The jarring, synthetic blare of the iPhone alarm shattered the absolute silence of the bedroom like a physical blow.
Natán groaned, a low, gravelly sound of profound misery, as he rolled over in the massive, California-king-sized bed, blindly slapping at the glass nightstand until his hand finally connected with the vibrating device.
He swiped the screen to kill the noise and let his arm drop heavily off the side of the mattress, his face buried deep into the plush, white down pillows.
He was thousands of miles away from the warm, golden shores of the Mediterranean Sea.
He was back in Manchester.
And he could already hear the relentless, dreary drumbeat of the rain lashing against the floor-to-ceiling windows of his master bedroom.
His house in the upscale, hyper-exclusive neighborhood of Cheshire was a sprawling, multi-million-pound architectural marvel, yet to Natán, it often felt more like an ultra-modern mausoleum than a place to actually live.
It boasted six bedrooms, a state-of-the-art indoor swimming pool, a fully equipped private gymnasium, a cinema room with tiered velvet seating, and a massive, open-concept kitchen outfitted with gleaming marble countertops and industrial-grade stainless steel appliances.
But despite its immense scale and luxury, the house was profoundly, painfully empty.
Because Natán possessed absolutely no eye for interior design and spent the vast majority of his time either at the City Football Academy or traveling for away fixtures, the sprawling mansion remained starkly under-furnished.
The walls were painted a sterile, brilliant white, completely devoid of artwork, family photographs, or any semblance of warmth.
His living room contained little more than a massive, custom-built grey sectional sofa and an enormous flat-screen television.
The polished hardwood floors echoed with every single footstep he took, amplifying the sheer, isolating quietness of living alone in a foreign country.
In Catalonia, his apartment maybe empty but he could go out there and be treated like their family.
But here, in the perpetually gloomy northwest of England, he had nothing but the cold, echoing space of his own success.
He slowly pushed himself up into a sitting position, the heavy, expensive duvet falling to his waist.
He rubbed his eyes, shivering slightly as the hyper-efficient air conditioning chilled his bare chest.
He looked around the massive, shadowy room, taking in the sterile luxury of his surroundings.
The lingering, phantom taste of sweet vanilla and coastal sea salt still haunted his lips, a cruel reminder of the perfect, intoxicating kiss he had shared with Kylie just twenty-four hours ago in the warm Spanish night.
The memory felt like it belonged to an entirely different lifetime.
Dragging himself out of bed, his bare feet hitting the freezing, heated-yet-currently-off hardwood floor, Natán began his grueling daily routine.
He shuffled like a zombie across the cavernous master suite and into the attached en-suite bathroom, a space entirely clad in dark, imported Italian slate and featuring a walk-in shower large enough to comfortably fit the entire Manchester City starting eleven.
He reached in and twisted the heavy chrome dial, waiting for the massive rainfall showerhead to roar to life.
As the water quickly heated up, rapidly filling the enormous room with thick, billowing clouds of warm white steam, Natán stepped inside, letting the scalding water beat down upon his aching, heavily muscled shoulders.
It was here, enclosed within the glass walls of his absurdly luxurious shower, that Natán engaged in his daily, deeply embarrassing ritual.
Desperate to improve his broken, heavily fragmented English before the relentless British media completely devoured him in press conferences.
Natán cleared his throat, closed his eyes against the cascading water, and began to sing at the absolute top of his lungs.
His voice was, quite frankly, a catastrophic assault on the ears.
It was entirely off-key, raspy, and painfully loud.
But worse than his complete lack of musical pitch was his butchering of the vocabulary.
He had absolutely no idea what the words actually meant in context, treating them simply as phonetic exercises to wrap his tongue around the harsh, unfamiliar consonant clusters of the English language.
A thousand miles away, bathed in the brilliant, unrelenting sunshine of the Spanish coast, Kylie Jenner slowly opened her eyes.
The sprawling, opulent penthouse suite of the Plaza Hotel was flooded with warm, golden light filtering through the sheer, ivory curtains.
Kylie stretched her long, slender limbs beneath the high-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets, letting out a soft, contented sigh.
For the first time in what felt like months, she hadn’t woken up to the frantic buzzing of her publicist, a grueling call time for a high-fashion photo shoot, or the overwhelming, suffocating drama of her family’s reality television empire.
She just woke up naturally, to the rhythmic, distant sound of the Mediterranean waves crashing against the shoreline.
She pushed her dark, silken black hair out of her face, a small, involuntary smile curling onto her lips as the vivid memories of the previous night came rushing back to the forefront of her mind.
Natán.
Just the thought of the Spanish footballer sent a very pleasant, unfamiliar flutter of warmth cascading through her chest.
It wasn’t just the fact that he was breathtakingly handsome, with those intense, dark eyes and a physique carved from pure athletic dedication.
It was his absolute, undeniable authenticity.
In Los Angeles, Kylie was constantly surrounded by men who were desperately trying to be something they weren’t—actors chasing clout, musicians performing for the cameras, influencers calculating every single angle of their interactions.
But Natán?
He was just…
real.
He had eaten a massive pan of paella with his bare hands, completely unbothered by the garlic oil on his chin.
He had painstakingly, earnestly tried to offer her career advice in heavily broken English, using his own devastating losses on the football pitch as a metaphor to comfort her.
He was so incredibly grounded, possessing a profound, quiet confidence that completely stripped away her usual, heavily guarded defenses.
He just had a unique, magical way of making everything seem infinitely easier.
When she was with him, walking barefoot on the sand and eating melting lemon gelato, she wasn’t Kylie Jenner, the international supermodel and millionare reality star.
She was just a girl, enjoying the cool night air with a boy who made her laugh.
Tossing the heavy covers aside, Kylie quickly went through her morning routine.
She washed her face, applied a light layer of moisturizer, and brushed out her long black hair, leaving it cascading naturally down her back.
She threw on a chic, effortless white linen sundress, slipped her feet into a pair of designer leather sandals, and grabbed her oversized sunglasses.
She was determined to see him again today.
She wanted to grab a coffee, maybe walk down the promenade in the daylight, and see if the undeniable, electric spark of their nighttime kiss translated into the morning sun.
She practically skipped out of the hotel lobby, her heart beating with a rare, youthful excitement.
She navigated the winding, cobblestone streets of the coastal town, heading straight toward the beachfront promenade where they had spent hours talking the night before.
But as she walked, scanning the bustling crowds of sunburned tourists and loud, animated locals, she couldn’t find him anywhere.
She checked the small cafe where he had explained the complex differences between Spanish and Catalan.
He wasn’t there.
She walked past the artisan gelato parlor, peering through the glass display cases.
Nothing.
She even wandered down to the local five-a-side football pitches by the edge of town, hoping to catch a glimpse of his neon-green boots blurring across the rubber turf.
The pitches were empty, save for a few little kids kicking a deflated ball around.
A creeping sense of confusion began to settle in her stomach.
Where was he?
He was practically the mayor of this little town; everyone knew him.
Determined not to give up, Kylie spotted an older, deeply tanned woman sweeping the pavement outside the very same seafood restaurant where they had originally shared their paella dinner.
The woman was wearing a floral apron, muttering quietly to herself in rapid Catalan.
Kylie approached her politely, offering a warm smile.
“Excuse me? Hi. Do you happen to know where Natán is today? Natán Comas?”
The old woman stopped sweeping.
She leaned heavily on her wooden broomstick, squinting at the tall, glamorous American girl through thick, wire-rimmed glasses.
She clearly recognized Kylie from the dinner the other night, but the heavy language barrier stood between them like a brick wall.
“¿Qué?” the old woman asked, her brow furrowing deeply.
“Natán,” Kylie repeated, pointing vaguely down the street, speaking slowly and clearly in hopes it would help the translation.
“The football player? Do you know where he is? Is he at the beach?”
Understanding finally sparked in the old woman’s deeply lined eyes.
She gave a sad, dismissive wave of her calloused hand, shaking her head side to side.
“Natán, left,” the old woman said, her English incredibly broken, her accent thick and gravelly.
“He won’t back till next Summer.”
Kylie froze.
The ambient noise of the bustling street—the clinking coffee cups, the laughing children, the squawking seagulls—suddenly seemed to completely fade away, leaving a ringing silence in her ears.
“Left?” Kylie repeated, her voice dropping to a shocked, breathless whisper.
“What do you mean, he left? Like, he went to a different town?”
“No, no,” the old woman clarified, gesturing broadly toward the northern sky.
“Manchester. England. For the football. He go early morning. Gone. He won’t back till next Summer.”
The old woman offered a sympathetic, tight-lipped smile, before turning her back and resuming her sweeping, completely oblivious to the emotional bomb she had just dropped on the American supermodel.
Kylie stood rooted to the cobblestone pavement, entirely paralyzed by a sudden, violent cocktail of negative emotions.
First came the profound, undeniable shock.
Then, quickly hot on its heels, came the deep, stinging wave of betrayal.
And finally, bubbling up from her chest and flushing her cheeks with heat, came a fierce, vibrating anger.
She was incredibly annoyed.
She was genuinely, furiously angry.
How could he just leave?
They had spent the entire evening pouring their hearts out to one another.
They had walked hand in hand under the Mediterranean stars.
He had kissed her with a slow, agonizing tenderness that had quite literally left her breathless on the steps of her hotel.
And then…
what?
He just packed his bags, hopped on a commercial flight to rainy England, and completely vanished without saying a single word?
He didn’t ask for her phone number.
He didn’t even bother to casually mention that he was flying out at the crack of dawn.
Kylie clenched her jaw so tightly her teeth ached, spinning on her heel and marching furiously back toward the Plaza Hotel.
The audacity of it all was staggering.
She was Kylie Jenner.
Men literally tripped over themselves just to breathe the same air as her, and this nineteen-year-old who was barely older a month older than her, who could barely string a coherent English sentence together had just treated her like a fleeting, disposable vacation fling?
He had made her feel so special, so seen, so utterly normal…
and he hadn’t even bothered to say goodbye.
Back in the grim, unrelenting drizzle of Manchester, Natán was currently fighting for his absolute life on a bicycle.
Normally, Premier League footballers arrived at their ultra-exclusive training facilities behind the tinted windows of matte-black Range Rovers, Lamborghini Urus SUVs, or sleek Mercedes G-Wagons.
But Natán did not possess a driver’s license.
Despite his supreme, elite spatial awareness on a football pitch, the mechanics of navigating a motorized vehicle completely baffled him.
He had taken his UK driving test a total of three times since arriving from Spain, and he had spectacularly, disastrously failed every single one.
The examiners cited his alarming inability to grasp the concept of roundabouts, his tendency to drift onto the wrong side of the road out of sheer Catalan habit, and his terrifying lack of parallel parking skills.
Because of this, and because he stubbornly refused to hire a full-time private chauffeur out of sheer embarrassment, Natán was forced to commute to the City Football Academy on a top-of-the-line, carbon-fiber mountain bike.
He was pedaling steadily down a damp, narrow residential street, the hood of his waterproof Manchester City training jacket pulled up tightly over his head to shield him from the miserable, freezing drizzle.
His powerful, heavily muscled thighs pumped the pedals with a smooth, effortless rhythm.
Suddenly, the aggressive, whining roar of a heavily modified car engine shattered the quiet morning commute.
Natán glanced over his shoulder.
A souped-up, incredibly loud Vauxhall Corsa, painted an obnoxious, peeling shade of electric blue, was tailgating him dangerously close.
The bass from the car’s sound system was so loud it was vibrating the puddles on the asphalt.
The passenger side window rolled down violently, and a young man in a grey tracksuit leaned halfway out of the moving vehicle, clutching a smartphone.
“Oi, Nathan!” the guy shouted at the absolute top of his lungs, his thick, heavy Mancunian accent entirely incomprehensible to the terrified Spanish winger.
“Let me get a picture bro!”
Natán’s dark eyes widened in absolute, sheer panic.
He didn’t understand the heavy slang, the aggressive tone, or the context.
His brain, already completely fried from the early morning flight and the miserable weather, immediately jumped to the worst possible conclusion.
He thought this aggressive man hanging out of the window was trying to mug him, or perhaps a violently angry Manchester United supporter trying to rob him.
Instinct took over.
Natán dropped his head, gripped the handlebars with white-knuckled intensity, and stood up on the pedals.
He engaged the explosive, elite acceleration that terrified European defenders, speeding up drastically.
The bicycle shot forward like a bullet, tearing down the wet pavement.
The guy in the car let out a loud, incredulous laugh, filming the entire bizarre interaction on his phone.
“Yo! My man’s smoking off! Oy Nathan! Nah Nah! You man need to see this! Why u running?”
Natán didn’t look back.
He took a sharp, highly dangerous right turn down a residential alleyway, hoping to lose the screaming car.
But the driver was relentless, swerving the vehicle aggressively to follow him, the tires splashing filthy rainwater all over the pavement.
The guy hanging out the window was absolutely dying of laughter, still holding his phone up.
“Let me get a selfie bro!” the guy shouted again, slightly clearer this time as the car pulled up parallel to the sprinting cyclist.
Natán, his chest heaving, his lungs burning from the cold air, finally processed the specific phonetic sounds.
Selfie.
He just wants a photo.
Natán squeezed the handbrakes, the bike’s tires skidding slightly on the wet asphalt as he finally slowed to a complete halt, his chest heaving violently under his waterproof jacket.
He looked over at the car, his expression a mixture of profound relief, extreme exhaustion, and utter bewilderment.
“I just want a picture bro, that’s it,” the guy chuckled, hopping out of the car and stepping into the rain, holding his phone up to frame the shot.
“Okay,” Natán wheezed out, his Catalan accent thick, entirely confused by the sheer, terrifying aggression of British fandom.
The guy threw an arm casually around Natán’s soaking wet shoulder, bringing the camera close.
Natán, completely unsure of what else to do, stared blankly into the lens and rigidly put his hand out in a hilariously awkward, stiff thumbs-up.
He looked absolutely terrified, like a hostage proving proof of life, completely devoid of his usual, charming smile.
The camera flashed.
“My G bro!” the guy shouted enthusiastically, aggressively slapping Natán on the back in a show of profound street respect.
Natán looked at him, his brow furrowing in absolute, complete confusion at the phrase ‘My G’.
He had absolutely no idea what that meant.
Was it a threat?
A compliment?
Without saying another word, Natán instantly got back onto the saddle of his bike, pushed off, and pedaled as hard and as fast as humanly possible down the street, desperately trying to escape the bizarre interaction.
Forty-five minutes later, deep inside the ultra-secure, hyper-luxurious confines of the City Football Academy, the first-team locker room was erupting into absolute chaos.
The room was a masterpiece of modern sporting architecture, featuring sleek, circular leather seating, individual, illuminated player stalls, and the faint, lingering smells of expensive cologne, fresh athletic tape, and deep heat muscle rub.
The majority of the squad had already returned from their summer vacations, and the atmosphere was loud, boisterous, and deeply competitive.
Sergio Aguero, the legendary Argentine striker, was standing in the very center of the room, crying tears of absolute laughter as he held his iPad up high for everyone to see.
“Guys, guys, look at this,” Aguero gasped out in English, waving the tablet around frantically.
“You have to see this. It’s already viral on Twitter.”
The massive, imposing figures of the Manchester City squad immediately abandoned their warm-up stretches and clustered tightly around the Argentine.
Vincent Kompany, the towering Belgian captain, peered over Aguero’s shoulder.
David Silva, the quiet Spanish maestro, leaned in closer, while Kevin De Bruyne, Fernandinho, and Yaya Toure crowded around to watch the bright screen.
Aguero hit play on the video.
The tinny audio of the iPad echoed clearly through the quiet locker room.
“Oi, Nathan! Let me get a picture bro!”
On the screen, Natán, clad in his full City waterproof gear, looked over his shoulder with an expression of pure, unadulterated terror before standing up on his pedals and sprinting away like he was fleeing a burning building.
The locker room completely lost it.
A chorus of deep, booming laughter bounced off the walls.
Kompany threw his head back, clutching his stomach, while Aguero had to lean against the tactical whiteboard to support his own weight.
“Yo! My man’s smoking off! Oy Nathan! Nah Nah! You man need to see this! Why u running? Let me get a picture bro!”
The players watched, absolutely howling with delight, as Natán finally skidded to a halt on the video.
“I just want a picture bro, that’s it.”
Then came the pièce de résistance.
The camera angle shifted, showing Natán giving the most awkward, visibly terrified, rigid thumbs-up in the history of recorded media.
He looked like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming freight train.
“My G bro!”
The video ended with Natán looking profoundly bewildered before frantically pedaling away into the mist.
“Oh my god,” Fernandinho wheezed, wiping a tear of mirth from his eye, his Brazilian accent thick.
“This is worse than the time he was on a public bus.”
“We need to get him a car,” Kompany declared, his deep voice carrying a tone of genuine, fatherly concern mixed with endless amusement.
“The boy is an absolute liability on the public roads. He’s going to get himself killed by a teenager in a Corsa.”
“He can’t drive,” David Silva pointed out softly, a small, affectionate smile on his face as he laced up his bright orange boots.
“He failed his test.”
Kevin De Bruyne, currently sipping a bottle of isotonic sports drink, raised an incredibly pale eyebrow in disbelief.
“Again?”
“Yes, again,” Silva laughed, shaking his head.
“He told me he tried to yield to a cow in the countryside, but he stopped in the middle of a roundabout to do it.”
Yaya Toure, sitting back in his luxurious leather stall, crossed his massive arms over his chest, a massive grin spreading across his face.
“It’s not football, man. It ain’t sticking in his brain. If it doesn’t involve a ball at his feet, the boy is completely lost in the sauce.”
Aguero chuckled, finally turning the iPad off and tossing it onto the pristine massage table.
“Football was his only option.”
Thousands of miles away, completely unaware of the stress of her former fling was currently enduring in the English tabloids, Kylie Jenner was lying on her stomach across her massive hotel bed, aggressively scrolling through her phone.
She was still incredibly angry.
She had spent the last two hours pacing the opulent suite, cursing Natán’s name, cursing the entire country of Spain, and heavily cursing her own foolish vulnerability.
But as the initial, violent wave of rejection began to slowly recede, a cold, hard logic began to take its place.
She was Kylie Jenner.
She was a self-made multi-millionaire.
She had an entire empire at her perfectly manicured fingertips.
She made tons of money simply by existing in front of a camera.
If she really wanted to, she could snap her fingers, have her management charter a private, ultra-luxury jet, and be standing on the tarmac in Manchester, England, before the sun went down.
She didn’t have to sit here and passively accept being ghosted.
She had her own agency.
She rolled over onto her back, staring at the ceiling.
She had to say something.
She couldn’t just let him walk away without giving him a piece of her mind, or at the very least, demanding an explanation for his abrupt, cowardly exit.
She opened Instagram, navigating to the search bar.
She typed in Natán Comas.
His verified profile immediately popped up, boasting millions of followers.
She clicked on it.
His feed was incredibly professional and completely boring—mostly high-quality action shots of him playing in City blue or Spanish red, accompanied by generic PR captions thanking the fans for their support.
But then, she noticed he had been heavily tagged in a new, rapidly trending post on a popular football meme account.
Curious, Kylie clicked on the tagged video.
The heavy, aggressive bass of the car engine filled her quiet hotel room.
She watched the video of the bizarre bicycle chase play out on her phone screen.
She watched the absolute, sheer terror wash over Natán’s face as the British fan screamed at him.
She watched him frantically try to pedal away, his legs pumping in a blur of panicked motion.
And finally, she watched him nervously pose for the photograph, offering that stiff, terrified, completely awkward thumbs-up before fleeing into the rain.
Kylie tried to hold onto her righteous anger.
She really, truly did.
But a sudden, involuntary snort escaped her lips.
Then a giggle.
And before she knew it, Kylie was laughing so hard her ribs actually ached, rolling around on the massive hotel bed as she watched the video on a continuous, hypnotic loop.
All of her annoyance, all of her bitter feelings of betrayal, completely dissolved into the crisp, air-conditioned air of the hotel room.
She felt incredibly bad for laughing at him—he was clearly so genuinely terrified—but it was just so undeniably, stupidly funny.
Watching him give that stiff thumbs-up, looking completely and utterly lost in normal society, completely recontextualized his abrupt departure.
He hadn’t left without saying goodbye because he was a calculated, callous player trying to use her.
He had left without saying goodbye because he was so intensely awkward, so hopelessly unequipped for basic, regular social protocols, that it was actually deeply adorable.
He wasn’t a malicious ghoster.
He was like a human panda.
He was a creature completely reliant on a very specific, carefully managed environment to survive.
Put him on a football pitch, and he was amazing.
Put him on a bicycle in the Manchester rain, or ask him to navigate the complex emotional waters of a romantic goodbye, and he was a clumsy, stumbling bear who had absolutely no idea what was going on around him.
Still smiling widely, shaking her head at the sheer absurdity of the man she had somehow fallen for, Kylie opened his direct messages.
Her perfectly manicured thumbs hovered over the digital keyboard for a moment, deciding exactly how to play this.
She didn’t want to come off as desperate, but she also wasn’t going to let him off the hook entirely.
She quickly typed out a message, her dark eyes sparkling with wicked amusement.
Nice thumbs up, speed racer.
Next time you run away to a different country, at least leave a note.
Check your DMs.
I’m coming to Manchester.
She hit send, tossing the phone onto the pillows with a satisfied, triumphant sigh.
Back in Manchester, the miserable morning commute had finally come to an end.
Natán, completely drenched, physically exhausted, and profoundly traumatized by his encounter with the local fanbase, finally pedaled his bicycle up the long, perfectly manicured driveway of the City Football Academy.
He abandoned his bike near the main entrance, practically jogging toward the massive glass doors to escape the relentless, freezing drizzle.
As he approached the entrance, a small media team, consisting of a cameraman and a social media manager, was waiting by the doors to capture the players arriving for the first official day of pre-season training.
The social media manager, a friendly, energetic guy wearing a club polo, stepped forward with a wide, welcoming smile, extending his hand out for a traditional, professional handshake to welcome their star winger back to the facility.
Natán, trying his absolute best to be polite and adapt to the casual, cool culture of the English dressing room, bypassed the open palm entirely and instead offered a closed fist for a modern fist bump.
The social media manager, realizing his mistake, quickly retracted his open hand and curled it into a fist to match Natán’s gesture.
But at the exact same millisecond, Natán, feeling incredibly awkward that he had left the man hanging, panicked and rapidly uncurled his fist, offering a flat, open palm for the handshake.
The result was a catastrophic, painful collision of social awkwardness.
The manager’s fist awkwardly punched directly into Natán’s open palm.
The two men completely froze, staring at their mangled hands in total, excruciating silence, while the camera lens captured every single agonizing second of the interaction.
Natán’s face flushed a deep, embarrassed crimson.
He didn’t even attempt to correct the gesture a third time.
He simply dropped his hand, offered a tight, pained grimace, and immediately scurried through the sliding glass doors, desperately eager to just get inside the building and hide.
He practically power-walked down the sleek, brightly lit hallways, his wet sneakers squeaking loudly against the pristine linoleum flooring.
He just wanted to get to the locker room, change into his dry training kit, and forget this horrific morning ever happened.
But as he rounded the final corner, he practically collided head-on with a man standing in the corridor.
It was Pep Guardiola.
The new manager was dressed impeccably in a fitted, dark grey sweater and tailored trousers, looking sharp, intense, and profoundly focused.
He held a tactical clipboard in one hand, his sharp, calculating eyes immediately dropping to inspect his young, £40 million superstar.
Natán looked like an absolute disaster.
His hair was plastered to his forehead, his waterproof jacket was dripping muddy water onto the pristine floor, and he was breathing heavily, his eyes wide and thoroughly spooked.
Pep slowly raised his wrist, tapping the face of his extremely expensive, elegant watch.
“Estàs gairebé tard,” Pep said smoothly in perfect, rapid Catalan, his tone carrying a soft, yet undeniable edge of authoritative discipline.
(You’re nearly late.)
Natán swallowed hard, his posture immediately snapping to attention out of sheer, ingrained respect for the legendary manager.
“Ho sento, míster,” Natán stammered, his Catalan rushing out of him in a desperate, frantic wave as he tried to explain the absolute absurdity of his morning.
“I… I got chased by a man in a blue car. He was screaming at me. I thought I was going to die. I went around the block five times on my bike trying to lose him, but he wouldn’t leave me alone until I gave him a thumbs up for a photograph.”
Pep Guardiola blinked.
The brilliant, obsessive tactical mastermind, a man who spent his nights awake calculating the exact geometric angles of passing triangles and the intricate mechanics of the false-nine system, simply stared at the soaking wet, trembling nineteen-year-old standing before him.
He looked at Natán’s terrified expression, processing the sheer, ridiculous magnitude of the excuse he had just been given.
Pep slowly lowered his wrist, letting out a long, heavy, incredibly deep sigh that seemed to originate from his very soul.
He pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes for a brief, fleeting second.
This is going to be a very, very long few seasons, Pep thought to himself.
“Just go get changed, Natán,” Pep said quietly, pointing a finger toward the locker room doors, not even bothering to unpack the sheer madness of the bicycle story.
“I need you on the pitch in ten minutes. We have a lot of work to do.”