"Argh. Finally he is back on us. I mean, who really wants to know about the wonders of restaurant work and farming? This dude, really."
He scoffed.
Then he said it with actual venom.
"He deserves all the cooking he is getting."
Mtcheww.
He hissed through his teeth.
In the passenger seat, Aina had been scrolling on her phone. She turned her head at the sound and found Pedri mouthing off to absolutely nobody.
She stared at him.
"Are you talking to me?"
She pointed at herself.
Pedri's eyes came off the road. He looked at her, and his face was so genuinely blank that she started doubting herself.
"What?"
"You." She gestured at his mouth. "You were muttering something just now. I thought you were talking to me."
Pedri looked back at the road. Then he turned and looked at her again.
"What?"
"You were." Aina's hand was still up. "You were literally just."
She stopped. She closed her eyes.
"You know what. Never mind."
Pedri glanced over at her again, still driving, and this time he smiled.
"You really look good in that dress."
Aina stared at him for a second.
Then she smiled.
"Thank you."
In the back seat, Mateo and Olivia were having their own problems.
"I am serious. It looks good."
Mateo was laughing, one hand on the back of the seat, holding his phone out to her.
Olivia was giving him a look. Not a glare exactly. Something in the family of a glare. Her mouth was pulled into a small pout and her eyes were completely unconvinced.
Mateo looked back at her.
Then he laughed again.
"What? What?"
Olivia's mouth opened, and a smile got in there before she could stop it.
"You are lying."
"I am serious. It does look good."
"Let me see it again." She reached over. "Let me see it properly."
She took the phone right out of his hand.
Normally, Mateo hated that. He genuinely, deeply hated when people took his phone. Something about not being the one holding it made his skin itch.
He let her take it.
Olivia turned the screen toward herself and looked at the picture.
It was a photograph of her that Mateo had taken outside the apartment. And it was, by any reasonable measure, a terrible photograph. He had come in close, held the phone up somewhere near the level of his own eyebrow, and shot down at her, so the whole image was mostly forehead. Her forehead took up the top third of the frame. Her chin was somewhere far away at the bottom, doing its best. The angle had given her the proportions of a woman being viewed through a peephole.
Mateo turned his head and looked at it with her.
Then he leaned across, resting his shoulder against hers, and studied it more closely.
"See." He tapped the screen. "Isn't it cute?"
Olivia rolled her eyes.
"This looks horrible. What is wrong with your taste?"
She was laughing as she said it.
Mateo's mouth fell open. He made a small scoffing sound.
"Wow. Rude."
She was still laughing. He started laughing too. He took the phone back from her, held it up in front of himself, and looked at the picture again with the seriousness of a man in a gallery.
"I like it."
Olivia just shook her head at him.
Up front, Pedri glanced down at the dashboard.
"What is the time," he muttered.
He read it off the display. Then his head came around.
"Hey, Mateo. Is it not time the match started?"
Mateo looked up, confused.
"Match?"
Then his eyes went wide.
"That is true. That is true, it should be time."
He was already going into his phone, thumbs moving fast.
Olivia leaned in a little, watching him.
"Match?"
From the front, Aina twisted round.
"What match?"
Pedri answered first, eyes on the road.
"The guys. Gavi and them. They have their other round of the intra high match today."
Mateo was still working at his phone.
"The match should be starting right about now."
The stream loaded. He smiled.
"Yes. Got it."
He tilted the phone and started watching. The players were coming out onto the pitch, the little figures on his little screen, filing into two lines. He watched Casadó walk out at the front of one of them and shake hands with the captain of the women's team, the two of them exchanging a word before the coin toss.
Olivia shifted across the back seat until her shoulder was against his, watching over his arm.
"Are you not supposed to be playing in that?"
Mateo did not hear her properly. He was already lost in it, his eyes tracking the shape of the first pass.
He turned his head.
"Sorry, what?"
"I thought you were supposed to be playing with them?" Olivia nodded at the screen. "Why didn't you go?"
"Oh." Mateo blinked. "Well. Ehm. I think they had some scheduling problem, I am not totally sure, that is what the coach said. And then it was only yesterday that they moved this match to today."
"Yesterday?"
"Yeah. It was too sudden. And I had the dinner and everything."
"Oh."
Mateo shrugged and leaned back into the seat, still watching.
"Anyway. It is not like they need my help or anything."
He said it lightly. Casually. Barely thinking about it.
"I mean. They are playing the women's team, after all."
There was a pause in the car.
"Wait, what."
Olivia had gone very still.
In the front, Aina's head came all the way around.
"Excuse you."
The two of them looked at each other. A long look. A shared, deeply unimpressed, entirely wordless look that passed between them with the fluency of two women who had known each other for years.
Then they both turned and looked at Mateo.
Mateo looked up from his phone.
He found two faces staring at him.
An awkward smile arrived on his face and immediately began to die.
"Wait. No. Like. I mean." He held up a hand. "Yeah, like, it is the women's team, so. The guys should be able to beat them. Is what I."
Both women gave him a look.
Mateo heard the words leave his own mouth and understood, in real time, that he was not helping himself even slightly.
"And what," Aina said slowly, "is that supposed to mean?"
Mateo started laughing. It was a fake laugh. It fooled nobody.
"You know what I mean."
Beside him, Olivia turned her whole body toward him.
"No. I don't. Please explain."
"Well." Mateo could feel his own collar. "Ehm."
He looked to the front for support.
"Pedri. Pedri. You know what I mean, right?"
Aina turned to Pedri with a slow, amused, absolutely delighted expression.
"Oh." She tilted her head. "You do?"
Pedri made a sound that was not quite a laugh.
"I do not," he said, "know what that man is talking about."
He flicked his eyes up to the rearview mirror and found Mateo's.
"You are on your own, big man."
Then he put both hands on the wheel and gave the road ahead the kind of focus normally reserved for landing aircraft.
Aina looked at him, and her smile widened.
Olivia and Aina turned back to Mateo in perfect unison.
"Continue," Aina said.
Olivia folded her hands in her lap and looked at him with enormous amusement.
"Yes, please do. I want to know exactly why it would be so easy for." She lifted both hands and hooked two fingers on each. "The guys. To win."
Mateo was in a corner. He could feel the walls.
"Well. You know."
They both just looked at him. They were both smiling now, which was somehow much worse.
"Go on," Olivia said.
Mateo glanced at Pedri, who was driving with the intense concentration of a man performing surgery.
Whipped fool.
"I mean." Mateo cleared his throat.
And then an idea arrived, and he grabbed it the way a drowning man grabs a rope.
"Yeah. Yeah, I mean, like, you know the women's season is over already, right? So they are out of their competitive rhythm. No match fitness. And some of their main players might not even be there for a friendly like this, they will be away, resting, on international duty, whatever. So the squad is not going to be full strength. That is all I meant."
He nodded, as though he had just delivered a closing argument.
"That is why I said it would be easy for them. Match fitness. Squad availability."
The two women looked at him.
"Hmmm," said Aina.
"Hmmm," said Olivia.
Mateo's eyes went past them, out the window, hunting for absolutely anything.
And then he saw something, and he lunged for it.
"Wait." He sat up. "I know this area."
He looked around properly now, at the buildings, at the corner they had just passed.
Safeee.
Up front, Pedri glanced at him.
"You do?"
He checked the map on his display.
"Actually, yeah. The venue is just up there."
"Really?" Mateo said, and he could hear how bright his own voice was. He pointed out the window at a turning. "That street. Right there. That is where old man Francisco and his wife Manuela have their restaurant." Mateo who was very good with roads recognized the place instantly
The car was quiet for a second. Everybody looked at him.
Mateo grinned, genuinely amused now by how close it was.
"They are the parents of my dorm supervisor. Or, well. Former dorm supervisor."
Pedri's eyebrows went up.
"Of Mister Alejandro's?"
"Yeah. They live there with his kids."
Pedri's head half-turned.
"He has kids?"
Mateo laughed.
"Yes. Twins, as a matter of fact."
"Wow." Pedri shook his head. "Wow."
Aina frowned.
"And they live with his grandparents? The kids do?"
Mateo shrugged.
"Yeah. I guess so. I mean, he is a dorm supervisor. He cannot exactly have them at the dorms with him all the time."
Olivia tilted her head.
"And no wife?"
Mateo thought about that for a second.
"I am not sure on that front, honestly. I have never seen him wear a wedding band. Maybe something happened. I don't know."
The car went a little quieter.
"Ohhh," they all said, more or less together.
Then Pedri slowed and turned the wheel.
"We are here."
...
Mateo got out of the car and immediately started fixing his suit.
He tugged the jacket straight at the shoulders, pulled at the cuffs, ran a hand down the front of it where the seatbelt had folded a crease into the fabric. He turned his wrist to check his watch, then went back to the cuffs again.
Beside him, Olivia was doing her own version. She smoothed the front of her dress, adjusted one of the small buttons, ran her fingers under her hair and pulled it back over her shoulder.
Pedri finished parking, killed the engine, and looked out through the windscreen.
Up ahead, set back from the road, was a building. It was small. It was also, unmistakably, extremely expensive. Low light spilling out of tall windows, a soft glow along a stone frontage, staff in black moving in the doorway.
He pointed at it.
"That should be it."
He got out, came around, and found Aina already standing there, straightening the line of her dress. She glanced up at him.
Pedri smiled and extended his hand.
"May I."
Aina looked at his hand. Then at him.
She smiled and took it.
They started walking together.
Behind them, Olivia turned to Mateo.
"Am I okay?"
Mateo looked at her.
"You look perfect."
It came out plainly, without any effort at all, and it landed heavier than he had meant it to. Olivia's eyes flicked down, then back up. He felt his own ears go warm. Neither of them said anything for a second.
Then he put out his hand, and she took it, and the two of them started walking in.
The car park was a museum.
Mateo could not stop looking. A black Maybach sat gleaming under a lamp with a driver still behind the wheel. Two rows of BMWs, the big ones, the 7 series, sitting there like they were parked at a funeral for someone important. An Audi A8 with tinted glass. A Range Rover so clean it looked wet. Somewhere near the back, half in shadow, a Bentley that Mateo actually slowed down to look at.
He looked at all of them. He looked at every single one of them.
Olivia watched him doing it, and she started laughing.
"I guess you love cars."
Mateo did not even look at her. He was still staring at the Bentley.
"How can you tell?"
She laughed harder, and he grinned, and he let her pull him along.
Two security men stood at the entrance.
They saw the group coming and they straightened, and then one of them recognised who was walking toward him, and his whole face changed.
They did not stop them. They did not ask for anything.
"Good evening." One of them nodded, holding the door.
"Good evening," Mateo said.
He had taken two steps past when he heard the voice behind him.
"Mateo. Sorry, can we."
There was a sharp sound of a hand hitting an arm, and a hiss through gritted teeth.
"Dude. We are at work."
Mateo turned around, smiling.
"It is okay. It is okay."
The first guard's face split wide open. He was already digging in his jacket, pulling out a small notebook, patting himself down for a pen. He found one in his breast pocket and held it up like he had struck oil.
"Yes."
He handed both over.
"Could you make it out to Iker? Iker Serrano."
Mateo clicked the pen and started writing.
The second guard, who had been standing there rigidly staring straight ahead like a man determined to keep his job, cracked.
"Turn the page." He leaned in. "Let him sign one for me as well."
The first guard did not even look up.
"I thought we were at work."
"Dude." The second one reached over and pulled the notebook out of his hands. "You."
Mateo laughed and took the notebook back and signed a second page.
"What is your name?"
"Sergio."
"Sergio." He wrote it. He signed underneath. He handed it back.
Both of them were beaming. And then the second guard, Sergio, looked past Mateo, and his eyes went to Pedri, who had been standing back with Aina.
"Could we." He hesitated. "Could we get yours too?"
Pedri blinked.
"Me?"
He pointed at his own chest.
"Oh. Oh, okay. Okay, sure. Sure."
He came forward and took the pen, and as he was signing, the first guard started talking, and once he started he could not stop.
"That final goal. Against Atlético."
"Dude." The other one turned to him. "Goosebumps. Actual goosebumps. I was screaming so loud in my flat, my neighbour banged on the wall."
Pedri laughed, still signing. "I was screaming too."
"You have no idea what you did for us."
"Thank you." He handed the notebook back. "Thank you, really."
The two guards were thanking them, and shaking their hands, and thanking them again, and Mateo and Pedri were laughing and backing away toward the door, and Aina and Olivia were laughing too. The four of them went inside hand in hand, and Mateo turned around one last time on the threshold and the guards were both still standing there with the notebook, grinning like boys.
Everybody, all six of them, was smiling.
Just inside, Laporta was waiting.
He spotted Mateo across the entrance hall and his arms came up immediately.
"There he is. You are finally here."
"President."
Laporta shook his hand with both of his, and Mateo, remembering the medal ceremony, braced very slightly.
"Ah, Pedri. Pedri." Laporta moved on and got him by the shoulder. "The man of the hour. The goal. The goal, Pedri."
"Thank you, president."
"No, no. Thank you."
Then Laporta turned to the two women, and his whole manner shifted into something courtly.
"And these must be the beautiful ones we have been hearing about." He inclined his head. "Welcome. Truly. Welcome."
Aina laughed.
"Thank you, sir."
"Thank you," Olivia said.
"Please." He gestured toward the inner doors with a wide arm. "Go in. Go in, all of you, it will be starting soon."
"Okay, sir."
Ferran Reverter appeared at Laporta's shoulder as they moved past, offering a hand to each of them in turn, his greeting shorter, cleaner, more measured.
"Mateo. Pedri. Good to see you both. Enjoy the evening."
"Thank you, sir."
They started through.
And then Laporta's hand landed lightly on Mateo's arm, holding him back for half a step, and the president leaned in, and his voice dropped to something meant only for him.
"Mateo. A word of advice."
Mateo turned.
"I would advise you to start getting used to things like this. For the future." Laporta's eyes moved briefly around the room behind them, at the suits, at the glasses, at the low murmur of it. "Some of the people in this room can help your career. Sometimes more than anything that happens to you on the pitch."
Mateo held his eye for a second.
Then he nodded.
"I understand, president."
He nodded again.
"Thank you for the advice."
Laporta beamed and clapped him on the arm.
"It is nothing. It is nothing." He was already turning back to the door, back to the next arrival. "Okay. Go, go. Make sure you have fun, eh?"
They stepped through the inner doors.
"Wow," Olivia said.
The room opened up in front of them, and it was nothing like the small get-together anyone had described.
The ceiling went up and up, carrying two enormous chandeliers that threw a warm, low, golden light down over everything. Round tables in white linen, set with more glasses per person than any of them would ever use. Waiters in black moving between them with trays held at the shoulder. A long wall of arched windows down one side, and along the far end, a raised area where a string quartet had already set up, tuning quietly. The flowers on the tables were fresh. The napkins were folded into shapes. Somewhere a cork came out of a bottle with an expensive-sounding sigh.
The four of them stood in the doorway looking at it.
"I thought," Mateo said slowly, "that this was a small get-together. Or something."
Pedri was staring at a chandelier.
"Yeah. That is what they said."
A staff member appeared at their side, hands folded, smiling.
"Good evening. May I lead you to your seats?"
Well.
After that, what could Mateo say.
The next few hours were, honestly, a lot like the going-away party he had been thrown when he left the dorms. The same shape, the same rhythm. People eating too much and staying too long and laughing at things that were not that funny.
This one was just bigger. And fancier. And full of suits with much deeper pockets.
But it was, surprisingly, really nice.
They ate. The food came in courses, each one smaller than the last, which Mateo found personally offensive but did not say so. There was some kind of fish that Olivia loved and he did not understand. There was a dessert that arrived under a glass dome, and when the waiter lifted it there was smoke, and Pedri actually laughed out loud.
And they mingled.
Mateo and Olivia moved through the room together, and Mateo shook more hands in two hours than he had in his entire life. Chief executives. Managing directors of financial institutions whose names he recognised from bank cards in his own wallet. Sporting directors from brands he had worn since he was eleven. A woman who ran the Spanish arm of a media company. A man who owned a chain of hotels and wanted to talk about nothing but the Suárez tackle.
They all did the same thing. They all put a hand on his shoulder and told him what a season he had had. They all said it as though they were letting him in on a secret.
And the whole room hummed with the specific noise of important people greeting other important people, a noise made of first names and laughter and hands on forearms.
By the first hour, everyone had arrived.
The quartet started properly then. Real music, filling the room from the far end, the strings climbing over the top of the conversation and quieting it. Something slow. Something old. Mateo had no idea what it was.
Olivia went completely still.
He looked at her, and she had turned herself toward the music, and she was listening to it in a way that he did not really have the equipment to understand. When it finished she clapped, and she clapped harder than anybody else in that room, and she turned to him with her whole face lit up.
"Wow. Wasn't that beautiful?"
Mateo, who genuinely could not have told you whether it had been beautiful or not, smiled at her.
"Yeah. Yeah, it was."
Then came the speeches.
Messi spoke first, and it was short, which surprised nobody, and it was good, which also surprised nobody. He thanked the club. He thanked the staff. He said the players had given everything and they knew it, and that he was proud, and that he did not say that often.
Koeman spoke next and his voice went almost immediately, which got a laugh, and then a warmer one when he pretended to be angry about it. He talked about a season that had begun with nobody believing in them.
And Laporta spoke last, and he spoke longest, and by the end of it half the room was on its feet.
Each of them said something different. Each of them, in the end, said the same thing.
We won the league.
We are not finished.
There is one more.
Every time it landed, Mateo felt it in the same place. So did Pedri, three seats away, whose jaw had set. So did every player in the room. The Champions League final was sitting in the middle of that beautiful room like a thing under a cloth, and every speaker in turn walked past it and put a hand on it, and reminded them all exactly what could still be added to this.
By the third hour, Mateo was extremely bored.
He had run out of ways to say thank you. His face hurt from a specific arrangement of pleasantness he had been holding since he arrived. He had eaten four small things and was still hungry.
He was standing near the edge of the room, half-listening to a woman explain something, when he realised he had started actually listening.
She was talking about a project. Some kind of campaign. She had been describing it for a couple of minutes now, with her hands, sketching it out in the air, and from what she was saying he had gathered she was some sort of creative director at Nike Spain, or something in that area.
And what she was describing was, honestly, incredible.
"So the whole thing opens in silence," she was saying. "No music, nothing, just the sound of the boots. And then."
She snapped her fingers.
"That is so sick," Mateo said.
He said it before he could stop himself, the way you say something when you have forgotten to be impressive.
She laughed, delighted.
"Right?"
Someone across the room called her name. She glanced over, lifted a hand, and turned back to him.
"I am sorry. I have to go in a moment." She smiled at him. "But I am really glad you enjoyed my vision."
"Yeah, no, it is amazing, honestly."
"Maybe," she said, "once both our teams are done with the preliminary talks, we can sit down properly and I can take you through the whole thing. In depth."
Mateo blinked.
"Wait." He tilted his head. "What do you mean, both our teams?"
She stopped.
Something crossed her face. A small, careful hesitation, the flicker of a woman realising she may have just walked ahead of somebody's schedule.
"Well." She recovered smoothly. "Yes. We have already sent a sponsorship proposal to your agent."
Every ounce of the composure Mateo had been carefully faking for three hours went out of him at once.
"No way."
She smiled.
"Get out." He actually said it. Out loud. To an executive. "Is that true?"
Thank God, she found it funny.
She laughed properly, her hand coming up.
"Yes, Mateo. Really."
"Nike?"
"Nike."
He just stared at her.
She was still laughing as she gathered herself to go.
"Okay. I really do have to leave now." She put out her hand and he shook it. "It was very fun talking to you. I hope for our eventual cooperation in the future."
"Oh. Yeah. Yeah, me too."
She held his hand a second longer, still amused, and then she was gone into the room.
Mateo stood exactly where he was.
Then he turned around.
Olivia was standing a few feet behind him with a glass she was not drinking, and she had clearly heard the whole thing, and she was smiling at him with her eyebrows raised.
Mateo looked at her, completely stunned.
"Fuck." He said it under his breath. "That was actually Nike. What is happening here?"
Olivia burst out laughing.
"Congratulations," she said. "That is amazing."
"That was actually Nike."
"I heard."
"Liv. Nike."
"I know."
And he laughed, and rubbed his face with both hands, and laughed again, and she watched him do it, and something in her chest went soft.
He looked around the room.
The quartet had started again. The tables were half-empty now, people standing in clusters, the volume up, the night settling into its long comfortable middle. Laporta was somewhere in the centre of a laughing group. Ferran was talking to a banker. Koeman was sitting down for the first time all night with his tie loosened. Pedri and Aina were on the far side, heads together, Aina saying something that was making him laugh into his glass.
Nobody was looking at them.
Mateo turned back to Olivia.
"Hey," he said. "You want to get out of here?"
Olivia's eyes widened.
"What?"
"You know." He shrugged, and his mouth pulled at one corner. "Go out. Somewhere more private. Just you and me."
She was smiling before she had decided to. She looked away, then back.
"We can't." She glanced around the room, at the chandeliers, at the club president twenty feet away. "What about."
Mateo looked around too.
"They are already done," he said. "The speeches, the food, all of it. Nobody is going to notice."
He looked back at her, and he held it.
"Plus." His voice dropped, easy, sure of itself. "I would much rather spend my night with my girlfriend."
Olivia's mouth opened slightly.
She looked at the floor. Her fingers found the edge of her sleeve and turned it, the way they always did. She was fighting a smile and losing badly.
She looked back up at him.
"We can't."
Mateo reached down and took her hand.
"Yes," he said, "we can."
And he led her out.
...
"I cannot believe we just left."
Olivia was walking beside him down the street, still in disbelief, still half-looking over her shoulder like the building might come after them.
"We just walked out. Of a room with the president of Barcelona in it."
Mateo was laughing.
She turned to him, laughing herself now.
"And where are we even going?" She gestured at him, at all of him. "Plus you are not even covering up. No hat, nothing. Are we not going to get mobbed and."
"Why." Mateo grinned. "Are you panicking?"
"I am not panicking."
"You are panicking."
She hit his arm, and they both laughed, and he shook his head.
"We are going to the restaurant. The one I told you about." He pointed vaguely ahead. "Francisco and Manuela's place. It is small. It is old. It is one of those antique little places where everything on the wall has been there for forty years. And it is private."
He glanced sideways at her.
"You would love it."
Then he looked around, up and down the street, at nothing.
"Plus I do not think I see anyone around."
He turned in a slow circle as he walked, hands out.
"Same as last time I was here. I barely saw a single person on this street. So we should be fine."
He shrugged.
Olivia looked at him.
"Should."
Mateo nudged her with his shoulder.
"Yeah. Should."
She laughed and nudged him back, and they walked like that for a bit, bumping into each other on purpose, the sound of her heels on the pavement and nothing else.
Then Mateo said, "I honestly just wanted to hang out with you."
And his voice dropped.
"Just you."
Olivia heard it.
She felt the warmth arrive at her face before she could do anything about it, and she looked down at the pavement, and her mouth was doing something she could not control.
She reached over and took his hand.
She looked up at him.
"Me too."
After crossing to the next street, they were close.
Mateo recognised the little park where Alejandro's kids always played. It was deserted, the swings hanging still. They had not passed a single person the entire way.
Thank Davidness.
"Did you see that couple?" Olivia was still laughing about it. "That man knew nothing about his date. Nothing. It was so funny."
"The way she kept correcting him." Mateo was laughing too. "Every two minutes."
"God, I almost died of embarrassment for her. I actually had to look away."
She was shaking with it.
The man had brought his date a plate of shrimp, proudly, like he had done something wonderful, and she had stopped him with one hand and told him, quietly, that she was allergic. And at another point in the evening, he had called her by the wrong name entirely. The whole thing had been a slow, public disaster, and the two of them had watched it from across the room like it was theatre.
And now here they were. The new couple. Laughing about it.
"Why even go out with someone you barely know," Mateo said, scoffing.
He had no idea what he had just unleashed.
Beside him, Olivia's smile faltered.
"Hmm," she said.
Mateo, completely oblivious, had spotted the restaurant up ahead. He lifted his arm and pointed.
"There. That is it, over there. Come on, let us go."
He started to lead her, tugging gently at her hand.
"Let us go."
Olivia did not move at the same pace.
She looked at him.
"Do you really know me?"
Mateo stopped.
"Wait. What are you talking about? wait is this about what i just said, you know I didn't mean it like that"
"No, like. I mean, just. It was a valid take" She laughed, but it was not quite a laugh. "I just mean. You asked me to be your girlfriend. But you do not really know me."
She lifted a shoulder.
"I mean, we started dating fast."
Mateo blinked.
"Aina and Pedri knew each other for the same amount of time." He held up a hand. "Less, actually. And we have spent way longer together than they have."
Olivia tilted her head.
"Yeah. But I am not Aina. And you are not Pedri. Are we?"
Mateo opened his mouth.
He closed it.
"Fairs."
"This is about me and you."
He was staring at her now.
And she asked it.
"What really attracted you to me?"
His eyebrows went up.
"Like." She was searching his face. "I mean. What made you ask me out?"
"Hmm." Mateo drew it out. "I guess."
Then he looked at her, and a smile arrived, slow and dangerous.
"Wait."
He turned toward her.
"But you accepted."
He started laughing.
"If, like you claim, we do not know each other, then why did you accept to date me?" He spread his hands. "And is dating someone not exactly when you start getting to know your partner?"
He looked at her, insufferably pleased with himself.
Olivia nodded slowly.
"I guess. Yeah. That is true."
"Aha."
"But."
Mateo's smile stopped.
"But something should have attracted you in the first place." She stepped in a little. "Something made you want to get to know me more. Something made you want to date me. What was it?"
"That is."
He was looking at her. She was waiting.
And Mateo, feeling the ground go soft under him, found his way around it.
"What about you?"
Olivia blinked.
"Me?"
"Yes. You." He smirked. "What attracted you to me?"
He had used her own weapon on her and he knew it, and he was extremely happy about it.
Olivia looked at him. Then she folded her arms, and she made her own face go smug.
"It is because you were handsome."
Mateo stopped walking.
"What?"
"You are handsome."
"Well." He felt his ears go hot. He cleared his throat. "Ehm. Thanks."
Olivia's smile widened.
"Now answer my question."
"Well." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I guess because you."
She stuck her hand out flat, stopping him mid-sentence.
"And do not say because I am beautiful. Or something like that."
Mateo's mouth fell open.
"Now how is that fair?"
She shrugged.
"I do not care. Be original."
He shook his head at her, smiling, looking at her, shaking his head again.
"You are really troublesome. You know that?"
Olivia looked up at him from under her lashes and fluttered them, once, outrageously.
"At least you now know something about me."
He just kept smiling. He just kept shaking his head.
Olivia knew she was being unreasonable.
She knew it. She was standing on a empty street pressing a boy for something he had no obligation to give, stressing him out over a question she had ambushed him with, and she knew he was right. They had barely known each other. It had not been that long. Not really.
But.
But here was the thing she had noticed.
She was in love with him.
She had known it for a while now, in the way you know something before you agree to know it. And she did not need him to be in love with her. Not yet. Not this early. That was not fair and it was not reasonable and it was, in the end, her own fault, for going and falling in love with a boy she had only just met.
Just.
Just, she had been seeing him.
She had seen the way he carried joy around with him like something he had been handed and could not stop giving away. The way a room got warmer when he walked into it, not because he tried, but because he genuinely could not help it. The way he smiled at strangers. The way he smiled at everybody. The way he had signed a notebook for two security guards and then turned around at the door to look at them one more time because he wanted to see them happy.
She had seen the way he talked about football. How his hands started moving. How his voice changed. How his whole face came alive when he described a pass he had seen, or a goal somebody else had scored, and how he lit up brighter talking about Pedri's goal than he ever did about his own.
She had seen him with Aina. The bickering. The way he pretended to be annoyed by her and would have walked into traffic for her.
She had seen him with his mother.
She had seen him lying on a dressing room floor in a video Piqué had shown at a dinner table, crying and laughing at the same time, and she had watched his face while everybody else laughed at it, and he had been embarrassed, and he had also, secretly, not minded at all.
She had known him for barely more than a month.
But she had noticed him. She had noticed every single thing.
She had fallen in love with him.
And he did not have to be in love with her yet.
he might not need to be in love with her now, but she at least wanted him to notice her also.
They kept walking.
Olivia was smiling, but she said it anyway.
"No, but I am serious."
She turned to face him.
And they stopped there in the middle of the empty street, and looked at each other. Hazel eyes into dark brown.
Mateo looked at her.
And behind the smile that was still sitting on her face, he saw it. Something underneath. Something that had gone a little quiet, a little down, and was doing its best not to show.
He was not sure when he had gotten this perceptive. He did not remember becoming a person who could tell.
But he knew her smile. And this one was different.
"Well," he said.
He looked up the street, into the middle distance.
"Well. Hmmm."
He put his hand on his chin. He tapped it. He made a great show of thinking very hard.
Olivia watched him.
"Well," he said, "I guess you are kind of right."
She just looked at him.
And he finished it.
"I really do not think I know you that much."
Something moved across Olivia's face.
She had known that was coming. She had asked for it, she had walked herself straight into it, she had been fully prepared for it.
Hearing it out loud was still sudden.
She looked down at the pavement.
"Hmm," she said.
And that was when Mateo started talking.
"I guess I do not know about the fact that your favourite dish is pasta."
Olivia's head came up.
"What?"
Mateo was still looking up the street, smiling to himself, not looking at her at all.
"I cannot count the number of times I have seen you go back for seconds and thirds whenever we cook pasta. I have watched you do it. You wait until you think nobody is paying attention and then you go and get more."
He shook his head, laughing.
"I also do not know that you tell a joke and then start laughing uncontrollably at your own joke. Every single time. Before you have even finished it."
He turned to her, laughing properly now.
"Oh. Oh, yeah. And when you laugh too hard, at some point you snort. You just start oinking up the place."
Olivia's mouth fell wide open.
She hit him on the arm.
"I do NOT."
"Hahahaha."
"I do not do that."
"You do. You absolutely do."
She hit him again, and she was laughing too hard to say anything, and Mateo caught both of her hands in his own to stop her.
And then they were standing there.
Her hands in his. Both of them still laughing, the laughter coming down slowly, the street quiet around them.
They looked at each other.
Mateo's thumbs started moving, slow, back and forth across the backs of her hands.
And when he spoke again, the smile was still there. But everything under it had changed.
His voice came out low.
"I guess I do not know that you like taking photos of random things you find beautiful."
Olivia went still.
"A door. A crack in a wall. The way the light hits a table. I have watched you stop in the middle of a sentence to take a picture of a doorway."
His thumbs kept moving.
"How when you get a tune in your head, you have to write it down. Immediately. It does not matter where you are, it does not matter what is happening, you have to get it down."
Olivia was looking at him.
"And how you will not write it on your phone. Because you do not like writing on your phone. You like a pen and paper."
He tilted his head.
"Oh. On that note. I have been meaning to tell you." He gave her a look. "You have a habit of chewing on your pens. I do not think that is very healthy."
"Tehehehe."
Olivia laughed, one hand coming halfway to her mouth before she remembered he was holding it.
"Oh, and the hand gestures." Mateo let go of one of her hands so he could demonstrate, waving his own around badly. "You do this. When you find something funny, or when you really want to make a point, you start gesturing. Like you cannot get the words out fast enough on their own."
She was laughing at him, at his terrible impression of her, and he took her hand back.
And then he kept going. And the laughter went out of his voice.
"I know you really love songwriting."
Olivia stopped laughing.
"The smile on your face when you are writing." He shook his head slowly. "When you get a hymn, or a verse, or one line, just one line, and it is right. The look on your face."
He was quiet for a second.
"It is just so enchanting."
She was staring at him.
"I know you wear your emotions on your face. All of them. You cannot hide a single one, not for a second. Honestly, I am shocked you were ever an actress. You cannot hide your feelings for squat."
"Hey."
"It is true."
"Hey."
He was laughing again.
"I know you get embarrassed very easily. And then you get shy right after. And then, to cover it, you do this awkward little fake laugh."
Olivia's mouth opened.
"Hey. Be nice."
"Sorry, sorry, sorry."
He was laughing, and she was hitting his hand, and he was still holding on to her.
Then he stopped.
He looked at her, and everything in his face went serious.
"I know you miss home."
Olivia's laugh died in her throat.
"I know you miss your mum. I know you check the time in California without meaning to. I know that when Aina talks about America you go somewhere else for about four seconds and then come back."
He held her hands tighter.
"I know you, Olivia Isabel Rodrigo."
Her eyes widened.
"Wow." Her voice cracked slightly. "Even the middle name."
Mateo shrugged, insufferably smug, absolutely glowing.
"I do my homework."
She was staring at him. Her eyes had gone wet at the corners and she had not noticed.
And Mateo held her hands, and he stepped in half a step, and he said it. "And i want to keep knowing you "
"The reason I asked you out, Olivia."
He tightened his grip.
They stood there in the middle of an empty street, in an old part of a city, in a suit he had grown out of and a dress she had not planned to wear, and he looked at her.
"It is because I like you."
Olivia's whole face broke open.
And then, because he was seventeen and because he could not help himself, he added:
"Oh. And also because you are beautiful."
"YOU."
She laughed and hit him in the chest, and he was laughing, and she was laughing, and he caught her hand again and this time their fingers went through each other's and stayed there.
He was still smiling at her.
She stepped in, and put her forehead against his shoulder, and stayed there.
Mateo looked down at the top of her head.
He held on.
Then he smiled.
"Come on. Let us go. The restaurant is right there."