Rest
Two matches. Two goals. One assist.
Looking at the numbers alone, it hardly seemed dazzling. Players hitting a hot streak piled up attacking returns over short stretches all the time. But fold in the fact that those numbers belonged to a fifteen-year-old kid in his debut season, and the picture changed entirely.
It was an insane run. The quality of the contributions was high, and even his ordinary match-to-match play was excellent. Francesco Grasso of Milan, who had set all of Italy buzzing the moment he arrived, had posted four goals and one assist in nine matches in his own debut campaign. Tomaso Vitale of Lazio had four goals in seven. Both of them had put up performances no one could reasonably call mere "promising youngster" form — and Yohan's debut-season pace was faster, and better, than either of theirs.
Of course, two strong matches alone could never define a player's entire ability. It could have been a flash in the pan. It could have been luck. Even so, people could not help getting ahead of themselves. Watch the performances and that kind of expectation rose on its own.
Yohan, and Grasso and Vitale, who had debuted a season earlier. The football pages dissected the three of them every day, sketched out their futures, and gave readers something vivid to enjoy. There were already people boldly declaring that the Ballon d'Or races of the years ahead would come out of Serie A alone. Three talents of that rare caliber bursting onto the scene at nearly the same time was that much of an event.
England, Spain, and Germany — the other three of the so-called Big Four leagues — had their own standout young players, a few of them. But people tended to favor their own, and Italian eyes rated the domestic names higher. In any case, the three boys' stock climbed by the day, and in the middle of it all, several pieces of major news about Yohan came flying in from abroad.
Outstanding youth players always drew eyes from other clubs. If a player had not yet signed a professional contract, another side could take him with only a modest training compensation fee paid to his current club — provided the player himself agreed. For the buying club, it meant securing high-upside talent for a relative pittance. For the player, an offer from a bigger-name club meant better training and, often, a healthier financial package for the family. Youth hijacking was common enough. And a player like Yohan — rated as overflowing with potential, already featuring in first-team league matches, and performing at a high level — was the kind of asset clubs would do almost anything to pry loose.
So clubs that had already been watching him, and plenty of others from abroad, started calling Simone. But Yohan had no intention whatsoever of signing elsewhere. The club he had dreamed of was Roma. The thought of playing for anyone else had never been worth a single cent to him.
That stance delighted the club and the fans alike — seal-clapping levels of delight — and Roma soon put out a club statement of its own to quiet the transfer talk.
It was a deal set to trigger automatically at sixteen — the youngest age at which a player could turn professional. The truth was that players like Yohan, who had already debuted with the first team, almost never moved. Why leave for a new club where minutes were uncertain and everything had to be learned over again, when you could keep growing under the trust of the side you already belonged to? Francesco Grasso at Milan and Tomaso Vitale at Lazio had both been the subject of endless transfer rumors, and both had ended up signing professional terms with their own clubs. Of course, those two also genuinely loved their clubs, and Milan and Lazio were the kind of large, desirable destinations players wanted to join in the first place — that had to be factored in.
Either way, Yohan left the matter in Simone's hands and focused on training. He was named in the starting eleven for Roma's final match of the season as well.
When he came out of the tunnel, the home fans' soft swell of song was already underway. He remembered falling for that melody the first time Ciro had played it for him back in elementary school — a tune good enough to pull a smile out of him on its own. Listening to it as he lined up on the pitch, Yohan scanned the stands beyond the track.
Did they come...?
He had asked the club for tickets and handed them all out to his classmates and homeroom teacher, keeping a promise he had made to himself. And not only tickets — he had also secured them places for the end-of-season field walk, the event where players' families and friends were allowed down onto the grass after the final whistle. He had only mentioned tickets at first, but even for a group of roughly twenty, the club had gone out of its way. It said everything about how much expectation Yohan carried, and how carefully they were handling him.
They're here.
A young crowd filled a good block of seats near midfield. Too far to count precisely, but roughly twenty. The whole class, by the look of it.
Roma! Roma! Roma!
As he moved to find his place on the field, the anthem hit its high point and a shiver ran through his whole body. From the time he was small, he had dreamed of standing on this pitch with that sound in his ears. Now that it was real, his affection for the club only felt deeper. And he was in the same position as against Atalanta — stationed on the center line, feeling for all the world like the main character. A thrill ran through him, and the resolve to play well rose fresh and sharp. His role leaned more toward support than it had that day, but if he could still make something happen, he would try.
With that vow set, the whistle blew, Guidotti rolled the ball, and Yohan turned it out to Lorenzo the way he had in the previous match.
The final opponents were Cagliari, a weaker side. They had been relegation candidates, but had scraped clear of the drop zone in round thirty-seven, and the match never turned fierce. Throughout it, the crowd watched Yohan's every move almost like a parenting diary, cheering him on. Even when he turned the ball over they cooed that he had done well — which Yohan found a little strange, and also quietly fortifying.
The result was a 2–0 win on goals from Rossi and Mackenzie. Yohan did not add to his attacking returns, but he linked play like a long-time member of the side, threaded several key passes, and came away with a high rating.
Three matches. Two goals. One assist.
That was how Yohan's debut season came to a close.
Then came the field walk. He chatted with his classmates and homeroom teacher as they poured excitedly onto the pitch, watched them shyly ask other players for photos, and looked over at Haley.
"You're not getting any autographs?"
"I don't even know who those people are."
"What about Aunt Carrie?"
"Over there. She's asking the players to take pictures with her."
"She really is. Does she like football?"
"No. She just wants photos with famous people to put on social media. She used to do the same thing with NBA and NFL players back in the States."
Yohan, who lived entirely apart from anything digital and had no interest in it to begin with, had not known that — but Caroline was active on social media. She had a large following, too. The Newman family carried a considerable name in the United States, for better and for worse. More precisely, Caroline herself, currently on a break from fashion work, and her parents' side of the family were relatively well-behaved. It was the relatives' branch where the trouble tended to erupt.
"I see."
"Must be nice being famous. Does it feel real?"
"Day to day? Or during matches?"
"Both."
"Day to day, not really... Only a little, when people in the neighborhood cheer when they see me, or when fans show up at the training ground. But in matches, yeah — I think I might be a bit famous. You saw it yourself."
"Listen to you. Cocky."
"Did it sound like that?"
"Yeah. Kid's gotten a big head."
"Have I...? I'll try to be more humble."
"I won't even be able to go to the movies with you anymore. Head into central Rome and half the city'll recognize you."
"That doesn't mean I can't go to the movies with you. Want to go later, after this? It's been a while."
"What about dinner? Mom said we should eat."
"We can do dinner and a movie. Talking about dinner made me hungry."
"You look it. You're skin and bones."
Haley clicked her tongue, fussing with Yohan's sweat-damp arm. Watching her do it without the slightest hesitation, he asked,
"Don't you hate getting sweat on you?"
"If I did, I wouldn't have slept stuck to you when we were little."
"People don't sweat when they're asleep."
"Who says? You sweat when you sleep too."
"Oh. I didn't know that. But didn't you always get annoyed in the summer when I came back from football?"
"That was because you'd wander into the room still covered in sweat and whine about playing. If you'd showered first, who would've said anything?"
"Ah. Yeah, that sounds right."
"You're such an idiot."
Haley saw Yohan soaked in sweat fairly often. When they were kids and he came back from football, she had gotten irritated exactly the way he had just described. Not anymore. Even if he flopped onto her bed in that state and rolled around, she thought she would be more or less fine with it.
He looked strangely unfamiliar. She had thought something like that watching his debut in person, and again watching on television, but the feeling landing in her now was much stronger. Probably the eyes. The look he had when he played with real fire was still alive in them, and seeing it this close made something young and tender kick in her chest.
"Haaah..."
Once upon a time she would have written off a random yawn like that as childish. Now it almost made him look like someone with quiet room to spare.
Get a grip.
Suddenly off-balance in a way she could not name, Haley steadied herself and gave Yohan a couple of prods.
"Hey."
"Hm?"
"Some guy over there is staring at you."
Yohan looked where she pointed and brightened at once. Miguel was coming toward them with his lovely wife.
"Miguel!"
"Gio — this is my wife. Say hello."
"Mrs. Valentina, right? I'm Yohan. Please just call me Gio. Thank you so much for the mate — I enjoyed every bit of it."
Yohan stepped in warmly with the greeting. Haley had been standing quietly behind him, glancing around, when he suddenly hooked an arm around her shoulders and drew her forward mid-conversation with Valentina. Her brow twitched for a second.
"This is Haley."
On any other day she would have had something to say about him putting a damp hand on her clothes — but his teammates were right there, and she decided dignity required a little performance. She played the well-mannered part.
"Haley Newman."
It was the same act Caroline pulled outside the house: every inch the refined young lady, composure pouring off her in waves.