The morning is fresh and bright – exactly what I don't want. My cousin, a teacher, knows how to party well. Lize seemed to remember our raving days perfectly, and picked up from there. We only got back to her house, situated in the city's quieter suburbs, a few hours ago. I must have slept for twenty minutes before her toddler came bounding in, giggling her way through her request for me to take her to the nearby park. Noa has brought along her football; muddy and well-used already.

I smile as she separates herself from me the minute we reach the actual park, seemingly not caring at all for the way a teenager out on her morning run does a double-take at the sight of me. She even has the nerve to protest when I drop her ball to the ground and kick it instead, declaring that the game has not started yet.

Sighing, I rub my eyes with my hands to clear the hangover from my vision, telling myself that it's a mental game, really. Noa is determined in her journey to the pond, absolutely fascinated by the flapping of the early-rising ducks. She quietly imitates the sounds they make, doing it under her breath as if to perfect it before showing off her new skill, and is very much pleased with herself the minute it sounds similar. I endure her quacking as we round the pond, heading towards the children's playground.

"Your turn," Noa states as I lead us to a bench, needing to sit down before I lurch and lean and forget what sobriety feels like.

"Let's have a break," I tell her, though we have only been walking for fifteen minutes. Her ball rolls off the bench as she scrambles up beside me. I pull her and her warmth onto my lap, feeling a shiver run through me despite the relatively warm weather. "There's only so much exercise I can take."

She frowns audibly – in that incredibly expressive way only children seem to be capable of. "But football?"

"Ja, I play football. I also like to be lazy." I get a few weeks a year to be completely relaxed, and I prefer to make the most of them. Noa just happens to be unfairly adorable and her parents were very encouraging about me taking her out. "It's good to have a balance, schatje. Find equilibrium."

"Fancy word," she mumbles, unimpressed. "Flootz." She tugs at the fabric of my t-shirt, trying to get my attention as if she doesn't have it all already. "Flootz," says Noa once more, sounding faintly like her mother. She carries the same whiny insistence.

"Ja?"

"You know Alexia Putellas?"

"Ja, and you have met her." That was a terribly confusing day.

"She's my third favourite." She holds up three fingers, thrusting them into my face as if to further convey her point. "You are my favourite, and then Leah, and then Alexia Putellas. Flootz, did you know that Jaimie is Leah's girlfriend? Leah is my second favourite!"

"I'm sure Jaimie had you in mind when she was choosing who to date." Noa nods enthusiastically, totally agreeing with such a silly statement. I laugh – I'll let someone else deal with the effects of that. "Are you still an Arsenal fan, then?"

"My mother says I am not allowed."

I poke her cheek as she purses her lips, frowning as though she feels those words incredibly deep in her soul. "Your mother is right. I always thought your uncle Luka would be the disgrace of the family, but you're doing quite well for a little baby."

"I'm not a baby!" she protests, her smile returning as she cheekily thinks of a way to get me back. "Flootz, I'm not a baby." She jabs my stomach with her chubby toddler fingers, sending a dull ache through me as I curl into myself, hiding from her hands as they continue to prod at me. She giggles loudly, the sound practically echoing through the empty park, and I let her have her fun. I'll push her over when we play football later.

Noa and I return to her house, finding out that both of her parents have left for work and that I'm in charge for the day. We may visit the Arena later on, considering there is a stadium tour that she needs to be taken on once more if she is not yet convinced about the family football team. As far as traditions go in the de Voss family, the stadium tour is a big one. Noa, however, was an actual baby during Covid.

While she completes the insultingly easy puzzle Lize left out for her, I check my emails and texts. It's the usual stuff: an interview here, an update on filming the documentary there. Alexia dyed her hair pink a few days ago, and I'm still not over it. She continues to send me little videos of her and Talia at camp. They are sharing a room. It's driving them both crazy.

My own camp starts the day after tomorrow. I'm excited to see my teammates, and the World Cup is becoming a very near and real thing. I expect they'll start the Australia-related media soon enough, even if we're playing in New Zealand first.

Alexia calls me, which is a little unexpected. With Noa still occupied, I recline on the sofa, watching over her as she works away on the floor. My Spanish has improved a lot, by the way.

"This place is terrible. Distract me."

She is very... Alexia.

But I kind of like it. (I like it a lot.)

"I'm babysitting. Do you want to talk to Noa?"

"No. No, I want... to talk to you." She sounds breathless and panicked, and I realise it might be a worse situation than what has initially seemed like another instance of her being needy and sandwiching it between two slices of demandingness. "It's so bad here, Fleur. I don't think I can do this. It's so bad."

"What's bad?"

Noa slots the last piece into place, looking up at me to see if I have been watching her. She makes to jump up onto the sofa like a bounding puppy, but I stop her, shaking my head. There is a little xylophone in the corner – one that is left out to inspire some form of musicality into her life – which she heads towards. I continue to listen to Alexia's explanation, deciphering the blend of Catalan and Spanish, brown crinkling as I try as hard as I can to understand.

It's difficult and she doesn't seem to be stopping anytime soon.

I interrupt her, unsure whether or not I am the right person for her to have called if I can barely understand her. "Do you want to talk or to be distracted?"

"I don't know," she mumbles in English, nearly inaudible.

A surge of guilt runs courses through my body, as though it is my fault for the Spanish camp's horrific environment. Or maybe it's that I feel I should never have let her get herself into a situation like this, even if I have no control over it. I just don't want her to be upset.

"Do you know that I got home at seven in the morning? And then I had to take Noa out to the park!"

She laughs wetly, though she seems to have cheered up a little bit. "I already know that. You sent me a message at five. It was like 'Alexiaaaaaaaaaaa'. A voice note."

"No," I groan. "That's like, the fourth time that's happened."

"Mhm. You are a drunk-texter."

"I'm not." I let her imagination create the rest of that sentence, not quite willing to admit it. Not quite willing to admit that it is just her. It's a little embarrassing. "Anyway, you should be grateful for the entertainment. You'd be miserable otherwise. All doom and gloom."

"I'm not miserable!"

"You are so serious." Her response is to mutter something unintelligible. I smile, relaxing further, deciding that I'd happily spend the rest of my day one-handed if it meant I'd get to carry on talking. "Do you want to FaceTime?"

"Only to prove to you that I am not miserable," she says.

She's not. She can't be when she spends the next half an hour in a virtual music class led by Noa, who hijacks the call as soon as I accidentally slip into Dutch and she can understand. One word and that child seizes my phone from my hands, carrying it towards her xylophone insistently.

Lize has clearly started her daughter's conversion to the correct football team, because Noa somehow knows how to play a tune that vaguely resembles Three Little Birds. It's sweet that she is patient with Alexia, not quite grasping that Alexia is finding the lesson so difficult because she doesn't happen to have a xylophone on her at the moment.

It's okay. They manage.

I cut up an apple for the both of us to share, gently steering the FaceTime away from music and onto things like the documentary and the World Cup and how much I sort of miss her. And she gladly reciprocates, comfortable on her hotel bed, apparently hiding from her team and their relentless group activities. She says that they are nosy – especially the Barcelona girls – and they want to know who she is constantly talking to.

The pang of jealousy that evokes has nothing on the furious blush when she clarifies that the person is me.

I decide that this is a lot better than hating her. Whatever 'this' may be for now.

━━━━━━━

I arrive at pre-camp in the mid-afternoon, glad to have agreed to let Papa drive me. It feels like I am a child again, on my way to my first-ever call-up, but I let myself bask in that faux innocence for the forty-five minute journey because I know that the stress of the next two months will kill the little girl inside of me. The whole nation is counting on us; watching us. Watching me. I can't be the star of Dutch football – the next national hero – without leading our team to victory, even if I have declined the official position of captain.

The car in front of us holds Jill, who greets my father before she greets me. Papa knows Jill well, and likes her a lot. It is hard not to like her though, I suppose. She's practically a ray of sunshine. And she's friends with Jaimie.

"Girls," calls out a member of the content team, phone angled at our faces as we walk in together. Jill elbows my stomach, knowing it's protected by the pillow I have brought with me. Papa reminded me that I used to take it with me to every tournament when I was younger – he's not usually a superstitious man, but he wants us to win just as much as any other fan. If he claims the pillow is a catalyst for success, who am I to disagree?

We smile for the first of many Instagram stories, shuffling along the entrance as fast as we can despite the hands thrust out for us to shake and the teammates I haven't seen in a while waiting to be greeted. (I was granted another break by a manager that clearly loves me, and missed the earlier camps.)

Andries gathers us in one of the many meeting rooms. He brings me out to the front, making a joke about how I have finally decided to show up. The girls laugh, mostly because it's true. I glance at Sherida, who has been trying to slip the armband on my sleeve for years, and think of something to say when she nods at me.

I shrug. "Now the real work starts, right?"

Jill gasps loudly and with great offence, standing up from her seat in the middle row. "Andries, we're not doing more fitness testing because she wasn't here!"

He only raises his eyebrows.

Their collective groan is my cue to sit back down, and I get light punches in my arm from those around me when I do.

The evening goes as usual: yoga led by a physio whom I lost a bet to a year ago and now am required to carry out any of their instructions; cards before dinner; dinner. A few of my teammates storm into my room – we have our own for this camp – and declare it their makeshift cinema, my protests that the green room has a projector falling on deaf ears. No one notices when I slip out halfway through Pulp Fiction to take a call.

"Te extraño," leaves my lips before I can think about it, though the girls shouldn't be able to hear me through the door.

"Pues, ven aquí."

"Ojalá." 

notes: 

sorry for the drought. not only have i been overwhelmingly busy -- i've been uninspired too! 

i apologise for how much of a filler chapter this is. i just need to get the plot to the wc and then ofc it will return to the usual drama 

i'm sooo tired rn so it's not proofread (as if it ever is lol)

te extraño = i miss you 

pues, ven aquí =  well, come here

ojalá = i wish 

thanks for reading!!!!!!!