Cause and Effect

Eleven

If it hadn't been for my depressing thoughts, the day might have been absolutely perfect. We visited the Plaça De Catalunya (basically the city centre,) the Venetian towers, Arc De Triomf, the Magic Fountain of Montjuic, and toured the ancient Temple Expiatori del Sagrat Cor, which was essentially a big church.

Afterwards, we went shopping at La Rambla, which would usually have excited me, but not even all Hec and Granit's efforts to make me cheerful could remove the guilt I felt every time I looked at Alexis, which I admit, was oftener than it should have been. He genuinely looked sad. Neymar was moody, but thankfully avoided me, and hopefully he would continue to do so until he left for Brazil. He had, in short, reacted exactly how I'd expected Alexis to react, after we'd almost kissed that time in the elevator.

In that sense, the two were poles apart.

Alexis would continue to blame himself for everything that went wrong. Neymar would blame me.

Mesut added to the sour moods that prevailed amongst us by continuing his silent treatment of almost everybody. I continued to receive nasty looks from him, but I noticed him glancing sideways at Neymar as well, leading me to think that perhaps Alexis had related some of what had happened to him. It would explain his anger over the past few days - maybe he thought I was deliberately playing Alexis?

But this idea was soon overthrown as well, as I realised Alexis was still getting the cold shoulder from him, and when he tried speaking to Mesut, was met with sullen disinterest. I really felt for Alexis - he so clearly needed a friend to stand by him at the moment. I was thankful for Hector and Granit, who stood by me despite knowing how idiotic I'd been.

This sorry state of affairs continued for the rest of the week, with the exception of Neymar trying, and failing, to talk with me again. I wanted to - you have no idea how much I wanted to, and I almost caved so many times. But my anger always overtook me, anger for what happened, and towards myself. And as long as Alexis continued to avoid me, I would feel too guilty to talk to Neymar. I was relieved when Friday finally came, and took Neymar to Brazil out of temptations way. I was now determined to find opportunity to talk to Alexis, even if I had to corner him to do so. He was completely refusing to acknowledge me, and honestly? It hurt. It hurt a lot.

I had half expected Thierry to talk to one or both of us about how we'd been behaving. I knew he'd noticed. He wasn't born yesterday. But for some reason best known to himself, he preferred to observe in silence, making attacking practice for that week some of the longest hours of my life.

In short, we were playing Barcelona at the end of the week, and the front three weren't talking to each other.

Oh sure, we played football, but the teamwork was lacking. Badly. Mesut was behaving like he never learned how to read a book, let alone a football game.

At the end of our Saturday practice, Thierry called the three of us over, as he usually did, to discuss the events of the training session.

"Right. We're playing Barcelona tomorrow, yes?"

We nodded.

"We want to put out our best team, yes?"

Silent assent from all three of us.

"So..." Thierry paused, and glanced at each of our faces. "Which Of you three do I need to bench to make the communication work?"

We stared at him.

"Me," said Alexis, after a pause.

"What?" I responded immediately, turning to him. "No! None of this is your fault, it should be me!"