Of course I’ve never heard of any of them, but I make a face like she’s handed me a photo of my beloved college roommates.
“Your assignment is to come up with a distinct campaign tointroduce each player that would get existing fans excited about the new signing and bring along fans from their old clubs. Any questions?”
“No, ma’am.” I brush back the bangs again.
“Good. You have two days.”
“Thank you so much, Ms. Collins. You have no idea how much I need this job.Wantthis job.”
“The good news is that if you don’t get it, you’ve already got a passionate speech ready for the open groundskeeper position.” There’s no hint of a joke in any of the dignified lines of her face—either she’s got the world’s best deadpan or she’s genuinely going to pass my CV on to the facilities staff. Either way: 3,118 miles from Boston.
After arranging the follow-up interview, Charlotte’s assistant walks me back through the labyrinthine halls of the Mersey F.C. training complex and out into the sunny parking lot. No sooner has the door to the building shut behind her than a shiny black Range Rover pulls up and stops a few feet from me. A man steps out, and it’s immediately clear he’s a professional athlete: He’s tall and toned and wearing an outfit that to the untrained eye looks totally casual but actually costs more than my rent. He’s pale—a rosy, healthy pale—underneath a shock of dark blond hair. He looks at me and smiles, and it briefly scrambles my insides, a quick whisk of my viscera.
“Hiya,” he says. “Sorry, I’m a bit early. Matilda, is it?” His accent is…Irish? Scottish? Unbelievably sexy?
“Oh, uh, I’m not…I don’t…” I stammer, scrabbling for mental purchase and coming up short. For all I know, I could be talking to the Babe Ruth of soccer, and here I am just flapping my gums like a guppy. It doesn’t help that he’s almost painfully handsome.
A brief look of confusion flits across his face and he scratches at the scruff of stubble on his jaw—stubble with a perfect little hint of ginger in it. “Do you work here?”
“No. Or, not yet. Maybe one day, but maybe never.”
“What is that, a wee riddle?” He snaps his fingers twice and turns his head. “Don’t tell me: It’s time. Or man. Or a river.”
I laugh as my brain finally shifts into gear. “I’m sorry, we were looking for ‘The doctor was his mother.’ ”
His smile stretches wide across perfect white teeth. “Damn. Never was much good at riddles.” He takes a step toward me and extends his hand. “I’m—”
But before he can introduce himself, a harried-looking young woman—presumably Matilda—bursts out of the door and intercepts him. “So sorry to keep you waiting, sir. Come on in, they’re ready for you.”
As Presumably Matilda ushers him inside, the mystery man looks over his shoulder at me, calling, “Send the fox in the boat with the grain first, then go back for the chicken!”
I watch him walk away and I’m filled with a strange sense of buoyancy, lightness. It’s a feeling that takes me a minute to identify, but then I realize what it is: excitement. Optimism. Hope. Not just because I’ve had a positive interaction with a man for the first time in months (perhaps years), but also because this job could really be something. It all seemed so ridiculous a few days ago when I drafted my cover letter, mascara running down my cheeks, half-empty wine bottle on the desk next to me. Preposterous as I handed in my resignation to the Red Sox before I’d even heard back about the Mersey interview. Ludicrous, really, as I forked over $800 and squeezed into my middle seat. It was just an escape, just a distraction from everything that had happened to ruin my life. But now? Now I want this job, and not only becauseit comes complete with handsome, witty men. (Though I cannot lie: That is a tremendous perk.)
I have a few minutes before I need to catch the bus back into town, so I head over to the bit of wall that will hopefully clinch it for me. I sling my faux-leather attaché case up on the brick wall and rest my chin on top of it. A gentle, early summer breeze catches the scent of the newly shorn blades of grass and wafts it toward me. I feel, deep in my gut, a pang of the most complicated nostalgia. It’s just as I said to Charlotte Collins: a flood of memories. Playing catch in the backyard with my brothers, spreading blankets on the banks of the Charles on a hot summer day, holding hands with Steven as I took him to see a Sox game at Fenway for the first time—and now a new one: trading facetious riddle answers with a mystery man in a city that I’ve never been to but that I might soon call home.
The distant sound of a lawnmower shakes me out of my trance and I step back from the wall. Now is not the time to lose focus. Too much is on the line, and I’ve got work to do. This job is the cornerstone of my plan to reboot my life. I take one last deep breath, the grassy scent mixing with the earthy, rusty smell of the bricks. Then I hike up the pantsuit, brush back the bangs, and head for the bus.
Chapter Two
As she ladles an enormoushelping of chickpeas onto my plate, Sabiha Iqbal smiles. “It sounds like it went very well.”
Amina, her daughter, snorts. “Yeah, except for the part where you said you don’t give a shit about the place where she works.”
Mrs. Iqbal uses the chickpea spoon to gently rap the back of Amina’s hand. “Language.”
The Iqbals are family friends from ages ago when my dad studied abroad here. They live closer to Manchester than to Liverpool, but staying with them seemed far preferable to me spending untold days staring at the wall in a drab hotel room, and comes with the added benefit of Mrs. Iqbal’s excellent cooking. Amina is my age, and we’ve kept up a slow but consistent correspondence over the years, progressing from handwritten letters to AOL instant messages to emails and texts interspersed between occasional hops across the pond. Mrs. Iqbal is fighting an uphill battle with the language issue, though, as more than two decades of friendship can attest. Amina is tiny—barely over five feet—but packs an unbelievable amount of personality in that petite body. She’s some kind of lawyer (“one of the boring paperwork ones,”she told me once), and I can only guess how hard it must be for her to censor herself in the briefs she writes.
“Yeah,” I say. “That probably wasn’t my best move. But I managed to turn it around, and now I basically have two days to learn everything there is to know about soccer. Football. The one with all the kicking.”
Amina’s younger brother, Hassan, stares into the middle distance, a look of grim determination on his face. “This is my Everest.”
“Oh God, here we go,” Amina mutters.
He steeples his fingers under his chin. “Where do I even start? It must be with the Dutch concept oftotaalvoetbal.” He looks up at me, eyes aglow. “I assume you’ve heard of Johan Cruyff?”
I grimace in something like an apology.
Amina rolls her eyes. “Hassan, we have a day, not a decade.” She turns to me. “You’ve played table football, with the little men on rotisserie spits?”
