of legends that I would die to be in the same room as. But I understand Sophia’s feelings more now. For her, that would be like me meeting a famous chef or Picasso. You can understand why someone is revered for their accomplishments, but not appreciate them the same way someone else might.
I’m shocked when I check my phone and see that it’s already after midnight. Clocks are another thing my apartment is missing. I have practice at eight tomorrow, and I’ll probably have a hangover from the beers I blew through. But I don’t regret anything about tonight.
I needed this—a night to relax and do a few things I shouldn’t. It’s the closest to normal I’ve felt since arriving here, aside from the time spent playing soccer.
Sophia looks equally surprised when I tell her the hour.
“Did you drive?” I ask.
We walked to get the paint and the pizza, and I hadn’t thought to ask when she first showed up. I was too stunned that she actually did.
“No.” She covers her mouth as she yawns. “I only live a few blocks away.”
That’s…knowledge I didn’t need. I’m not spending time with Sophia because it’s convenient, but I don’t want to know she’s basically just down the block. It’s temptation, which I’m terrible about ignoring. Especially where she’s concerned.
“I’ll walk you home.”
Sophia groans, sprawling back on the bed. Her blonde hair spreads like a halo around her as she yawns. “I wish I’d driven,” she mumbles. “I don’t feel like walking.”
“Then, just stay here. I have practice at eight, so I’ll be up early. As long as you don’t care about that…”
