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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Neymar and Lorelai got back into their routine — texting, messaging, sending pictures on a daily basis. They talked about basically everything; their jobs, the events of the day, basically whatever they felt like sharing (»›Just had a schnitzel in Vienna, not my taste!‹« or »›My babies succeeded in destroying yet another football! This is starting to get expensive!‹«). He told her about his family, about Davi and the difficulties of being a father on a different continent than his kid. She told him about her studies, her friends, the crazy parties she occasionally went to with her friends.
Nothing about her family though, Neymar noticed, which struck him as odd, what with him having such a close relationship to his own. He didn't question it though — she obviously must have a good reason for withholding that information.
They even had conversations over the phone, real ones that is, but these had been short and far between, since both of them had been rather busy these past few days. Neymar had been occupied with training with the national team for the friendly match in Vienna and Lorelai had been busy with thinking up a schedule that would work for her art project — which Neymar was very much excited about. Nervous even, seeing as how Lorelai would now be present for most of the training sessions at Barça.
Of course, when she told him about the individual training, he'd suggested to just come to him whenever he was doing individual stuff. Or anything, actually. That was football-related. Thinking back, it was no wonder that it had turned into a rather awkward conversation after that, with him stuttering like an idiot about when she should come to him, and her telling him about how Dani and Marc had already offered to help her individually.
This, in turn, had ended with them talking about her »special condition«. Neymar still didn't have the slightest clue how that girl was to complete her assignment with that phobia. Seriously, painting pictures of footballers playing football with a football phobia? What a tongue-twister that was!
Nevertheless, he admired her for planning such a project with that fear always in the back of her mind. He wanted to help her get rid of it. He'd made a promise to her that he would help her get to come to love the ball, even if they'd only been joking around back then. Anyhow, he couldn't do more than offer his help and support — which apparently Lorelai wasn't able to accept. Yet, anyways. Quite adamantly, she'd told him to just stop bringing up that football thing, she could handle it, no biggie. Yeah, right, he'd said.
Suffice it to say, after that, the mood between them had become dented, and a few degrees colder. They had bickered some more — fought even, maybe? — over the phone, which had abruptly ended when Lorelai had simply hung up on him. One of their few actual conversations, finished with the sound the dead line going »beep beep beep«.
That phone call had been on the day of the friendly match against the Austrian national football team. He hadn't been at his best on the pitch. The Brazilians had won, yes, but their performance had lacked the usual flair. He wasn't happy, the rest of the team wasn't happy, their trainer wasn't happy. He'd had to admit though, they had brutally underestimated the Austrians; they had offered a good match. But that admittance didn't change anything.
