What I Should Have Said About You

Rafa asked about the interview on a Sunday morning while I was trying to make pancakes.

“Is this a serious conversation?” I asked. “Because I'm already managing a crisis.”

He looked at the pan.

“That one might be beyond help.”

“It has character.”

“It has smoke.”

He turned down the heat while I opened the window. Then he put the ruined pancake on his own plate, which was either devotion or poor judgement.

“Lucy has an opportunity for a longer interview with a football magazine,” he said. “About the move, the season, and us, if we're comfortable.”

I put down the spatula.

“What do you want to say?”

“I want to answer for what I said last year. Properly. Not just in a car park with someone shouting.”

I considered him across the small kitchen.

Since Kingswell, I'd worked through the match with Reed, trained well, and come off the bench to make a useful contribution the following week. My confidence had returned in ordinary pieces. Rafa had supported me without trying to become my coach.

We were doing well. I didn't particularly want the old hurt brought back into the room.

But I understood why he did.

“What would you tell them?”

“That what I said was false and cruel. That I was afraid, and made that your problem. That I'm sorry.”

“No messages,” I said. “The private ones stay private.”

“Of course.”

“And I don't want them deciding the entire story is about how generously I forgave you.”

He nodded slowly. “Neither do I.”

“We're happy now. I'd like that to be in there somewhere.”

His mouth softened.

“I can manage that part.”

We discussed it with Lucy. Agreed on boundaries. Rafa would speak for himself; I wouldn't be expected to supply a statement of forgiveness. He could mention our relationship without giving anyone access to every moment of it.

The interview took place three weeks later.

I wasn't there. I had training, a meeting, a life that did not need to pause while my boyfriend sat in a room with a recorder.

He rang afterwards.

“How did it go?” I asked.

“I think well. I didn't enjoy all of it.”

“Did you survive?”

“Barely. They asked what you're like at home.”

“And?”

“I said you're very particular about toast.”

“Intimate. Reckless. I'll contact my solicitor.”

He laughed, then went quiet.

“I love how you make a room feel when you're in it,” he said. “I didn't tell them that. I wanted to tell you first.”

I stopped beside the training-ground gate.

Around me, boots rattled in bags. A groundskeeper raised a hand in greeting. I waved back without knowing what my face was doing.

“That was unfairly good,” I said.

“I wasn't trying to win.”

“I know.”

The article came out in March. Lucy sent us the link after Rafa had checked the factual details available to him. I read it alone at my kitchen table.

The journalist asked him directly about the old quote.

Rafa's answer was simple.

“I wanted an uncomfortable question to go away, and I said something untrue that hurt someone I cared about. He didn't deserve that. I had choices. I chose badly.”

Asked whether he had been frightened, he acknowledged it, then added that fear did not excuse the way he'd treated me.

There were other things in the piece. Football. His family. The difficulty of moving countries. A description of the record player and his refusal to admit my music was better.

I found myself laughing halfway through, then unexpectedly wiping my face near the end.

He hadn't made me a lesson. I was a person he liked, loved being around, sometimes disagreed with. He had given the interviewer enough to be honest and kept the rest for us.

When he arrived that evening, he began taking off his coat before he'd fully entered.

“Did you read it? Was anything—”

I crossed the hall and hugged him.

He stopped talking. His arms came around me slowly, then tightened.

“I read it,” I said against his shoulder.

“All right?”

“Yes.”

He rested his cheek against my hair.

We stood there until the open front door let enough cold air inside to make me shiver.

“Close that,” I said.

He reached back without letting me go.

In the kitchen, I put the kettle on. He leaned against the worktop, waiting.

“You don't have to keep proving you're sorry forever,” I told him.

His face grew still.

“I needed you to say it. I needed things to change. They have.”

He looked down at his hands, then back at me.

“Thank you for letting me try.”

I stepped between his knees and touched his cheek.

“I know you'll answer me now.”

He kissed my palm.

“Yes,” he said. “I will.”

That night, the old message remained in our phones. Neither of us deleted it. It had simply become one part of a conversation that was still going.