Adrien
She kept the drawing.
The warmth that flooded my chest at that was unwelcome.
So she’s beautiful? You’ve been with plenty of pretty girls.
“The waiter gave it to me,” Janey said haughtily. “I meant to throw it away, actually.”
“But you didn’t.”
She crossed her arms. “Did you draw this?”
I nodded. “Still Life with Hair and Book.”
“God, you’re obnoxious.” She snatched the napkin and tossed it onto the table.
“But you do remember me,” I said, sitting back and lacing my fingers behind my head. I kicked my feet up on another chair. “I thought so.”
“Can we please start the interview?”
“Ask.”
She huffed a breath and composed her face. “You live here with your sister?”
I nodded once, slowly. “And my mother. I help my mother take care of Sophie, and vice versa.”
“And your father…?”
“He went to Vietnam in ’53.” I held her gaze steadily. “He didn’t come back.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that,” she said, her voice warming. “You are the sole provider for your mother and sister, then?”
“I am.”
Now her beautiful face softened and I felt another question I wasn’t prepared to answer readying on her lips. I flashed her the smile that Brigitte said could disarm any woman.
“Your French is very good,” I said. “For an American.”
She straightened her shoulders. “Merci.”
“How did you become fluent?”
“My nanny was French,” she said. “She taught me from the time I was a baby, and I continued studying it through school.”
“A nanny, eh? So you have money?”
She bristled. “That’s a personal question, and not relevant to our interview.”
“What does your father do?”
“He owns a vineyard, but—”
I snorted a laugh. “A vineyard? In California? Did he send you to France to learn the secrets of making good wine?”
Janey slapped her pencil on her notebook. “Our wine is perfectly good, thank you very much. Award-winning, if you must know, and our winery is quite successful, though I have no idea why I’m explaining this to you.”
“Well, now we’re even,” I said.
“Even?”
“The rich, arrogant, footballer being interviewed by the rich, stuck-up American girl.” I held my hands out. “I like a level playing field.”
She clenched her teeth. “You are truly infuriating. If we could get back to the interview…?”
“I suppose.”
“You don’t like talking about yourself?”
“Not especially.”
“Then why agree to this?”
“For the team,” I said, and heaved a sigh. “Go on. Let’s get it over with.”
She nodded slowly. “Antoine tells me you’re a medical student. Is it difficult maintaining your studies while playing soccer professionally?”
“I’m only semi-pro.”
“Even so, do you have time to devote to your studies while playing a full season of soccer?”
“For now,” I said. “Next year, I begin the practical training in a hospital. There won’t be time for both.”
“What happens to soccer then?” she asked. “Or is it med school you quit?”
I stiffened at the question. No one had ever asked me that before. Everyone—my team, my sister, my mother—they all assumed I’d quit med school if I had a shot to make it to Ligue 2 or higher. The truth rose up but I bit it back and fought for another diversion.
“Paris Central is Division 3. But we’re two points from the promotion zone, which means—”
“Wait, the promotion zone? Points…?”
“Yes,” I said slowly. “We get points. Two for a win, one for a draw, and none for a loss. The top three teams with the most points advance to the higher league. The four teams with the lowest are relegated down. Goal differentials decide ties...”
She scribbled furiously to get this all down.
I furrowed my brows. “You’re not familiar with the EUFA tier structure of European football?”
“I don’t know much about the game at all.”
I sat up straighter, the perfect diversion having fallen into my lap. “Nothing?”
Janey shrugged. “I know it’s a long game, and hardly anyone scores.”
I had to bite back a laugh. “Why did Antoine send you to interview me?”
“The other guy was sick.” She raised a brow. “Why? Not used to having someone unfamiliar with your glory and achievements? Sorry to disappoint, but I’m only here to get a little background on you, and talk about your upcoming match against….” She consulted her notes. “Consolat Marseille.”
I burst out laughing. I loved her prickliness. Her refusal to flatter me like so many others—men and women—did was like a goddamn breath of fresh air after breathing in the stench of my own ‘talent’ for so long. I wanted to break off the cocky asshole act I kept up to keep people at a distance. I wanted to talk to this girl. But I couldn’t talk to anyone. Not about the truth.
“Here’s your article,” I said, “Paris Central wins. The End.”
“Thanks to you?” she asked. “The star forward?”
I let a sly grin lift one corner of my mouth. “Do you even know what a forward does?”
“Runs a lot? Tries to kick a ball into a net?”
Another laugh burst out of me. “Yes, that’s true. Forwards do a lot of running. But I’m not just a forward. I’m the center forward. The striker.” I leaned over the table, and dropped my voice an octave. “Strikers do all the scoring.”
Janey shot me a look and then checked her watch. “Three minutes.”
I blinked. “What is three minutes?”
“How long it took you to hit on me, thereby turning this interview into the same as every other interview, where I’m not taken seriously and now just want to leave as soon as possible.”
My smile faltered and I sat back in my chair. She’d been burned before. Of course she had. The way men talked about and to women sometimes made me want to scream. But if it turned me into just another jock to her, so be it.
“You don’t know anything about football and you clearly don’t care, so why are you here at all?”
“That’s a good question,” she said. “I want to cover stories of substance…”
“Ah, I see. A bunch of guys kicking a ball up and down a pitch is beneath you.”
“It’s the story I have to write with the hopes of getting something better.”
“Better…”
Something better than football. A long-buried longing tried to rise up in me but I quelled it with practiced ease.
“You’re quite honest, aren’t you?” I asked.
“Look, I’m sure soccer—”
“Football.”
Her jaw clenched. “I’m sure football is very important to you and to France and to… all of Europe. But there are much bigger things happening in the world right now. Important, awful, history-making things that I’d rather be writing about than a ball game.”
She sat back, as if bracing herself for me to kick her out, not realizing she had put that deep longing of mine into words when I never had before.
“I agree,” I said, and turned my gaze from Janey to the kitchen window where Sophie was laboriously pouring a glass of lemonade from a heavy pitcher. “There are more important things in the world. More important things to do and be.”
“Like a doctor?” Janey asked softly.
My gaze dropped to the tape recorder’s slowly spinning wheels, ready to capture my words and make them real, let them out of this small backyard and share them beyond this American girl.
She leaned closer, into my space. “What happens to your medical studies if Paris Central moves up to Ligue 2?”
I met her gaze and held on. “They stop.”
“Is that what you want?”
“Off the record?”
“Sure.”
I struggled with how to answer, or whether to answer at all. This girl’s honesty was like an invitation for me to do the same.
Finally, I said, “Off the record: there are more important things in this world than what I want. On the record, Janey Martin, there is nothing more important than football.”
A silence fell and I realized we were both leaning over the table, less than a foot away from one another. I had a fleeting idea that Janey was diving deep into my eyes to read my thoughts.
The back door screeched open, jerking us apart. I tore my gaze from hers and smiled at my sister. “That looks good, Sophie.”
She crutched down the step to the patio, a tall glass of lemonade clutched precariously in one hand.
“I poured one for you, Adrien, but I can only carry one at a time.”
“I’ll have it in the kitchen in a bit,” I said. Her answering smile for me was sweet and adoring, instantly reminding me of my responsibilities to her and my mother.
But that doesn’t mean I can’t see Janey again.
I reached over and pushed ‘stop’ on Janey’s tape recorder and turned to her. “Saturday then?”
She coughed in surprise. “What happens Saturday?”
“We conclude the interview. You need to see a football match firsthand or your article is going to sound like a bunch of amateurish gibberish. You want to be taken seriously?”
She pressed her lips together for a moment. “Yes.”
“So do I. Saturday at noon at Stade Jean-Marc. We’ll finish the interview after.”
“Antoine wants the article in two days,” she said.
“Tell Antoine I said to wait.”
She took another long pull from the lemonade, her pride not letting her say yes to me so quickly.
“Saturday then,” she said. “For the article.”
“Right,” I said, holding her gaze. “For the article.”
She finished off the lemonade and set the glass down. “Thank you very much, Sophie. It was just what I needed.” She gathered her belongings and turned to me. “See you.”
“You have a drop of lemonade on your chin,” I said.
“Where?” Her hand flew to her mouth. “No, I don’t…”
I held out the cocktail napkin with my sketch of her, my brow raised.
Janey dropped her hand from her dry chin, fuming. I expected her to flounce away. But she snatched the napkin out of my hand, dropped it into her bag, and coolly walked away.
I wasn’t in love with her, but in that moment, I knew someday I would be.