This Season

II

   Cecilia had noticed Vincenzo's presence in the restaurant and when leaving the bathroom the two bumped into each other and there was some kind of awkwardness as the girl also recognized him. She doesn't deny it by telling herself that she wishes she had felt the same butterflies when she fell in love with Kendrick.

   Four years and one month together and still she laughs so hard at his unfunny jokes that she almost cries, but nothing is as perfect as it seems. The relationship between the two has been slowly losing its ways, even with the happy moments. They fight a lot of the time, and the reason Kendrick went to the hospital at the time of the finals was that: fighting. They were arguing, but he ended up tripping and hitting the glass of the backyard door pretty hard, which shattered on him.

   Galaretto, now driving back to his home through the wet streets of Chicago, feels the icy cold breeze hit him in the face. In one of the rare September drizzle, he decides to leave his window slightly open, to let his thoughts clear up.

   Arriving home, he picks up one of his favorite books to reread: 'Crime and Punishment' by Fyodor Dostoevsky, a novel and philosophical and ethical essay on the consequences of human actions.
   Smelling the mixing rain and soil from sitting on the balcony of his room, Vin lets the reading flow late into the night. But he stops reading only because he remembers that he has to go to Adam's office early in the morning, to solve some contract's problems with brands that he collaborates with.

   After locking all the entrances, he goes downstairs to the kitchen to wash the bowls he used to eat earlier, since he is fascinated by organization and there is no one to do it at the moment anyway. After turning off all the lights downstairs now, he climbs back up to his bedroom and throws himself on the bed, grabbing his cell phone. As he unlocks the phone, the very first thing he thinks of doing is getting on Instagram and going to look for Cecilia's profile. Which was a little difficult because her user has nothing in common with her own name and surname: @watercolorautumn.

   Vincenzo had to go into Kendrick's profile to find her, but in one of the few pictures the two of them have together, he only tags a friend of hers who was present in the picture. So Vin, goes into the girl's profile and finally finds the profile of the much sought Ellis. And it's not as if he is a genius of technology, he was even impressed with himself for discovering that it is possible to tag people in his own publications.
   After looking through her entire profile, picture by picture, he decides to follow her and finally tuck himself in for a peaceful sleep.

   After only four hours of sleep, Galaretto wakes up more exhausted than before he went to bed, mumbles something to himself about still wanting more rest, and goes straight to his shower to take a cold bath. Breaking his own routine is certainly not on his list of what to do today, so even though he mentally complains about being sleepy, he puts on his sports clothes and walks to the gym close to his house.

   Sequences of exercises are done for an average of an hour and a half, drops of sweat are seen all over his body as he follows his teammate's training. Something of his daily routine since he became a sports professional.

"No, no. Look! If I'm in that certain position, it makes no sense for me to play the role that the other guy should be playing, bro!" Talking about a game from last season, Sheldon gestures by pedaling the bike.

"Okay, alright! Thinking about it that way, it was really dumb of me to do that. But it was also really dumb of him to do that, too. Damn, he was like a panda trying to dance Atilogwu by himself the whole game." Pratt, the forward, argues, trying not to let all the blame fall on himself.

"I have to agree with you there. Even though I was on the bench that day, I could see him handling the stick like a slug learning how to play hockey." Vin says finishing his squats.