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The First
It happens after a match they win, which should make it even easier to dismiss. There can be many things that make men lose their cool, and there’s usually too much feeling after a match.
Plus, he believes they’re both drunk, which is also very important.
Cristiano has had, at least, (or at most,) one glass of champagne. Maybe one and a half. There was also a sip of something Marcelo handed him that tasted way too sweet and probably violated several nutritional principles Cristiano holds dear. But the exact number is not the point. The point is that there was alcohol, and Cristiano knows that alcohol makes people do things.
It’s getting late by then, and the party at Cristiano’s house is starting to empty out. One by one, his friends disappear into waiting cars. Kaká is about to leave too, already holding his jacket, when he pauses by the door and asks Cristiano if he needs help cleaning up.
Which is very nice, obviously. But also kind of stupid, because they both live in million-dollar houses (that are somehow suspiciously only less than .5 mile away from each other). Cristiano has people for this. Kaká knows he has people for this. Everyone who has ever stepped inside Cristiano’s house knows he has people for this. There is no real reason for Kaká to be standing there, looking back at him with one hand on the door, offering to stay.
Cristiano starts laughing, because of the alcohol, obviously.
“Dude,” he says. “You think I clean?”
Kaká giggles. “No, of course not.”
“Then why are you asking?”
“I was just being polite.”
“Should I say thank you?”
Now Kaká burst out a big laugh out of nowhere, which supports Cristiano’s point that they’re both drunk as fuck.
“What?” Cristiano asks stupidly.
“Nothing.”
“No, tell me.”
Kaká shakes his head, still smiling. “You don’t have to say thank you.”
The conversation is as simple as it can be, and Cristiano cannot spot even a trace of flirting in it, which is good, because if there had been flirting, Cristiano would have noticed immediately. He is not oblivious – as a matter of fact, he is extremely good at noticing when people want him.
And the next thing Cristiano remembers clearly is Kaká’s jacket on the floor. They are both on the couch, Kaká laying on his lap facing him and Cristiano has one hand cupping his teammate’s cheek while he presses a sloppy kiss to the corner of his mouth.
Kaká laughs softly against him. “Cris.”
“What?” Cristiano asks lazily.
“That was my face.”
Cristiano blinks at him. “Yes?”
“You just kissed my face.”
“I’m drunk,” says Cristiano, “I’m really drunk, bro.”
“You don’t call people bro when you make out with them,” Kaká says, laughing again. “that’s very strange.”
Cristiano frowns. “We are not making out.”
“No?”
“No.”
Kaká looks pointedly at the hand still cupping his cheek.
“That was a kiss on the face,” Cristiano insists, “that’s like nothing. Plus, I think you’re drunk too, dude.”
Kaká blinks. For one moment, he looks like he is a little confused and about to say something, but then he blinks again and agrees.
“Yeah,” he says. “I guess so.”
The Second
Sadness also makes people do things. Everyone knows this. People cry at airports, call their mothers, binge eat junk food. People also hug their teammates for a long, long time after losing matches they should have won. There is literally one entire category of songs about sadness making people lose their minds. Cristiano does not listen to those songs, but he is aware they exist.
They end up going back to Kaká’s house together, and again Cristiano is not sure how that happens. One moment they are in the dressing room after the match, both of them quiet, and the next they are sitting side by side on Kaká’s stupidly expensive couch.
(This also makes sense. Kaká lives less than half a mile away, which is ridiculous. At that distance, going to Kaká’s house is basically the same as walking into another room in Cristiano’s house.)
Cristiano feels a little nervous, for some reason, maybe because most of the lights are off, except the big chandelier in the dining room.
Speaking of that chandelier, he remembers telling Kaká once that it was too much, almost weird in his otherwise minimalist house. Everything else is clean lines and pale walls and expensive restraint, and then there is this ridiculous chandelier hanging over the dining table like Kaká accidentally let one dramatic thing into his life and never had the heart to take it down.
Kaká had just shrugged and told him to shut up.
So now Cristiano somehow can’t take his eyes off that stupid chandelier. He stares at it while feeling his teammate sitting right next to him, their shoulders touching. Wait, is Kaká’s couch really this small that they have to sit this close?
Cristiano says, stupidly: “I still think you should change that chandelier.”
Kaká tilts his head and turns towards him, and Jesus Christ, he looks ridiculously handsome in this dim light. “What, you still hating on it?”
Cristiano has to turn his eyes away to stop his heart from beating too fast.
“Yes,” he says. “It’s some really bad taste.”
“Well, my girlfriend likes it.”
“Then she has some really bad taste.”
“I don’t think so,” Kaká says. “She chose me.”
Cristiano looks at him, and now he suddenly feels something sharp and stupid move in his chest. So he asks, “Are you going to marry her?”
Kaká looks a little surprised by the question, but only for a second.
Then he smiles, small and easy. “Probably. She is a great woman, and we’ve known each other for a really long time.”
Cristiano nods. A man with a girlfriend saying he will probably marry her, in a house with an ugly chandelier she apparently likes. Everything is exactly where it should be, except for the fact that Cristiano fucking hates it.
“What about you?” Kaká asks back.
Cristiano says without thinking, “I don’t think I’m going to marry mine.”
Kaká looks at him and Cristiano immediately regrets speaking.
Then Kaká asks, carefully, “No?”
Cristiano shrugs. “Not her, maybe.”
“Oh.”
“I mean,” Cristiano adds, “not now.”
Kaká smiles. “Yeah, you are still very young.”
They stay silent for a little bit. Then Kaká reaches for his phone to order food. After they eat, they decide to watch a match one of their friends is playing now, and when Kaká says the television in his bedroom is better, Cristiano follows him there.
That is probably where it starts.
Or maybe it started earlier, with the stupid chandelier. Maybe it started with Kaká laughing at his jokes even when the jokes were bad. Maybe it started in the dressing room, when Kaká looked sad and Cristiano could not leave him alone with it.
The point is, by the time they are lying together on Kaká’s bed, the night has become something else.
The football match plays low in front of them. They are not touching, exactly, but they are close enough that Cristiano can feel the warmth of Kaká beside him. Close enough that every time Kaká shifts slightly, Cristiano knows. Close enough that the space between them feels more like something both of them are pretending not to notice.
Cristiano is full and tired and probably still sad from their loss, and sometimes that makes him emotional. Not crying, obviously. Just kind of loose around the edges. A little too quiet inside his own head. A little too aware of the dim room, and the blue light from the television, and Kaká lying beside him like this is something they do all the time.
It all feels really nice to him.
Cristiano stares at the match without seeing any of it.
There is a future in his head suddenly.
A big house. Bigger than this one, obviously, and without that stupid chandelier. A gym. A pool. Football on television. Someone laughing quietly beside him, probably his wife, but something in him makes him think about -
Cristiano says without thinking, “Even after I get married, I’ll probably still live close to you.”
Kaká blinks, like he did not expect that.
Cristiano continues. “Like, maybe we should just live together forever.”
Kaká turns his head fully to him. The television light moves over his face. He looks tired and sad and soft.
“That would be nice,” Kaká says quietly after a beat.
Cristiano’s heart does something stupid.
“And you’ll probably be married,” he adds quickly. “I’ll—um, I’ll probably get married later than you, but I’ll marry a girl too eventually.”
Kaká looks at him for a long moment.
“Yeah,” he says.
“Our wives will be friends,” Cristiano says. “They’ll hang out while we hang out. And our kids—they’ll play football together. While we hang out.”
Kaká’s mouth twitches. “Then what will we do while hanging out?”
Cristiano looks at him.
Kaká is still smiling a little, but there is something underneath it now, something quieter than teasing. The television light moves over his face. The match keeps playing in front of them, blue and bright and useless, but Cristiano cannot hear it anymore.
All he can think is that Kaká is so close. That Kaká would be there in every version of the future Cristiano had just invented, no matter how many wives or houses or children he tried to put between them. That the whole stupid fantasy had only ever been a way to keep Kaká beside him. Close enough to touch. Close enough to laugh with. Close enough to come home to after losing.
Cristiano wants to kiss him so badly it stops feeling like wanting and starts feeling like panic.
So he does.
The Third
Cristiano could be angry at Milan, at Madrid, at the club, at Kaká, at himself, at whatever idiot machine has arranged the world so that Kaká can leave and Cristiano can do nothing except stand in an airport pretending this is normal and okay.
Instead he only feels tired.
And sick.
And very, very stupid.
“So,” Cristiano says. “Milan.”
Kaká nods. “Milan.”
“You’ll be happy.”
Kaká looks at him.
Cristiano looks away first.
“I mean, you know them,” he says. “The club. The city. The people. It’s okay that you want to go back.”
Kaká steps closer.
“I will miss you,” he says.
Sickness moves through Cristiano again because this is fucking ridiculous.
They are both rich as hell. That is the part that keeps occurring to him, suddenly and stupidly. They have private jets, agents, houses, cars, people who arrange their lives down to the minute. Cristiano could buy a plane today if he wanted. Kaká could be anywhere in Europe before dinner. They could fly to each other. They could meet in hotels. They could build a whole private world out of money and locked doors and careful schedules.
And somehow none of it helps.
All that money in the world, and they still cannot find a way to be together. Not in the way Cristiano wants and refuses to want. Not in the way where the future in his head stops needing wives and excuses and houses half a mile apart.
Kaká takes Cristiano’s arm gently, turning it so the inside of his forearm faces up.
“What are you doing?” Cristiano asks.
Kaká does not answer.
He pulls a pen from his pocket. Cristiano recognizes it vaguely, some stupid airport pen, maybe from a form, maybe from nowhere. Kaká uncaps it with his teeth, and Cristiano is so busy staring at his mouth that he almost misses the first touch of ink against his skin:
K
Cristiano’s throat goes tight.
“That’s stupid,” he says.
Kaká smiles down at his arm. “Yes.”
“You’re stupid.”
“Yes.”
“It’ll wash off.”
Kaká looks up at him.
“Cris,” he says.
“No.”
Kaká’s breath catches. “No?”
“No,” Cristiano says. “Don’t say anything.”
Because if Kaká says something, Cristiano might answer. If Kaká says stay, Cristiano might. If Kaká says come with me, Cristiano might find out exactly how much of his life he is willing to set on fire.
So he kisses Kaká to make sure he shuts up.
One of his hands coming up to the side of his face, the other still curled around the K on his own arm like he can keep it there if he holds tight enough. Kaká kisses him back immediately, softly and terribly, like he has been waiting for it and dreading it in the same breath.
For a second, the airport disappears.
No Milan. No Madrid. No training missed. No waiting plane. No money, no houses, no private jets, no wives, no future arranged neatly somewhere else. Only Kaká’s mouth under his and Kaká’s hand on his shoulder and Cristiano thinking, take me with you, take me fucking with you, just fucking take me with you, so loudly it feels impossible that Kaká cannot hear it.
They stand like that for one more second until a staff member says something politely from a distance – something about Kaká’s flight. Kaká’s bags. Kaká’s future. Milan, Milan, Milan.
Kaká takes a step back and looks down at Cristiano’s arm.
“Don’t wash it off,” he says.
Cristiano laughs, sharp and shaky. “You don’t get to tell me what to do all the way from Milan.”
“No?”
“No.”
Kaká looks at him for a long moment.
Then he says again, “I will miss you a lot.”
Cristiano watches him walk toward the doors.
Every step feels stupid. Impossible. Reversible. Like Kaká could turn around at any second and say this was all a mistake, and Cristiano could laugh and call him dramatic and follow him anywhere. Like the world might still become the version in Cristiano’s head if one of them is brave enough to say it out loud.
But Kaká does not turn around.
And Cristiano does not call after him.
Cristiano stands there until Kaká disappears, then looks down at the K on his arm. It is already starting to blur.