Cause and Effect

Eighteen

A/N: ^^^ awwwww these two <3 hehe

I didn't know it then, but that was the day Alexis started avoiding me.

The main reason I did not initially notice was because I had been trying to spend more time with Hector and Granit than I had been. It was nice to get back to the good times we used to have. As Granit put it, my 'beginning of relationship fever' had run its course, and I accepted this as the reason why I didn't want to be with Alexis all the time. It was, in fact, an inaccurate theory, but my conscience was pretty subdued these days, and apparently didn't feel like bringing up the real reason.

"It's like it's suddenly occurred to her that she doesn't need to spend every waking moment with her boyfriend," Granit told Hector, and Hector agreed with him.

"She's worked out she needs us in her life after all!" Hector smirked teasingly.

I rolled my eyes at the two of them, Hector was lucky I knew he was only joking around. But I could see what they were saying. Besides, I had missed them - playing video games until we physically couldn't continue, falling asleep in awkward positions resulting in cramps the following morning, carpooling on the way to training, and late night conversations remembering all the stupid things we'd done together over the years. Nothing could ever replace your best friends.

That being said, these days Neymar hung out with the three of us a lot as well.

Most of our teammates played FIFA, and a bit of Fortnite here and there, but Neymar was the only one who really shared our passion for it. On the first day of November, Granit picked up Minecraft from Hector's stack of games, and put it in to play. Originally, we'd only intended to play a couple of hours for a bit of nostalgia, but we ended up starting an SMP with just the four of us, and had played it nearly every day since then. That was the nature of Minecraft - endlessly addictive. We somehow had almost no away games in November, meaning we were always around London, and could easily gather at one or other of our houses. It was almost December now, the cold weather really starting to set in. We hadn't had any snow yet, but as going outside still meant donning hat, coat and boots, staying inside always seemed the nicer option.

There was tension in the air between Neymar and I, not a lot, but it was there. I'd come to accept this as normal. It wasn't bad tension, merely the fact that there was something there, like an elephant in the room that we were all ignoring. But we were happy. The atmosphere was always warm in Hector's living room, where most of our gaming went down, and sometimes we laughed so much it was like abs day at the gym. Some of my best memories from that month of November were from playing Minecraft with Hector, Granit and Neymar.

Not that my footballing was anything to write home about, unless you're into tragedies.

I had to face it, I was going through a goal drought. We'd played eight games since the beginning of October, and I hadn't scored a single goal. In hindsight, I would look back to the North London Derby, the first of the eight games, and pinpoint that as the beginning of my dip in form. Mesut had scored a brace, and Cech kept us a clean sheet, but I'd had a shocker of a game. Neymar, who lived for rivalries and had leapt wholeheartedly into this one, had jokingly directed me towards the Tottenham dressing room as we'd walked back down the tunnel after the game.

"That's where the bottlers go," he'd grinned.

I'd glared at him, but I'd been more annoyed with myself than anyone else. I'd completely lost my confidence in the box since that game, and I could feel the fans loosing faith in me as well. I avoided social media like the plague, but it still filtered through to me. I pushed myself in training, I really did, even staying back later than usual, analysing my game, and working on my physical form. But it took time to make adjustments, and fans didn't understand that. They wanted me to be at 110% now.