How hard can it be to fall in love with a football player when you're afraid of footballs...?
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Helping out her best friend by playing the lead in that music video project for university had seemed like an easy enough feat for art student Lorelai...
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A couple days after her date with Fernando the other night, Lorelai sat in a plastic seat at the Joan Gamper training ground, watching the members of the FC Barcelona train. Well, most of them. A couple of the players were on »national team« duty, as Dani had called it.
For example, Lionel Messi was missing. And, sadly, so was Marc.
And so was Neymar.
All that nervousness pent-up these last few days, and for nothing! It made Lorelai partly angry with herself for caring, and partly angry at Neymar for not telling her he wasn't going to be in the country for a while. Never mind how irrational that anger was. Her nerves would have definitely been spared from all the stress, had she known she wouldn't be running into the Brazilian.
Better not start to analyse the why behind that fact.
»You doing okay?« Dani shouted in her direction as he jogged over the field to make a stop in front of the grandstand, only a few metres away from where Lorelai was sitting.
»Yeah,« she replied and smiled. »I think this will work nicely. Thanks again for making it happen!«
Lorelai had followed Fernando's advice — and just asked. He had been right; that was the simple truth of it. There really was nothing else to do but ask. Why had it taken him of all people to finally make her realise that? Jane and Diego hadn't done anything else than try to convince her for days now to just suck it up and call. Then again, they had pleaded for Neymar, to whom Lorelai had developed a slight touchiness. Stupid non-chatter.
As soon as she had summoned up the courage — and had imagined several scenarios involving a certain Brazilian before catching herself daydreaming and promptly banning him out of her mind, well, tried to ban him at least — she had called up Marc. Just to put out the feelers, so to speak. Or so she had thought.
The whole topic had taken a surprising turn in her favour. Marc had been delighted by the prospect of the paintings, even suggesting to help her out privately. »If your girlfriend is okay with that,« Lorelai had said, amused and relieved by his enthusiasm (normal-dosed, not Stella-dosed, just to be clear). Had she mentioned what a darling this guy was?
After that, Lorelai had called up Dani, who had sounded extremely happy to hear about the project as well; he'd wondered about her apparent lack of enthusiasm towards football which he'd gathered from the video shoot, but hadn't commented otherwise on it. Instead, he'd promptly invited her to one of their practises. She hadn't even known he could do that.
Why both football players had seemed to be so delighted about this whole deal, Lorelai would probably never find out. It was just a simple stupid art assignment for a university project after all, wasn't it? But then again, that was how the video had started out. And there, the FC Barcelona had already proved to be different than what was to be expected.
How Dani and Marc had managed to persuade the club's management and board and all the important people making the big decisions, she would probably also never find out. From what she could tell so far, Marc was really just a darling you couldn't say no to. And Dani had a rather persuasive character. Or maybe he'd been annoying them so much with it that they'd relented in the end to make him shut up.
