If he does, then I have no idea how he hasn’t burst a blood vessel. I’m about to rupture something when this is the first time I’ve ever been on the receiving end and it’s been all of five seconds.
Oliver thanks the person at the window as they hand him our drinks. A small cup is set in my hand, again with GG written on top. I frown down at the lid, then up at the menu I just noticed inside the window, where I see The Double G is a custom drink advertised.
“What the hell.” I point past him, toward the menu.
Oliver wrinkles his nose and leans closer. “Well, would you look at that.”
“I’m looking. I noticed it, you menace. What is this about?”
I remember what he said when I asked him last time what GG stood for and he said it was between him, God, and Deja Brew’s owner, Bhavna. There’s some significance to this, and I’m frankly too pissed about too many things to be rational about it. “Goddammit, Bergman, stop being cryptic and tell me. If this has anything to do with me, I deserve to know.”
Taking a long sip of what looks to be an iced matcha green tea latte, Oliver pulls out of Deja Brew and says, “Apparently, the drink I specially ordered for you was a big hit when Bhavna did a tasting of new specialty drinks. Now it’s on the menu.”
“What,” I say between gritted teeth, “does ‘The Double G’ stand for?”
“Bhavna follows the team,” he says, focused on merging into traffic, ignoring me. “The first time I made a whole-team coffee run, I asked her to make you a little something special.” He keeps his eyes on the road. “I was hoping she’d pick up on my sinister vibes toward you and throw in something rough like pickle juice or Worcestershire sauce, but alas, she did not. Not that you acted like what was in that drink made a lick of difference anyway.”
I remember his wide smile, the drink thrust in my face as he passed around coffees. How raw and empty I felt those first few weeks. Back in a country that I’d literally run away from, home only to sad or, at best, bittersweet memories. Here simply because my body was not capable of the caliber of play required in England, because here I could still be somebody, lead a team, keep playing the game.
“It was good,” I admit. “Just not good enough to wash down the very bitter pill I was still trying to swallow.”
The pill of leaving a world-class club that had been home to the height of my career. Leaving behind a town that had become familiar, an adoring—well, in times gone by, adoring—fan base, supposed friends, a lover, a whole life.
Oliver glances my way, then back to the road. “Was that just a genuine—albeit highly metaphorical—sentiment out of your mouth, Mr. Hayes? Did you just communicate your…feelings?”
I point with my breve cup at the speakers and tell him, “It’s Leslie Odom Jr.’s fault,” before taking a sip of my drink. “Show me someone who can listen to Aaron Burr reflecting on indiscriminate suffering, the inevitability of death, the point of existence, and not even inadvertently say something genuine.”
He cracks a smile.
I sip my coffee, watching him when I shouldn’t. Just like last time, watching sunlight paint his face, burnishing his beard, the tips of his lashes, flashing off his wide grin. “Bergman.”
“Hmm?”
“Tell me what The fucking Double G stands for.”
“Oh, that. The Gorgeous Grump,” he says breezily.
I nearly spit out my drink.
His smile widens. “As Bhavna says, just like you, the Gorgeous Grump is rich, dark, and bittersweet. Classic breve, half-and-half with espresso, and a splash of dark-chocolate syrup added.”
My stomach somersaults. “You’re fucking with me.”
“I most certainly am not,” he says, eyes on the road. “And don’t get any ideas. I didn’t come up with that drink, Bhavna did.”
Oliver might think I didn’t notice, but I did. He said Bhavna came up with the drink but not who decided on its name. I don’t indulge myself in wondering, hoping he’s responsible for that.
Instead, I indulge in my breve. In its warmth. Its rich semi-sweetness. Like most things in life—a small, fleeting pleasure.
After our drive to the facility, my visit with our physical trainers is not encouraging. They know what not to say, because I’ve told them I already know what they’d tell me. They still say it, though, with worried expressions and careful hands.
I’m playing on borrowed time.
I don’t need them or the specialists I see to tell me. I feel it. I feel the consequences of pushing my body brutally for over half of my life. And I know that every time I lace up and go back on the pitch, I’m tempting fate, that I’m one wrong turn or fifty-fifty ball away from it all being over.
I just refuse to think on that. I refuse to accept that the end of what has been the only good thing in my life draws closer.
Every athlete I know has struggled with the end of their careers. It’s only natural. We live and breathe the sport, perfect our bodies for it, devote our time, our healthiest, most energetic years, the so-called “prime of our life” to the game, and then one day, whether because of chronic pain or injury or the understandable wish to avoid any more of either, it has to come to an end. And then there’s this yawning expanse ahead, decades and decades—hopefully, at least—of life stretched before us that we’re suddenly supposed to know what to do with, now that the thing that’s shaped our lives since we were adolescents, often even younger, is gone.
It’s hard enough for those with family, friends, a relationship, children, hobbies. I have hardly any of those. A man who literally saved my life by sticking a soccer ball at my feet and believing in me is dead. A slew of friends and a former long-term lover back in England who I pissed off when I signed with the Galaxy because I wouldn’t listen to them and stay in England and retire when they thought I should. Maudlin poetry lining my shelves. Black-and-white photos lining my walls, taken places I only ever visited alone. The poker guys, with their half-hearted bickering and karaoke obsession. My next-door neighbor, co-captain, and irritating thorn in my backside…
Oliver.
I watch him from behind dark sunglasses, standing on the sidelines, even though I should be seated and elevating my sore knee. Problem is, I’m a prideful motherfucker, and I’m not sitting on the sidelines, and since Dan and Maria doctored me up, being in my body has been dialed down from nearly intolerable agony to familiar, exhausting pain.
Oliver stands beside Santi, talking with his hands, laughing when Santi makes a face, clearly telling some joke. The whistle blows, and like well-trained athletes, they split off, immediately in game mode. I watch Oliver fly across the field, envy coiling through me.
It’s so easy to latch on: my jealousy of his whole, young body, my resentment that I have to spend the final chapter of my career enduring his presence as such a stark contrast to mine, salt in the wound of my reality. That’s what I’ve clung to since I signed, and it burns through me, sharp and hot, as I watch him spin with the ball, rainbow it cheekily, then barrel toward the goal. With one flawless fake, then cut, he nails it into the net, Amobi rolling after diving and missing the ball entirely.