Something Like Casual

I'm Here But I'm Not.

Nobody's POV

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The flat felt colder now. Not because the heating was off, it was actually humming quietly, but because everything between them had shifted, silently, painfully, overnight.

She sat on the edge of her bed, elbows on her knees, staring at the floor like it might give her answers. Just… drained. That was the only word that fit. Drained in a way that didn’t feel fixable with sleep or time off or a good cry.
It was the kind of tired that sat behind the ribs.

Leah was somewhere in the kitchen. She could hear the cupboard door open, then close again. They moved around each other like strangers, except strangers didn’t know how the other took their coffee or which spoon they preferred or what side of the bed they used to sleep on.

And Mariana, sweet, awkward Mariana, was in the spare room pretending she couldn’t hear any of this.

The break-up was barely twenty-four hours old, still sharp, still raw, still sitting between all three of them like a ghost nobody could look at. And nobody knew. No family to crash with. No teammates close enough to stay with without raising questions.
Lucy was in Barcelona. Leah’s family was in Milton Keynes.
Hers were up north. Too far.

So they stayed.
In the same flat.
In the same silence.

She finally stood, pulling her hoodie on. Arsenal training waited for no one, not even a fresh heartbreak.

The worst part wasn’t even seeing Leah at training. It was the way Leah could switch into captain mode, into teammate mode, into bright-smiled, easy, confident-leader mode… while she had to swallow everything down and pretend she wasn’t coming apart at the seams.

It wasn’t that Leah wasn’t affected. She was. But Leah hadn’t been in love anymore. Not for a while. Leah had moved on quietly, gently, probably months before they’d said the words out loud.

Her?
She was still catching up.

And Mariana…
God. Mariana had to act like nothing had ever happened between them. Like she hadn’t been the one whispering to her in the kitchen at 2am two weeks ago, telling her she deserved to be loved properly. Like she hadn’t kissed her, soft and terrified, before pulling away as if she’d touched fire.

She never expected it to matter. She wasn’t even getting game time.
Arsenal had six strikers. Six midfielders. Every position she could play was double-stacked.
She was the utility player nobody needed right now.

Which made the cover story perfect.

If people noticed how distant Leah and she were?
If anyone questioned the tension, or the exhaustion on her face, or why Mariana had suddenly moved into their flat?

Easy.
She wasn’t playing. Mariana was helping her out temporarily. They were just friends. Everything was normal.

No one needed to know her relationship had ended the night before.
No one needed to know that her chest felt bruised from holding it together.
And no one needed to know what almost happened, or what did happen, between her and Mariana.

She grabbed her keys, forcing a breath out through her nose.

Time to survive another day.

But before she left, she felt someone step softly into the hallway.
Leah.
Hair messy, hoodie half-zipped, trying, and failing, not to look concerned.

“You heading in?” Leah asked quietly.

“Yeah.”

A beat.
A silence full of everything they couldn’t say anymore.