#i feel like i shouldve just written it all in spanish ngl

[slothgiirl]

leo messi drabble

It starts raining halfway through her walk. Which isn’t unusual for the Netherlands as far as she’s aware. Or Holland. She was never great at geography. 

What matters is she’s in Utrecht for the day from Amsterdam. It’s not far, but given the only two people she knows in the continent of Europe stayed back, it feels like she might as well be on another planet. Another planet with similarly Flemish style buildings and a map the size of a4 paper: the better to hide the most obvious sign of her being a tourist. She doesn’t really have a plan other than exploring the city aimlessly; a plan the rain’s putting on hold.

She shoves her map into her bag, glancing around the street to find somewhere to duck into while the worst of the rain passes. 

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

Last summer when she’d been planning this with Rocio and Yadira it had been the dream girl's trip. A month in Europe going from hostel to hostel before taking on university. They’d fit in museums in the afternoon with late nights bar hopping. Yadira had written some useful dutch phrases, carefully copied from the yahoo page that had taken ages to load. 

Then Yadira had pulled out. Her friend had decided to put the money into university tuition over a graduation trip. 

And Rocio’s solution was to bring her boyfriend along.

So now she was a third wheel. 

Javier was fine. 

But it wasn’t the same. 

She didn’t mind when they went to museums, even at clubs it was nice to have a guy around, just in case. It was at restaurants when she felt like the odd one out. 

Maybe she was being too sensitive. 

Ducking into one of the many pubs with their neon colored Heiniken signs and terrace tables filled with smoking patrons ambivalent about the rain. She drags her shoes over the mat, cleaning off her shoes before glancing around.

The place was filled with guys who might have finished school alongside her with questionable hairstyles that ranged from hippie-long to gelled to the point it might hurt to touch. Tourists then, she thought. Or some travel group. She’d seen plenty of those at the Rijksmuseum. It had been a battle of endurance to wait while an entire school group from the states walked down the stairs in the Anne Frank House. 

Some were even cute. 

With glasses of beer in hand, they were definitely celebrating something. 

She beelines to the bar. A coffee sounded amazing but she would settle for a beer. Rest while the rain passes and just enjoy the view of the street. Traveling made even streets interesting. The streets were even cobblestone instead of the cracked pavement and pothole stricken streets around Veracruz. 

Still, she’d have traded anything for a taco. Even just the warm tortilla cooked on the woodfire stove would beat any meal she’s had here.

“Un cafe,” she leans against the bar, “coffee, koffie?” The words sounded foreign on her tongue. She usually tried English first, as she was more familiar with it. But years of instruction in school still left her fumbling, the pronunciation garbled in her mouth. 

Well, they sounded similar enough.

“Twee vijftien,” the bartender’s an older man, maybe a decade older than her parents with cauliflower ears. He plots the paper receipt in front of her. 

It’s a fumble of coins: digging them out of her purse and figuring out which coins were how much. 

She sets her euros on the counter, trying to make eye contact to make sure he knows she paid while he helps one of the guys. 

His t-shirt is blue with blocky white font reading Argentina. (It’s a safe bet where they’re all from.) The shirt is too large, and his jeans are just as wide legged. She’ll never understand why guys loved to buy jeans that were too large only to get a belt. 

His hair was long and mousy brown as he patiently tried to order which was a complicated matter when the bartender didn’t speak spanish, and the guy clearly only spoke in spanish to him. 

“Birra. Una birra,” the guy waves his hands trying to communicate. 

“Beer,” the barkeeper raises a brow, “Yes.” He points at the pint, “beer.”

“No,” he sighs dejectedly, “de-una caña?” 

He had church boy-help old ladies with their grocery bags written all over him. 

“Como corona?” She butts in. 

It wasn’t rude if she was trying to help.

The guy looks over at her, smiling kindly in a manner that is contagious. “Si. De cristal. Vidrio? Nunca se con eso que el castellano cambia de pais a pais.” 

“Verdad!” She nods, mirroring his easy going smile, “o mas bien, che vos.”

He takes her light teasing in stride, looking down at his shoes and laughing. His cheeks turn pink in a charmingly sheepish way. 

She tries to get the message across. “Beer,” she mimes with her hand, “in…bottle?” 

“Ah,” the barkeep nods, and fetches an amber glass bottle. It’s a random dutch brand, but better than nothing. He also hands her her cup of coffee. 

“Leo,” Leo extends his hand like he’s going through motions. 

She shakes his hand, introducing herself.

Whatever easy moment passes as he can’t hold her gaze for long, a thread of self consciousness in his stance. 

“Are you here with school,” she asks.

This makes him snort, “no-a. . .work actually,” which only seems to amuse him more.

“Really?”

“Well,” he tilts his head. “The world cup. Sort of.”

“Isn’t that next summer?”

“Under 20,” Leo rubs the back of his neck, “but it’s still a world cup.”

“That’s cool as fuck.” She looks him over again, trying to imagine him playing semi-pro, pro(?), either way, it was crazy to think about when he seemed so normal. Football players came off pretty arrogant in the press clips but then again, she didn’t follow any team that closely. 

“I keep waiting for it to feel real but even benched for Barca,” he shrugs because Leo can’t put the feeling into words. It was bigger than that.

“Did you win?” 

Leo meets her wondering gaze. His amber eyes twinkle with mirth, “just a little.”

“Ha! Trying to be humble?”

“It was close,” he says seriously, “I’d rather be honest than humble.” 

“So you play pretty well?”

“I love football.” He shrugs as in a what can you do about it before taking a long drink of his beer. 

She wets her bottom lip, before remembering her own drink and looking away. 

“And you?” Leo fidgets with the beer cap in one hand. 

“Just. . .touristiando. Taking in the sights before I hit the books.” It sounded woefully inadequate compared to playing at any level of a Fifa world cup. Had she already failed at life? She was only eighteen but already she was falling behind. 

Her grip tightens on the coffee cup.

“See anything good?” He asks leaning into her.

The pub feels cozy now. Not as loud as when she entered. She doesn’t mind having to put her walking on hold.

“The canals. Some ancient tower. I think this isn’t a tourist centric city. Must be why it’s a day trip,” she tells him truthfully. “I had lunch in the park. That was really nice. It’s been nice just to wander around.” Not every vacation day had to be jam packed. 

“Do you want to get dinner,” Leo says suddenly, going still. “With me.” He swallows.

It was nice, skipping the whole song and dance and just getting to the point. She liked that about him. She liked Leo. And she was on an entirely different continent. Why not? 

She was an adult. She was going to start uni soon. 

Her gaze kept flickering over Leo. Like an optical illusion, he looked like a guy she might have shared a class with yet more attractive than any guy she knew. 

Why not?

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

She giggles.

Leo ducks his head.

She was glad it had rained on her day trip.