Hannah stands on the pavement, the flat white cooling against her palm, the morning sun warm on her neck. The café door swings shut behind her with a soft click, and the street sounds rush back in—a motorbike rattling past, someone's laughter from a nearby table, the hiss of an espresso machine through the open window.
She doesn't move.
The phone is in her other hand. Emily's contact stares up at her from the screen, the name she typed ten minutes ago in the café bathroom while her heart was still hammering: Emily — coffee disaster.
Her thumb hovers over the message field.
The cursor blinks. Waiting.
She types: Hey, it's Hannah from the coffee shop.
Reads it. Deletes it.
Types: Hey, thanks for the coffee. And the napkins. And for not being mad about the sleeve.
Too long. Too much. Deletes it.
Types: Hey, it's Hannah.
Too plain. Too needy? Too something. Deletes it.
The phone buzzes in her hand, hard enough to make her jump. A notification banner drops down from the top of the screen:
Aitana: WHERE DID YOU GO??? We have training in 20 and you're not in the changing room. Did you get kidnapped?? Should I call the police??
Hannah's jaw tightens. She swipes the notification away without reading the three follow-up messages that immediately appear beneath it. Aitana will survive. The team will survive. Twenty minutes is plenty of time to get to the training ground.
She shoves the phone into the pocket of her training jacket. The coffee stain is there, dark against the black fabric, already drying into a faint shadow across her forearm. She runs her thumb over it. It's just coffee. It's just a stain. It's just a jacket that cost more than most people's rent, custom-made, club-issue, a size that took four weeks to arrive because they had to account for her shoulders.
She doesn't care.
The phone buzzes again. Aitana again, probably. Or the group chat. She ignores it.
The morning air smells like bread and exhaust and someone's cigarette a few metres away. A pigeon struts along the edge of the pavement, considering her with one unimpressed eye before striding on. The sun catches the window of the café, and for a second Hannah sees herself reflected—tall, dark hair cropped short on the sides, the ink on her arms barely visible beneath the jacket, a flat white in one hand and her other hand shoved in a pocket that's buzzing with a phone she's pretending she can't feel.
She looks like someone who belongs here. A local. A regular. Not someone whose face is on a billboard two blocks away, advertising sportswear she doesn't even wear because her endorsement deal is with a different brand.
Emily didn't recognize her.
The thought lands in her chest like something delicate, something she's afraid to breathe on. Emily didn't know. Emily looked at her—really looked at her—and saw a woman who'd just spilled coffee on her own sleeve, who stammered when a pretty stranger smiled at her, who said she played for a local team and didn't elaborate because she couldn't find the words.
Emily saw her.
Hannah pulls the phone out of her pocket. The screen is still open to the message field. The cursor is still blinking.
She types: Hey, coffee disaster here. Thanks for the flat white. And the napkins.
Her thumb hovers over the send button.
The phone buzzes again. This time she looks—it's not Aitana, it's a group chat called "Champions League Defense Squad 🏆" with seventeen unread messages, most of them emojis and exclamation points and someone's blurry photo of what looks like a cat wearing a miniature Barcelona jersey.
She doesn't open it.
Her thumb is still hovering. The cursor is still blinking.
Hey, coffee disaster here. Thanks for the flat white. And the napkins.
It's casual. It's friendly. It references the thing that happened, which means Emily will know exactly who it's from without needing to scroll through her contacts and guess. It's not too long. It's not too short. It doesn't ask for anything. It doesn't assume anything.
It's just a message.
She presses send before her brain can catch up.
The message flies away, a little blue bubble on the screen, and for a second Hannah stares at it like she's just done something irreversible. Like she's thrown a pass she can't take back, and now she has to wait and see if anyone catches it.
The phone stays silent.
Of course it stays silent. Emily has a life. Emily is probably at work, teaching seven-year-olds to read and do arithmetic and not put glue in each other's hair. Emily isn't sitting on a pavement outside a café, holding a cooling coffee and staring at a phone screen like it holds the secrets of the universe.
Hannah pockets the phone. Starts walking. The training ground is a fifteen-minute walk if she takes the shortcut through the park, and she needs to move, needs to shake this feeling in her chest, the one that's been there since Emily smiled at her and said hey, I'm Emily like it was the most natural thing in the world.
She walks.
The pavement gives way to the gravel path of the park, the trees casting long shadows across the grass. A dog bounds past her, chasing a ball thrown by someone further ahead. A child shrieks with laughter. A bench near the pond holds an old woman feeding breadcrumbs to the ducks, her movements slow and deliberate.
Hannah walks past all of it, her strides long and automatic, the coffee still warm in her hand. She hasn't taken a sip. She's not sure she can, not without thinking about the way Emily had watched her take the first sip in the café, those sea-glass eyes tracking the movement of her throat as she swallowed.
She blushes. Standing in the middle of a park path, a flat white in one hand and a phone in her pocket that still hasn't buzzed, she blushes like a teenager.
Get a grip, Voss.
She takes a sip of the coffee. It's good. It's really good—not too bitter, not too sweet, the milk steamed to perfection. Emily had ordered it without asking, had known exactly what Hannah would like after watching her for exactly five minutes.
That's something. That has to mean something.
The phone buzzes.
Hannah stops walking. Her hand is in her pocket before she can think about it, pulling the phone out, her heart suddenly loud in her ears.
A notification from Emily — coffee disaster.
She opens it.
Emily: You're welcome! 🌸 How's the sleeve? Did you manage to get the stain out or is it a permanent reminder of your clumsiness?
Hannah laughs out loud, a surprised sound that startles a passing jogger. She doesn't care. She's laughing, standing in the middle of a park path, and the coffee is still warm in her hand, and Emily's message is on her screen with a little flower emoji that feels like a wink.
She types: It's drying. I think it's going to be a permanent reminder. I'm thinking of framing it.
Sends it before she can second-guess.
The reply comes within thirty seconds.
Emily: If you frame it, you have to invite me to the gallery opening. I'll bring champagne.
Hannah's thumb freezes over the keyboard. Invite me to the gallery opening. It's a joke. It's clearly a joke. But it's also an opening, a door left slightly ajar, and Hannah can feel herself standing in front of it, her hand on the handle, not sure if she's brave enough to push.
She types: Deal. Opening night is next Thursday. Dress code: coffee stains encouraged.
Sends it.
Waits.
Emily: I'll wear my favorite coffee-stained cardigan. It'll be thematic.
Hannah grins at her phone, standing in the middle of the park like an idiot. The dog from earlier bounds past her again, this time with the ball in its mouth, and she reaches down to scratch its ears without looking away from the screen.
The phone buzzes again.
Emily: So what are you doing right now? Besides walking through a park and ignoring the fact that your phone is probably blowing up with messages from your teammates?
Hannah's eyebrows shoot up. She looks around instinctively, as if Emily might be hiding behind a tree, watching her. But the park is just the park—the old woman at the pond, the jogger who's now a distant figure, a mother pushing a stroller, a teenager on a skateboard.
She types: How did you know I was in a park?
Emily: Lucky guess. Also I can hear birds in your voice message.
Voice message. Hannah hasn't sent a voice message. She sent text. Just text.
She stares at the screen. Then she scrolls up, and sure enough, there it is—a tiny blue voice message bubble she doesn't remember sending, timestamped three minutes ago, right after the coffee joke.
Her thumb must have hit the voice message button. She must have recorded a few seconds of ambient park noise without realizing it. She sends a lot of voice messages to her teammates—it's faster than typing when she's walking—and her thumb has muscle memory for the button.
But to Emily. She sent a voice message to Emily.
She doesn't know what she said on it. She doesn't remember saying anything. She might have just breathed into the microphone for ten seconds like an absolute weirdo.
Hannah presses the voice message. Holds it to her ear.
Ten seconds of silence, footsteps on gravel, a bird singing, and then her own voice, quiet and a little breathless: I'm in a park. Thinking about you.
She stops the recording. Her face is burning.
Thinking about you.
She said that. Out loud. To Emily. And Emily heard it, and Emily replied with a joke about birds, which means Emily heard it and decided not to comment on it, which means—
Hannah doesn't know what that means.
She types: I didn't mean to send that. The voice message. I hit the button by accident.
She sends it. Then stares at it. Then wants to throw her phone into the pond.
The reply takes a minute. A full minute, which feels like an hour.
Emily: Did you mean it though?
Hannah's heart is a wild thing in her chest, throwing itself against her ribs like it wants out. She's standing in the middle of a park path, a flat white cooling in her hand, a phone screen glowing up at her, and a woman she met twenty minutes ago has just asked her a question she doesn't know how to answer.
Did you mean it though?
Yes. She meant it. She's been thinking about Emily since the moment she bumped into her, since the moment Emily laughed and said well, that's one way to make an entrance, since the moment Emily wiped coffee off her sleeve with a napkin and Hannah's brain had gone completely blank.
She types: Yeah. I meant it.
Her thumb presses send. The blue bubble flies away.
The reply comes immediately, a single line that makes Hannah's breath catch:
Emily: Good. Because I've been thinking about you too. ☕️
Hannah stares at the screen. The coffee emoji. The simple, devastating fact of it.
And then she's walking again, faster now, a smile on her face that she can't contain, her phone clutched in her hand like a talisman. She has training in fifteen minutes. She has a team waiting for her, a Champions League title to defend, a manager who'll give her a look if she's late again.
She has Emily's number in her phone. And Emily is thinking about her.
The coffee is still warm. The stain on her sleeve is drying into something permanent. And Hannah Voss, the most famous footballer in the world, walks through the Barcelona morning with a smile she can't shake, already planning what she's going to say next.