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3one3

Apr 29, 2014

The Sequel - Chapter 108

Enlightenment

André Schürrle, other Chelsea players, and random awesome OC’s

(okay they’re less random now but they’re still pretty awesome)

original epic tale

all chapters of The Sequel

Christina spent Wednesday hobbling around at home, mostly in bed with a book. She explained her situation to Heiner, who was understanding but less than thrilled. He gave her a couple of names to start her list of potential grooms but warned her that as she suspected, not many would want to be the at-home-only guy or gal and many need more hours than she could offer. Employing someone full-time would not only be prohibitively expensive but also a waste, because she really only needed someone for half days during the week and not at all on weekends. The horses were generally gone for at least a week every month too.

The pain wasn’t so bad on Thursday, so she spent it with the horses, on the ground. Each one got an extra-long grooming and spa treatment after working on the lunge line. The barn manager told her she could set up a free-jumping chute in the indoor during her layup if she really wanted the horses to have a chance to school over fences. Free-jumping is sending a horse over one or a sequence of jumps in a line without a rider. You build it up against one wall of your ring and create another artificial one out of other rails and standards so that the horse has nowhere to go but over the jump or jumps. It’s mostly used as a way to show form for young horses or stallions because it shows off the horse’s natural way of going and natural instinct over fences, absent a rider to influence it. It doesn’t offer many training benefits, but it would at least be something for the horses to do while Christina was sidelined. The barn manager had a couple of candidates for her grooming list too, including Kyle, the teenager whose mother rudely demanded the rider give him lessons back in the spring. Apparently her son was not returning to university for the fall term and inquired with the stable about teaching beginner lessons part-time. Christina saw him ride a couple of times and thought he was decent and his horse, while “aged,” was easily the next nicest animal on the property after hers and before Samantha’s.

Friday afternoon was a nice one despite heavy rain. She lunged the horses in the morning and then played host to Natasha and the Hazard boys in the afternoon. Each one had a mini-lesson on the same pony she borrowed for them the first time, and then she gave them bareback pony rides on Dirk. She trusted the stallion to be quiet enough to walk around the indoor while she and Natasha held the kids up on his back, but not enough to use him as the demo-horse for their little grooming clinic. Tin Tin was selected for that, because Christina knew he wouldn’t move in the crossties. Her stallion wasn’t ill behaved in the grooming stall like Calvin, but he wasn’t a statue either and that with tiny children around it’s not ideal. The big gelding took a nap while the boys brushed his legs, shoulders, and belly, and they repaid him for his patience with chocolate and peanut butter candy cups, which Tom had recently informed her were the horse’s favorite treat.

Things like that highlighted the difficulty in finding a good groom. Tom was definitely the only person as familiar with her animals as Christina, and he was as elite in is job as she was in hers. The competition to groom for the best national federations might not be quite what it is to ride on them, but it wasn’t far behind. Tom had been assigned to her for almost a year, and the idea of starting again with someone new was daunting. Of the few people she got in touch with, beginning with the most experienced ones, two were unavailable, one was available but not interested in relocating, and one was looking for more money than the part-time gig would pay. There were more calls to make over the weekend.

Post pony play-date dinner with Natasha, her sons, and their housekeeper/nanny was lots of fun. Christina normally hated encountering kids in restaurants because they’re always wandering around, standing up on their seat, screaming, crying, and just generally being annoying, but the Hazards were well behaved and even did cute things like throw all their food on the floor and laugh at it. Their French caretaker made a ricotta and asparagus soufflé for the older diners, and it was divine in flavor and execution. Christina wondered how hard it must be to find someone you trust to live with you and take care of your children if it was that hard to find someone to deal with her horses.

“Kids are asleep. On to the gossip, finally,” Natasha said with some satisfaction when she came back to the kitchen after helping to put the boys to bed. “Do you want another glass of wine first?”

“Sure, why not? I’m not driving for a while.”

The girls took their topped up glasses of sauvignon blanc to the living room and settled in to chat about grown-up things after an afternoon of keeping it kid-friendly. Despite numerous attempts, Christina still hadn’t talked to Alexis about the Monday night showdown, but Natasha had all of the dirt.

“Now bear in mind that this is the Lex-version of what happened, so it may or may not be complete, or accurate,” she began. “She said he was already furious about her disappearing act before she even got to the really bad stuff. He claimed there was no reason good enough for her to just run away and hide like that, because it meant she didn’t trust him with whatever it was, and then when he found out the reason, he was even more angry with her, understandably.”

“I can’t really picture him mad. I’ve seen him mad on the pitch but never off it.”

“Well he called her immature and inconsiderate before she ever even mentioned Giroud, so I’m sure he was as mad as she said he was,” Natasha added, eyes wide before taking a big sip of the wine. “Lex claims she was mad enough at him for being mad at her that she was able to tell him everything from the beginning without crying or anything and at the end, he told her they were done.”

“That doesn’t exactly fit with the Oscar version,” Christina pointed out. “He said there was shouting and door slamming. I bet Lex was so angry that he wasn’t just forgiving her and telling her everything was okay about the first part that she went all fire and venom about the rest. You know, like, “well if you’re going to be a jerk, then guess what else I did!” – all defiant and stuff?”

“Maybe, but she just sounded completely heartbroken when I talked to her yesterday. The only person she was angry with was you.”

“What difference would it have made if I answered her call that night?” she asked incredulously, putting her glass down to hold her hands up in frustration like Fernando Torres every time he sits down and can’t believe he didn’t get the free kick. “What did she want me to do, tell her what to say in real time? I already gave her all the advice I could think of before we got out of the car and if she was just looking for a shoulder to cry on…well…because she dragged me out earlier, I owed André some time, I needed to get to sleep so I could work the next morning, and quite frankly, her shit is not my shit. I did everything I could up to that point, and I’ve called her a million times since then.”

“I told her she could come here to talk if she wanted, but she said no.”

“She’s probably at Giroud’s house. Probably been there since Monday night,” Christina replied a little bitterly. What did she think was going to happen? I told her even Juan would have a limit to his tolerance.

“Have you talked to Juan?”

“No. I wouldn’t know what to say. I still haven’t worked out how to handle admitting that I knew about it, if he asks,” she mumbled, feeling far more guilty about that particular subject than she felt about not calling Alexis back on Monday.

“Just tell him the truth – you didn’t know what to do, so you did nothing, but encouraged Lex to tell him what was going on. He can’t fault you for that, really.”

“Shame there won’t be a wedding,” Christina mused absently. “Would have been such an epic event with football and fashion worlds colliding.”

“They could still fix things. Couples have survived worse.”

“It’s the lying, for me. I could never get over that.”

The Chelsea wives spent a little more time on the subject of the breakup and began to strategize on how to convince Eden that his boys were in desperate need of their own pony. They had a lot of fun at the barn and Natasha said she liked that it was something she could do with them, especially when her friend told her that a pony mom had to be fully involved until at least the pre-teen years. She also told her that if they picked out the right small pony now, he or she could be suitable and useful for at least five or six years, unless the kids were going to grow ahead of schedule and end up exponentially taller than either of their parents. Christina salivated at the idea of hunting for just the right one. In her mind, the only way Dirk could have been improved upon is if he were actually the size of a medium pony. Ponies were top for her, always.

She didn’t stay late, surprisingly eager to go home to her empty house. It was still raining, and she drew all of the curtains in the bedroom to watch it fall in sheets. When it really poured, the sound of the rain beating down on the river was actually audible all the way up in the Chelsea-blue tower. After just lying on the couch for a while looking out the windows, she decided it was a good time to email her mom back and wrote to her about all the latest goings on since she last spoke to her, which was when the Nations Cup nominations came out. A slightly whitewashed version of the truth about her injury was included, so as not to cause any unnecessary worry with the un-sanitized truth. Another invitation to attend the final was extended and another for the winter holidays too. Christina was not about to be accused of not providing enough notice again.

Once the email was sent, she went back to staring at the rain and picking the beat up nail polish off of her fingers. No matter what she tried to concentrate on, be it ideas for finding a groom, how to adapt the now very condensed pre-Ireland training program for the horses, a Hazard pony – her mind kept wandering back to Alexis and Juan. She really wanted to know how the Spaniard was doing, and what really went down. She decided to bite the bullet and try to find out.

“What does a gay horse eat?”

“I don’t know. What?”

“Hayyyyyyy”

“….”

“It’s better in person. You home/not busy/interested in coming down for coffee/tea/wine/scotch?”

“Put the kettle on.”

Christina hopped up from the couch and then trudged less enthusiastically out to the kitchen on her sore ankle, via the front door, which she unlocked so as not to have to do any extra walking. The horrible post-treatment pain subsided and the leg was okay while working with the horses in the morning and goofing off with the kids in the afternoon, but it definitely started to ache once the sun went down. She put the water on the stove, set two cups out, and sat on the counter to wait for Juan.

“It’s open!” she called when she heard his familiar pattern of four raps on the door. Oooo he doesn’t look so good, she thought as soon as he appeared in the kitchen. By that she meant he looked tired and stressed, with bags under his eyes and unkempt hair. His regular smile was there but it lacked conviction.

“Do you want to try that joke again?” he asked after giving her a quick hug, made awkward by her position on the countertop.

“No. What kind of tea would you like?” Christina used her good foot to open a drawer full of boxes and tins of tea and bags of coffee. Juan selected the green variety of Darjeeling from Fortnum & Mason and she reached in to grab the box of cheap cherry-infused herbal tea.

“You know that stuff isn’t even really tea, right?”

“I have to be in the right mindset to drink serious tea,” she replied defensively. She was fine with any sort of tea that didn’t taste like dried leaves, but that was a problem since that’s exactly what tea is. Like most kinds of fish, most tea was something she didn’t like but really wanted to, so she simply pretended to be into it and hoped she’d come to enjoy those less fruity varieties. Fake it ‘til you make it. Some mint types were okay too. “And since I cut back on coffee, any little bit of caffeine keeps me up all night. My herbal tea has none.”

“Maybe I should be drinking that then. I haven’t been sleeping well lately.”

“It kind of tastes like a cherry cough drop melted into sweet tea, even though there’s no sugar. I don’t think you’ll like it. Dr. Chris, professor of tea…ology, prescribes Gunpowder green for the dark and stormy night and your bleary eyes.” The self-proclaimed and not at all qualified tea expert replaced his choice and selected hers instead, which made Juan roll his eyes good-naturedly. Trying to be both comical and helpful was allowing her to avoid the apprehension in the pit of her stomach about what she knew was coming. “Match tomorrow?”

“Sunday. At the Emirates.” The Spaniard’s answer was pregnant with irony. He smiled knowingly and sarcastically, as if to answer the indignant question, “are you kidding?” which should have been the likely follow up if Christina knew about everything, and he was sure she did.

Fffffffishsticks, she thought, mentally cringing and trying not to use foul language even if it was only to herself. I didn’t know that. I totally would have suggested postponing the confession a week if I had. There was sort of an uncomfortable pause, during which time she tried to make up her mind about what to say next. The flip-flopping of ideas was what was making it awkward. Thankfully the kettle interrupted before Juan would have, and pouring the water provided a brief reprieve.

“Don’t leave it in there too long or you’ll end up with too much caffeine,” she warned about the tea bag he moved around in his cup. “IIIIIIIIIII’ve no idea what to say next to be honest, but Dr. Chris, professor of psychology, is open for business, and so is Dr. Chris, master of not knowing what to do when two friends breakup with each other.”

“I broke up with her. We didn’t breakup with each other,” a suddenly very bitter sounding midfielder declared. “Is that the story she’s peddling?”

“No, I- I haven’t talked to her actually. She just sent me a text saying it was over and she won’t call me back so that’s all I know.” Don’t make it even worse, you ninnymuggins.

“That’s not all you know,” Juan said flatly, hopping up to sit on the island opposite her. “You know exactly why.”

“Okay, I do know why, but-“

“For how long?” He cut off her fast-talk explanation right away, and stared her in the face with a very frank, and frankly disappointed, expression. His friend was not about to lie to that face, not after everything that had happened.

“A week and a half, since the scavenger hunt, but-“ Her similar style explanation was cut off again, this time on her accord, because Juan suddenly looked very confused.

“Really? I thought you knew the whole time. She said…well she said you convinced her to tell me the truth, so I just…” He didn’t finish his sentence, but stared down at his tea.

“Wow, you thought I knew all along and you didn’t slap me in the face as soon as you walked in here? You are more understanding than me,” Christina replied with a rueful shake of her head.

“I was giving you a chance to admit it first, but I was very angry. A week and a half though…that I can understand.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you right away,” she added quickly after seeing him go from confused back to sad. “I didn’t know if I should, or how I should, or…I don’t know. I just wanted Lex to tell you herself.”

“It’s all right. I should thank you for getting her to come clean.”

Juan explained that Alexis first told him she fled from dinner because she thought Santi called him to tell him about something she did that she wasn’t proud of. She claimed she was too mortified to face the music, and admitted it was wrong to just disappear inexplicably. Then she finally brought up the affair, beginning with that party she met Olivier Giroud at, and including all the same details she shared with Christina and Natasha. The Spaniard asked her if she was cold and heartless or just plain stupid, which is where the arguing really got out of hand. She accused him of not paying enough attention to her, implying that he should have known something was going on and if he was too oblivious to even see it, then he didn’t deserve her anyway. Juan accused her of using him the way she used everyone else, and that seemed to really set her off. She said he wasn’t worth using- that he didn’t offer enough in that way in the first place. He said she made a fool out of him, and was appalled that she didn’t even understand how he could be so upset. Alexis acted like he should have been consoling her for having to struggle through carrying on the affair and trying not to hurt him.

“Is there no chance you’ll forgive her too, like you kinda forgive me for not telling you?” Christina spoke with a tone that was full of hope, though she didn’t really know why. It was never clear in her head whether she wanted them to stay together or not, and it still wasn’t.

“No. I don’t even want to see her,” Juan answered bitterly. “It was a mistake to propose to her in the first place. I was just trying too hard to make everything perfect at one time. I rushed into it.”

“What happened to “everything is better with her”?”

“Everything was better with the idea of her. It could have been any tolerable woman. I wanted to settle too quickly because I couldn’t…” He paused like he was unable to finish whatever his point was. “She’s just not what I want, and never was. She had the balls to get angry at me for not having any sympathy for her! After that, I realized all of the things about her that I hate. Lex is dedicated to her career and she works hard at it just like you because she really loves it. Not many women are like that. She’s funny like you too. That’s where the list of…good things stops. She isn’t kind, or loyal- obviously! She’s selfish and uses everyone to get what she wants, and she doesn’t understand what lying to people does to relationships. You know what? She hired a photographer to follow you around a few months ago just to find something the papers would talk about so that you’d be more recognizable when you wore her dress to the Chelsea dinner. She did it before ever asking you about the dress. She knew you wouldn’t say no. I told her the guy would never catch you doing something worth publishing. The Mail had to put together things from before that guy got on your tail, and when he told Lex what they were going to publish, I made her call it off. She threatened not to pay the guy if he let them run all of it, but only because I said I would tell you the truth if she didn’t. She’s so manipulative.”

Christina went from processing the parts where Juan compared Alexis to her to trying to digest the massive bomb he dropped at the end. She didn’t know whether to be appalled that Alexis would set her up that way, or upset that Juan didn’t tell her the truth about it, or hurt by both of them, or just very angry. The designer played her like a fiddle. How long has she just been using me as a means to her own end? The nerve of that girl! And she’s been mad at me all this week? Unbelievable. Her pulse raced a little, and she could feel a deep flush rising from her chest to her cheeks as a feeling of all-over sickness set in. The idea that the level of inaccuracy with which she judged Alexis was going from Fernando Torres to John Obi Mikel just made her want to vomit, or punch something. Instead, she dumped her tea out violently in the sink next to her and then chucked the cup in after it. It didn’t break, but it made a horrible clunking sound and the impact seemed to reverberate around the metal basin. And Juan! All this time I wrestled with what to do with a Lex-secret, he was keeping one from me!

“You should have told me,” she finally said, clearly unhappy with his decision even though she had withheld something from him too. “If not right away, then when I called you to talk about it. You shouldn’t have made up that whole thing about giving their competitors a Jose exclusive or whatever.”

“I know. She was my girlfriend though, and I wanted to protect her. I thought that as long as I made sure nothing bad happened, you didn’t need to know. I didn’t think you ever trusted her completely anyway. I foolishly hoped that was just because you wanted to look out for me, but I should have taken it as a sign. Your instincts are usually good, even if they are sometimes a little delayed. And by the way, if you need a pot to go with that kettle on the stove, I think you know where to look.” Juan sounded sympathetic, but it didn’t help.

“I need a coke,” Christina said absently, gingerly getting down from her countertop perch and opening the refrigerator. The sometimes, but always wanting to be, health-conscious girl reasoned that a Coke was somewhat less terrible than reaching for a harder drink. They kept the cans of soda on the top shelf of the door where it was least cold because they taste better when they’re just the chilled side of room temperature. Without thinking, she stood up on the toes of her right foot to reach for one, and immediately winced and recoiled in pain.

“Did you hurt yourself again? Deja que te ayude.” The still miserable but now also concerned looking player got down too, and plucked a soda off the door for her.

“Yeah, I did, and then Dr. So Awesome I Work at Chelsea Football Club made it worse with a huge needle,” she grumbled after opening her Coke and having a little sip. The carbonation kind of hurt on the way down if she took a big gulp right away. “I’m unavailable for selection for another week and a half.”

“Are you making a football metaphor or saying you’re going to miss a horse competition?” Juan raised an eyebrow at her, never sure where her sarcasm truly stopped.

“The first one,” she sighed, slumping back against the stainless steel of the refrigerator. “I’m mad at you, just so you know. I’m kind of too tired and exasperated from the drama of Le French Connection and yet another story about me and André’s teammates and my injury and groom hunting, which won’t make any sense to you but just take my word for it, it sucks, and so I’m going to pass up the opportunity to hold a grudge and let you off with a stern warning. The bench also acknowledges the existence of the double standard.”

“Why was her stupidity tiring and exasperating for you?”

“Because I didn’t want to be keeping this huge thing from you! And then I didn’t know if maybe it was better for you just not to know anyway, like in case it wasn’t worth ruining everything for. I got in a big fight with her over it at Nat’s house, and then…jesus, do you know what a mess everything turned into last weekend at that club?” Christina worked her way back into incredulity again and was sort of enjoying having a good rant. “Trying to help her keep you and Olivier in separate places turned into me getting into a big fight with André- a really big one. Oh, and as long as we’re raining truth down with all the precipitation outside, Santi Cazorla has known Lex’s dirty secret from the beginning.”

“Great.” Juan practically snorted before laughing. “Just gets better and better.”

Christina moved to the L-shaped couch in the living room, wanting to get off her ankle, and motioned for her guest to join her there. Both of them sighed heavily a lot, and didn’t say much. She sipped her Coke and he sipped his Gunpowder tea.

“So…the I Banged Alexis Derby ought to be good fun, yes?”

“I can’t make up my mind. I want to tell my teammates about it so they take it out on Giroud, but I also don’t want to look like a fool to even more people.”

“Do it,” she sniggered, imagining the Tottenham defense taking every opportunity to be unnecessarily rough on their cross-town rival’s striker. “Tell the back four. I’m going to tune in. You should leak it to the tabloids too.”

“Bad karma to take it that far.”

“Did you get the ring back?”

“She threw it at me before she left. A lot of her stuff is still at my place though.”

“You need to go on some very public dates with a really hot, famous chick. Do you know any Spanish pop stars or anything? That would be perfect.” Christina was so angered by Alexis’ manipulation of her that she couldn’t stop thinking up ways to get revenge. Deep down, she knew that was petty and wrong, but it still felt satisfying to at least muse about it.

“What are you going to do now? Regarding Lex?”

“Not talk to her anymore. With friends like that, who needs enemies?”

That was what she thought about later when Juan went home. She couldn’t be friends with someone who would set her up to look bad like that. Voting Alexis off Friendship Island severely diminished the population of that place though, and that was kind of a bummer. Maybe that’s not the worst thing though, she wondered. Maybe having fewer distractions is actually good, or maybe it just opens up a place for a new friend. Because I meet so many people between the barn and home, she added sarcastically. Her characterization of her interaction with new people was off though. The rider met quite a lot of people for all different reasons in many sorts of places, and often. She just didn’t pay much attention to them. It wasn’t like she was suffering from terrible loneliness anyway. I just miss Jill. All the time.

Before he left, Juan told his friend some more not-nice things about his ex-fiancée. Not things that she had done, but things she would have been embarrassed about, like her troll-like snoring problem, how she looked ten years older without makeup, that he was totally grossed out by her hair extensions, and how she lacked creativity in the bedroom. Not only did in reinforce her newfound belief that she was a poor judge of people, despite his insistence to the contrary, Juan’s sharing made Christina wonder about two things. First, she was curious about what sort of embarrassing things André could say about her. There were plenty of funny or gross things she could hold over him too, so it wasn’t a troubling question, but she was still interested. Second, how she could do a better job of assessing people in the future, since she thought pretty highly of Alexis and even admired her at times, not just for her accomplishments and aura of confidence, but also her looks. It never occurred to her that at home, in private, the beautiful, shiny, young designer with the former modeling career and fabulous lifestyle could have blotchy skin, someone else’s hair, and a boring sex life.

#Football Fanfiction #André Schürrle #oh juan