Meu Amor

Chapter 2

"Oh, my God. Is this real?" I say, showing Taylor my phone while we have lunch.

"See? I told you he liked you! Boy has been doing his homework."

"Wait, this wasn't you?"

"Nope. He didn't text or anything."

"Let me see your phone. I don't trust you."

"Fine" Taylor says, rolling her eyes. "But you won't find anything."

And, after scrolling through all her texts and dms... I do indeed find nothing.

"Then how did he manage to find my Instagram account? It is private, you can't see my face on my profile photo, and he didn't know my name. Did he ask about who covered the game or something?"

"Maybe he read your name on your id."

"I wore it backwards, I hate how I look on that photo."

"We all look bad on those photos" Taylor says. "But give me my phone back, I want to check something."

After just a few seconds, she shows me her phone again.

"Look at the user who liked this post from our last holidays."

"What about it?" I ask, confused.

"That is Rúben's private account."

"He has a private account?"

"Duh. They all do."

"But he requested the follow with his official account."

"That's their modus operandi. It's a way to make sure you believe it's them and not someone impersonating them" she explains. "They start chatting with you there, and then mention the private account if things go well."

"Do I want to ask how do you know that?"

"No, you don't. But look at the date of the like."

"That's yesterday."

"The day after the game."

"And?"

"He was looking for you! And he found you. That post is a photo dump, and you are on one of them. I tagged you."

"Oh" I say.

"He is a clever boy, isn't he?" Taylor smirks. "What are you going to do?"

"About what?"

"About what" she says, making fun of me. "About the follow! Are you accepting it or not?"

"I don't know... Is it professional?"

"You follow other players, don't you?"

"I do, yes. But most of them are English, and none of them play for City. Wouldn't it be weird?"

"To whom? Your account is private. If people want to lurk, they'll find nothing."

"That's true... But I don't know, Taylor. I told you I want to focus on my work."

"You can focus on your work and chat with a super hot guy on your free time. C'mon, give him a chance. He's one of the good ones, I promise."

"I still don't know how you met him."

"Accept his follow, follow him back, and I'll tell you."

"Fine" I say, opening Instagram again and doing just as Taylor said. "Done. Now talk."

"It isn't that interesting" she shrugs. "I met him last year during a football gala, the one I attended with Charlie. While he was fanboying over some rapper that was singing, I joined some other journalists I knew, and he was with them. They were talking about Portugal, and turns out that he knew the place where I used to spend my summers as a kid. That's how we started chatting, because of Portugal."

"But you called him Mr. Dias at the game. As if you didn't know each other well."

"That was a joke because the day we met I called him that, and he didn't like it. He said that was his father."

"So you just... Talk over dms."

"Yes, that's all we've done. No need to be jealous."

"I'm not... Ugh. I hate you, Taylor" I say, rolling my eyes.

"I hate you too" she says, sending me a kiss from the other side of the table.

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Now I put a face and a body to the name. And what a body. Taylor told me to check his account and... Yeah. Let's just say that when I finished, the temperature of the room had gone up a few degrees. Or maybe just mine.