When Words Are Not Enough

My first question has an answer when Conejo arrives in the same beat-up Mazda we once kissed in. Fame has not changed him. 

The second question lasts until we lock eyes for the first time in two years. He still looks at me as if we’re alone in a crowded stadium.

If there is a third, it floats away with my heart in the humid Barranquilla breeze.

We are not talkers, me and Conejo. Even in childhood, we spoke little. There is only fútbol - a dance, a duel, and a heart-to-heart all in one. Words could not have brought us close enough.

Once when we were eight, the night after las bacrim murdered his brother, I found him sitting alone in the middle of the training pitch. I’d brought my football, a cratered moon his brother had called El Golazo for all the times he’d scored with it. Conejo leaned back with it in his hands, arms outstretched, as if to put it back amongst the heavenly bodies. 

He pointed at the stars - none in particular, or perhaps them all - and said nothing, because I knew what he meant. To break free of poverty and violence, to provide for our families, we must become one of them. Fútbol is the only way out. 

He sees the same ball in my hand now, and he grins with teeth whiter than I remember. I toss it to him, and, catlike, he traps it beneath his instep. He passes it back to me, firm and precise.

¿Qué más?

A greeting. Confident, but safe. 

My return falters before it reaches him. The ball spins on close-cut grass, pivoting in a dozen directions like my thoughts and emotions. 

I missed you.

If words did it justice, this is what I would say. Instead, from one abject mis-kick, he knows how I feel. Two whole years of watching him lift trophies and live our dream in Spain, while my team - our team - loses game after game and the gang violence worsens. Two years of tabloid gossip linking him with this model and that music star. Too long without his arms around me; his lips on mine.

He is watching me, expression inscrutable. He takes the ball into his stride and runs past with a tap on my backside.

Did you? Then come and get me.

I stand motionless, a sunburned goalpost, taking in the sight of him dribbling. Faster, faster, Conejito! Coach Reyes used to bark. Fast as a rabbit and twice as agile. White shorts of Real Madrid C.F. flap against his thighs, above the hairy, shapely legs worth thirty million euros each. 

He checks over his shoulder, wondering why I’m not right behind, and the look on his face pulls my heart out of my chest.

I cover the distance in a few long strides, but only because he lets me. He shields the ball, twists away, and darts to my left in one smooth motion. A challenge.

Can you keep up, Dani? Madrid has changed me. 

I still know you best.

My leg sticks out and nicks the ball away. It rolls free and we scramble towards it, side-by-side, arms all over each other. 

It has been this way since our teens: he is the attacker; I am the defender. Whenever we stole fruit or sweets from a stall, pursued by angry men, it was Conejo who ran in front with the goods, while I covered his back. He would let me keep all the watermelon, since he now had no siblings, and I had six. We shared the cocadas, wiping sticky crumbs from our chins in between fits of laughter.

He puts himself between me and the ball, and I slam into his back, swinging a leg around him, then between his legs, trying to make contact with it. I feel the heat of his body against mine, and I know he feels me, too.

Did you forget how it feels to be close to me, Conejo?

We jostle each other - a small eternity - until I pull away, and he neatly pirouettes to face me. My breath is short, and not just from exertion. The Colombian summer pulls moisture from his black curls, and it drips like rain falling from forest leaves in the Amazon. He brushes it out of his eyes with a theatrical gesture.

How could I forget? 

The gesture takes me back to the night of our championship final. We lost the game, and afterwards, a gang of thugs from las bacrim ambushed Conejo and beat him bloody. They blamed him for missing chances that cost us the trophy. I found him lying senseless in an alleyway, and in my panic, I started CPR without the slightest idea of what I was doing. When he awoke, he brushed blood-encrusted hair out of his eyes as if nothing had happened. Then he hugged me close.

And still you left me.

Next thing I know, I’ve booted the ball to the other end of the pitch. He immediately sets after it, but at a leisurely pace, as if giving himself time to think. The rational corner of my brain chides me for being too harsh, but it is quickly drowned out by jealousy and fear. 

When he kicks it back, it is with laser precision and deliberately applied power. I cushion it down, but the force behind the pass knocks me off balance. Pain blooms where it landed on my chest. His meaning is clear:

It hurt me to leave. But you know I had no choice. 

It is hard for outsiders to understand, but fútbol is more than life in Barranquilla. From birth, we accept that there is no other way to sustain body and mind. It is a need as natural as food and drink. And fútbol is truly more than life when las bacrim threatens your family if you don’t perform. 

But sometimes, when a player is truly special, a scout will arrive from Real Madrid C.F. - the biggest, richest, and most supported club in the world - to watch him play. That scout will personally recommend him to the president.

A week later, Real Madrid will offer Barranquilla F.C. sixty million euros - the equivalent of a quarter of a trillion pesos, or enough to build four new fútbol stadiums - to buy him. More than this, they will offer fame, wealth, and an escape from poverty. All they ask, unwittingly, is to leave his childhood love behind.

I could never begrudge Conejo his choice, even if it broke me.

My next pass sails over his head. Wayward, distracted.

My life has never been the same.

With a move I’ve seen him do on TV, he plucks it out of the air with his leg extended backward like a scorpion. It loops back over his head and into his waiting hands. He spreads his arms wide, not in annoyance, but as if to say:

I came back, didn’t I?

Still overwhelmed, I don’t respond, so he charges at me with the ball at his feet, challenging me to take it back. His feet are a blur. His body slaloms left and right with the balance of a ballerina. I frown, unsure what he is trying to say.

Once he is within striking distance, my tackle is full-blooded and passionate. I want to leave a mark, make sure he never forgets me. This is how I tell him that once in two years is not enough. That he should have never come back if he won’t stay. That, despite it all, I want him to succeed in Spain and achieve everything his talent is worth.

At the last second, he swivels away, but my boot-tip catches his ankle and we tumble down together in a tangle of limbs. He lands on top of me, and now we are impossibly close; our breaths meld as intimately as our lives once did. Our eyes meet again, mere inches apart. I raise an eyebrow.

So, what now?

I am reminded of my third question, which came to life the day before he left for Madrid.

It was born in his battered Mazda, on a cliff by the sea, under a blanket of stars, in a life we left behind.

It swirled inside my mind exactly one second after his lips pulled away from mine, for the very first time, for much too short a time.

It arose in a single moment, yet has consumed all the moments since. 

“Come with me,” he whispers. “To Madrid.”

The answer to the third question makes my heart flutter in the breeze, and suddenly his words are all I ever want to hear.