Sure Thing • Gavi

Chapter 57: An Unexpected Spectator

🎶 Symphony (feat. Zara Larsson) — Clean Bandit, Zara Larsson 🎶

Gavi POV

Fucking thankfully, we managed to win the game against Alavés on Sunday and the day after, I flew to Madrid with Ferran, Inigo and Lamine as we were the only ones from Barca to have been called up to the senior national team. I had really hoped that Fermín would have been called up too, but he was going to be with the U21s instead unfortunately. Pedri had stayed back home to rest and I was bummed for him on one side, but on the other hand, Barca needed him rested and Spain had already qualified for the EUROs anyways.

I opened up my phone and tapped on my chat with Vicky. She had been busier these days, she was probably distracting herself and her articles had gotten more intense and harder for me to understand, which meant that she was doing a good job probably.

It was good to see the teammates from the Seleccion again, one good thing about Aymeric not getting called up was that I didn't have to do that stupid TikTok dance he dared me to do back in Norway a month ago. On Tuesday afternoon, we flew to Cyprus already and I tracked the flight on the small monitor on the seat in front of me. My eyes fell on the Israel pin on the map and I sighed. Vicky would be so close, yet she was still so far. She had resorted to send me one voice message each evening now, telling me how her day was, even though she tried not to tell me about the ugly stuff she saw - but I inevitably read it in her articles: families torn apart, violence, cruel decision-makers.

On Thursday, it was finally game day. De la Fuente had asked me a million times if I was mentally fit enough to play and I had to see the team therapist so that he would give me the green light, but in the end I was obviously cleared. The only time where I didn't think about my girlfriend being far away from me, was when I set foot on the pitch - nothing else mattered in that moment, only the ball, my teammates and me. We arrived at the changing rooms and as I pulled my phone out of my pocket, I saw a message that made my heart beat faster.

Vicky POV

Everything was settled. The CIA guy had run the name of this Al-Hashimi man and told me he wasn't classified as particularly dangerous. And so I arranged meeting him next Tuesday in a Syrian city, just half an hour away from the border to Israel, from where he would drive with me to the camp. I needed to get to Syria somehow undetected as my passport had an Israeli stamp in it and I would never get over the border officially with that. My American colleague Joe had helped me and found a guy who was taking some people over illegally in a truck of his. We were leaving on Monday evening. To say I was nervous was the understatement of the year, but I was willing to do all this for my story, I was sure that it was going to be a success if everything went smoothly.

Pablo was with the national team now and he had been more and more on my mind since I decided to do all this. He was playing in Cyprus on Thursday evening and I decided to fly over there and surprise him. It was only a one-hour flight and I would arrive there in the afternoon and fly back really early the next morning. I wanted to see him so badly before doing the story, of course I was afraid that something could go wrong and... at least I would have seen him one last time.

I had brought his shirt from the victory in Norway with me and put it in my tote bag, along with a pyjama and my most necessary toiletries, I wasn't even taking a trolley. At lunchtime, I submitted my article for the day and called a taxi that would take me to the airport in Tel Aviv. The plane was on time and after landing, I took a taxi again that would drive me to the stadium, which was approximately one hour away from the airport.

When I arrived and had found my seat, I asked my neighbour to quickly take a photo of me to send it to Pablo. Thankfully, they had wi-fi at the stadium, this trip was costing me enough already, but it was all worth it if it just meant to see my boyfriend.