Home is Where the Heart is - Pablo Gavi

Chapter 24: What Are We?

Pablo's POV:

I wake up to a series of buzzing sounds and groan, pulling Isla closer into my chest. I trying to ignore it and keep my eyes closed, hoping to fall back asleep.

Isla groans. "What is that noise?"

I peek my eyes open and turn my head to look at my nightstand. Both our phones are laying on it, but hers is the one lighting up. "Your phone," I tell her, my voice groggy.

"Ugh," she says, sitting up a bit, "if they're texting me that much it must be important, can you pass it to me?"

I close my eyes for one peaceful second before opening them again. "Sure." I collect her phone, unplugging it from the charger. As I pass it over to her I look on the screen. There are a few messages from Xavi, but the most recent messages are from Joao Felix. I reluctantly hand her the phone.

She takes it and opens it, reading the messages. She glances over at me, knowing I saw who was messaging her.

"What did he say?" I ask, trying to act like I don't care. In reality, I don't want anyone to have a chance to take her away from me, even though she's not really mine to begin with. This past week has been different, but in a good way. I never imagined this is where our friendship would go, but I'm extremely glad it has. I feel closer to her than ever, and happy. I think she's happy too.

"Xavi let me know he's heading in early and how he won't be home when I get back," she says. "And," she adds, "Joao said hey."

"That's all?" I ask, shifting so that I'm on my side facing her.

"And he said I played really well yesterday and was wondering if I wanted to hangout with him today, while he's still in Barcelona."

I pause, trying not to overreact. "Are you going to go?"

Her eyes widen and she sets her phone down on the bed on the other side of her. I'm waiting patiently for her response when she smiles over at me. "Oh Pablo, of course I'm not going to go." I sigh and she starts delicately drawing lines across my collarbone with the tips of her fingers.

"You can go if you want," I tell her, hoping she won't, but at the same time knowing she wouldn't do it if she thought it would hurt me. Regardless of how I feel about it, we're just friends, I shouldn't be standing in the way of her going out with someone.

She laughs lightly. "I don't want to. Plus I don't have time today."

I tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear. "What are your plans for today hermosa?"

"Morning: relaxing, afternoon: training, evening: meeting with Lily and we might hangout afterwards. What about you?" she asks, setting her hand down on my chest so that it's sprawled across my heart.

"Same, same," my tell her, bobbing my head as I speak, "evening I think I'm going to hangout with Pedri, catch up a little bit."

"So I won't see you tonight?" she asks suggestively.

I chuckle. "No you won't."

She pretends to pout.

"Unless you really want me to ditch Pepi, he won't be happy about it though."

She drops the pout. "No, go hangout with him. Oh, also in Xavi's several 'here's my exact location at every moment today' messages he asked me to tell you he'd like you to go into training early to have a word with him alone."

"Am I in trouble?" I ask. To be fair I have done plenty of things to get me in trouble with Xavi recently, what I did last night with his niece, for example, would be more than enough to get me benched for a century if he ever found out. Still, I would do it again.