Shoulder to Shoulder

After arriving at Stamford Bridge, Elena made her way to the ticket office. She gave her name and the young man at the window, retrieved an envelope for her. While she walked away, Elena opened the envelope and out fell a ticket, which she presented to the security guard who looked her up and down suspiciously. A few seconds later, he stepped to the side, leaving the entrance free for Elena to walk through.

She made her way inside and found her seat pretty quickly. Elena sat down and looked out across the stadium, which was filling up quickly. Around her, there weren’t many people, but that may have been because there was still around 45 minutes before the match started.

As the time passed, the area surrounding Elena began filling up, the seat next to her remained empty right up until about 10 minutes before kick off.

Elena felt something knock into her shoulder.

“I’m so sorry,” a soft Northern Irish accent spoke.

“Oh, it’s no problem,” Elena said to the woman, who she instantly recognised to be Christine Bleakley, Frank Lampard’s other half.

“I’m Christine,” she said, offering her hand to the younger woman.

“Nice to meet you, I’m Elena.”

“Who are you here with?” Christine asked, turning her upper body slightly to face Elena.

“I’m here with Juan Mata, he’s my…boyfriend.” She said quietly, still feeling a little embarrassed saying it out aloud. Elena tucked a curl that had fallen out of the bun on the top of head behind her ear. The curl was persistent and refused to stay behind her ear.

“Do you need a hair pin?” Christine began digging around in her bag and retrieving a couple of black Kirby grips from it.

“Thank you so much, you’re a lifesaver!”

Not long after, the match got under way. Without wasting any time, Chelsea were 2-0 up within 10 minutes of the match starting thanks to defenders Gary Cahill and Ryan Bertrand.

Though it was in the 16th minute, Juan passed to Torres just outside the box, before making a run forward. With a nice 1-2, Fernando passed the ball into Juan’s path and he proceeded to slide it into the bottom left hand corner. Elena clapped and cheered with the rest of the home crowd. As he celebrated, Juan kissed his hand and then pointed up to where Elena was sitting. Christine playfully nudged her in the side while she blushed profusely. From then on it, was a Blues Cruise, the Wolves team were outplayed by Chelsea in all areas of the pitch – barely getting a look in.

Over the course of the match, she began to chat with Christine, who was very welcoming. She was a charming, funny woman; Christine gave Elena a few pointers on how to deal with being a footballer’s partner. Towards the end of the match, they both exchanged numbers. “If you ever need anything or just want to go out for coffee, give me a call.” Christine smiled and hugged the younger woman before she left her seat.

After the match was over, Chelsea winning 6-0 in the end, Elena went meet Juan who drove her home again. “Thank you so much,” she said as they reached her house. She leaned over to kiss him, and as their lips met, she suddenly realised that there was only a week and a half until she left London. When it dawned on her, she let her lips linger on his for a second longer than usual and pulled him into a hug. He kissed her temple before she jumped out of the car and went into the house.

She goes into the house, and doesn’t really feel like talking to anyone, so she goes straight up to her room. Elena begins to feel sadder at the prospect of leaving, every year before she leaves she gets a little down, it wasn’t just the fact that she wouldn’t get to see Juan as often; she would miss her parents, her job, her friends, and London itself.

The next 9 days passed unbelievably quickly, and though she’d had the chance to meet up with Juan, her friends and spend time with her parents – she still wasn’t ready to leave.

The night before her move, she’d gone over to see Lila, then before she went home, she popped in to see Juan.

When she knocked on the door, it took a few seconds for him to answer. She didn’t even say hello, she just pulled him into a hug.

“I thought you weren’t going to have any time to come and see me before you left?” he asked, pulling her inside.

She shrugged off her jacket, and sat down. “I finished packing a bit earlier and I came over to this side of London to drop a couple of things off to Lila, so I came to see you first.”

Just as she finished her sentence another woman walked into the room. She had dark curly hair and didn’t look much older than herself or Juan.

Juan jumped up from the sofa and put his arm around the woman’s shoulder. “Elena, this is my sister, Paula.”

“Paula, so nice to meet you!” Elena said, as the young Spanish woman pulled her into a hug.

“Elena, I’ve heard so much about you,” Paula said, making Elena look to Juan who diverted his gaze as his cheeks flushed pink. Elena playfully punched him in the arm and smiled at Paula.

Paula was lovely; she had the same polite, unassuming manner as her brother; she was really funny, Elena took to her instantly. The three sat and talked for sometime, usually Elena would have been nervous meeting a member of her boyfriend’s family, but she felt at ease.

It got to around 10pm and Elena realised that she should probably get going. She got up and said bye to Paula before turning to Juan. Quietly, Paula slipped out of the room to give the two some privacy.

“I’m really going to miss you,” Elena said into Juan’s chest as he hugged her.

He kissed the top of her head, “I’m going to miss you too. It’s going to be odd not seeing you so often, but we’ll make it work.”

Her throat began to tighten as she held back tears. It hit her like a punch to the gut that she was leaving the day after. “I’ll call you when I’ve settled in. I promise.” She said making her way to the door.

“I’ll miss you so much, don’t have too much fun without me!” He smiled, kissing her once more before she left for Lila’s. And with that, she left him; unsure of the next time she’d actually get to see him in the flesh.