Keep Cool, Stay Tough

Carlos from concierge was a tall, perfectly proportioned specimen of a man with kind, light brown eyes and a brilliant, dazzling smile. His eyes had lit up in recognition the moment I mentioned the sushi spread from last week that Cristiano had put together with his help.

“So you’re the one the fuss was all about? Good for you,” He encouraged with a cheeky grin.

I gave a tiny, forced smile. I had been giving nothing but tiny, forced smiles from the moment I had left London. It was mind-numbingly exhausting, and I knew the only way I could stop these forced smiles is if I went straight to the one person I never needed to pretend for.

He tilted his head, leaning forward, and dropping his voice to protect our conversation from any prying ears, “What can I do for you this afternoon, Senna?”

I mimicked his actions, my eyes going wide to emphasize the sincere urgency to my request, “I just need his room number, Carlos.”

He didn’t ask me for a reason, he simply nodded, and wrote the number down on a pad of the hotel’s fancy stationary and slid it over to me with a wink and a flash of a smile.

“Thank you,” I grabbed the note, forced one more smile, and disappeared into the nearest elevator.
Real Madrid was all set to play against Almería at the Bernabéu in a few hours, and I couldn’t bring myself to wait to see Cristiano. I chalked up never-ending press conferences and interviews for the reason why he wasn’t answering his phone. I was in such a daze that nothing else even occurred to me.

I reached the room with the matching number, took a deep breath, and gave two polite knocks. I waited, listening to muffled footsteps, and watched the door handle as it moved.

Cristiano’s smile dipped when he saw me. He didn’t have a shirt on and his hair was still wet – I assumed from a recent shower and not from a walk outside in the pouring rain. I couldn’t take my eyes off of his face as a realization abruptly occurred to me.

I arched a brow, a forced smile taunting me, “You’re not alone.”

I wasn’t asking, I was stating a fact. He stepped into the hallway shutting the door carefully after him. I stepped back from him in response, almost bracing myself to make an immediate break for it. But I didn’t. I waited wondering what he had to say.

“What happened?” He asked instead.

“You had an out,” I recalled, ignoring his question, forcing my words to stay steady and firm. That conversation burst to the forefront of my mind. That very conversation that we had over sushi in the garden that was just outside this very hotel.

He rolled his eyes, “Give me one second. Let me throw on a shirt, and let’s go downstairs and talk.”
I was already shaking my head, “No, it’s fine, really it’s fine. I made you a promise, and you had an out. I am giving you your out, just forget I was here.”

I turned to leave, but he grabbed me by the arm, easily holding me in place.

“Stop saying that, obviously something’s wrong with you, and I’m just asking you not to disappear on me so I can throw on a shirt,” Cristiano had his other hand on the doorknob, and his eyes on me as if assessing whether or not he could trust me to not move.

“Why won’t you just invite me into your room?” I asked, unsure whether or not I wanted to hear what his answer could be. I grabbed his arm and tugged it off of my own.

“Karim is napping in there,” He answered immediately.

“Liar,” I snarled.
He gave me a look; he was caught off guard by the spike of aggression in my tone. I realized I was waiting for the impassive mask to slip on his face to hide his emotions, but for some bewildering reason he was keeping his guard down and allowing me full access.

“I’m not stupid, I am a lot of things, but I am not stupid,” I muttered as if I was reminding myself more than griping about his half-assed attempt to lie to me about the secret he was holding behind that shut door. I knew I needed to walk away; I knew I needed to be able to have a shadow of a doubt to hide behind. I wanted room to be wrong about the guess I was making.

Almost as if cruelly on cue, the door handle shimmied out of Cristiano’s grip to reveal an impatient Irina looking glamorous and goddess-like in Cristiano’s missing shirt. Ironically enough, I recognized the shirt. He had been wearing this very same shirt last week, before all this chaos had befallen me when we had been sitting across each other eating and complaining as our little tradition dictated for us to do.

I smiled wide, my teeth bared, and acted as if I was carrying on a conversation without missing a beat, “So Martha sent me to remind you that if you don’t feel that tendon throb then you’re all set to play, otherwise make sure you find her so they can make the necessary adjustments to the lineup.”
He wouldn’t take his eyes off me. Even when Irina had his face in her hands, tutting and chastising him for not mentioning his imaginary throbbing tendon to her earlier. I arched a brow, disbelieving of the bizarre scene playing out before me.

“Senna, wait,” Cristiano demanded, his voice firm and bordering on an aggression almost similar to my own.

I wanted nothing more than to demand a detailed play by play of everything that had happened this past week that had led to this moment for him, but I needed a little more time to reconcile with what I had just gone through. I still had my own fresh wounds to lick.

“Have a great game tonight Cristiano, break a leg!” I yelled over my shoulder with the strangest mix of positivity and aggression ringing in my words.

“I always thought you only say ‘break a leg’ to stage actors,” I heard Irina wonder aloud just before I turned the corner. God, even her voice was glamorous.

With shaky fingers, and a course, unsteady voice, I managed to order a taxi, and got dropped off at Zoe and Chloe’s place. The house was brightly lit with music thumping, and throngs of people lining the grassy front yard. I frowned, but pressed inside, ignoring the curious looks and occasional inebriated hellos.

“You look like hell.”

“Then I look better than I feel.”

“Is it your dad?”

“It is complicated.”

“It’s the side-chick business, isn’t it? You talked to the guy and the guy said no,” Zoe assumed, “He’s a jackass who doesn’t comprehend how amazing you are!”

Tears stung my eyes, I swallowed down the lump in my throat, “Listen I just need to stay here for tonight, I don’t want to deal with…anything right now but a hot shower and even hotter coffee.”
Zoe nodded, “No yeah, give us ten minutes and we’ll have the place cleared out.”

I shook my head, “Oh god, no please no, you don’t have to do that. I just want to take a hot shower and crawl into the guest bedroom, please don’t stop the party on account of me, please, I’ll feel even more awful.”

Zoe gave me a wayward glance, “That really doesn’t seem physically possible.”

I tried to smile, but I really have no idea what my lips were trying to do. I was shivering, and soaked to the bone from the rain.

“Get upstairs, and do what you have to do, if you need clothes, our closets are yours to go through. Chloe and I will be up in ten,” Zoe ordered.

Before I could argue she ushered me towards the stairs, smacked my butt, and sent me on my way as she started calling out for Chloe.

It wasn’t all that difficult for me to tune out the party, mostly because I had so many awful memories from the last week to focus on. I almost wanted to go straight to bed without taking a hot shower, but I smelled like a wet dog, and I didn’t want Chloe and Zoe to suffer at my expense.

I sat on the bed and pulled out my phone. I scrolled through my contacts until I finally found the one I needed.

“Senna?”

“Hi, Martha.”

“How are you? You have me worried sick, why aren’t you answering my calls? Where are you?”

“I’m in Madrid. I’m with Zoe and Chloe, at their house,” I answered, “I’m sorry I didn’t answer, I’m really sincerely so sorry, but I’m back, and I just realized you’re at work, wow I have incredibly shitty timing today.”

“I don’t care about any of that,” She assured me, “Just tell me, are you alright? Why don’t you sound alright?”

“I’m alright, and even if I’m not, I’m getting there,” I promised, “I just need to know that you’re not angry with me, and I need you to know I won’t be home tonight.”

“I’m not angry with you, but I want to see you. Can you come to the Bernabéu tonight for the match?”

“I’m with Zoe and Chloe. I want to stay the night here, I’m just so tired,” I hated that my voice was beginning to break, “I’ll be by the house tomorrow, or I’ll come straight to the complex for work.”

“Okay, but I’m around if you need me, Senna. Call me, and I’m sorry. Mina was right, I should have told you, I should have ignored your dad.”

“It’s alright. Go back to work; I just wanted to touch base with you.”

By the time I got out of the shower, the music had gone away, and been replaced by a stiff English commenter discussing Real Madrid’s chances of salvaging their season. Either Zoe or Chloe had put the live game on for us to watch together.

“Come downstairs when you’ve finished, everyone’s gone, and there’s coffee, and your two best friends in the world waiting with shoulders for you to cry on,” Chloe called.

Alright, someone was still a bit tipsy.

I didn’t really want to see anyone, I only wanted to scream and sob into a pillow until I fell into that black pit that is sleep, but I felt like I owed them both some kind of explanation. I mean they stopped their house party for me.

I braced myself when I started my decent downstairs, I could give some details away without giving everything away. I had years of experience explaining away these sort of situations. A little extra exhaustion wasn’t going to dull my brain down.

So I sat there with my coffee in hand and explained about those first few days in Barcelona, reunited with my dad and sister under those awful fluorescent hospital lights. I mentioned going to visit my ex-boyfriend to tell him once and for all I didn’t love him anymore only to find out he was still in love with me, and I completely destroyed any chance of ever having a civil relationship with him. And then I got to the part of my sordid adventure where the brunt of the conversation would be levitating towards.

“He was with his ex-girlfriend, and I felt awful, and I needed a shoulder to shrug me off and tell me what he had been telling me for weeks.”

Cristiano was the only person that would always give it to me straight. Even if I got emotional, or confrontational, he would tell me the truth as he saw it, he would never feel the need to sugar coat, and that’s all I had needed from him tonight.

“He told you not to go to see your ex?” Zoe asked, in mild surprise.

I nodded, “Yeah, why?”

“Why would he be so dead-set against you going to see your ex? Why is it such a bother for him for you to get closure on the matter?” Chloe asked instead.

They looked at each other as if they both had a half of a whole that they needed to bring together for me to see.

“He didn’t want you to see your ex because he thought you might realize that you still have feelings for him, when you saw that he was still holding onto feelings for you,” Zoe eventually explained when I didn’t make a gasp of understanding.

I still didn’t gasp. I shook my head, feeling the urge to laugh, but not finding enough energy to actually complete the action.

“That’s ridiculous, trust me, that’s absolutely totally not it at all,” I confirmed.

“Then what other reason could he possibly have?”

“I have no idea, but obviously that couldn’t be it because he had his ex-girlfriend with him tonight.”
“Well, he was rebounding with his ex because he knew you were going to go and see yours,” Zoe explained, almost planting a ‘duh’ at the end of her sentence.

“He didn’t know I was going to see my ex, I mean he knew I was thinking about going, and I wanted to do it soon, but he didn’t know I had actually gone until I had stood in front of his-“ I stopped myself midsentence. Zoe and Chloe waited for me to continue.

“I have no idea how I’m going to look him in the eye ever after tonight.”

“Do you have to see him tomorrow?”

“I think so, unless he’s really mad at me in which case I won’t see him until next week,” I assumed aloud, “I don’t think he is.”

“Honestly, I think you just need to sleep on it. If you get in some rest, you’ll figure out what your next move should be,” Chloe insisted, “It always works for me.”

I nodded, finding comfort in the suggestion to sleep.

We all turned our attention over to the TV that was still playing on behind us. Chloe pressed the volume up and I found myself dozing on the couch not long after Alvero made the score 3-0.