Judge My Skills, Not Me

Chapter 21: No Such Thing as 'Bad Press'

The chance finally came from Leo about 30 minutes into the game. Cristina managed to steal the ball from a Leverkusen midfielder from a throw-in. She looked up and saw Leo signal the ball. She made a beautiful pass between two defenders that didn't even realize Leo was making a run. Once they saw the Argentine, they both chased after him. With the ball so close to Leo's foot, the only chance they had to get the ball was to tackle him. One of the defenders slide but Leo anticipated it and kicked the ball up to jump over him. He continued his run and sped into the penalty area. The second defender was still trying to get between Leo and the goalposts. He made his stance as big as possible, but Leo just nutmegged him and got through easily. It was only Leo and the goalie left. Leo saw him slightly faint left and sent the ball into the other top corner. "Goal!" the stadium screamed as Leo pointed at Cristina with the biggest smile on his face for the assist.

Cristina meet him halfway at the corner flag and jumped into his arms. "Goal!" she yelled as Leo lifted her up in their hug and spun her around. "That was incredible! How did you do that? Are you even human?" she jumbled all her questions as he put her down.

"Couldn't let your amazing pass go to waste," he said winking at her. Suddenly, Ney jumped on his back and Luis ran over to celebrate.

"Vamos! I cannot believe how you got through those guys," Luis said astonished by his friend.

"Yeah, who are you trying to impress with those moves?" Ney said teasing his friend. Leo pushed Ney over and smiled at Cristina.

"Let's go guys. We still have a game to win and it's only been a couple of minutes," Leo clapped as he pushed Ney to the center field. He did his signature celebration pointing up at the sky. Cristina waited for him on the side. Once he was finished, Leo smiled at her and put his arm around her as they walked back to the center together.

While there were some more chances after the first goal in the first half, everything was relatively slow. By the time they got back to the locker room for half-time, everyone was just waiting for what Luis Enrique would say. "Okay. That was fine for the first half, but we need to press more," he said walking in. Cristina drank from Leo's bottle as she tried to cool herself down. "Geri and Dani, I need you to stop hanging out with Marc in the back and actually get into the play before they have the opportunity to get passed you. You're looking like dead weight out there. Andres and Sergio, keep up the possession and have Cristina act as a feeder for moving up. Ney, you need to start trying to separate from defenders earlier. Luis, I know you just got back, but come on you can't just miss those easy tap-ins." Everyone nodded as their coach started showing on the whiteboard what he wanted from them in the next half.

Cristina was only partially paying attention because his anger was mostly pointed at the backline. She undid her ponytail because it was bothering her how tight she accidentally made it. She was just going to make it into a loose bun when she felt someone touching her hair. "May I?" he said asking for the hair elastic she just took out of her hair. Cristina was so confused she just nodded and gave it to him. God knows what he was thinking right now. Leo, out of either boredom or not even thinking about it, started to braid her hair. It was a loose braid that didn't give her the headache from earlier and surprisingly looked nice.

"When did you learn how to braid hair?" Cristina looked at him. He was always just so full of surprises. She couldn't wait until the day he would tell her all his secrets.

"What, can't a man know how to braid hair? That's not very progressive of you" he teased. In all honesty, Leo had noticed for the last couple of days how Cristina's head had been hurting, especially after a difficult practice and games. He figured it had to do with the tight ponytails she tended to wear to keep the hair from her face. So, he decided to figure out what other hairstyles she could do and research on his own. He looked up hair tutorials online and even asked some of Cristina's former teammates what they did. He learned that a braid was probably the most comfortable and easy thing to do and learned how to do one. It was the least he could do to help with her growing headaches.