the edge of everything: part 2
They play more matches and Barça keeps winning, cannot be stopped. Leo would laugh at how easy it all is, except it’s not. Leo works hard, runs hard and trains hard and it pays off, but that doesn’t make it any easier.
But it doesn’t matter because Barça keeps winning, and so what other option does Leo have? He can’t slow down now. He can’t lose the celebrations or the sweat on his skin or the roar of Camp Nou as they crush whoever stands in their way.
Pep pulls him aside after practice one day, keeps him on the pitch as everyone else files inside to the weight room.
“Watch yourself, okay, Leo? I see what you’re doing and I don’t want you pushing yourself too hard,” Pep says.
“I’ve got to, though,” Leo says. “You can’t score if you’re not any good.” And that must catch Pep off guard, because he sits on the bench and stares for a minute before he says anything.
“Leo,” he says. “Leo, you are good.”
“And that’s exactly the point,” Leo says. “I’m good. The Sextuple was good. You’ve said so yourself. But I don’t get why it’s so wrong of me to want to be great.”
Pep looks sad for a minute, completely and overwhelmingly sad, and he rubs his eyes with the heels of his palms.
“Leo,” he says after a while, and the way his voice cracks makes Leo want to know what he did. “Leo,” he says again. “I’m so sorry. I read you so wrong.”
“It’s okay,” Leo says because he doesn’t know what Pep is talking about. “Barcelona deserves the best.”
“You are the best, Leo. You are.”
“But I’m not my best,” Leo says. It doesn’t matter; Pep doesn’t get it.
Barcelona is beautiful. Leo walks the streets sometimes, usually at night when it’s dark, and he thinks. Argentina is beautiful, too, but not in the same way as Barcelona. Argentina doesn’t have La Rambla, with its vendors and mimes and living statues. The only street in the world I wish would never end, García Lorca said, and Leo agrees. Argentina doesn’t have Casa Dels Ossos, either, its visceral shape, its angles that look like the bones of some unimaginable creature, and Argentina doesn’t have Casa Milà or Parc Güell or Font màgica de Montjuïc.
Leo is proud to be Argentinean, wouldn’t have it any other way. He wouldn’t trade La Cueva de las Manas or Costanera or the Gualeguaychú carnival for anything in the world, wouldn’t swap La Albiceleste for La Roja even if they begged him to, but there’s something about Barcelona-something in the air, maybe-that Leo just can’t get enough of.
Barcelona is beautiful, and Leo walks the streets sometimes.
They’re in bed.
“Do you think it hurts for Pep not to play?” Leo asks. He’s warm and tired, pressed skin to skin against the length of David’s body.
“I don’t know,” David says. He has a hand in Leo’s hair, and Leo doesn’t know when that became normal between them.
“I think it would hurt me, right down to my bones.”
“Are you okay, Leo?”
“Yes, I’m fine.”
“Why did you ask about Pep?” David asks.
“I don’t know. I’m just thinking about what I’ll do when I retire,” Leo tells him. It’s the truth.
“Leo, you’re twenty-three,” David says, and his eyebrows are knotted together and he tugs lightly on Leo’s hair.
“I know,” Leo tells him.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine.”
“Okay.”
“What if I started putting my hair in a ponytail?” Puyi asks him at practice. More stability ball exercises; it’s boring
“You’d probably get a lot of numbers,” Leo says.
“But would you still be my friend?”
“No,” Leo says. “Not in public at least.” He tries to keep a straight face but fails pretty miserably.
“As your captain, that’s unacceptable,” Puyi says.
“Oh captain, my captain!” Bojan shouts from a few people over.
“Exactly,” Puyi says. “See? He knows.”
Leo shakes his head, says, “He’s young. Doesn’t know any better.”
“Go home, hombre!” Bojan says. “You’re only three years older than me!”
“Exactly,” Leo says, and Bojan calls him a puta madre.
Their next match goes well for Barça and terrible for Leo. He barely gets a shot off, gets frustrated, gets a yellow for fighting. Keita throws an arm around him as the final whistle blows and says, “Chin up. Everyone has these days.”
Leo doesn’t.
He heads into the locker room and goes right for the showers, turning the water hotter than he usually likes.
“Leo?” David asks from a shower or two over.
“What?” Leo doesn’t open his eyes, just lets the water pound on the back of his neck.
“Nothing,” David says, and the way he says it sounds a lot like Get over it.
But Leo can’t get over it, doesn’t want to talk about it, and he goes out to sit with Jeffrén on the bus because he’s relatively quiet.
When they get back to Camp Nou, Leo heads inside to grab an extra pair of boots that he left in his locker and David follows him.
“What’s wrong?” David asks, and he says it like it’s a chore.
“Nothing,” Leo tells him, but it’s not nothing, it’s something, and he doesn’t want to talk about it, doesn’t know how to talk about it.
“Seriously?” David raises an eyebrow.
“Nothing,” Leo says. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Oh, come on,” David says. “Just fucking tell me already.”
“I already have. Football is all we talk about, so I’ve told you a thousand times. You just don’t get it,” Leo says, and David rolls his eyes as if to say, This again? He looks mad, too, and Leo wasn’t expecting that.
“I don’t get it? I don’t get it? What the fuck are you on, Leo? I get it better than anyone,” David says.
“How can you?” Leo asks. “I don’t even get it.”
David looks at him, levels his gaze and says, “You’re the best player in the world. Even if you don’t realize it, you get it, because one day you’re not going to be the best, and one day people will look at you and say, Remember when? And that kills you because then you’ll have to retire, and you won’t be you anymore.”
Leo doesn’t say anything.
David continues, “And I know what you’re thinking; fuck, Leo, I can read you like a book. You’re sitting there thinking, If only I was some mediocre piece of shit player, then none of this would matter because I’d just be so grateful to have been in the league. Yeah, well you know what? Fuck you for that, because there’s not a person out there who wouldn’t kill to be able to do with a football even half of what you can.”
“Even you?” Leo retorts.
“Yes,” David says. “Especially me. Don’t you fucking get it yet?”
Leo says, “No, I don’t,” and he doesn’t, because David’s one of the best out there and so how can he be jealous of what Leo can do? It doesn’t make sense.
“This is the reason,” David says slowly, like he’s talking to a child, and he makes a hand gesture that says that this is all everything comes down to. “This is the reason behind everything you do: You love football so much that it hurts, and you need to keep winning so you can keep playing, forever, because if you slow down, if you stop playing, what are you? Because what the fuck are you if you’re not football?”
“I’m nothing,” Leo says, and a part of him means it and a part of him says it just so David will contradict him. He doesn’t.
“Yeah, well I’m nothing either,” David says. “You stupid fuck.” He storms off down the hall and leaves Leo standing there and standing there and standing there.
The heavy weight on Leo’s chest doesn’t go away and so he calls his mother. She’s wonderful, has that way of talking to him without asking for anything in return, and Leo thinks he needs that. She tells him that the dog had gotten into the pantry and ate half a package of alfajores before anyone had noticed, and how his brother tried to make milanesa and set the smoke detectors off. He asks after her garden and she says that he has to see it to believe it and that her tomatoes are the best thing she’s ever tasted in her life.
“And how’s football?” she asks, and he tells her all about it, about matches and practices, about his teammates and Pep and about how he thinks they’ll take home a few titles at the end of the season. She’s quiet for a minute after that, and Leo needs to double check his phone to make sure the call wasn’t disconnected.
“Leo,” she says. “Mi hijo. Do you even like football anymore? Because you talk like it makes you miserable and that kills me.”
“Of course I love football,” Leo says, and it all just catches him off guard. Of course. “Football’s the only thing I do love.”
“Then just love it,” she says. “Enjoy it. Don’t turn it into a job like you are now, because you’ll ruin it.”
“I don’t know how else to love football,” he tells her.
“You do,” she says. “I see it every time I look at your face.”
At practice, Leo tells himself, This is not a job. You love football. You are lucky to be here. Leo knows he’s lucky, knows he loves football, but it is a job, it is, and Leo is trying hard not to see it that way anymore.
“Listen, David,” Leo says, and he doesn’t have the words, not yet, but he needs to make sure he and David are okay.
“I’m busy,” David snaps, and he walks right past Leo, goes to stretch by himself, away from the group.
It hurts Leo a little more than he’d care to admit, and it hurts Leo even more to see that it doesn’t affect David’s game at all, that they’re still perfect on the pitch together even when they’re not talking.
Leo thinks about it all the time. He tells himself not to, that it doesn’t matter, but it does and he has to know because that could be him. He lies in bed and picks up his phone, notes that it’s late, half past one, but calls anyways.
“Is everything okay?” Pep asks. His voice is thick with sleep, and Leo thinks it says a lot about him that he’s not mad in the slightest.
“Why do you coach?” Leo asks. “How is that not the worst thing you could possibly do?”
“I like it,” Pep says. “I like football. Simple as that.”
“Why?” Leo asks. “Why do you like it when people look at you and only see the Barcelona legend, someone who used to be great but can’t even play anymore?”
Pep laughs, “Is that how you see me?” and Leo stumbles over his words, tries to say that he didn’t mean it that way. “I know you didn’t,” Pep says. “I was just kidding.”
“Good,” Leo says. “Because that's not what I meant.”
“I know. But look at everything I have now,” Pep says. “I’m the manager of Barcelona and we won the Sextuple. Barcelona is my team again, Leo, and we’re the best. And now when people look at me, they remember who I was but they see who I am-the manager of the best team, and I’m great again. And maybe it’s not in playing anymore, but I’m still great and they still notice that, and when it’s your time, whatever you choose to do, people will notice that in you, too.”
Leo pauses, lets that sink in for a minute. He’d like for it to be that simple, he really would. Pep always knows what to say.
“A bit sure of yourself there, huh?” Leo jokes because he still needs to think it all over.
“Yes,” Pep says, and Leo can hear the smile in his voice. “And I have the stats and the records to prove it.”
“Thanks, Pep,” Leo says, and Pep says, “Hey, Leo?”
“Yeah?”
“Talk things over with David.”
Leo rolls his eyes, says, “Yes, coach.”
“I’m not saying that as your coach,” Pep says. “Goodnight, Leo.”
Leo doesn’t sleep for a long while.
Leo goes to Gerard’s because he has a bigger computer. Technically Leo’s is bigger, but his is still in the box and Gerard’s isn’t, so they Skype Cesc from Gerard’s. It’s something they try to do every few weeks, but they’ve all been busy and it’s kind of fallen to the wayside. Leo doesn’t like that.
“Saw you get tackled hard the other day,” Gerard says. “That sucks. That kind of stuff doesn’t happen in Barcelona, you know.”
Cesc laughs, says, “Maybe when you guys get a little older you’ll play real football.”
Gerard pulls a face, puts his hand to his chest all affronted, and says, “Cesc Fàbregas! Well, I never!” He looks at Leo, says, “And he used to be such a sweet boy.” Cesc laughs again, and Leo forgot about that, about how easily Cesc laughs. He’s missed that.
“You doing alright, Leo?” Cesc asks.
“Yeah, more or less,” Leo says, and he smiles as he does.
“More, I hope,” Cesc says. “You’ll be winning La Liga soon.”
“I hope Arsenal knows what they’ve got,” Leo says, and Cesc is silent for a minute because Leo doesn’t usually bring that up, believes that if Cesc wants to play in England, then he should. Leo doesn’t understand it, but he knows that not everyone sees Barcelona the way he does.
“We’ll play together again someday,” Cesc says, and his smile is easy.
“What about me?” Gerard asks, and Cesc shoots back, “What about you?” That sets Gerard off again and Leo almost can’t breathe, he’s laughing so hard.
He leaves earlier than expected, just as it’s starting to get dark, because he has somewhere else to be, something else he needs to be doing.
Leo goes to David’s to apologize, or maybe not to apologize, maybe just to make things right between them, Leo doesn’t know.
“You’re not nothing without football,” Leo says, right as David opens the door. “You’re so much. Why can’t you see that?”
“Why can’t you?” David asks, and then he steps aside to let Leo in. Leo kisses him, right there in the foyer, hoping that David will just get it because Leo doesn’t know how else to say it. David loops his fingers through Leo’s belt loops, pulls their hips closer, and kisses Leo harder. Leo lays his palm flat on the skin of David’s stomach and it’s warm and smooth and David squirms a bit; he’s ticklish.
They have sex, nice and slow, and afterwards Leo tries to explain himself, tries to put words to what he’s feeling. He tells David how he worries that he’ll lose focus and slip a little, and all those people who thought he wouldn’t make it when he had the growth hormone deficiency will be proven right, and that thought just eats him up inside. And he still needs to repay Barça for what they did for him when he was younger, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to do that.
“Leo,” David says. “They’re already paying more money to keep you than they ever did to make you.”
“I know, but it’s not about the money. I’m just grateful.”
“Okay,” David says, and it’s as simple as that and Leo almost can’t believe it.
“Okay,” he says, and he spends the night for the first time since he’s known David.
In the morning, Leo stumbles into the kitchen wearing nothing but a pair of boxers that aren’t his and David’s making breakfast. It’s weird to Leo because it doesn’t feel weird at all.
“What is this?” he asks, although he regrets the words the second they leave his mouth.
“Pan con tomate. What kind of an idiot are you?” David asks. He’s drizzling olive oil over bread. “It doesn’t look that bad, does it?” It doesn’t; the food looks great although that wasn’t what Leo was talking about. He decides to let it go.
“No, it looks good,” he says. “Thanks.”
They start eating and things are quiet for a minute, but then David says, “Why does it have to be anything?” He’s not looking at Leo.
“Because,” Leo says, but he doesn’t know why. “I just wanted to know.”
“Why can’t we just keep doing what we’re doing? Because we’re doing it right. It doesn’t need a name,” David says.
“Okay,” Leo says, because that works for him. If David’s not going to make a big deal out of any of it, neither is Leo. He likes that.
David looks up at him and smiles, and there’s a breadcrumb stuck in the patch of hair beneath his lower lip.
Leo walks down the hall to Pep’s office, and it’s quiet, empty, and his steps echo loudly.
“Hey, Leo,” Pep says when Leo pops his head in. He’s standing in the middle of his office holding a manila folder. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
Leo doesn’t say anything, just steps forward and hugs Pep, hugs him long and hard and Pep hugs him back, sagging against him a bit. Leo thinks maybe Pep needed this as much as he did. It feels good; it feels a long time coming.
“Thank you,” Pep says, and Leo wants to laugh at the absurdity of it all.
“Thank you.”
Camp Nou is the most beautiful place in the world, Leo knows. Other stadiums are nice, but there’s nothing like Camp Nou on match day, nothing even close to the feel of the wind on his cheeks as he walks onto the pitch, nothing like the roar of the people around him. Nothing. This is home, for Leo.
Barcelona is home, for Leo.
He can’t imagine not being here, not wanting to give it his all or die trying for the blaugrana. It’s so imbedded in his mind, in his muscles and bones, that Leo can’t imagine anything else. Football is football, it’s what Leo needs, but playing for Barcelona is what Leo wants, wants forever, and will never stop wanting as long as he lives.
He knows, has thought about it obsessively, that the day will come when he can no longer destroy a defense, when a keeper will come along that can read Leo’s every move before he even makes it. Leo knows there will be a time when he becomes increasingly familiar with the bench, when it takes him longer to warm up and longer to cool down and longer to do everything that he used to do in a second, without thought. Leo knows. And maybe he’ll coach, like Pep, or maybe he won’t, maybe he’ll move to Asturias and spend his time drinking cider, playing pick-up games of five-a-side on the beach and in the narrow streets of Tuilla.
It doesn’t sound too bad, not anymore, not to Leo, although he still hopes it’s a long time away. He’s decided not to think on it too much, the future, and that he’ll just deal with it when it comes, one step at a time.
In the fifty-ninth minute, Leo gets a short pass from David and takes it, weaving the ball in and out of defenders before he shoots, a beautiful shot, long and high and bending, just at the last minute, into the top right corner of the goal.
He throws his arms wide, a smile playing on his face, and David runs to congratulate him. He presses his own sweaty forehead against Leo’s, points a finger at Leo’s chest, at the Barcelona crest, and says, “You,” his smile big and wide and unrestrained. He looks happier than Leo’s ever seen him, but Leo doesn’t let that bother him; he knows he’s at his happiest on the pitch, too.
“You,” Leo says back, and maybe that’s all David needs to hear, because then he’s pulling away and Leo’s other teammates are there with hands in his hair and on the back of his neck, with words in his ears, Dani and Pedro and Xavi and all of Camp Nou, right there with him. Leo looks up at the stands and kisses the crest on his shirt, so proud to be allowed to wear it, and as Camp Nou sings El Cant del Barça all around him, Leo stops and sings with them for a minute.