As the ball whizzed by the opposition keeper into the net, Ederson couldn’t help the sigh of relief that escaped his throat. He knew that the general public wouldn’t be so mad at him for conceding that goal, but Guardiola, on the other hand…

He needed to stop thinking about it. Chelsea were coming up on the attack, and if Ederson let City go behind right after they’d equalized Guardiola would have his head. One of the only places on his body that wasn’t tattooed. He tried to laugh at that as he dove down to the turf, the ball firmly in his grasp.

The final whistle took forever to blow, but eventually, the referee did signal for full-time. As the players mingled among each other, Ederson couldn't help but notice a flash of blonde hair tousled by the wind rushing towards the tunnel. At first he’d dismissed it as one of the Chelsea players or staff, and followed his teammates into the tunnel. But there was no ignoring the loud, heavily accented shout directed towards him.

“Ederson! You like jazz?”

Ederson turned around so hard, he could've gotten whiplash. "Odegaard? What are you doing here in Manchester? You guys are supposed to be in another city!”

"Well, it's only forty-four minutes from Burnley to Manchester. And I was bored and decided to watch some football." Odegaard stopped to high-five Oscar Bobb, throwing out a quick greeting in Norwegian. "Plus, I do have my international teammates here.”

Ederson raised an eyebrow. He crossed his arms in front of his chest and walked closer to Odegaard, stopping about four feet in front of him.

"Alright, enough with the pleasantries, Odegaard. What are you doing here, and why are you talking to me, out of everybody on my team? Obviously, you didn't come here for Oscar or Erling, because they’re both already in the locker room.”

"Because you're so much more interesting than either of those two!" Odegaard blurted, stepping closer to Ederson. He wanted to hug him since he seemed tense, but Ederson backed up further until he was against the wall. "I already spend enough time with Erling, and Oscar gets along better with the younger players in the national team. So that means that I need to get to know you better."

"And it's me and not anybody else on the team because…”

"Think about it this way, Ederson. You're Alisson's international teammate, right?"

"Yeah, we get along."

"Well, Alexis Mac Allister is Alisson's teammate on Liverpool."

"And Alexis is your boyfriend, isn't he? I figured that out when I visited Kirkby a couple of weeks ago and saw him making a Valentine in Arsenal colors to ' mi querido Martino '. Unless Arsenal has another Martin that I don't know about." Ederson chuckled wryly, his shoulders relaxing slightly. "But in that case, wouldn't you want to go with Julián? He plays with Alexis for Argentina. You could learn more about Alexis that way."

"I already crashed the Argentina group chat months ago." Odegaard took a deep breath, fiddling with a large button on his coat. "Here's the deal, Ederson. The word on the street is that you're a tattooed motorcycle rider with an ice cube for a heart. But when Lexi was telling me about your visit to Kirkby the other day, he didn't describe you as any of those things. So…let’s go to dinner together.”

“ O que? !”

“To dinner! I saw a restaurant a couple streets away from here.”

“I don’t know about that one. I heard it’s…pricey, to say the least.”

“Don’t worry, we’re not going to do anything crazy. And everything’s on me. You just do whatever you do after the match and meet me at the front door, okay?”

Ederson hesitated for a long time, his eyes darting from side to side. Eventually, he uncrossed his arms and moved away from the wall.

“So…see you in half an hour?”

*

Odegaard didn’t know why he’d gone to watch a City game. Maybe it was because Arteta was Guardiola’s friend and the ex-City vice manager, and so Arteta had a free pass to watch the matches. Maybe it was because Arteta had left the match pass in Odegaard’s pocket by mistake, and Odegaard had only discovered it when he was already in Manchester and standing by the Etihad.

Anyways, he’d gladly witnessed City dropping points to Chelsea, a team in the bottom half of the Premier League table. He'd had to hide his joy, though, when he made his way down to the halls where the players were making their way towards the locker room. After a quick hello to Erling Haaland, Odegaard found who he'd been looking for.

"Ederson!" he'd called out among the din of conversing footballers. "You like jazz?”

If there was anything Odegaard had learned from Mac Allister, it was that Jerry Seinfield had the best pick-up lines in history. Judging by how Ederson responded as if he’d been struck by lightning, he did not agree with that sentiment. But at least he’d agreed to dinner.

Odegaard thought Ederson was an interesting customer, to say the least. On the pitch, he was far less affectionate than some other goalkeepers Odegaard had met—namely Ederson’s position-mate and compatriot, Alisson—and he barely seemed to talk to people, whether on his team or on the opposition’s side.

Of course, on-pitch character assessments didn’t always stand up to the truth. Take Alisson as an example. Odegaard had thought that the Liverpool keeper had mastered the art of relaxation…well, at least until the whole wedding incident. He’d learned far more than he’d bargained for that day.

Anyways, the point was that Odegaard wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice. He was going to get to know Ederson before forming an opinion about him, and the first step towards that was dinner at Gusto Italian.

Odegaard paced back and forth in front of one of the Etihad’s many exits, mentally rehearsing what to do now. He didn’t have time to change into his lucky pink dress shirt that he’d worn on his first date with Mac Allister, but, thankfully for him, he was still wearing his camel-colored overcoat with the large wooden buttons. A relief, considering the oatmeal overalls and thistle-colored turtleneck he wore underneath it. He had no idea how post-match dinner with Ederson was going to go, but at least he wouldn’t be kicked out for his awful fashion sense. Finally, the door opened and closed in a blur.

"Ready for dinner, Ederson? Because I—" Odegaard stopped short, staring at Ederson as if he'd just worn an octopus costume to the Ballon D'Or gala. "Is that seriously…a snowflake jumper?"

Ederson nodded, a fond smile appearing on his face as he played with the hems of the cuffs. Odegaard couldn't help but gasp in shock; in his three years of playing in England, he'd never seen Ederson smile, "I borrowed it from Ali when we last met up at Brazil camp in October. I planned to return it to him in the next international break, but then things happened and…well, you know. Stuff happened. It's nice, isn't it?"

Odegaard had to admit, the navy and white jumper was nice—a lot nicer than the one he'd shown up in to sign his first Real Madrid contract, anyway. There was one large snowflake in the middle of it, one that looked suspiciously like the Frozen snowflake. Odegaard didn’t think Ederson would take it too well if he pointed that out, though. “It is. Ready to go out?”

“Well, it doesn't look like I have a choice, do I? You’ve got the Uber waiting and everything.” Ederson rolled his eyes, opening one of the car doors and almost teleporting inside the vehicle. “Let’s go before somebody sees us.”

The Uber ride was deathly silent, aside from the faint easy listening music playing on BBC Radio. For a moment Odegaard regretted not driving his own car, but two footballers from different teams exiting one car to go to a restaurant was already going to give the press the wrong idea.

Thankfully, the driver seemed very disinterested in his passengers or why he was driving to a restaurant. After twelve excruciatingly awkward minutes of silence, the driver dropped them off—quite literally—at the door of the restaurant and left.

Ederson slowly stood up from the pavement he’d been dropped onto, rubbing his smarting backside. “Remind me how we’re going to get home, Odegaard?”

“Jeez, Ederson, we just got here! And you can call me Martin.” Odegaard opened the door to the restaurant, holding it as Ederson made his way up the steps. “I mean, we can’t be on a last-name basis with each other if we’re going to be friends, right?”

Ederson stopped in his tracks as if he’d been petrified. “Friends?!”

“ Just friends, not anything else! Friends, I swear. Not boyfriends, never, ever boyfriends. You could be straight for all I know, or you could already be—oh, forget it.” Odegaard, realizing how much of a mistake he’d made before even stepping into the building, groaned and pulled the door almost clean off its hinges. “Please, Ederson. Step through the door, and let’s forget this conversation here and now.”

Ederson sighed in relief, sprinting up the steps and into the restaurant. “Consider it done.”

They secured a table near a window that overlooked the Manchester skyline, dark now with white and yellow street lights dotting the deep indigo. It was a table for two, and so that’s how Odegaard ended up sitting across from Ederson. Since the two were almost the same height while sitting, it meant Odegaard was currently looking straight into Ederson’s eyes.  

What WAS it with him and awkward situations today? He needed to ask a question to break the silence, or else this wasn’t going to go well.

“So, what do you like to drink?” It was simple, and there was no way asking what Ederson liked to drink could be offensive.

Ederson pushed his chair further back, crossing his arms the same way he’d done back in the tunnel. “Coffee.”

Well, this was brilliant! “Coffee! Great, I love coffee! Do you have milk? Sugar?”

“Coffee.”

Forget brilliant. The one thing that Odegaard had in common with Ederson was quickly dissolving like Burnley’s defense had done earlier. “Well, that’s okay. Most of my coffee is mainly milk and sugar anyways. I don’t mind if you want something else.”

“Wait, that’s not what I meant!”

“Waiter!” Odegaard rang the little silver bell on the table three times, pointing to the menu. “A cup of cafe au lait, please.”

He turned back to Ederson, putting on what he considered his nicest smile. “So, now that the coffee’s out of the way, how do you feel about tea?”

Ederson didn’t look up from the menu he’d buried himself behind. “Tea? Maybe you don’t feel the same, but I’d love—”

“Waitress! Two cups of tea for me and my friend!” Odegaard quickly placed the order before turning back to Ederson. “You were saying?”

Ederson bristled, his hair standing on edge like an irritated hedgehog. “I was saying, I’d love it if tea could go to hell.”

It took all of Odegaard’s self-control not to scream in frustration. Why was he getting this so wrong now? He needed to relax. Ederson was already tense enough.

“Sorry about that, Ederson. What other drinks do you like besides coffee?”

If Ederson was a pufferfish, Odegaard’s words would’ve deflated him back to his normal size. “Well, I do like hot chocolate—”

“Oh, same here!” Odegaard stopped the waitress that was just about to leave their table. “Sorry about that, ma’am. Two hot chocolates for me and my friend, please.”

The waitress muttered something about the back-and-forth adding too many steps to her FitBit, but left the tea at their table and left them alone.

“Perfect! All settled now.” Odegaard exhaled in relief, only to meet a pair of blazing hazel eyes. “Oh dear…”

“Look, Martin. No coffee with a boatload of milk poured inside it, no tea because tea is basically pigeon sweat, and no hot chocolate because who the fork goes to an Italian restaurant for hot chocolate?” Ederson gritted his teeth together, before staring at the five cups of beverages on the table. “Please, Martin. All I want is a glass of water.”

“Consider it done.” Odegaard carefully loosened a button on his overcoat—was it just him or was it getting too hot in the room? “Waiter! Could you get my friend a nice, tall glass of water? The nicest, tallest water that you have, please.”

*

After the whole fiasco with the drinks, the waiter or waitress didn’t come back for a long while. That left Odegaard to finish one cup of coffee, two cups of tea, and two cups of hot chocolate by himself, all while trying to distract Ederson from the fact that his water was taking a suspiciously long time to arrive.

“So…what do you do for fun?” Odegaard asked, finishing the second cup of tea. He’d never been more hydrated in his life. He regretted not securing a spot outside, so he could pour the excess drinks in the bushes. “I mean, outside of football, of course.”

“Well…” Ederson put down the menu, which Odegaard swore he’d memorized from the first appetizer to the last dessert due to the amount of time he’d hidden behind it. “I sleep.”

“Good for you.” Odegaard didn’t know if there was any other polite response. “I’m rather partial to architecture myself. I actually participated in an ice sculpture competition when I was ten. Do you ice-carve?”

Ederson shot him a deadpan glare. Odegaard felt like he would be seeing that glare a few more times during dinner—if they even made it to the main course. “You try finding an ice block to carve in São Paulo. Unless I was petty enough to try carving an ice cube from the icebox, then the answer is a resounding flip no.”

Quick, another question, another question! “I’ve always been interested in your tattoos, especially the smiley face one. Lexi told me baby Aya liked that one.”

“Aya?”

“Vera and Kanchana’s baby daughter. When you went to Kirkby.”

“Oh, right.” Ederson laughed awkwardly, almost knocking the hot chocolate cup over. “Sorry, I don’t remember stuff well when I’m…”

“Nervous?” Odegaard suggested as kindly as possible.

Ederson nearly jumped out of his chair. “NO! Not nervous, never. I just need a…I need a drink.”

Odegaard hesitated. “I don’t think alcohol’s a good idea for an empty stomach, Ederson.”

“I didn’t mean alcohol. I meant the bottled water that’s taking a ridiculous amount of time to pour into a glass and carry towards our table in a basically empty restaurant.” Ederson glanced towards the kitchen doors, which had only opened once since Odegaard had called for the water. “Do they think water is a pavlova in Italy?!”

So he does have a sense of humor! “Don’t worry, Ederson. The water should be here soon.”

No later than he said that did the kitchen doors burst open. Instead of a server with a tray, four waiters rushed out with a large, covered object on a gurney. If they weren’t dressed in suits and ties instead of lab coats and scrubs, the scene would have easily been mistaken for a picture of an emergency room triage floor.

“What do you think that is?” Odegaard wondered aloud.

Ederson hummed under his breath, studying the size of the lump under the muslin sheet. “Looks tall. Maybe it’s a wedding cake.”

“In a restaurant?”

“Stranger things are happening.”

To both’s surprise, the waiters stopped in front of Odegaard and Ederson’s table. One stepped forward and cleared his throat.

“We are sorry it has taken so long, but here is your tall glass of iced tap water.”

The other three waiters pulled the muslin off of the gurney. Instead of a regular glass of water, there was a five-foot, clear plastic vase full of water. This was set beside a shocked and confused Ederson. 

Odegaard wanted to scream in exasperation, yet again. Instead, he turned towards the waiters with what he prayed was a smile.

“Thank you.” For nothing, he desperately wanted to add.

*

After the whole vase incident, Odegaard decided that the only way to salvage dinner was to hurry it along. He ordered two orders of the restaurant's soup of the day, reassuring Ederson that whatever was served, they would endure it together.

Ederson hadn’t been so sure. “What if it’s escargot soup? I’m not a big fan of eating snails.”

“How have you not conversed with Lexi yet? He hates eating snails, too.” Odegaard grinned at the thought of his boyfriend, who was probably feeding his snails right now. “You know, Edi, you’re not who everybody says you are. I mean, yeah, you can be scary as fork, but you also have a sense of humor, too.”

“Everybody on the team says that, even the youngsters. They don’t know how many times I’ve used my looks to protect them. As for a sense of humor…” Ederson looked around the restaurant, before glancing back at Odegaard with a glint in his eyes. “I think it’s about time I gave this vase of tap water what it deserves.”

Odegaard raised an eyebrow, his curiosity piqued. “We're going to pour it down the drain?"

Ederson smirked mischievously, his eyes alight with a newfound energy. “Watch this.”

Before Odegaard could protest, Ederson reached for the vase and lifted it up, holding it above his head. With a swift motion, he drop-kicked it away from their table in a way only a goalkeeper could do.

Odegaard's eyes widened in shock as he tried to process what had just happened. "What the hell did you just do, Edi?"

Ederson laughed so hard that he almost fell over, clinging to the table in an effort to keep his balance. “Did you see that?! That was gold! I think I could win the World Cup with that goal-kick.”

“Oh, I saw that.” Odegaard gulped as he realized just where the vase of water had landed. “Alternatively, you could get obliterated by a toothpick-sized missile, because your nice, tall glass of water just landed on two people in fancy suits.”

Odegaard grabbed Ederson’s shoulder and pointed to the table behind them. A tall, thin man in a very expensive-looking and dripping-wet tuxedo wrung water out of his coal-black toupee, glaring at Ederson as if he’d set arson to the whole restaurant. His partner, who was short and fat and wore a clouded monocle, didn’t seem any more amused.

Ederson’s laughter quickly died down, replaced by a blank face, replaced by an expression of doom, replaced by a telltale smirk. “Man the fort over here, will you, Martin? I have to go over there.”

“I’m barely a man! I’m in that strange limbo between boyhood and manhood! You can’t do this to me!” But Odegaard stayed at the table out of fear of upsetting the pair even more.

Ederson walked over to the other table, stopping in front of the dignitary with the toupee. He took the vase, which still had some water left, and dumped it all over the tall, thin one’s head.

“Sir, I am sorry if you feel offended. But please, consider this water as a blessing from whomever you believe in, because in all honesty you needed the shower.”

Odegaard ducked under the table and screamed into a fistful of tablecloth.

“Why, I beg your pardon.” The more rotund man hopped out of his seat, scurrying up to the other’s side. “How dare you insult your elders like this! And foreign dignitaries, on that matter!”

“Well, for an elder and foreign dignitary, you don’t seem to have a very good moral conduct!” Ederson held up the thinner dignitary’s toupee, shaking more water out of it. “Who would let their bald friend exit the house to dinner without making sure that he showered or that his toupee is affixed to his head? Pray be more gentlemanly next time, sir, because I have done you a massive favor.”

The rotund dignitary spluttered in shock, presumably at being talked to so honestly by somebody in a public setting. “But—”

“As for you?” Ederson turned to the thinner one of the pair, handing him back his toupee. “Never wear black shoes with a dark blue tuxedo again. Choose a neutral color and stick with it. And as for your so-called ‘friend’, dump him if this ever happens again. Friends don’t let friends humiliate themselves.”

*

The more Odegaard thought about the Nice-Tall-Glass-Of-Water Incident, as he and Ederson had agreed to call it, the more he realized how wrong he’d been about Ederson in the first place. Sure, he took a while to open up to others, and seemed to have a hard time trusting people, but when he did, he was fiercely loyal and protective. Better yet, he knew his Gucci from his Calvin Klein and he had an effective, rather chaotic sense of humor.

Right now, Ederson was telling a story about some kind of prank he'd pulled on Richarlison during the September international break. Odegaard had found himself lost in all the details of the encounter, but it didn't take an expert to see that Ederson was having the time of his life recounting the event.

“So Ali and I ran off, because remember, Richarlison thought Ali was helping me out, and then we both went into hiding in a dark alleyway. We ended up playing street football with a bunch of kids before cafe-hopping around the block.” Ederson twirled his fork around the bowl-like pasta dish. After the soup of the day turned out to be a gazpacho that looked more like two bowls of V8, Ederson and Odegaard decided to order a large plate of capellini to split between the two of them. “For some reason, Richarlison seemed more mad at Ali than at me, even though I'd been the one who piled the spiders in his locker.”

Odegaard couldn't help but chuckle at the thought of Ederson and Ali playing street football with a group of kids. It was a far cry from the intense matches they played in the Premier League. “Sounds like you had quite the adventure. But I do have a question…”

Ederson shrugged nonchalantly. "Might as well ask."

“Why are you and Ali friends?" Odegaard blurted before he could regret it. "You two are so different, you might as well stand on different ends of the color wheel."

“I…” Ederson paused, staring into space as if trying to come up with an answer. “I really don't know. I thought Ali and I being two great keepers on the same national team doomed us to be enemies, because you can’t have more than one goleiro on the pitch at the same time.”

Odegaard felt a lightbulb go off in his head as the pieces clicked together. “So it was Ali who didn’t immediately treat you like a rival?”

“You could say it that way. I think the fact that Ali and his brother played on the same team, even into their early professional years, made Ali realize that having two amazing keepers on the same team didn’t mean that they had to be enemies. So when we bumped into each other, he just went straight into hugging me and talking my ear off.”

“Is that even accurate?”

“Nope, he did not go straight into it. He immediately began to behave as if I was a potential friend, and I actually kind of liked it.” Ederson glared at a tiny piece of broccolini in the pasta, dumping it into the plastic vase that held their gazpacho. The cold soup wasn’t anywhere near palatable, but at least it would make great fertilizer for some random community garden. “Then I mirrored his behavior, and voila, now we call ourselves os primos.”

“The cousins, huh? I can see that happening.” Odegaard buttered another piece of bread, cursing under his breath when the butter slipped off the knife again. “No wonder he went to Liverpool, then. It’s like a big family over there. As soon as everybody got over the surprise that Lexi and I liked each other, I basically became a brother-in-law to the rest of the squad. They even gave me a nickname.”

That same mischievous grin snuck its way onto Ederson’s face. “Tell me! Tell me!”

“I swear, you’re as bad as Darwin sometimes. And I’m not telling you.” 

“Come on, please?”

“Fine, but only if you eat your broccolini.”

“Not a chance, raio de sol. ”

Odegaard blushed hotly. “How did you know?!”

Ederson almost fell off his chair laughing. He would’ve fallen off if it wasn’t for him holding onto Odegaard. “Klopp calls you raio de sol?!”

“Even worse.” Odegaard sighed before letting go of the final shred of that night’s allocation of personal dignity. “He calls me kleiner Sonnenstrahl.”