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Klopp had not expected the office to be so full of players, waiting to hear his ancient story. But the whole team was there, sitting on every surface possible to sit on and waiting. Tsimikas had run in last, and with all the seats taken he had hopped into Thiago’s lap. Bajcetic blushed and groaned, while the others laughed.
“Are you sure you really want to know?” Klopp asked them. He’d been pretty sure when he sent the invite in the group chat, but now he was having second thoughts. “I mean, the story’s all the way from 1992—BCE.”
Nunez, of course, spoke first. “Look, jefe, we’re your boys. We will literally do anything to hear about your juicy love life. So begin!”
Klopp rolled his eyes, not surprised at all. “It started when I was a player in Germany. I knew that my heart didn't love only girls the way that society expected me to, but it didn't get in the way of me trying to bond with my teammates at Mainz. And then…”
"Come on gaffer, tell us!" Robertson squirmed impatiently in his seat, clearly excited to hear the story.
"Shush, Robbo," Salah gently chided him. "He'll tell us when he feels like it."
"Thank you, Mo, but I have to tell you so you all can understand this story better. When I was twenty-five, I had a crush on someone. Someone called Zeljko Buvac."
Gomez' eyes widened to the size of Meisterschales. "No freaking way."
"Our old vice-manager?" Alexander-Arnold squawked. "But you two were friends."
"We were for years and years. But when we just met, I had a crush on him as big as the solar system. He rejected me, saying that he didn't like boys. And so I believed him…for two days.”
"What happened after two days?" everybody chorused like a crowd of schoolchildren. Ignoring the fact, of course, that some of them were still young enough to be in school.
Klopp sighed, removing his hat and balling it up in his hands. "I was in a restaurant with one of my sisters, hanging out, when I saw him flirting with at least three guys. He wasn't drunk, either, and after two days of hanging out I knew how Zel acted when he was drunk.”
Jota’s jaw dropped from the desk he was sitting on to the floor. “Two days and you already got drunk together?! What the fork did you do?! ”
Klopp froze, the chaotic memory playing in his mind like a classic cartoon. “Let’s just say there was a bar, and there was Truth or Dare.”
"So he lied to you!" Van Dijk growled under his breath, balling his hands into fists. "The nerve of him."
Alisson took Van Dijk' hand, running his hand over it until the captain calmed down. "Were you upset with him, boss?"
"Upset and then some. I hated the fact that he'd lied to me instead of being honest. After three days, though, I was ecstatic." Klopp chuckled softly, putting his hat back on and standing from his office chair. "Because now that I knew he was into guys after all…”
“No way. No freakin' way." Nunez gasped in shock and delight, almost vibrating from excitement. "You tried to seduce your man?!"
“Darwin, filter!” Mac Allister and Diaz raced to cover Nunez’s mouth with their hands.
“He’s right, though, I did. I possessed even less subtlety when I was younger than now, and so I dedicated my time to convincing him that I wasn't such a bad idea." Klopp grinned at the memory as he opened the scrapbook, showing his players the grainy Polaroid photos inside. “Flowers, sweets, letters…I tried it all. And every time, Zel either ignored me or told me that he wasn't interested in men. Which was a lie, because I saw him that night. So, after three days of endless trying, I decided that there was only one way to get his attention."
"The parade!" Robertson cheered, bouncing in his seat and shaking poor Salah from side to side. "Tell us about it gaffa, tell us! Was it chaotic?"
Endo rolled his eyes, briefly covering the intrigue he'd followed the story with. “Knowing the boss, it was chaotic and then some. It probably upset the world order entirely.”
“Well, it almost did. I borrowed Isolde's convertible for the day and covered it with red streamers and paper hearts. And then I drove to Zel's street and drove in front of it, waving and honking my horn at him. On Saturday morning, at five o'clock in the morning."
Most of the players burst into laughter, while others were in shock.
"You did what?!" Lijnders exclaimed, looking at Klopp in disbelief. "I know you've always been an early riser, but this...this is insanity."
“I did. And it worked...well, somewhat." Klopp grinned, flipping through the scrapbook to show them a photo of Buvac standing on his balcony, looking down at the parade with a mix of annoyance and amusement on his face. "He came down, wondering what all the commotion was and we talked. It turned out that the whole reason he'd lied to me was because he liked me as a friend, but was too afraid to tell me the truth."
“That he likes men, too?" Thiago wrapped his arm around Tsimikas, ruffling his boyfriend's blond curls with a fond smile. "Kind of ironic, considering what you'd told him a few days earlier."
"If only it was that simple. He didn't want to hurt my feelings by admitting that he liked men, but he just didn't like me in that way." Klopp closed the book and set it to the side with a sigh. "We eventually became best friends until…well, you know what happened. But I can't help but wonder if we would've been even closer if I hadn't fallen in love at first sight—or if I had some subtlety."
“I don’t know, boss. Buvac sounded pretty shy to me back then,” Szoboszlai pointed out, finally looking up from his gaming console. “If you hadn’t been so obvious about your crush, I don’t think he would’ve felt comfortable to talk to you in the first place.”
“Wow, Domi actually has a point!” Endo drawled, snatching the gaming console and tossed it across the room into a basket, ignoring Szoboszlai’s strangled squawks. “Three points.”
“No, seriously, Domi’s right. Part of the reason people bond so quickly with me is because I talk so much, I don’t make them feel self-conscious at all!” Nunez pulled the elastic out of his hair, letting his dark hair cascade to his shoulders. “Well, there’s my smooth, fluent English and my gorgeous body, but there’s that, too.”
Diaz dived under the desk and began reciting Ave Marias and Pater Nosters, while Mac Allister and Bajcetic just laughed. Alisson picked up Nunez and lifted him off the desk, plonking him in a seat between him and Van Dijk.
“Fluent English, my Golden Glove! The only English that you speak fluently is the kind that needs to be bleeped out on the BBC. Don’t think I forgot about translating your interview from Spanish to English.”
“But you don’t speak Spanish.”
“Exactly. I was translating from English to Portuguese, and then from Spanish to Portuguese to English because even though you played in Portugal and you know Portuguese, you insisted on giving your answers in Spanish!”
“The boys are right, you know.” Lijnders rolled his chair next to Klopp as they watched the chaos occuring in front of them. “You do make people feel more comfortable with all that enthusiasm and never-die attitude. Zeljko should be thankful for your incessant yammering.”
“I guess so.” Klopp stiffened in his seat as his brain registered what Lijnders had just said. “Incessant yammering?!”
“At least I’ve still got my beauty,” Nunez shot back, smirking and tossing his hair in the gust of wind provided by the office fan.
Alisson rolled his eyes, but he was smirking, too. “HOW does that help us?!”
“I’m seducing the opponents into leaving me free!”
“Fantastic! Now why don’t you seduce your feet into putting the ball in the net and not the posts?!”
“Well, I have to score some goals that are as beautiful and complicated as me.”
“And you had to burn breakfast in the most complicated way possible, too, huh?”
“It was a complicated dish!”
“It was an omelette!”
“It was an omelette with mushrooms and chorizo!”
“It was charcoal!”