Winds of Change #2
When Yohan first saw Haley, he thought she must have hit her head on something and passed out cold.
That was how deeply she was sleeping — like a fairy-tale princess under a spell.
"Huh..."
He gave her a few light taps, but she didn't stir at all, so he decided to leave her be.
The suitcase in the room suggested she hadn't been there long, and she was clearly exhausted.
Yohan settled into the desk chair and slowly scrolled through his phone, tapping the screen with a single crooked finger. Then he tried calling Caroline.
"Yeah, Yohan?"
She picked up right away, though she seemed to be in the middle of something — voices murmured in the background. Worried about interrupting, Yohan cut straight to the point.
"Aunt Carrie, Haley's in Italy right now..."
"Oh, so she made it. She's at the convent, right? Can you just dump her at our place later? You've got the key, don't you?"
"I do have the key, but why is Haley—"
"I'm a little swamped right now. I'll call you back later."
"Ah — okay. Got it."
Having gotten none of the answers he wanted, Yohan scratched his head and looked over at Haley. She was sleeping with complete, enviable abandon.
He switched on the night-light and sat at the desk for a long while, studying languages. He was mouthing newly learned words under his breath when —
"Ghk..."
— Haley made a choked, gurgling sound, as if her breath had caught in her throat. Yohan turned his head just as her upper body rose in a slow, zombie-like lurch.
It was one of those things she did from time to time.
"....."
With bleary eyes, she scratched her neck and peered around the room. When she spotted Yohan, she opened her mouth to say something.
"I'll get you water."
He beat her to it. She nodded with a satisfied look, then gulped down the cool water he brought her in greedy swallows.
"Haaah..."
She emptied the cup in seconds, let out a deep breath from somewhere low in her chest, and rewound herself straight back onto the bed.
That, too, was classic Haley, so Yohan took it in stride and returned to the desk. In about ten minutes, he figured, she'd start fiddling with her phone and gradually come back to life.
Right on cue, exactly ten minutes later, Haley climbed down from the bed. She rummaged through her suitcase, found her toothbrush, and left the room with the easy, familiar steps of someone who had spent plenty of childhood visits here — back when Caroline would drop her off at the convent to play with Yohan.
Lively conversation drifted in from the hallway. Haley was chatting with the nuns.
She returned to Yohan's room a full fifteen minutes later.
"What're you doing?"
She opened with it so casually, so naturally, that anyone listening might have thought she'd never left Italy at all.
"Reading."
"What book?"
"French. Sleep well?"
"Yeah."
"You hungry?"
"The sisters gave me something before I went to sleep."
"What'd you have?"
"Bread with grape jam and some milk. They said they'd give me the jam to take home, so I offered to buy it — but it's made with allulose, so it spoils fast. They couldn't sell it all and had a ton left over, so they just told me to take it."
"Nice. You used to eat a lot of that stuff when you were dieting. Aunt Carrie liked it too."
"Yeah, well... anyway, come sit over here for a sec."
Haley patted the edge of the bed. She had the look of someone with a lot to say. Yohan set his book aside and sat down beside her.
"What?"
"Aren't you curious why I showed up in Italy out of nowhere like this?"
"Yeah."
"Then start by explaining the face you made at me in the airport."
"What airport? What face?"
"When I was leaving the States. Right before you went through departures, you turned around and looked at me like — like, what kind of ridiculous person is this."
"What...? I never looked at you like that. Not once, no matter what."
"I mean a face like that...! Anyway, what was that about?"
Yohan tilted his head and dug through his memory. He did remember turning back toward Haley just before entering the departure gate, raising one hand in a wave.
"Was my expression that bad?"
"Yeah."
"Hmm... I don't remember exactly what face I was making, but if that's how it came across, it was probably a mix of the club situation and everything going on with your family."
"Go on."
"When I went to the States, our club's results were terrible. I was playing badly on a personal level too. I wanted to reset with you and your family, but there were cameras everywhere, so I never really got to rest. I think it just didn't feel like I'd actually taken a break."
"Hrm... you sure?"
"I didn't have any hard feelings toward you, so yeah — probably."
"No hard feelings? You're sure about that too? Give me just one."
"Well... the cameras trying to film me, that kind of thing — that did sting a little. But like you said, I was the one bottling it all up on my own, so I figure that's on me. I could've just quietly told you or anyone else that I wanted some real rest."
"That's exactly my point."
Haley gave his shoulder a light smack. For some reason the gesture reminded him of Coach Marchetti, and Yohan's face went blank with confusion.
"What is?"
"No matter how long we've known each other, no matter how well we read each other's minds — we still don't know what's buried deep down. Right?"
"Right."
"So what do we do about that? We talk about the deep stuff. I don't like this, this is hard, this is good — you've got to put it all out there honestly if you want the relationship to get stronger, don't you? I tell you everything straight. Why are you the only one holding back with me?"
Yohan was the type who said what he needed to say. He always had been, even as a kid — and he still was, around close friends like Ciro.
With Haley, too, he'd always said everything, the easy and the hard.
But things were different now. He'd grown careful. More precisely, he'd started overthinking — worrying about what might upset her, reading her mood before he spoke.
Why had it come to this?
Because he liked her far too much.
Afraid that one wrong move might push her away, he bent over backward to accommodate her. He wanted so badly to keep this person he truly cared about close that he'd given up on any chance of the relationship going further, settling instead for a safe, uneventful status quo.
It was the fear of what if.
But his thinking had shifted a little. Seeing her come all the way here had given him a measure of certainty. So he resolved to be honest with her again — the way he used to be.
"I'll admit it. That tendency's gotten worse lately."
"Right? From now on, stop hanging out with Aiden."
"Huh...?"
"You two just play those nerd games together and now you've turned into an actual nerd. You've gotten so timid."
"That's going too far. Oh — and for the record, you said you'd visit all the time and then never showed. That actually hurt."
"I'll give you that one. Fair enough."
"But when I went to the States and you came running, all of that just disappeared."
"So which is it? It hurt or it didn't?"
"Fifty-fifty...?"
"Yep. Total nerd. Anyway, let's pick this up again in two hours. Jet lag's killing me."
"Want to head to your place together, then?"
"It's too big and empty when I'm alone. I'm staying here tonight, so deal with it."
"One night? So we go to your place tomorrow?"
"I'm flying back to the States tomorrow. I skipped school to come here. My attendance is already short — if I keep missing, I won't graduate."
Yohan's eyes closed slowly, then opened again. With no one around to stop her, she really did just go full throttle.
"I see... but if that's the case, why not come on a weekend? Or take your time and—"
"Shut up. I don't even care if I don't graduate. I'm going to be a model."
"Ah... so you've settled on a career path?"
"Yeah. So can I just stay a few days?"
"Didn't Aunt Carrie make high school graduation a hard condition for letting you go to the States...?"
"She did. Nice memory. If you'd forgotten, I was going to throw you under the bus."
"Please don't."
And so, inside the convent, Yohan and Haley talked through the night — all the things they'd left unsaid. Falling asleep side by side on the narrow bed, pressed close the way they had as children, was just a bonus.
The next day, Yohan saw her off at the airport. In front of the departure gate, they held each other for a long time and promised the next meeting.
"Don't come in March. If you've got makeup classes, take them. I'll come in the summer."
"Didn't you say you had to play in the Olympics?"
"They probably won't even select me — but if they do, I'm planning to turn it down personally."
"Why?"
"They got through the qualifiers without me. If I take someone else's spot just because I want to go to the Olympics, what kind of person does that make me? I'm not that shameless. I'm still young — there'll be other chances. It's fine."
"You somehow manage to say that in the most annoying way possible."
"Did it come off like that?"
"No. So in March, I trust you and I don't come?"
"Yeah."
The faint heaviness he'd carried from America was gone. He watched Haley's plane take off, then hurried back to the training ground.
The personal matters with Haley had been settled, and Yohan had reclaimed his old, straightforward self. The fractures inside the club had been properly mended as well — all in all, things were looking good.
From that position, Roma couldn't quite be called dominant, but they kept up solid results and climbed as high as eighth in the table.
Yohan, too, raised his personal numbers dramatically. Playing a more goal-oriented style than the previous season, he racked up sixteen goals and six assists — and more than a few fans lamented that if he hadn't stalled in the first half of the campaign, he might even have been in the running for the top scorer's crown.
In any case, ever since Coach Marchetti's arrival, things had truly been falling into place.
From the outside, though, Roma still looked like a club on shaky ground.
And it was that outside perception that finally made Marchetti explode — at the press conference before the next match, after Roma had fallen 3–1 to Lazio in the Coppa Italia semifinals.