The training ground doors slam shut behind her with a heavy clang. Fifteen seconds. Maybe ten. She's breathing hard, not from exertion but from the rush, from the three blocks she covered at a jog that was almost a sprint, from the weight of Emily's message still burning in her chest like a second heartbeat.
Aitana is already there. Leaning against the lockers in her training kit, arms crossed, that grin already spreading across her face like she's been waiting for this exact moment all morning. 'You're smiling,' she says. It's not a question.
Hannah's hand goes to her pocket before she can stop it. Her thumb finds the screen through the fabric, feels the faint warmth of the phone where Emily's words are still glowing, waiting. 'I'm not.'
'You are. You walked in here smiling at the floor like you just won the lottery.'
'I was checking the time.'
'You were smiling at the floor, Voss.' Aitana pushes off the lockers, circles her like a shark scenting blood. 'And what's that on your sleeve?'
Hannah looks down. The coffee stain. Dark brown against the club-issue jacket, dried into something that looks deliberate, like a badge she didn't ask for. 'Coffee,' she says, and even she can hear how defensive it sounds, how it comes out like a confession.
'Coffee.' Aitana's eyebrows climb toward her hairline. 'You spilled coffee on your sleeve and you're smiling about it.'
'I'm not—' But she is. She can feel it, the smile trying to crack through her composure, and she bites the inside of her cheek to stop it. 'It's nothing. I bumped into someone.'
'Someone.'
'A woman. In a café. It's nothing.'
Aitana's grin deepens. She's enjoying this too much. 'Uh-huh. And this woman who you bumped into, who spilled coffee on your sleeve, who made you walk into training smiling at the floor—does she have a name?'
Hannah's phone buzzes in her pocket. Three messages, then four. The group chat. Champions League Defense Squad. She doesn't need to look to know what they're saying: Where are you. Did you die. Did you finally meet someone. The usual. The relentless, the loving, the unbearable.
'Emily,' she says, and the name feels different in her mouth. Heavier. Like she's handing over something precious and watching it leave her hands.
'Emily.' Aitana tastes the name, lets it sit on her tongue. 'Emily with the coffee. Emily who made you late to training. Emily who you're thinking about right now instead of the tactical drill we're about to run.'
'I'm not—'
'You're doing it again. The smile. You're smiling at the ceiling now.'
Hannah presses her palm against her face, hard enough to feel the bones. 'I need to change.'
'You need to tell me everything.'
'I need to change. I'm already late.'
She turns toward her locker, fumbling with the combination, and her phone buzzes again. She pulls it out without thinking—just a glance, just to see if it's Emily, just to feel that flutter again—
It's not Emily. It's Alexia in the group chat: Did someone kidnap our captain or is she just getting laid.
Hannah shoves the phone back in her pocket. Her face is hot. The tips of her ears are burning.
Behind her, Aitana is laughing, low and delighted, and Hannah wants to disappear into the locker and never come out.
Training is a blur. Or it should be. She's done this a thousand times—the warm-up laps, the passing drills, the rondos where she's supposed to be sharp and quick and untouchable. But her body is on autopilot and her mind is somewhere else entirely, stuck on a pair of sea-glass eyes and a voice message she's replayed in her head at least six times since she sent it.
I'm in a park. Thinking about you.
She miscontrols a pass from Mapi and the ball skips off her foot, rolling into the path of an opponent. Mapi swears in Catalan. Hannah raises a hand in apology, but she's already somewhere else, already back in that café, watching a woman with ginger curls laugh at her own joke.
'You're late on your runs,' the manager says, and Hannah blinks, realizes she's standing still while the ball moves past her, while the drill flows around her like water around a stone. 'Voss. With me.'
'Sorry. I'll pick it up.'
'Pick it up faster. You've got a Champions League final in three months.'
Three months. That's a lifetime. That's next Thursday and a hundred Thursdays after that. She can't think that far ahead. She can barely think past the next break in play, the next chance to check her phone, the next moment she can steal a glance at the screen and see if Emily has messaged again.
At the water break—halftime in the scrimmage, everyone sprawled across the grass or leaning against the goalposts, bottles tipped back and sweat dripping—she pulls out her phone. Three new messages from the group chat, all of them variations on the same theme: where is she, what's she doing, why is she ignoring them.
And one from Emily.
Emily — coffee disaster: Hi. I just wanted to say I'm glad you bumped into me. Even if my coffee did end up on your jacket.
Hannah's heart does something stupid. It stumbles and recovers and stumbles again. She reads it twice. Three times. Her thumb hovers over the keyboard, trembling slightly.
'I knew it.' Aitana is suddenly beside her, water bottle forgotten, craning to see the screen. 'Who are you texting? Is it the coffee woman?'
'It's no one.'
'You're blushing. You never blush. You scored a hat trick in a Champions League final and you didn't blush. You took a boot to the face against Real Madrid and you didn't blush. But you're looking at your phone like it's a love letter and you're bright red.'
'It's the sun.'
'We're indoors.'
Hannah locks the phone and shoves it in her pocket. The screen goes dark, but Emily's words are still there, burned into the back of her eyelids. I'm glad you bumped into me. 'Can we just—finish training?'
'Fine. But you're telling me everything after. And I mean everything.' Aitana stands, offers her a hand, pulls her up from the grass. 'Come on. Let's go score some goals so you can get back to your phone.'
The second half of training is sharper. She forces herself to focus, to feel the ball at her feet, to hear the calls from her teammates, to read the defensive shape and find the seams. She scores twice—once with her left, once with her head—and each time the roar from her teammates pulls her back into her body, reminds her who she is, what she does, what she's good at.
But between goals, between passes, between breaths, her mind drifts back to Emily. To the way she laughed. To the freckles on her arms, scattered like constellations across pale skin. To the way she looked at Hannah like she was just a person, not a player, not a captain, not a name on a billboard two blocks from where they stood.
Like she was just Hannah.
Training ends. The showers are loud with chatter—Alexia teasing her about being distracted, Ingrid asking if she's okay, Mapi making jokes about love at first coffee spill that make the whole team groan. She laughs along, deflects, lets them think what they want. But her phone is in her hand the second she's alone in the locker room, her bag packed, her hair still damp, the noise of the team fading into the background.
She reads Emily's message again.
Hi. I just wanted to say I'm glad you bumped into me.
She types: I'm glad too. Training was torture because I couldn't stop thinking about you.
She deletes it. Too much. Too fast. Too honest.
She types: You made my morning. Even the stain.
She sends it before she can second-guess it.
Three dots appear immediately. Emily is typing. The dots vanish. Appear again. Vanish. Hannah's heart is in her throat, beating against her windpipe like it's trying to escape.
Then:
Emily — coffee disaster: I made you a playlist. It's called "Songs for the Coffee Stain Girl." I hope that's not too much.
Hannah laughs out loud. The sound echoes in the empty locker room, bounces off the tiles, surprises her with how bright it is. She types: Send it to me.
Then, before she can overthink it, before the fear can catch up with the wanting: And I made you something too. A reservation. For dinner tonight. If you're free.
Emily — coffee disaster: Tonight?
Hannah — coffee disaster: Tonight. I know it's short notice. But I can't wait until Thursday.
Three dots. A long pause. Hannah watches the screen like it holds the answer to every question she's ever asked herself. The dots vanish. Her stomach drops. Then they reappear, and she holds her breath.
Emily — coffee disaster: Okay. Tonight. Send me the address.
Hannah stares at the screen. Her heart is hammering, a wild uneven rhythm that has nothing to do with the training she just finished. She did that. She asked. She's going to see Emily tonight.
Aitana appears in the doorway, towel around her shoulders, hair dripping onto the floor. 'You're smiling again.'
Hannah doesn't bother denying it. She can't. The smile is too big, too wide, too real. 'I have a date.'
'I know.'
'How do you know?'
'Because you just said it out loud. And because you've been smiling all day, and because you checked your phone approximately forty-seven times during training, and because you scored two goals while clearly thinking about something other than football.' Aitana grins, warm and knowing. 'Good for you, captain. Good for you.'
Hannah looks down at her phone. At Emily's name on the screen. At the coffee stain still dark on her sleeve, a mark she doesn't want to wash off, a badge she wants to keep.
Tonight. She's going to see her tonight.
And Emily still doesn't know who she is.
The thought lands like a weight in her chest, heavy and cold. She should tell her. Before tonight. Before dinner. Before Emily shows up expecting a local footballer, a woman who plays for a local team, and gets the star striker of FC Barcelona, the face on the billboard two blocks from the café, the woman whose name is on the back of a thousand jerseys worn by children and adults and everyone in between.
She should tell her.
But she doesn't know how. She doesn't know how to say: I'm not just a footballer. I'm the footballer. The one everyone knows except you. And I didn't tell you because for five minutes, I got to be just Hannah. And I'm not ready to lose that.
Her phone buzzes.
Emily — coffee disaster: I'm excited. Is that weird? We just met.
Hannah types: Not weird. I'm excited too.
She locks the phone. Puts it in her pocket. Grabs her bag.
'Hey,' Aitana says, softer now, the teasing gone from her voice. 'It's going to be fine.'
'What if it's not?'
'Then it's not. But you won't know until you try.' Aitana shrugs, a simple gesture that carries more weight than she probably means it to. 'And if she's the one who makes you smile like that, she's probably worth the risk.'
Hannah nods. She doesn't trust her voice.
She walks out of the locker room, through the tunnel, into the Barcelona evening. The sky is pink and gold, the air still warm from the day, the streets beginning to fill with people heading home or heading out. Her phone is warm in her pocket, a live wire pressed against her thigh. And somewhere across the city, Emily is getting ready for a date with a woman who hasn't told her the truth yet.
Hannah stops in the middle of the pavement. People flow around her like she's a stone in a river. She pulls out her phone. Types before she can lose her nerve, before the fear can catch up with the wanting.
Hannah — coffee disaster: There's something I should tell you. Before tonight.
She sends it before she can stop herself.
Then she stands there, in the pink and gold evening, her heart in her throat, waiting for the three dots to appear.