I Knew I Loved You

Chapter 2

One week later

Kemal slaps a folder on his desk, scattering papers and dust. But it's not nearly enough. He needs to get out of his head or he'll spiral. And so he walks over to the metal cabinet and kicks it with all his might - with his bad foot. Blinding pain shoots from his foot through his whole body, and somewhere near his ankle, something pops and grinds alarmingly. With a shout of pain and a drawn-out curse, Kemal teeters in place, standing on his good leg.

He grinds his teeth and pants through the waves of pain that ebb and flow and ebb and flow in an all too familiar pattern. There's a sizeable dent in the metal door, and his foot is throbbing more viciously than those dark thoughts made his head throb a moment ago.

With a groan, he sinks to the floor and leans against the cabinet, stretching out the leg that hates him. He rotates his foot, making something click again and bringing a wave of pain so intense it makes him nauseous for a moment. But then things settle into an almost comforting ache, and Kemal breathes through it.

About three years ago, fate said 'fuck you' to him and ended a career that should have had several more years of steam left. It didn't happen while training or playing basketball, something he could have dealt with. Instead, it was an accident. Driving home one evening, Kemal suddenly slowed the car to avoid hitting a mother cat and its kitten crossing the road. He'd been too focused on the animals to notice that another car had been driving behind him. It was going so fast that it couldn't brake on time, and it rammed his vehicle. To make matters worse, the momentum slammed him forward and into a tree by the roadside.

It took the fire brigade over an hour to get him out of the mangled mass that had once been a car, and he clearly remembered the paramedic telling him it was a miracle he was still alive. He made it out with a concussion, cuts all over his arms, two broken ribs, and his left foot basically unrecognizable. It had taken complicated reconstructive surgery and a metal piece now permanently lodged inside his foot to get him back on track.

Months of rehab and physiotherapy followed, and enough painkillers to drive him to the point of addiction. More months of weening himself off the strong medicine, and getting his life back a day and a step at a time. His doctor advised against training but stubborn mule that he was, Kemal went back to sports anyway. Only his foot had other ideas. No matter how slowly he tried to ease back into it, running was painful and jumping was simply out of the question.

So he bid farewell to being a professional basketball player and found himself unemployed and feeling utterly useless. Realizing that he didn't know who he was outside of his basketball persona and realizing that he had nobody who wasn't a part of that circle, had driven him to alcohol. The same alcohol that one night had him so drunk that he fell down the stairs to his apartment and landed in the hospital with another concussion and his foot giving him new trouble.

Luckily, it had been a wake-up call. Kemal finally made an effort to build a new life for himself, albeit half-heartedly and aimlessly. It turned out his unfinished university degree was useless for jobs that paid well because he'd dropped out after less than two years. And no team wanted to hire him as a coach because of his recent past. Sure, he had enough money to last him for another decade or more, but dammit he needed to DO something. And so here he is, trying to teach a bunch of kids basketball and hating every minute of it.

Judging by the one week that's passed, he's doing a shitty job of it, but he can't quite bring himself to care. What he does care about though, is that out of all the people from his past, it had to be Burcu he re-encountered. The only woman he'd ever loved. The one person he thought about whenever he wanted to share a victory or a loss in his early career days. The one person he had been unable to forget.