Define Me | A Soccer Romane [ NEYMAR JR. ]

3. insomnia by definition

Gabriella was taking small bites from her croissant while scrolling through twitter. The fans were already talking about Neymar following her. Maggie was sitting across from her, talking about him following her was a disaster. She said that doing nothing would be best, everyone would just assume he followed her because of Messi. A part of her felt bad for not following him back but she knew there would be no coming back from that and by the time she had hit the follow bottom everyone would suspect she was in Qatar.

“Remind me what we have to do for the day?” she asked Maggie, not taking her eyes off her phone.
“We are on vacation; we don’t really have anything to do.”
“No games?”
“Brazil game is tomorrow.” Said Maggie eating a spoonful of the fresh cake she had bought. She glanced at Gabriella with a warning look. Gabriella smiled.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that.”
Maggie swallowed her food and crossed her arms, laying back on her chair. “I have a feeling I will regret everything about this trip when we get home.”
“We are not going home, we are going to Greece, remember?”
“Oh I remember! Do you remember? Because I can already imagine you packing for brazil!”
Gabriella laughed “I don’t even like him! He’s an entitled prick! Last thing I need in my life is to get mixed up with his shit.”
“Yes, because bad boys are totally not your type.”
Gabriella let down her phone and looked at Maggie with complain in her eyes “low blow!”

Maggie smiled and got up, picking up her dirty plates and glass. “4 years is a long time out of the game Gabriella” She walked to Gabriella’s side, looking down at her “I said it before and I’ll say it again. Be careful.”
Maggie left for the kitchen and Gabriella looked back at her screen, Neymar’s picture glowed in it. Then a text appeared on the top of the screen, it was from Leo and it wrote “los chicos quieren volver a verte. ¿Te importa si los llevo antes del entrenamiento?.” She had to google the translation just to be sure that he was asking if the kids and Antonella could stay with her while he was training. In other circumstances she would have thought twice before saying yes but she couldn’t even leave the house and she had nothing better to do so she agreed.

BRAZIL’S BASE – QATAR

Neymar was already finished with his morning training, he was sitting, wet after the shower, on the edge of his bed. His eyes were glued on his phone waiting for Gabriella to follow him back. He was nervous. He quickly opened his contacts and called his friend.

“Ola Messi. Commo estas?”
“Estoy bien. Voy a entrenar. ¿Por qué?”
Neymar hesitated; did he really want to bother his friend with this before his training. He felt like a teenage boy, getting caught writing notes for the girl on the front desk. He asked if he was going to see Gabriella, and Messi told him about his plan to leave the kids with her while he was training.

“¿Por qué ?”
“los chicos la adoraban. Quieren jugar con ella y Antonella quiere compañía.”

Of course, the kids had loved her, Neymar didn’t need to struggle to understand why they did. But now he had no good reason to see her and he couldn’t just drop off at her house. He didn’t understand why he liked being ‘bullied’ by her so much but he did, it was a quite challenge to get to know her.
“Neymar?” asked Messi from the other line, distracting him from his thoughts.
“Lo siento.” He said quickly apologizing.
“Neymar… ¿te gusta la actriz?” teased Messi, asking him the exact same thing Neymar had asked when he first saw Messi with Gabriella. He laughed and shook his head.
“No, creo que es irritante.” It wasn’t a complete lie; she was a bit annoying and entitled most times but he knew Messi would never really believe his words.