Adrian

“Adrian, wait!”

I stopped at the street corner, bracing myself for what I knew was coming.

Janey ran to stand before me, looking impossibly beautiful with her cheeks flushed pink and her blue eyes meeting mine with an understanding I’d never seen in anyone else before.

“You have to go to this,” she said, pressing Dr. Recamier’s speech pamphlet in my hand. “This is just what you want, isn’t it? To help on the world’s stage? This could be the start of something…big.”

“I can’t, Janey,” I said. “The final match is that day. There will be other speeches. Other chances…”

“Adrian,” she said, and I loved my name in her mouth. Loved the sound of it in her American accent.

Her French is so good; she’d make an excellent translator for Dr. Recamier’s cause…

I blinked to see her staring up at me expectantly.

“Forget it,” I said, bitterness clawing up my throat, making my words thick. “I can’t…let anyone down.”

I can’t let my mother and sister starve.

“But Adrian—”

“I said, forget it, Janey. I have to play.”

She pressed her lips together, likely to bite back stubborn protests. I loved that about her, too. How tough she was, and how she didn’t fall at my feet like some of the other girls. She wasn’t afraid to really talk to me. I’d been hiding behind my reputation for so long, I’d forgotten what it was like to really be with a girl, instead of wearing one on my arm.

But I couldn’t let her get too close either. Janey came from money. A vineyard and award-winning wine. A rich father who paid her way through everything. I didn’t begrudge her that, but…

If she knew the whole truth, she’d be ashamed to be seen with me.

“I understand,” Janey said finally. “But I’ll feel like a fraud when I finally turn in this article.” She gazed up at me and her own protective shell came down to let me see the softness beneath. “There’s so much more to you than football. It’s a shame no one will see it.”

“They can’t,” I said. “No one can.”

Including you.

She nodded then her face morphed into shock and fear.

“Am I bleeding again…?” I touched my lip under my nose but it was dry.

“My camera,” Janey said, her face going white. “I left it at the stadium. With my purse. But…my camera.” Her hand clutched my arm. “We have to go back. Now.”

“Of course, of course.”

Instead of taking the Metro, I hailed a cab. At Stade Jean-Marc, Janey raced ahead of me to the spot where her camera and bag lay. Both were still there.

I joined her as she hugged her camera to her, her eyes shut with relief. “That was my penance,” she said on a shaky breath, “for smacking you in the nose.”

“That was an accident. It’s forgotten.”

She rose to her feet and shouldered her bag. “Not forgotten. The bruising Marcel warned of has started. I’m so sorry.”

“I thought you didn’t like me,” I said slowly, my casual grin feeling transparent. “You’re sorry for whacking me?”

“Of course I am,” she said. “But I…”

“But what?” I asked, my head wanting to bend toward hers.

“Nothing. I…have to go,” she said, pulling away. “This article is late. I have to give something to Antoine tomorrow.”

The article, I thought. That’s why she came today. The only reason.

“Of course,” I said, taking a step back. “I’ll leave you to it.”

“Thanks,” she said. “See you later? At La Cloche, maybe?”

I nodded.

“Okay, great. Bye.”

I watched her go, her long legs striding away from me, her hair long and soft and glinting gold in the sun.

Maybe. Someday. In the future. But not now. Never now. What I wanted was just out of reach, and I was starving for the sunlight like a man locked in a dank cell.

I almost called Janey back to answer her question as to why I thought I’d had such a knack for football. Because on the pitch, eleven opposing players tried to take what was mine. The ball. The score. The match.

But I refused to let them. Only there, racing across the grass, I was in control. And when the ball sailed out of the goalkeeper’s reach and into the net, and the crowd went mad; for that one brief second, I was one of the heroes my father had idolized. And I told myself that was enough.

It had to be.