"Nee!" Esmee covers her eyes with a groan I'm sure the whole of Barcelona hears. Her hand remains a shield between her and us until she is certain I have disengaged from Alexia. I stack three bowls on the space on the worktop where she had previously been sitting to pretend we have only been preparing breakfast. "We talked about this."
"You have no reason to come into the kitchen," I reply indignantly, handing her a spoon to tell her she is serving herself today. "You were also asleep."
"I said it was a bad idea," Alexia adds, and, with the way she smiles when Esmee huffs in triumph, I doubt she is on my side.
After a second of basking in her glory, Esmee must begin to question why we have a guest in the first place. Though forcefully accustomed to the presence of her captain, Esmee does not seem convinced about this morning's appearance, knowing that it has not followed a night as we cycled through the Harry Potter movies together. "Why are you here, Alexia?" she asks, eyebrows raised as she scoops yoghurt into a bowl, using a foot to pry open the cupboard where the granola is kept. "Missed each other?"
"No," I scoff, blushing nonetheless. Alexia looks up at me from her embarrassed position hovering near the oven, and the scepticism I find on her face when I glance at her is far too telling. "No, Esmee." I ignore whatever my unwanted lodger mutters under her breath. "Ale's taking you to training because I'm going with the crew to get some footage, and, because she is being so nice and putting up with you, I invited her for breakfast."
She shrugs. "Do you lack so much creativity that the only things on the menu are yoghurt and each other's mouths?" She whines when I kick her in the backside.
"I'm not operating a five-star hotel, you know."
"Duidelijk, hoewel het soms voelt alsof dit een Airbnb is in het rosse district."
Alexia doesn't understand Dutch, but her nose scrunches up in confusion upon seeing how Esmee's little comment has made me freeze. I remember that I am dressed and ready to leave, which softens the blow somewhat. "You are so annoying and I don't want anything to do with this conversation anymore."
Who cares if I let Alexia and Esmee hold a 'which one of us is more socially awkward' competition. Not me, that's for sure.
Olivia and the crew run through the schedule once more, just as they park their van up in the carpark of the training ground. It is far from meticulous, but it does contain a basic list of the footage from training. I remind them all that the cameras are not to zoom in on any interaction Alexia and I have, even if Jaimie has instructed otherwise.
"Will it be hard?" Olivia asks, pinching the bridge of her nose as if I have already brought on a migraine. Apparently, I have a talent for causing them.
"We're professionals," I reassure her calmly, climbing out of the vehicle and readying myself to hurry off into the changing rooms. The girls know we're filming today, and so I have cut out my time with them away from our bosses so I can avoid their insufferable teasing. Ale said they have been recycling the same jokes from when she had her documentary filmed (though hers was far less invasive, as I take great care to remind her).
"Sure, Fleur." I roll my eyes. "I'm going to chat to your manager quickly, along with the club's photographers and social media staff. I don't want the documentary to be leaked because we've been caught in the background of some action-shot."
I nod, "yes, ma'am."
"Brush your hair, fix your eyebrows, and try not to stay by Alexia the whole time if you don't want us to film you together."
"Yes, ma'am," I repeat, pairing this one with a salute. "Wait, what's wrong with my eyebrows?"
She doesn't reply, pushing my shoulder towards the building instead. I'm certain she's winding me up, but that doesn't stop me from checking how they look the minute I pass by a reflective surface (coincidentally, a very specific Cupra Formentor belonging to a very annoying Barcelona captain).
Aside from a few humorously spiky comments from Patri, Pina, and the like, the training session passes with ease. With our upcoming game against Atleti being one of the harder ones in the domestic league, we hone in on a few new combinations. I shrug when asked why the triangle of Alexia, Esmee, and I on the right-wing has a chemistry so dangerous that it is impenetrable.
Furthermore, as agreed, the cameras subtly stop recording whenever a break is called and I head over to my girlfriend for a chat. It's relatively inconspicuous, considering we talk quietly and just to the side of the gaggle of our teammates. Esmee does a favour every so often and lingers nearby, third-wheeling as an excuse to daydream as she regularly does.
"Are you coming over later?" Alexia asks one water break. Her hand grazes my elbow to get my attention, even though she knows she already has it all. "You need to give me my t-shirt back. I will have no pyjamas in Madrid if you don't."
I grin; she's walked right into this one. "That is ideal." She rolls her eyes. "Jaimie's promised to call, but aside from her rambling, I'm free. Might have to bring Esmee with me just in case she murders Oli when I'm not there." He has been shedding a lot recently, and Esmee was not pleased to find her pristine black hoodie no longer so... pristine. He must have enjoyed the (over-priced) fabric, and has continued to choose it as his bed despite her hiding it away in her bedroom.
"Bring the cat instead."
"The last time I brought Oli with me to yours, he ended up with Mapi and we were accused of neglect!"
Alexia sets her water bottle down, eyes gleaming. "It was worth it, no?" I turn away from her before she sees how red I have become.
Perhaps it is planned that the camera lenses are being wiped down, as I end up giving the crew an unobstructed view of my blush. No one seems to notice that they have stopped recording now that we have moved into a more incriminating location: the gym. Olivia takes one look at how I have angled my equipment towards the machine Alexia is using, her muscles glistening with sweat in all their glory, and signals to me that they have gotten enough footage and are going to head out.
━━━━━━━
Jaimie calls me earlier than expected, just as we sit down for lunch in the training ground canteen. She isn't interesting to talk to, mainly regaling me with tennis stories and keeping me updated on how moving in with Leah is going. Apparently, I am being visited by our mother in Barcelona so that I am not required to make the trip to England and see her with Jaimie. She's coming in November, invited by an old friend from athletics to see me play against Real Madrid in the stadium where she won an Olympic gold. The pressure is on for both my sister and I to qualify for the Olympics now, especially seeing as Jaimie missed her chance last time because of an injury.
Better news from the older de Voss comes in the form of Dutch school holidays. I had forgotten about the October break, and am pleasantly surprised that Lize and co will be in Barcelona for a few days and will visit me when I get back from the international break. Noa has been dissuaded from donning Arsenal red, but it came at the cost of a de Voss jersey (number fourteen now) in blaugrana. No one in my family is happy about it, but tolerance is our way until the excuse of her being a baby is no longer valid.
I'd say it was bad parenting, but Jaimie thinks that is mean.
When I return to the lunch table, my food still relatively warm and everyone else only half-finished (I assume our captain had something to do with that, not wanting me to eat alone), I find myself entering an unwanted conversation about boxing with Lucy and Mapi. Well, it is generally about all the things Mapi deems 'too cool for Capi'.
"You'd think she'd love it because it's exercise," Lucy muses, intrigued by Mapi's insistence that Alexia is strongly against boxing. "And it's good for anger management."
"I don't need to manage my anger, Lucia," comes a stern interjection, but Alexia's glare does not linger as she quickly returns to her own chat.
"Mountain biking is also exercise, but Ale hates that," Mapi points out, as if Lucy and I were supposed to know this.
"She doesn't like mountain biking?"
"High risk of injury!"
"But it's... just cycling." When I was younger, we'd drive to the Ardennes in the May holidays for a weekend of mountain biking. I think Papa felt the most free when charging down hills, as evidenced by his out-of-the-Netherlands hobbies. He loved to race us when we went skiing, and he used to win until he hurt his knee and was forced by the doctors to calm it down. "It's a bit like skiing, just on a bike."
"Skiing is a 'no' from me," Mapi says, holding her hand up to halt my protests. "ACLs, first and foremost. And it's cold."
"Your girlfriend is literally Norwegian."
Lucy chuckles. "I don't know, Fleur, I'm with Mapi on this one. Skiing is a risky move for a footballer and I much prefer the heat." She glances across the table to Ona Batlle, new this season but already settled back into her old home. "Ona loves skiing, I think. Don't lots of Spanish people go to Andorra?"
"Or Sierra Nevada," Mapi adds, rolling her eyes at where her fellow defender has obviously sourced her information.
"My family goes to Austria every year. Same place, same resort, same hotel." They both look at me, urging me to go on. I think I often forget that I am not an open book, and that some people I'd consider to be friends hardly know anything about me. "Well, now our parents don't come with us, so it's just the cousins and their children. My cousin Lize and I spend our time at the snowpark, but Lize's daughter is old enough to ski properly now so this year I think I'm supposed to teach her."
It's an adorable but boring job, one that renders you on the nursery slope for what feels like centuries. Up the magic carpet, down the flat green. Up and down. I've drawn the short straw for teaching Noa, but it means that I won't have to teach anyone else, seeing as there are enough of us to go round. The rule stands – usually – that you have a duty to one child, not necessarily your own. It means that my future children won't get stuck with my impatience.
"So you can do flips and stuff?" Mapi asks excitedly, her sudden affinity for the sport most definitely sprouting from her craving for adrenaline. "Ingrid does the cross-country thing, and it's so boring."
"Yeah, Nordic. I do freestyle, so jumping and flipping and landing face first in the snow more often than not." I feel eyes boring into the side of my face, well aware who is now listening to the conversation. To comfort Alexia, I add in a half-hearted 'don't worry, it's not that dangerous'. She clicks her tongue – a habit she has picked up from Talia – but she is no longer watching. "Would you like to see some videos?"
"Of you?" Mapi's jealousy grows quickly. "Next it'll be that you have a dirtbike and Capi's sweet spot for you is making it so that you can ride it! I'm not allowed to do it during the season, but of course you would be allowed."
I'm not sure whether Lucy understands it, but if she does, she doesn't say anything.
After cycling through the last ski trip I went on (not last year because that was... not a good time), we circle back to where I had joined: boxing.
Lucy boxes; says it's calming, says she wanted to try something new when she moved to Barcelona last year. She doesn't know the word for it in Spanish, but she tells us, "it's cathartic, especially if I am upset."
"I can imagine," I agree. "The few times I've done it, it's killed me."
In some terrible humour, I think boxing and death reminds Lucy of a sparring partner she once had. "Did Scarlett ever take you?"
Scarlett used to box all the time. Her father had dabbled in it during his youth, and he rekindled his hobby when she was around twelve. Being his devoted follower, she trailed along to his sessions until she learnt to apply the techniques she observed at the gym to how she played football. Fast, decisive, and with enough aggression to beat a rugby team. She converted the precision of her punches into goals, and so on.
"Yeah," I reply with a smile, hoping Lucy's mood is not dampened by the thought of her.
Lucy's shoulders relax and she grins. "Scar got me into boxing, back when she played for Manchester City. Some little squirt she was, but she beat the shit out of me enough for me to want to get a bit better. I kind of lost touch with it, but she suggested I try it out in Barcelona – 'cause we'd always spar at camp – and I found the gym." Her words are directed more towards Mapi than me, probably because she assumes I know this. (I do.) "Fleur, you should come with me today!"
I frown. "I have plans, sorry."
"Alexia," Lucy calls with a smirk. "Ven a boxear conmigo." The table is still rowdy as ever and Lucy is a lot closer to Alexia than I am, meaning I can't hear the rest of the conversation. Mapi seizes the opportunity to kick me under the table so that my head jolts upwards and I see her tongue sticking out at me. I let out a surprised little sound until I regain my composure, only for that to be ruined the minute Lucy turns back to us with a satisfied 'hmph'. "There. You're not busy anymore because your plans are coming with us."
Maybe Lucy did understand what Mapi said earlier.
Alexia tells me not to ask when we arrive at the boxing gym two hours later. "Let her be smug."
"You wanted to keep it a secret," I whisper back hurriedly. We enter the gym, letting go of each other's hand before Lucy spots us. "And it doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure it out. Not when you agree to come boxing instantly because you weren't satisfied with the view you had at the gym!"
Frustratingly, Alexia laughs at my accusation, no denial present in the click of her tongue as she saunters past me to greet our friend with a warm hug.
notes:
ok it's a bit of a filler but SO WHAT
Duidelijk, hoewel het soms voelt alsof dit een Airbnb is in het rosse district. = sometimes it feels like this is an airbnb in the red light district
ALSO
THANK YOU FOR 300K READS EVERYONE
you guys hold a special place in my heart
thanks for reading!!!