Alexia Era

The sun sat high above the beach, white gold and merciless, pressing itself down over the sand until the whole shoreline seemed to shimmer. The air above the promenade trembled. The metal railings looked illegal to touch. The sand was the colour of something that had been baking since dawn and now wanted revenge. Even the sea, bright and blue and glittering under the light, seemed smug, lying there in the distance like salvation with waves.

Naturally, because footballers were apparently incapable of making sensible choices when given a rare day off, half of Barcelona Femení had decided this was the perfect day for a beach outing.

A family day out, they had called it.

Relaxed, they had said.

Easy, they had promised.

No training. No pressure. No one discussing pressing triggers or recovery markers or set piece assignments. Just sun, sea, food, music, volleyball, and the rare pleasure of everyone being together without anyone needing to be at the facility in ninety minutes.

Which meant, in practice, that the beach now contained almost the entire squad, three partners, two mothers, one sister, one best friend, Jay's agent, Jay's therapist, approximately nine coolers, four umbrellas, six beach bags, enough towels to open a small hotel, and more competing opinions about shade placement than any group of adult women should have been able to generate before midday.

Mapi had been the first to declare herself medically betrayed by the sun.

She was lying flat on a towel beneath one of the umbrellas, sunglasses crooked, one arm thrown dramatically over her face, the rest of her body stretched out like a fallen soldier in a historical painting. Every few minutes she made a quiet noise of suffering, just loud enough for Ingrid to hear.

"Ingrid," she said faintly.

Ingrid, seated beside her with a book in one hand and a spray bottle in the other, did not look down. "Yes?"

"I am dying."

"You are not dying."

"I feel crispy."

"You have been outside for twenty minutes."

"Twenty Spanish minutes."

Ingrid turned a page. "That is not a different measurement."

"It is when the sun is this aggressive."

Without taking her eyes off the book, Ingrid lifted the spray bottle and misted Mapi's torso.

Mapi sighed in immediate relief. "Again."

Ingrid sprayed her again.

"Higher."

Ingrid sprayed her face.

Mapi went still for one blissful second. "You love me."

"I am watering you like a plant."

"A loved plant."

"A dramatic plant."

Mapi smiled beneath her arm. "Still loved."

Pina, walking past with a volleyball tucked under one arm, stopped to stare. "Is Ingrid misting you?"

Mapi did not move. "I am in a delicate recovery phase."

"You played zero minutes yesterday."

"I am recovering from existing."

Cata dropped down nearby with a packet of crisps. "Can I be misted?"

"No," Ingrid said.

Cata looked offended. "Why does Mapi get misted?"

"Because Mapi complains more."

Cata opened her mouth.

Ingrid finally looked up. "Do you want that to be your strategy?"

Cata considered.

Then lay down flat beside Mapi. "I am also dying."

Ingrid sighed.

Mapi, still under her arm, whispered, "Careful. She is learning."

Across the sand, Lucy and Keira were arguing about how to properly secure a beach umbrella. Lucy had taken command despite absolutely no evidence that she had expertise in the matter. Keira was standing with both hands on her hips, watching the umbrella lean at an increasingly suspicious angle.

"That's not straight," Keira said.

"It's fine," Lucy replied.

"It's leaning."

"It's aerodynamic."

"It's going to kill someone."

"It's character."

Ona walked by, glanced at it, and said, "It is definitely going to fall."

Lucy pointed at her. "No one asked for Catalan engineering input."

Ona smiled sweetly. "You need it."

The umbrella immediately tilted another two inches.

Keira stared at Lucy.

Lucy stared at the umbrella.

"Wind," Lucy said.

"There is no wind."

"Exactly. Suspicious."

Near the water, Patri and Pina had already claimed one side of the volleyball net and were shouting at Salma and Jana on the other side. It had started as friendly. It was no longer friendly. Nothing involving Patri and a ball stayed friendly for more than three minutes unless an authority figure intervened, and on a day off there were no authority figures, only Alexia, who had already told them she was not captaining volleyball and had then put on sunglasses to make the statement legally binding.

"Out!" Patri shouted as the ball landed on the line.

"It was in," Salma said.

"It was spiritually out."

"You cannot call spiritually out."

"I just did."

Jana looked towards the umbrellas. "Alexia!"

"No," Alexia called back without turning.

"You did not even hear the question!"

"I heard the tone."

Aitana sat on a towel beneath the second umbrella with a book open on her lap, quietly existing inside a level of concentration that made the surrounding chaos seem disrespectful to physics. Marta and Caro were beside her, sharing cherries from a plastic container. Irene was applying sunscreen to her shoulders with the disciplined seriousness of someone who understood consequences. Míriam was stretched out next to Eli, wearing a wide brimmed hat and laughing softly at something Alba had said while Julia arranged water bottles in a cooler with managerial precision.

Clara, sitting on the edge of the blanket in linen trousers and sunglasses, watched the entire scene with the calm, clinical interest of someone observing a group therapy session nobody had consented to.

"This," she said, "is what happens when elite athletes are unsupervised."

Julia did not look up from the cooler. "It is not even noon."

"That supports my point."

Eli, who had seen enough footballers in her life to be unsurprised by most things, smiled behind her sunglasses. "They are happy."

"They are feral," Clara said.

"Happy and feral," Míriam corrected. "It is different."

Alba flopped down onto the edge of the blanket, already sandy despite having been at the beach for approximately six minutes. "Where are they?"

"Parking," Eli said.

Alba grinned immediately. "Good. I want to see how long Jay lasts before embarrassing herself."

Míriam lifted her eyebrows. "With Alexia?"

"With existence."

Julia took out another bottle of water. "I give her ten minutes."

Clara shook her head. "Too generous."

Eli looked towards the promenade. "She tries."

Alba laughed. "That makes it worse."

And then Alexia and Jay arrived.

They came down from the promenade together, moving through the bright heat with all the easy familiarity of two people who had woken up in the same bed, argued about sunscreen, kissed in the hallway, forgotten one of the bags, gone back for it, and then blamed each other affectionately the entire drive.

Jay was carrying almost everything.

This was not because she had been asked to.

Alexia had, in fact, specifically told her not to carry almost everything.

Jay had heard this, nodded seriously, said, "Absolutely, baby, balanced labour distribution," and then picked up both large beach bags, the folded parasol, a tote full of towels, and the cooler strap anyway because apparently romance, to Jay, meant risking shoulder damage in the name of service.

She walked slightly ahead, not enough to leave Alexia behind, just enough to look like a woman leading an expedition across hostile terrain. Her hair was loose and messy from the car, sunglasses low on her nose, the top buttons of her white linen shirt undone over a black bikini top. Loose black shorts sat low on her hips. Her tattoos stood out dark against sun warmed skin. She looked overloaded, dramatic, slightly irritated by the sun, and annoyingly beautiful.

Alexia followed beside her in an oversized pale shirt and loose black shorts of her own, sunglasses on, hair twisted into a low knot at the nape of her neck. To everyone else, she looked relaxed and simple, dressed for the heat but still covered enough that she appeared almost sensible.

Jay had no idea.

No idea at all.

That was the danger.

Alexia had been quiet in the car. Too quiet, maybe, but Jay had been too busy complaining about the temperature of the seatbelt buckle and then making up a legal case against summer to notice. She had not looked properly at what Alexia was wearing beneath the loose shirt. She had not seen the flash of red at the neckline when Alexia bent to tie her sandals. She had not been prepared.

The group saw them coming.

Mapi lifted one hand weakly from her towel. "The English have arrived. Everyone prepare for dramatic heat commentary."

Jay pointed towards her without slowing. "I am not English right now. I am a victim of environmental violence."

"You have been here ten seconds," Pina shouted.

"And already I have evidence."

Lucy looked at the load Jay was carrying and snorted. "You moving in?"

"I am providing for my family."

Alba cupped her hands around her mouth. "You look like a pack mule with tattoos!"

Jay stopped dead on the sand and turned slowly.

Alexia immediately put a hand on her back and pushed. "No."

"She started it."

"She is my sister."

"All the more reason."

"Jay."

Jay pointed two fingers at her own eyes and then at Alba. "Later."

Alba blew her a kiss.

Jay muttered, "Tiny menace."

"I heard that," Alba called.

"You were meant to."

Alexia kept one hand at Jay's lower back as they crossed the sand, guiding her towards the shade with the easy, possessive familiarity that always made Míriam smile and Alba pretend to gag. Jay leaned into the touch instantly. She always did. Even while sweating. Even while carrying enough equipment for a youth tournament. One brush of Alexia's hand and her whole body softened around it.

"You are very dramatic," Alexia murmured.

Jay glanced at her. "You love me."

"Unfortunately."

"You say that like it's a burden."

"It is a full time job bebe."

"I offer excellent benefits."

Alexia's mouth twitched. "Do you?"

Jay leaned closer, lowering her voice. "You seemed pleased this morning."

Alexia's eyes flicked to her.

Sharp.

Warning.

Interested.

"Careful," Alexia said.

Jay grinned. "I am always careful."

Alexia looked meaningfully at the way Jay had nearly knocked herself sideways trying to carry the cooler and the parasol at the same time.

Jay corrected, "Emotionally careful."

"You are not that either."

"No, but I am hot."

Alexia looked at her for half a second too long.

Jay caught it instantly.

"Oh?" Jay said.

Alexia turned away. "Put the bags down."

Jay's grin became unbearable. "You looked."

"I have eyes."

"You looked with intent."

"I looked because you are blocking the path."

"There is no path. It's sand."

"Then you are blocking the sand."

Jay dropped the bags beside Eli's blanket with a theatrical groan and immediately bent at the waist, hands on knees, like she had climbed a mountain instead of walked from the car park.

Eli smiled up at her. "Hola, Jay."

Jay straightened at once and kissed Eli's cheek with exaggerated respect. "Hola, Eli. You look radiant and not at all oppressed by this weather."

"Very charming," Eli said.

"Thank you. I'm trying to be your favourite."

"You are not competing."

"With Alba? I absolutely am."

Alba, seated two towels away, threw a bottle cap at her.

Jay caught it one handed without looking, which was deeply irritating to everyone.

"See?" Jay said. "Violence from the daughter."

"You're also a daughter now," Alba said. "Through emotional adoption. So she has to judge us both."

Jay turned to Eli. "I would like my performance reviewed quarterly."

Eli laughed. "I will consider."

Alexia sat down on the blanket beside Míriam, stretching her legs out in front of her with the calm grace of someone who knew exactly how many people were looking and had decided not to care. Jay dropped beside her immediately. Not close enough to be indecent. Just close enough that her shoulder brushed Alexia's thigh.

Alexia looked down. "Already?"

"I am resting."

"You are touching me."

"Yes. Resting."

"You have been here one minute."

"It has been a hard minute."

Míriam, from Alexia's other side, said, "I missed you both."

Alexia smiled. "You missed this?"

"No. But it is nice to observe from a safe distance."

Jay leaned forward around Alexia. "There is no safe distance. Love has radius."

Clara, without looking up from applying sunscreen to her forearm, said, "That sentence should be studied."

Julia nodded. "Or reported."

Jay placed a hand over her heart. "My support system is hostile."

Alexia reached down and pushed Jay's face gently away from her thigh with two fingers.

Jay looked up, wounded. "Again?"

"You are too hot."

Jay smiled slowly. "Am I?"

Alexia held her gaze.

Jay's smile deepened.

Alexia realised too late that she had walked directly into it.

"In temperature," she said.

"Too late."

"In body temperature."

"No, no, I heard what I heard."

"Bebé."

Jay's eyes flickered.

That word still did something to her. Even here, in public, surrounded by family and half the team and several witnesses to her stupidity. Alexia watched it land, watched Jay's mouth close, watched the pleased little warmth move through her face.

Then Jay leaned in, much more softly, and kissed the inside of Alexia's wrist where her hand still hovered near Jay's cheek.

Alexia's face changed.

Only for a second.

But Eli saw it.

Míriam saw it too.

Alba made a gagging noise.

"Can you not?" Alba said. "Some of us came here to enjoy the beach."

Jay looked at her. "You came here to throw bottle caps at me."

"And enjoy the beach."

"Multitasking."

Alexia took her wrist back, though not quickly enough to hide the smile. "Go put sunscreen on."

Jay stared. "I put sunscreen on."

"You put it on your face and one shoulder."

"The rest is implied."

"That is not how sunscreen works."

"It should be."

Alexia reached into the bag, took out the bottle, and handed it to her. "Put it on."

Jay accepted it with a sigh. "I am being parented at the beach."

"You need it."

"I need affection."

"You had affection."

"I need more."

Alexia leaned closer, her voice lowering. "Then behave."

Jay's entire body paused.

Alba squinted. "What did she say to you?"

"Nothing," Jay said immediately.

"She said behave, didn't she?"

Jay unscrewed the sunscreen with too much focus. "No."

Alba pointed at her. "She said behave. You look weird."

"I always look weird near her."

"True."

Jay started applying sunscreen to her arms, but she did it badly because she was still looking at Alexia. Alexia took the bottle from her after ten seconds with a sigh and moved behind her.

"Sit still," Alexia said.

Jay sat very still.

Absurdly still.

Mapi sat up slightly from her towel, sensing entertainment. "Oh, she can sit still. Interesting."

Jay closed her eyes as Alexia's hands spread sunscreen over her shoulders. "I have entered a spiritual state."

Alexia's palms moved slowly over the tops of Jay's shoulders, firm and practical, thumbs pressing along muscle. Jay's head dropped forward slightly.

Pina stopped halfway through throwing the volleyball.

Lucy muttered, "Oh, for fuck's sake."

Clara looked at Julia. "Regulation is occurring."

Julia nodded. "Through sunscreen."

Alexia heard them and chose dignity.

Jay had no dignity left. Jay was a statue. A deeply affected, tattooed, sun warmed statue.

"Good?" Alexia murmured near her ear.

Jay's eyes opened. "I cannot answer safely."

Alexia smiled.

Secretly.

Privately.

With the kind of satisfaction she would never announce, because Jay already knew and everyone else did not need the encouragement.

Then Alexia stood.

Jay turned automatically to follow her movement.

And that was when the day changed.

Because Alexia reached for the hem of her loose shirt.

Jay was still sitting on the blanket, sunglasses pushed up on her head, sunscreen half rubbed into one arm, mouth slightly open because Alexia had just had her hands on her shoulders. She watched Alexia unbutton the last two buttons of the shirt.

This was normal.

This should have been normal.

They were at the beach. People removed cover ups at the beach. This was what cover ups were for. Jay understood the concept in theory.

Then Alexia slid the shirt from her shoulders.

The red bikini appeared.

Jay stopped breathing.

Not black.

Not white.

Not one of the simple neutral ones Jay had seen before.

Red.

Deep, rich, absurdly unfair red, sitting against Alexia's skin like it had been designed by someone with a personal vendetta against Jay's ability to function. The top framed her with effortless cruelty. The colour made the gold of her skin warmer, made the dark of her hair sharper, made every quiet, controlled part of Alexia look suddenly lethal.

Jay's sunglasses slipped down her nose.

Nobody spoke.

Alexia folded the shirt calmly and placed it on the towel.

Then she hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her loose black shorts.

Jay made a sound.

Small.

Damaged.

Possibly religious.

Alba immediately sat up. "Ay dios mio."

Míriam covered her mouth.

Eli looked down into her book, but her shoulders began to shake.

Jay whispered, "No."

Alexia looked at her. "No?"

Jay swallowed. "That's red."

"Sí."

"You didn't tell me."

"You did not ask."

"That feels legally unfair."

Alexia's mouth curved.

Then she pushed the shorts down.

Slowly.

Not theatrically. Not with any performance anyone else could accuse her of. Just the normal, simple, devastating act of removing shorts at the beach.

Jay looked like she had witnessed a natural disaster.

The red bikini bottoms matched the top, sitting high at Alexia's hips, elegant and clean and absolutely fatal. Alexia stepped out of the shorts, folded them neatly, and placed them beside the shirt.

Then she turned back to Jay.

Completely composed.

Completely aware.

Completely unreal.

Jay's face had gone slack.

Her hand, still holding the sunscreen, had frozen halfway to her forearm.

A line of white cream sat across one tattoo like a war stripe.

Alexia lifted an eyebrow.

"Bebé?"

Jay blinked once.

Then said, very quietly, "I need to go into the sea."

The entire blanket exploded.

Alba fell backwards laughing. Míriam hid her face against Alexia's abandoned shirt. Julia made a sound like she had tried to turn a laugh into a cough and failed. Clara, who had been maintaining clinical composure, removed her sunglasses and said, "That is probably wise."

Mapi shouted from her towel, "What happened? I cannot see. Ingrid, lift my head."

Ingrid gently lifted Mapi's head by the back of her hat.

Mapi looked.

Mapi stared at Alexia.

Then at Jay.

Then said, "Ah. Emergency swim."

Jay stood too quickly, tripped over her own flip flop, recovered with a hand on her heart, and pointed at nobody in particular. "No one speak to me."

Alba was wheezing. "She is broken."

"I am not broken," Jay said, voice too high. "I am making healthy choices."

"You are fleeing."

"I am regulating."

Alexia crossed her arms, which did not help the red bikini situation at all.

Jay saw.

Jay turned immediately towards the water.

"Yep. Sea. Now."

Alexia's voice followed her, warm and wicked. "Careful, guapa. Do not drown because of a bikini."

Jay stopped, turned back just enough to look at her, and said with absolute sincerity, "I'm not making promises."

Then she walked into the sea like a woman escaping a house fire.

For approximately five minutes, Jay behaved.

This, everyone agreed, was suspicious.

She swam out past the first cluster of people, ducked under the water, came up, pushed her hair back, and stayed there, bobbing in the sea with the desperate focus of someone trying to reset every system in her body. Occasionally she looked back towards the shore.

Every time she did, Alexia was still there.

In the red bikini.

Sitting beside Eli, Míriam, Clara, and Julia as if she had not just committed violence in broad daylight.

Jay would immediately turn back to the horizon.

Alba watched from the towel, delighted. "She's trying not to look."

Míriam smiled. "She is failing."

Eli glanced at her daughter, who was pretending to drink water while watching Jay in the sea over the rim of the bottle. "Alexia is also failing."

Alexia lowered the bottle. "Mama."

Eli returned to her book. "I said nothing."

"You said many things with your face."

"I am your mother. This is my right."

Clara looked out at Jay. "She did remove herself from the stimulus."

Julia nodded. "For her, that is growth."

Alexia tried to appear stern.

Unfortunately, Jay chose that moment to come out of the water.

And the beach had another collective pause.

Because Jay emerged from the sea looking like someone had taken every stupidly attractive thing about her and then added water.

Her hair was slicked back, darker at the roots, blonde strands pushed away from her face. Water ran down her throat, over the red amor tattoo at her neck, over her shoulders and chest, following the lines of ink along her skin. The black bikini top clung to her. Her shorts sat low, heavy with water, and she walked with the easy, athletic confidence of someone completely unaware that half the beach had become briefly stupid.

She was not trying.

That was the worst part.

Jay trying to be hot was dangerous, yes, but at least there was warning. This was simply Jay existing after the sea, sun behind her, body loose, shoulders broad, expression calmer now, as if she had successfully survived the red bikini incident and was returning to society.

Marta, sitting beside Caro with a cherry halfway to her mouth, said, "Gay James Bond."

Caro immediately choked.

Lucy turned. "What?"

Marta pointed. "Look at her."

Lucy looked, then sighed. "For fuck's sake."

Mapi pushed herself up on her elbows. "Who is James Bond?"

"Jay," Marta said. "But gay. And with more tattoos. And worse impulse control."

Pina nodded, watching Jay walk up the sand. "Gay James Bond after a skincare advert."

Patri shouted, "Jones! Stop walking like that. Some of us are trying to play volleyball."

Jay frowned. "Like what?"

"Like you own the sea."

"I just left it."

"Exactly."

Alexia had gone very quiet.

Eli noticed.

Of course Eli noticed.

Alexia sat on the towel in the red bikini, sunglasses low on her nose, watching Jay walk towards them. Her expression was controlled in the way it became when she was trying very hard not to show something. Unfortunately for her, Eli had raised her. There were levels to Alexia's composure, and this one had heat under it.

Míriam glanced at Alexia and smirked.

Alexia did not look away from Jay. "Do not."

"I said nothing."

"Your silence is loud."

Jay reached the group, water dripping onto the sand, pushing one hand through her wet hair.

Alba looked up at her. "Gay James Bond."

Jay turned to Marta. "Was that you?"

Marta lifted both hands. "Observation, not insult."

Jay considered. "Acceptable."

Alba kicked sand at Jay's ankle.

It was not a lot of sand.

It was barely sand.

A small flick. Petty. Sisterly. Entirely unnecessary.

Jay looked down at her wet shin.

Then slowly looked at Alba.

The beach seemed to understand something had happened.

Alba grinned.

"Oops."

Jay's face went blank in a way that made Pina immediately whisper, "Run."

Alba launched herself to her feet.

Jay moved.

Not jogged.

Not chased.

Moved.

A full sprint through sand from a standing start, wet hair flying, legs driving, tattoos flashing in the sun.

Alba screamed.

Not fear.

Delight.

"NO! JAY, NO!"

Jay gained on her immediately because Alba was fast but Jay was Jay, and Jay's entire football career had been built on ruining people's escape plans. Alba tried to cut left. Jay anticipated it. Alba tried to dodge behind Lucy. Lucy stepped out of the way without hesitation.

"Traitor!" Alba shrieked.

"I'm not dying for you," Lucy called.

Jay caught Alba around the waist and lifted her clean off the ground.

The beach erupted.

Alba kicked her legs, laughing so hard she could barely fight. "Put me down! Put me down, you psycho!"

Jay held her like a sack of very noisy potatoes. "You assaulted me with sand."

"It was a sprinkle!"

"It was an act of war."

"Alexia!" Alba shouted. "Control your girlfriend!"

Alexia, still seated, still watching with an expression that had not yet recovered from Gay James Bond emerging from the sea, lifted her drink. "She is not controllable."

Jay looked over at her while carrying Alba towards the water. "Baby, say that again."

"No."

"You said I'm uncontrollable."

"Do not flirt while kidnapping my sister."

"She started it."

Alba thumped Jay's back with both fists. "I hate this family!"

"You chose this fight," Jay said, marching into the shallows.

"I kicked one grain of sand!"

"You will reflect on your choices."

"Jay!"

With great ceremony, Jay carried Alba into the water until it reached her thighs.

Then stopped.

Alba froze.

"You wouldn't."

Jay smiled down at her.

"I love you like family," Jay said.

"That sounds threatening."

"It is."

Then she dropped her.

Alba hit the water with a dramatic shriek and came up spluttering, hair plastered to her face, laughing and furious. "I am telling Mama!"

Eli called from shore, "I saw. You kicked sand first."

Alba turned, betrayed. "Mama!"

Eli turned a page. "Consequences."

Jay put both hands on her hips in the water, delighted. "Justice."

Alba shoved water at her.

Jay shoved water back.

Within seconds, they were both soaked, laughing, splashing each other like children, while the team shouted encouragement from the shore.

"Drown her!" Mapi yelled.

Ingrid immediately sprayed her with water. "Do not encourage violence."

Mapi sighed happily. "I am involved."

Cata shouted, "Alba, go for the hair!"

Jay gasped. "My hair has done nothing."

Alba splashed her in the face.

Jay stood completely still for one second, water dripping from her eyelashes.

Then she said, very calmly, "Oh, so now it's personal."

Alba ran.

Jay chased her through the shallows.

Alexia watched with one hand pressed to her mouth, trying not to laugh too openly and failing. The red bikini caught the sun every time she moved. Jay, even in the middle of chasing Alba, kept glancing towards her as if Alexia's body had gravitational pull.

Míriam leaned closer to Eli. "She is looking at Alexia every ten seconds."

Eli nodded. "Eight."

Clara checked her watch. "Closer to seven."

Julia smiled. "Impressive, considering she is in active combat."

Eventually, Jay and Alba emerged from the water together, both soaked, both breathing hard, both laughing. Alba shoved Jay once. Jay shoved her back with two fingers and almost sent her sideways, then caught her before she actually fell.

Alba slapped her arm. "You are such an idiot."

Jay grinned. "You kicked sand at an elite athlete and expected mercy."

"You are family. You're supposed to be nice."

"I carried you safely."

"Into the sea!"

"With good form."

They walked back up the beach side by side, still bickering, wet footprints trailing behind them. Jay had an arm slung loosely around Alba's shoulders now, Alba pretending to be annoyed and very obviously leaning into it because annoying Jay was one of the great joys of her life.

Alexia watched them approach.

And softened.

Just for a moment.

Because this, too, was something she loved. Jay and Alba had built their own strange language of irritation and affection, somewhere between sisters, enemies, and two people competing for the same side of Eli's approval. They teased each other viciously, defended each other instantly, and could start a fight over a bottle cap that ended with Jay carrying Alba into the sea while Alba screamed betrayal at the entire family.

Jay belonged here now.

That thought still moved something in Alexia.

Then the universe, apparently, decided the scene needed to escalate.

An older woman appeared from the direction of the promenade.

She was small, tanned, elegant in a floral beach dress and wide straw hat, moving slowly but with the confidence of someone who had lived near the sea long enough to treat the beach as an extension of her living room. She walked past the volleyball net, past Lucy and Keira's structurally questionable umbrella, past Mapi being misted by Ingrid, and stopped directly in front of Jay and Alba.

Jay and Alba stopped too.

Jay still had her arm around Alba's shoulders.

Alba still had one hand gripping Jay's wrist as if preparing to remove it.

Both of them were dripping wet.

The old woman looked at them.

Then smiled warmly.

"You two," she said in Spanish, "make such a beautiful couple."

For one perfect second, nobody moved.

The beach went silent.

Not the whole beach, obviously. The sea kept moving. Children kept shouting somewhere. The volleyball hit the sand in the distance.

But their beach went silent.

Jay's arm left Alba's shoulders so fast it became a blur.

Alba physically jumped sideways like Jay had caught fire.

"No," they said at exactly the same time.

The old woman, apparently satisfied with her blessing, continued walking without waiting for clarification.

Jay pointed after her, horrified. "No, no, no, no, señora, no, incorrect, wrong sister, very wrong sister."

Alba wiped water from her face, panicking. "She's dating my sister!"

The old woman lifted one hand in a vague, cheerful wave and kept going.

Jay looked at Alba.

Alba looked at Jay.

They both recoiled another step away from each other.

"Do not stand near me," Alba said.

"You stand away from me."

"I am away!"

"Be more away!"

"I cannot get more away without entering volleyball!"

"Enter volleyball!"

The team exploded.

Lucy collapsed forward, hands on knees, laughing so hard no sound came out. Pina dropped the volleyball. Patri fell backwards into the sand. Mapi sat bolt upright, no longer dying, revived by scandal. Ingrid sprayed herself accidentally. Cata was screaming. Marta clapped once and said, "Beautiful couple," which set Caro off so badly she had to turn away.

Alba pointed at Jay. "I want it known that she kidnapped me."

Jay pointed back. "I want it known that she assaulted me with sand."

"You carried me bridal style into the sea!"

"It was not bridal style!"

"It was close!"

Jay looked appalled. "It was tactical prisoner transport!"

"That is worse!"

From the blanket, Míriam had both hands over her mouth, shoulders shaking. Julia had her sunglasses pushed up into her hair, laughing openly now. Clara looked like she was trying very hard to stay composed and failing by degrees.

Eli was not laughing.

Not at first.

Eli was watching Alexia.

Because Alexia's face was not good.

Alexia sat very still on the towel, red bikini bright against the pale blanket, sunglasses lowered just enough that Eli could see her eyes. Her mouth was relaxed, but not really. Her jaw had tightened. Her gaze was fixed on Jay and Alba, who were now standing so far apart they looked like magnets repelling each other.

It was not anger exactly.

It was worse.

Possessive calm.

Eli knew that look. She had seen variations of it since Alexia was a child, usually when someone touched something Alexia considered hers without permission. A toy. A medal. A football. A person she loved.

Now Alexia was looking at Jay like she was deciding whether murder was too dramatic for a beach day.

Eli leaned closer to Míriam and said quietly, "Watch Alexia."

Míriam looked.

Her laughter died for half a second.

Then returned, quieter and more terrified. "Oh."

Clara followed their gaze. "Interesting."

Julia looked too. "Jay should run."

Eli shook her head. "No. Running makes it worse."

Jay, who had excellent instincts in football and terrible instincts socially, finally looked towards Alexia.

She froze.

"Oh," Jay said.

Alba followed her gaze.

Then slapped Jay's arm. "Fix it."

"Me?"

"Yes, you! She is your girlfriend."

"She is your sister."

"She looks like she wants to return me to the sea."

Jay swallowed. "She might."

Alexia rose.

Slowly.

That made it worse.

She did not hurry. She did not call out. She simply stood from the towel, red bikini unreal in the sunlight, sunglasses pushed up into her hair now, expression calm in a way that made every single person nearby understand something was about to happen.

Jay stood very still.

Alba moved another step away from her. "Good luck."

"Coward," Jay hissed.

"Survivor."

Alexia walked towards them.

Jay's face did something complicated.

Fear, yes.

But also, because Jay was Jay and Alexia in a red bikini was walking towards her with possessive murder in her eyes, attraction. A lot of attraction. An amount that was honestly inconvenient for survival.

Jay lifted one hand in greeting. "Hi, baby."

Alexia stopped in front of her.

Close.

Too close for Jay's nervous system.

Jay swallowed.

Alexia looked at Alba first.

Alba immediately pointed at Jay. "I did not do couple energy."

Jay made an outraged sound. "Neither did I!"

"You had your arm around me."

"You were wet and unstable!"

"You made me wet and unstable!"

"Do not phrase it like that in front of your sister!"

Alba slapped both hands over her mouth.

The team howled.

Alexia's face did not change.

Jay looked at her, desperate. "Ale, baby, I swear on everything, that woman needs glasses, context, and possibly a family tree."

Alexia's eyes moved to Jay's face.

Jay immediately softened. "You know that, right?"

For one second, all the comedy thinned.

Alexia looked at Jay properly. Wet hair slicked back. Sand on one shin. Eyes wide and blue and utterly fixed on her. Jay could be ridiculous and shameless and loud with everyone, but underneath it, with Alexia, there was always that quick little need to make sure she had not hurt her, not really.

Alexia's expression softened, just a fraction.

Then she reached out, caught Jay by the front of her bikini, and pulled her into a kiss.

The entire beach screamed.

Not metaphorically.

Actually.

Mapi shouted, "THERE SHE IS!"

Lucy yelled, "For God's sake!"

Pina made a noise like she had been hit.

Alba covered her eyes with both hands. "I am RELATED!"

Jay, after one startled second, kissed Alexia back with immediate and total devotion, hands hovering for the smallest beat before settling at Alexia's waist. Careful even now. Even with half the beach losing their minds. Even with Alexia making a point in public. She held her like she knew this was a claim and a joke and reassurance all at once.

Alexia broke the kiss slowly.

Jay's eyes stayed closed for half a second.

When she opened them, she looked dazed.

Alexia's mouth curved. "Now she knows."

Jay blinked. "Who?"

"The woman."

"She's gone."

"Then everyone knows."

Jay swallowed. "Yeah."

Alexia patted her cheek once. "Mine."

Jay's entire face changed.

Softened.

Ruined.

"Yeah," she said quietly. "Yours."

Alba gagged. "I have trauma."

Jay turned her head. "You kicked sand at me."

"And now I have witnessed a dominance display."

Alexia looked at Alba. "Do not call it that."

Alba pointed between them. "What would you call it?"

Jay, still dazed, said, "Hot."

Alexia looked back at her.

Jay shut up immediately.

Míriam was crying with laughter by the blankets. Eli had finally started laughing too, one hand over her mouth, shoulders shaking. Clara looked like she was mentally filing the entire interaction under things to discuss never unless Jay brought it up first. Julia was smiling with the specific tired affection of someone who had managed Jay through many disasters and was simply pleased this one had not required paperwork.

The old woman, far down the beach now, turned once, saw Alexia kissing Jay, Alba standing five feet away looking traumatised, and lifted both hands as if to say ah, understood.

Then she kept walking.

Jay pointed after her. "See? Clarified."

Alba yelled, "Too late!"

Alexia slid her hand into Jay's and pulled her back towards the blankets.

Jay followed instantly.

Alba trailed behind at a safe distance, still muttering about emotional damages.

When they reached the shade, Mapi looked up from her towel, now fully revived and no longer requiring misting.

"So," Mapi said, "beautiful couple?"

Alba grabbed a towel and threw it at her face.

Jay sat down beside Alexia, very close, water still dripping from her hair onto the towel.

Alexia looked at the wet patch spreading near her thigh. "You are soaking."

Jay leaned in. "You kissed me anyway."

"I was making a point."

"Strong point."

"Necessary point."

"Loved the point."

Alexia's mouth twitched.

Jay, emboldened by survival, lowered her voice. "You jealous, baby?"

Alexia slowly turned her head.

Jay's grin faltered.

Míriam leaned towards Eli. "She is going to die."

Eli smiled. "Maybe a little."

Alexia leaned close to Jay, her voice low and warm enough that Jay visibly lost her breath.

"Guapa," Alexia murmured, "if I was jealous, you would know."

Jay stared at her.

Then whispered, "I would like to know."

Alexia's eyes darkened.

Alba shrieked, "I AM STILL HERE!"

Jay jumped. "Jesus Christ, Alba!"

"You made it weird!"

"You were eavesdropping!"

"You are two feet away!"

"Be more away!"

"I tried! The old woman got involved!"

The entire blanket dissolved again.

Alexia laughed then, finally, properly, leaning into Jay's side as the laughter took her. Jay immediately softened around it, arm slipping behind Alexia carefully, face bright with the private joy of being the one close enough to feel it.

Eli watched them from across the blanket, her smile gentle now.

Jay and Alba were still bickering. Mapi was demanding the story from three different angles. Lucy was threatening to tell the entire group chat despite having witnessed it in person. Pina had already titled the incident "The Couple Allegation." Clara was drinking water like she needed it for emotional distance. Julia was warning Jay not to "create a sequel."

And Alexia, in the middle of all of it, leaned into Jay's damp shoulder, still in that red bikini, still warm from the sun, still quietly pleased by the fact that Jay had looked at her like a miracle all morning.

Jay kissed the top of her head.

Alexia pinched her thigh without looking.

Jay yelped. "Ow."

"Behave," Alexia said.

Jay smiled.

In the sand, Alba threw a grape at her.

Jay caught it in her mouth.

Everyone went silent.

Then Jay pointed at Alba while chewing. "That was couple behaviour."

Alba screamed.

Alexia pushed Jay flat onto the towel.

But for several glorious hours, the day had behaved.

Training had gone well. Really well. The sun was out, the air over the pitches was warm without being unbearable, and Barcelona looked beautiful in the smug way Barcelona often did, all blue sky and sharp shadows and palm trees standing around like they knew they lived somewhere better than everyone else. Jay felt good from the moment she stepped onto the grass. Her first touch was clean. Her legs felt light. Her finishing had that dangerous edge to it, the one that made centre backs start glancing at each other as if trying to work out who had agreed to be embarrassed first.

She scored twice in training.

The first goal came after she rolled Irene with her shoulder so smoothly that Lucy, from midfield, shouted, “That is actually rude,” which Jay accepted as praise of the highest order. The second was worse, a chipped finish over Cata that was technically unnecessary and emotionally violent. Cata stood still afterwards with both hands on her hips, staring at Jay as the ball dropped into the net.

“You didn’t need to do that,” Cata said.

Jay jogged backwards, grinning. “Need is such a restrictive concept.”

“You’re annoying.”

“But clinical.”

“Annoying and clinical.”

Jay pointed at her. “That’s going on my gravestone.”

Even Jonatan looked pleased, which was rare enough that Jay almost checked whether someone was filming it for evidence. He did not smile, obviously. Jonatan smiling during training would have caused confusion and possibly paperwork. But he gave her a nod when she jogged over for water.

“Good movement,” he said.

Jay placed a hand over her heart. “Thank you. I like to be emotionally available to space.”

Jonatan stared at her for a full second, then turned and walked away.

Lucy wandered past, towel around her neck. “Every day, you make that man regret language.”

Jay took a sip of water. “And yet he keeps picking me.”

“Because you score goals.”

“And because I bring joy.”

“You bring HR incidents.”

Jay grinned. “Multitalented.”

So yes. Good day. Normal day. Sun shining. Alexia looking impossibly good on the opposite side of the pitch with her hair tied back and that captain’s expression that made Jay lose half her tactical awareness if she looked too long. Everything was fine.

Then Eli Putellas texted about mistletoe.

That was where civilisation began to collapse.

Jay was walking back from the pitch to the training building, boots muddy, towel around her neck, still slightly sweaty and glowing with post training satisfaction. The team were scattered around her in loose groups. Pina and Cata were arguing about whether Jay’s chipped goal was arrogant or artistic. Mapi was complaining that Ingrid had fouled her, despite Ingrid’s crime being standing still while Mapi ran into her. Lucy was telling Keira that Jay’s second goal had “main character disease”, which Jay took as a compliment even though Lucy insisted it was a diagnosis.

Alexia was a few metres ahead, talking to Irene, one hand moving slightly as she spoke. Jay watched her for half a second too long, as she usually did, then forced herself to look at her phone when it buzzed.

Eli.

Amor, for Christmas, is mistletoe too much? Alba says yes. I think no.

Jay stopped listening to the world immediately.

This was not a casual question. This was family diplomacy. This was Christmas infrastructure. This was Eli Putellas asking Jay whether it was appropriate to create sanctioned kissing zones in the family home. Jay, as Alexia’s girlfriend and a woman with a deep personal interest in kissing Alexia wherever possible, took this responsibility seriously.

She began typing while walking.

Eli, respectfully, mistletoe is dangerous around Ale because she will pretend she does not care, then stand under it deliberately and say it is coincidence.

She reread that, considered whether it sounded too revealing, then decided Eli already knew Alexia had been emotionally exposed the first time Jay brought flowers to Sunday lunch and Alexia stared at them like they had proposed marriage.

Then she added: So yes. I support it. But maybe not near the kitchen because food safety matters and I cannot be trusted.

Eli replied almost immediately.

Then I will put it near the kitchen.

Jay smiled so hard she almost walked into Lucy.

“Watch it,” Lucy said.

“Eli’s creating Christmas danger,” Jay replied, still typing.

Lucy did not ask. She had learned that some Jay sentences were not doors to open unless properly hydrated.

Jay’s thumbs moved quickly.

Eli, respectfully, you are too powerful. If I die before dessert, tell Ale I loved her and also that she started it.

Eli replied: I will tell Alexia this was your idea.

Jay gasped out loud.

Pina, three steps away, turned. “What?”

“Nothing,” Jay said, suddenly deeply focused. “Family politics.”

She began typing again, all urgency now.

Do not do that. She will weaponise it. And I will not survive Christmas.

That was the moment Jay reached what she thought was the familiar side door, pushed through what she thought was the familiar corridor entrance, turned left where she thought she always turned left, and walked directly into what she thought was the women’s locker room.

It was not the women’s locker room.

Several clues were available.

Jay noticed none of them.

The first clue was the smell. The women’s locker room had a very specific scent profile, one Jay could have identified blindfolded if forced. Shampoo, boot spray, sweat, muscle gel, clean laundry, coffee from a forgotten travel cup, and the sharp cloud of perfume Mapi insisted on spraying everywhere despite Ingrid repeatedly saying, “María, this is a changing room, not an airport duty free.”

This room did not smell like that. This room smelled like men’s deodorant, different shower gel, damp towels, and something aggressively masculine that seemed to have been applied in layers by people who feared subtlety.

The second clue was the voices. They were deeper. Male. Spanish conversation rolling from the benches, someone laughing, someone complaining about his girlfriend being annoyed because he had not answered a message, someone else saying something about lunch. A locker door opened. Another closed. A shower ran briefly somewhere beyond the tiled wall.

Jay noticed none of it.

Because she was texting Eli about mistletoe based sexual warfare.

She made it six steps into the room before the silence reached her.

It was not instant. It travelled. One conversation stopped near the showers. Then another by the lockers. A laugh broke off halfway. Someone’s towel rustled and then stopped. A locker door clicked shut with unnatural care. The whole room seemed to inhale and hold it.

Jay’s thumbs paused.

She looked up.

And made direct eye contact with a shirtless Pedri.

He stood in front of his locker with one arm halfway through a T shirt sleeve, frozen in place like reality had buffered at the worst possible frame. His hair was damp. His expression was not angry. It was worse. It was confused, startled, and polite in the way that suggested he had absolutely no idea what to do with the fact Jay Jones had materialised in the men’s locker room while typing with great intensity.

Beside him, Gavi held a towel in both hands, mouth slightly open.

On the benches behind them sat several other members of Barcelona’s men’s first team in various stages of changing. Some had shirts on. Some were finding shirts. Some had clearly been betrayed by timing and were not yet near shirts. Ter Stegen was across the room, fortunately dressed enough that Jay’s nervous system did not fully evacuate, watching with the calm face of a man who had seen football chaos but perhaps not this exact subsection.

Jay stared.

They stared.

Her brain, which usually ran like a browser with seventy two tabs open and music playing from one of them, became a slow government office with no air conditioning.

It processed, in order: This was not the women’s locker room.

This was the men’s locker room.

There were men in here.

Many men.

Several shirtless men.

She was very much not meant to be here.

She was still holding her phone.

She had just typed the phrase sexually to Alexia’s mother.

“Oh,” Jay said.

Nobody moved.

Jay blinked.

“Oh,” she said again, because apparently her vocabulary had been reduced to a single vowel sound. “This is…”

Several people began talking at once in Spanish. Jay did not understand most of it. She caught her own name. She caught the general tone of confusion. Someone said something that sounded like a question. Someone else said something that made Gavi look between Jay and the door.

Jay held up her phone.

That was, for some reason, the defence her body chose.

“I was texting about mistletoe.”

The silence deepened.

It became almost religious.

Pedri slowly pulled his shirt the rest of the way on. “Mistletoe?”

“Christmas,” Jay said, nodding too hard. “Not relevant. Well, relevant to me personally, but not to this. This is not a mistletoe situation. This is a location error.”

Gavi frowned. “Are you lost?”

Jay shook her head immediately. “No. I’m not lost. I knew where I was going. I was just aggressively wrong.”

Ter Stegen’s mouth twitched.

Jay pointed vaguely behind herself. “Wrong room.”

No one said anything.

She nodded, confirming it to herself. “Wrong room. That’s what this is. I thought this was the women’s locker room, which it obviously isn’t because…” Her hand moved before her brain could stop it, gesturing helplessly at the general chest height disaster in front of her. “Wrong boobs.”

The world stopped.

The silence after that sentence deserved its own plaque.

Jay heard herself.

She heard the words clearly.

Wrong boobs.

Wrong.

Boobs.

Her soul left her body, looked around the men’s locker room, decided it did not want to be associated with any of this, and disappeared through the vents.

Pedri’s eyes widened.

Gavi blinked. “Wrong… what?”

Jay’s face went nuclear.

“Room,” she shouted. “Wrong room. I meant wrong room. I said wrong boobs, yes, I heard it too, but I meant wrong room. My mouth panicked. This is not a commentary. I am not reviewing anyone’s…” She stopped, eyes wide. “No. Absolutely not. I’m stopping. I’m going to stop talking now.”

A strangled sound came from somewhere to the left.

It might have been Ferran.

Jay refused to identify witnesses.

Ter Stegen, with the controlled dignity of an older professional trying not to lose composure, said in English, “That is probably good.”

Jay pointed at him. “Thank you. Very goalkeeper of you.”

Then she closed her eyes.

Very goalkeeper of you.

Why.

Why was she still allowed to speak.

Pedri’s shoulders started shaking.

Gavi made a small sound and turned away.

Ferran, because apparently destiny had given him front row seats and a microphone, said, “Wrong boobs?”

The room cracked.

Not cruelly. That was the worst part. Nobody was laughing at her in a mean way. They were laughing because the situation had become too absurd for human dignity to survive it. Gavi sat down hard on the bench, towel still in hand, laughing openly now. Pedri turned into his locker with one hand over his mouth. Ferran looked like he had just been handed the greatest story of his professional career.

Jay lifted both hands.

“Right. I’m leaving. Excellent. This is over. We are all going to forget this happened because we are professionals, adults, and in some cases now wearing shirts, which I respect deeply.”

She began backing towards the door.

Slowly.

Carefully.

Not looking directly at anyone’s chest, face, towel, locker, soul or possible future voice note.

“I apologise,” she continued, because anxiety had apparently turned her into a formal email. “Very sorry. Extremely sorry. Wrong room. Wrong wording. Wrong everything. Have a lovely day. Please delete this from your memories and any group chats that may currently be forming in your heads.”

Pedri, still laughing, managed, “It’s okay, Jay.”

“No, it’s not. It’s a crime scene.”

Gavi wiped at his eyes. “You are okay?”

“Physically? For now. Emotionally? Absolutely not.”

She was almost at the door.

Freedom was close enough to taste.

Then her heel caught the bench.

A solid bench.

A cruel bench.

A bench with excellent positioning and no mercy.

Jay went down like a tree being felled.

Her arms windmilled. Her phone launched itself from her hand. She hit the floor flat on her back, stared up at the ceiling lights, and briefly considered simply becoming part of the building.

The silence returned for half a second.

Then Gavi lost his mind.

Pedri folded over.

Someone near the showers wheezed.

Ferran appeared above Jay, grinning in a way that immediately made him her enemy. “Are you okay?”

Jay did not move. “I live here now.”

“You cannot live here.”

“Watch me.”

“This is our locker room.”

“Not according to the bench. The bench adopted me.”

Ter Stegen walked over, picked up Jay’s phone from under the bench, and held it out. Jay accepted it without sitting up.

“Thank you,” she said from the floor. “Please delete everything after I entered.”

“I will try.”

“That means no.”

“It means I respect your request.”

“That is also no.”

Eventually, because lying on the floor of the men’s locker room was beginning to feel less like a dramatic response and more like a housing decision, Jay forced herself upright. She refused all help. Not because she was ungrateful, but because if a shirtless man touched her in that moment she was fairly sure she would burst into dust.

She gathered her phone. Found the door with both eyes this time.

“Goodbye,” she said. “Forever. If anyone asks, I was never here.”

Ferran smiled.

Jay stopped with her hand on the door.

“You’re going to tell everyone.”

“No,” Ferran said.

Jay narrowed her eyes. “You are lying with your face.”

“I am smiling.”

“Same thing.”

Then she fled.

Actually fled.

She ran down the corridor like the walls themselves were judging her. A physio stepped aside quickly as she passed. Someone called her name. She ignored them. She turned one corner, almost took the wrong corridor again, stopped so abruptly her shoes squeaked, pointed at the wall and said, “Not today,” then turned back and finally found the correct door.

She burst into the women’s locker room and collided directly with Ona.

Ona caught her by both arms. “Jay. Qué pasa?”

Jay stared at her, wild eyed. “I need to live in a cave.”

“What?”

“Can’t talk. Dying. Need moss. Maybe darkness. Maybe a new identity.”

Ona blinked. “What happened?”

“Nothing happened. Everything happened. I’m never leaving this room again.”

Ona looked past her into the locker room.

“She did something.”

Jay gasped. “Betrayal.”

The room turned.

Lucy looked up from tying her shoe. “What did you do?”

“Nothing.”

“That was a very loud nothing.”

“I walked.”

“Historically dangerous for you.”

Jay pointed at her. “Do not start.”

Then the phones started.

One buzz.

Then another.

Then another.

Then everyone’s.

Mapi looked down first.

Her face changed.

It was slow. Beautiful, if you hated Jay. Her eyes widened. Her mouth parted. A smile began at one corner and spread with the dreadful inevitability of weather.

Jay felt the blood drain from her face.

“No,” she whispered.

Mapi lifted her phone. “Jay.”

“No.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing.”

“The men’s team is losing it.”

“I don’t know any men.”

“Pedri sent a voice note to the general Barça staff chat.”

Jay’s mouth fell open. “He did what?”

Patri shot upright. “Play it.”

“No one play it,” Jay said.

Everyone played it.

Pedri’s voice filled the room from several phones at once, laughing before he even got the words out.

“She just walked in. Fully walked in. Texting. Like it was normal.”

The locker room exploded immediately.

Jay lunged for Mapi’s phone.

Mapi spun away.

Pedri continued, the voice note now becoming the soundtrack to Jay’s public execution.

“We all stop, and she looks up, and she says she was texting about mistletoe.”

Lucy bent double.

Pina made a squeaking sound.

Cata covered her mouth with both hands.

Jay shouted, “It was relevant at the time.”

Pedri’s voice carried on.

“Then she says wrong room, but then she says wrong boobs.”

“I DID SAY THAT,” Jay yelled, panicking at everyone’s faces, “BUT THEN I CORRECTED IT.”

That, somehow, made it worse.

Ona turned slowly. “You actually said wrong boobs?”

Jay pointed at her. “And then I said wrong room. Growth.”

Pedri was still talking.

“And then Gavi asks what she said, and she says she meant room and that her mouth panicked, and then she says she is not reviewing anyone’s…”

The voice note cut off for a second because Pedri was laughing too hard.

Jay’s hands went to her head. “He edited for suspense.”

Then his voice returned.

“And then she walks backwards, hits the bench and falls completely on the floor.”

There was a thudding noise.

Jay froze.

“He added sound effects.”

Pina slid down the lockers onto the floor.

Lucy was laughing so hard no sound came out.

Patri had both hands over her mouth, eyes shining with tears.

Mapi had gone silent, which meant she had reached a level of joy beyond speech. Ingrid stood behind her, one hand on her shoulder, shaking with laughter too despite obviously trying to remain kind.

Jay stared around at all of them. “I hate this family.”

“You said wrong boobs,” Pina wheezed.

“And corrected it.”

“That is not the part people remember,” Keira said calmly.

Jay turned to her. “I trusted you.”

Keira shrugged. “That was your mistake.”

The door opened.

Aitana walked in with her phone already in hand. “Is it true?”

“No,” Jay said automatically.

Aitana looked up. “You didn’t walk into the men’s locker room?”

Jay hesitated.

“You didn’t say wrong boobs?”

Jay hesitated longer.

“You didn’t fall over a bench?”

Jay looked at the floor.

Aitana nodded. “So it is true.”

Jay turned to the room, suddenly horrified by an even worse thought. “Where is Alexia?”

The room went quiet.

Jay closed her eyes. “No.”

Lucy winced. “Oh, mate.”

“No. Maybe she hasn’t seen it.”

Mapi found her voice again. “Alexia sees everything. She probably felt it in the air.”

“She could be busy.”

“She is captain busy, not dead.”

Jay made a small dying sound and sat down heavily on the bench.

The door opened again.

Alexia stood in the doorway with her phone in one hand.

She looked perfect, which felt rude under the circumstances. Training top still on, hair tied back, cheeks faintly flushed from the session, face composed in the way that usually meant she was either about to lead a team talk or ruin Jay’s ability to think. Her eyes went to Jay first, immediate and searching, checking her body, her face, her hands, the quick scan of someone who loved before she laughed.

Then Alexia clearly confirmed there was no injury.

And the laughter arrived.

It did not take over at once. Alexia was disciplined. She had standards. She was captain. She had survived finals, press conferences, chaos, and Jay’s breakfast inventions.

But her mouth twitched.

Jay pointed at her immediately. “Don’t.”

Alexia stepped inside. “Bebé.”

“No.”

“I heard…”

“No.”

“…there was an incident.”

“You’re smiling.”

“I am concerned.”

“You’re concerned with teeth.”

Alexia pressed her lips together.

Her shoulders moved once.

Jay gasped. “You are laughing.”

“I am not.”

“You are. You’re laughing in Spanish.”

That broke her.

Alexia covered her mouth with one hand, turned slightly away, and started giggling.

Not laughing loudly like Lucy. Not collapsing like Mapi. Alexia laughed in helpless, breathy little bursts that made her eyes crinkle and her shoulders shake, one hand over her mouth as though she could physically hold the laughter in. She could not. She looked delighted. Worse, she looked beautiful.

Jay stared at her in betrayed misery. “I came here for safety.”

Alexia tried to speak and failed.

“Wrong boobs?” she managed.

Jay threw both hands up. “I corrected it.”

“You corrected wrong boobs?”

“I said wrong room after.”

Alexia laughed harder.

“That should count.”

“It does not.”

“It absolutely should.”

Alexia came towards her, still laughing, and cupped Jay’s face. Her thumbs brushed Jay’s cheeks, gentle despite everything. “Are you hurt?”

Jay softened despite herself. “No.”

“Estás bien?”

“I am physically intact and socially dead.”

Alexia’s smile trembled. “Poor guapa.”

“You are still laughing.”

“Yes.”

“Terrible girlfriend.”

“Yes.” Alexia kissed her forehead. “But I love you.”

Jay huffed, but leaned into her hands because she had never once been strong enough to resist Alexia’s affection, especially when embarrassed. “You’re meant to be biased.”

“I am biased. I think it is funny because it is you.”

“That is not the defence you think it is.”

The room, unfortunately, had not disappeared.

Mapi moved closer, eyes bright. “Wrong Boobs Jones.”

Jay turned. “Do not.”

“It has rhythm.”

“It has defamation.”

“You admitted you said it.”

“And corrected it.”

Patri lifted a finger. “I think the correction makes it funnier.”

Jay stared at her. “Why?”

“Because it means you heard yourself and still had to continue living.”

Jay blinked.

“That is cruelly accurate.”

Aitana, still holding her phone, looked up. “The men’s team made a group chat.”

Jay went still. “No.”

Aitana nodded. “Yes.”

“What’s it called?”

Nobody answered.

Jay looked around slowly.

“What is it called?”

Pina whispered, “Wrong Boobs.”

Jay sat down again.

Alexia’s hand went to the back of her neck, rubbing gently while she laughed into her shoulder.

“I want to be traded,” Jay said.

“You cannot be traded,” Alexia murmured.

“I want to enter witness protection.”

“You are too recognisable.”

“I’ll wear a hat.”

“You are still tattooed.”

“A big hat.”

Lucy wiped her eyes. “Mate, Pedri added a bench emoji.”

Jay’s head snapped up. “Pedri is a menace.”

“Ferran changed the group picture to a locker room door,” Keira added.

Jay stood. “Ferran dies first.”

Alexia caught her by the waist immediately. “No fighting the men’s team.”

“He started psychological warfare.”

“You entered his locker room.”

“By accident.”

“You said wrong boobs.”

“And corrected it.”

Alexia’s arms tightened around Jay’s waist from behind, chin resting briefly against her shoulder. “My disaster.”

Jay’s eyes narrowed. “That sounded affectionate and insulting.”

“Sí.”

“You can’t do both.”

“I can.”

“You do.”

“I do.”

Then, because Jay’s brain had endured too much and was no longer safe around words, she blurted, “I need to see your boobs.”

The room died.

Every single person froze.

Even Mapi.

Jay closed her eyes.

There was a silence so total that somewhere outside, a boot squeaked against the corridor floor and sounded like an event.

Alexia blinked.

Lucy whispered, “Oh my God.”

Jay lifted one finger, eyes still closed. “Context.”

Alexia’s voice was suddenly very calm. “Context?”

Jay opened her eyes and looked at her with the panicked sincerity of a woman trying to explain science under hostile conditions. “For recovery.”

No one moved.

Jay continued, because apparently she had learned nothing. “I saw unexpected shirtless men. Wrong chests. Wrong boobs. Wrong everything. My eyes need a reset. A familiar, safe, girlfriend based reset.”

Pina screamed into Cata’s shoulder.

Patri started clapping.

Mapi bent over at the waist, making a noise that suggested she was fighting for oxygen.

Ona covered her face. “Jay.”

Jay pointed at Alexia. “You understand what I mean.”

Alexia did, in fact, understand.

That was the problem.

Alexia’s cheeks had gone pink. Not a little pink. A full, beautiful warmth that spread across her cheekbones and down her throat while she stared at Jay like she could not decide whether to kiss her, laugh at her, or leave the country.

Jay swallowed.

Alexia took one slow breath. Then she looked at the room.

“Everyone out.”

The reaction was immediate.

“No,” Mapi gasped.

“Yes.”

“But this is medical.”

“María.”

Mapi straightened. “Leaving.”

Lucy lifted a hand. “For the record, I support Jay’s recovery journey.”

“Out, Lucía.”

“I’m going.”

Patri pointed at Jay. “Girlfriend based reset is going in the minutes.”

“There are no minutes,” Irene said from the doorway, having arrived at the absolute worst possible time and clearly needing only three seconds to understand enough. “Everyone out.”

Jay looked at Irene in horror. “How long were you there?”

“Long enough.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“I know.”

That somehow made it worse.

The team filed out slowly, which meant they did not file out so much as drifted backwards while laughing, whispering and trying to memorise every detail for later legal use.

Mapi sang quietly, “Wrong Boobs Jones.”

Jay pointed at her. “I will replace your shampoo with mayonnaise.”

Mapi gasped. “You wouldn’t.”

“I have nothing left to lose.”

Alexia pointed at the door again. “Out.”

Finally, the door closed.

The room became quiet.

Jay stood in front of Alexia, towel hanging off one shoulder, face hot, eyes wide, looking like a woman who had survived battle but not commentary. Alexia looked at her for two seconds.

Then she burst into laughter again.

Jay groaned. “Ale.”

“I am sorry,” Alexia said, clearly not sorry at all. “Dios mío, bebé.”

“I’m in pain.”

“You asked for my boobs in front of the whole team.”

“I was making a medical argument.”

“It was not medical.”

“It was emotional medicine.”

Alexia walked into her space and slid both arms around her waist. Jay’s hands found Alexia’s hips automatically, holding on like the world had finally offered one stable thing.

“You are okay?” Alexia asked softly.

Jay exhaled. “Yeah. Just embarrassed.”

“Good.” Alexia kissed her once, soft and warm. “Then I can laugh.”

“Terrible girlfriend.”

Alexia kissed her again. “Your girlfriend.”

Jay tried to stay annoyed.

She failed by the third kiss.

Unfortunately, after the locker room came the rest of the day.

And the rest of the day was hell.

Not normal hell. Bespoke hell. Personalised hell. Hell with Jay’s initials embroidered on the towel.

The story spread through the facility like someone had fed it protein and given it a scooter. By lunch, everyone knew. The physios knew. The nutrition staff knew. The media team knew. A receptionist Jay had spoken to twice in her life smiled at her and said, “Correct corridor today?” with the calm cruelty of someone who had waited all morning to use the line.

Jay stared at her. “Even you know?!”

The receptionist looked delighted.

Ferran walked past the cafeteria and shouted, “Wrong room, Jay?”

Jay shouted back, “Your downfall approaches.”

Alexia immediately put a hand over Jay’s mouth. “No threatening the men’s team before lunch.”

Jay spoke against her palm. “He started it.”

“I know.”

“You’re meant to defend me.”

“I am defending the schedule.”

Mapi sat opposite them and placed a printed sign on the table.

THIS ONE.

Underneath, an arrow pointed towards a drawing of a women’s locker room door. Beside it was a tiny bench with angry eyebrows.

Jay stared at it.

Then at Mapi.

“You drew the bench angry?”

“It attacked you,” Mapi said solemnly. “I wanted accuracy.”

Ingrid took the paper from her. “No.”

Jay pointed at Ingrid. “Thank you.”

Ingrid folded the paper neatly and put it in her pocket. “I am keeping it for later.”

“Betrayal.”

Lucy arrived with her tray and sat down. “How’s Wrong Boobs Jones feeling?”

Jay dropped her forehead to the table.

Alexia rubbed her back, still smiling. “Poor bebé.”

“You are all enjoying this too much,” Jay said into the table.

“Yes,” said everyone.

Even Alexia.

Jay lifted her head slowly. “Baby.”

Alexia blinked innocently. “What?”

“You said yes.”

“I am honest.”

“You are my girlfriend.”

“Yes.”

“Lie for me.”

Alexia leaned in and kissed Jay’s cheek. “I love you.”

Jay softened immediately, because she was embarrassingly easy when Alexia kissed her. “That was manipulative.”

“Sí.”

“Do it again.”

Alexia kissed her jaw this time, quick but affectionate, and Jay closed her eyes for half a second.

Pina pointed at them with a fork. “Girlfriend based reset.”

Jay opened her eyes. “Do not make it a phrase.”

“It is already a phrase,” Patri said.

“I hate this club.”

“You love this club,” Alexia said.

“I love you. The club is on probation.”

By the end of the day, Jay had been called Wrong Boobs Jones by six teammates, two men’s team players, one physio, someone from media, and Eli Putellas, who sent a message that made Jay scream in the passenger seat of Alexia’s car.

Eli: Amor, I will move the mistletoe away from locker rooms.

Jay stared at the screen.

Alexia glanced over. “What?”

“Your mother knows.”

Alexia tried very hard not to smile.

Jay turned slowly. “You told her?”

“She asked why you stopped replying.”

“So you told her I walked into the men’s locker room and said wrong boobs?”

“I said you had a difficult day.”

Jay held up her phone. “She said locker rooms.”

Alexia’s mouth twitched. “Alba told her the rest.”

“ALBA KNOWS?”

“Everyone knows.”

“I can’t go to Christmas.”

“You have to. The mistletoe was your idea.”

Jay faced forward, horrified. “This is how I die.”

“You will not die.”

“I’ll arrive and Alba will say wrong boobs before starters.”

“She might.”

“Alexia.”

“What? I am Spanish, not delusional.”

Jay made a strangled sound and looked out of the window. “I’m moving to Portugal.”

“You said Antarctica earlier.”

“I’m weighing options.”

“You hate being cold.”

“I also hate being known facility wide as an accidental men’s locker room tourist.”

Alexia reached across the console and took Jay’s hand. “You are not a tourist. You were texting my mother.”

“That sounds worse.”

“It is funny.”

“It is not funny.”

Alexia lifted Jay’s hand and kissed her knuckles. “It is very funny.”

Jay tried not to smile.

Failed.

“At least you love me,” she muttered.

Alexia squeezed her hand. “Even when you say wrong boobs.”

“Especially?”

Alexia glanced at her. “Maybe.”

“Evil.”

“Sí.”

At home, Jay walked directly into the bedroom.

No detours. No water. No snacks. No dramatic collapse onto the sofa. She kicked off her shoes by the door, pointed at the hallway like it had personally disappointed her, and went straight to the bedroom with the determined energy of a woman entering witness protection.

“This is where I recover,” she announced.

Alexia followed behind her, shutting the bedroom door. “You have said this already.”

“And I mean it more now. No phones. No benches. No Ferran. No group chats. No men. No voice notes. No angry furniture.”

Alexia leaned against the closed door, arms folded, mouth curved. “You forgot no mistletoe.”

Jay turned sharply. “Too soon.”

Alexia laughed softly.

Jay pointed at her. “Don’t laugh. I have suffered.”

“You have.”

“I was attacked by architecture.”

“You were attacked by a bench.”

“Architecture.”

“You walked backwards.”

“Victim blaming.”

Alexia’s smile widened, but her eyes softened too. She crossed the room slowly, the humour changing into something warmer as she reached Jay. Her hands settled at Jay’s waist, thumbs slipping beneath the hem of her T shirt, just touching skin. Jay’s breathing changed immediately, which Alexia noticed because Alexia noticed everything.

“Still embarrassed?” Alexia asked.

“Yes.”

“Still traumatised?”

“Deeply.”

“By wrong boobs?”

Jay’s eyes narrowed. “By wrong rooms.”

“But also wrong boobs.”

Jay exhaled through her nose. “I did say it, yes.”

“And corrected it?”

“Immediately.”

Alexia nodded seriously. “Very brave.”

“Don’t patronise me when your hands are under my shirt.”

Alexia looked down at her own hands as if surprised to find them there. “Ah.”

Jay swallowed. “Yeah. Ah.”

Alexia stepped back.

Jay’s face fell. “Wait, no, don’t step back. I was not objecting.”

“I know.”

Alexia’s fingers went to the hem of her own training top.

Jay stopped breathing.

“Ale.”

“What?” Alexia asked, voice calm, accent thicker now, because she knew exactly what she was doing and enjoyed being cruel in beautiful ways.

Jay stopped talking the second Alexia’s top hit the floor.

For a woman who had managed to publicly survive walking into the wrong locker room, saying wrong boobs to the men’s team, correcting herself with the wrong room far too late, falling over a bench, threatening Ferran, and explaining visual trauma to an entire squad, silence should have been medically impossible.

And yet there she was.

Silent.

Frozen.

Eyes wide.

Alexia stood in front of her, bare from the waist up, hair slightly mussed from pulling the shirt over her head, cheeks still warm from laughing all afternoon. She looked beautiful and smug and far too pleased with herself for someone who had spent the last eight hours pretending to be a supportive girlfriend while absolutely enjoying Jay’s downfall.

Jay swallowed.

Alexia lifted one brow. “Recovered?”

Jay opened her mouth.

Nothing came out.

Alexia’s smile deepened. “Ah. Finally.”

Jay pointed at her, finger slightly unsteady. “Do not mock the patient during treatment.”

“The patient is staring.”

“The patient is clinically assessing.”

“You look like you forgot your own name.”

“I know my name.”

“What is it?”

Jay paused.

Alexia’s mouth twitched.

Jay narrowed her eyes. “That was a trap.”

“It worked.”

“I’ve had a traumatic day, Ale.”

“You said wrong boobs.”

“And corrected it.”

“You fell over a bench.”

“It attacked me.”

“You asked to see mine in front of the whole team.”

Jay’s ears went pink. “That was medical.”

Alexia stepped closer, slow and deliberate. “Medical?”

“Visual palate cleansing.”

“Sí?”

Jay’s eyes dropped for half a second before she forced them back to Alexia’s face. “Very serious condition.”

Alexia reached for Jay’s wrists.

Jay went still again.

The humour shifted. Not away completely, because nothing between them ever lost humour entirely, but lower, warmer, closer to something that made the room feel smaller. Alexia’s fingers wrapped around Jay’s wrists, thumbs pressing gently over her pulse. Jay’s pulse, traitor that it was, gave her away immediately.

Alexia looked down. “Your heart is very fast.”

“I am enthusiastic about healthcare.”

“You are impossible.”

“Also injured.”

“You are not injured.”

“Emotionally concussed.”

Alexia laughed softly, but her eyes had darkened now, the amusement threaded with something that made Jay’s mouth go dry. She pulled Jay’s hands forward, not to her waist this time, not to her hips, not somewhere safe enough for joking to survive.

She placed Jay’s hands on her chest.

Jay’s breath left her.

All at once.

Alexia watched her face as Jay’s palms settled against her, broad and warm and suddenly very careful. The joking fell out of Jay’s expression. So did the embarrassment. What remained was something softer and hungrier, a reverence that made Alexia’s own breath catch because Jay could be filthy, yes, and funny, and all dangerous grin and ridiculous confidence, but when she touched Alexia like this she always looked a little awed.

As if she still could not quite believe she was allowed.

Alexia’s cheeks flushed deeper.

Jay noticed.

Of course Jay noticed.

“Baby,” Jay murmured, voice lower now.

Alexia’s fingers tightened over her wrists. “You said you needed recovery.”

Jay’s thumbs moved once, slow and careful.

Alexia’s eyes fluttered before she could stop them.

Jay saw that too.

“Oh,” Jay said softly.

Alexia opened her eyes. “Do not sound so pleased.”

“I’m not pleased.”

“You are very pleased.”

“I’m deeply medically reassured.”

Alexia huffed a laugh, but it caught in her throat when Jay’s hands moved again, still gentle, still controlled, but with more certainty now. Jay stepped closer until Alexia had to tilt her head back to keep looking at her.

“All day,” Jay said, “everyone laughed at me.”

“You were funny.”

“I suffered.”

“You were ridiculous.”

“I needed you.”

Alexia’s expression softened.

Jay’s hands stilled for a moment, not because she wanted to stop, but because the words had come out more honestly than the joke around them. Alexia saw it at once. She always did. Her grip on Jay’s wrists loosened, sliding instead up her forearms, then to her shoulders, then around her neck.

“I know,” Alexia said quietly.

Jay swallowed. “Yeah?”

“Sí.” Alexia leaned closer, lips brushing Jay’s jaw. “And I am here.”

Jay’s eyes closed for half a second.

Then Alexia kissed her.

That was when the day finally ended.

Not officially. Their phones still existed somewhere. The group chats were probably still committing crimes. Mapi was almost certainly sending messages in all caps. Ferran might have been designing a shirt. Somewhere in Barcelona, Pedri’s voice note was being replayed by people who should have had better things to do.

But for Jay, the day ended when Alexia kissed her with both hands in her hair and her body warm under Jay’s palms.

The wrong room vanished.

The wrong word vanished.

The bench vanished.

Every laugh, every shout, every awful nickname blurred into nothing under the heat of Alexia’s mouth.

Jay kissed her back slowly at first, then deeper, one hand sliding with careful confidence while the other held her close. Alexia made a soft sound against her mouth and Jay’s entire body went still for half a beat, like she had just been handed proof that recovery was not only possible but actively underway.

Alexia pulled back just enough to breathe. “Better?”

Jay’s eyes were dark now. “My eyes are healing.”

Alexia’s mouth curved. “Only your eyes?”

Jay shook her head once.

“No,” she said. “Not only my eyes.”

Alexia’s breath caught.

Jay lowered her head, kissing Alexia’s throat, then her collarbone, then lower with slow, deliberate care. Alexia’s hand slid into Jay’s hair, fingers tightening there, her eyes closing as the last of her laughter dissolved into something breathless and warm.

“Jay,” she whispered.

Jay looked up at her for one second, all devotion and mischief and terrible, beautiful confidence.

“Still the correct room?” she murmured.

Alexia laughed once, helpless and soft, then pulled her closer by the hair.

“Correct room,” she said, voice thick with Spanish warmth. “Correct woman. Now stop talking.”

Jay smiled against her skin.

“Yes, captain.”

With Jay Jones, Clara had learned to distrust peace on principle.

Jay did not do serene. She did not drift gently into balance. She charged into temporary wellness like a bull through a patio door and then acted surprised when everyone noticed the glass. Her happiness usually had symptoms. Better posture. Fewer jokes with knives underneath. More eye contact. Less self sabotage disguised as humour. A strange softness at the edges of her mouth when she thought no one was looking.

Lately, Jay had been dangerously soft.

Not stable soft, Clara thought. Not quiet progress. Not the earned kind of peace that came from six months of consistent work, routine, medication, sleep, food and all the boring human foundations Jay treated as optional side quests.

No.

This was sex soft.

Possibly feelings soft.

Which, given Jay's history, was far more suspicious.

"She's happy," Clara said, sitting opposite Julia in a café two streets from the club offices, hands wrapped around a coffee she had not touched because she was too busy being concerned.

Julia Esteve looked up from her phone with the expression of a woman who had been trying to schedule a meeting with a hurricane. "I know."

"No, I mean suspiciously happy."

"You keep saying that like it is a medical diagnosis."

"With Jay, it is practically a weather alert."

Julia leaned back in her chair, dark hair tucked behind one ear, phone screen still lit with unanswered messages. She looked tired in the way agents looked tired when a client had decided calendars were philosophical rather than binding. Julia loved Jay.

She would deny it in legal language if pressed, but she did. She had fought for her, defended her, cleaned up after her, told presidents and coaches and sponsors to be less stupid about her. She had watched Jay blow through clubs and countries and press rooms with that grin, all charm and damage and talent so bright it made people forgive the paperwork.

Jay being difficult was normal.

Jay being unreachable was not new.

Jay being unreachable and happy was a new administrative category.

"She missed another meeting," Julia said.

Clara's eyebrows lifted. "Again?"

"Again."

"Did she forget?"

"She sent me a voice note twenty minutes after it was supposed to start saying, and I quote, 'Jules, I'm so sorry, I got trapped in a situation.'"

Clara stared.

Julia tapped her phone and played the voice note.

Jay's voice burst through the speaker, breathless, bright, and very clearly not alone. "Jules, I'm so sorry, I got trapped in a situation. Not a bad situation. Good situation. Time moved weird. I'll call you in ten."

In the background, a woman laughed.

Not loud. Not clear enough to identify. Just a warm, soft, helpless little laugh that made Jay's voice immediately change.

"Stop it," Jay said away from the phone, smiling so hard Clara could hear it. "I'm apologising professionally."

The voice note ended.

Julia put the phone down.

Clara stared at it for a moment. "She did not call you in ten."

"She called me in two hours."

"And?"

Julia swiped, found the call log, and set the phone down again like evidence. "Forty seven seconds. She sounded like she had run a marathon and then tried to convince me she was 'reviewing documents'."

"Was she reviewing documents?"

Julia gave her a flat look.

Clara nodded. "No."

"There was someone giggling in the background again."

"Same voice?"

"I think so. But Jay has a type."

Clara's mouth twitched. "Women?"

"Beautiful women who laugh at her before realising that encouraging her is how buildings catch fire."

"That is specific."

"That is Jay."

Clara finally took a sip of coffee. It had gone cold, which felt appropriate. "It is not unusual for her."

"No."

"Jay has never been a nun."

"No one has ever accused Jay of nun behaviour."

"She has flings. She disappears for a weekend. She makes terrible choices with excellent cheekbones. This is not new."

Julia nodded slowly, but her eyes stayed on the phone. "This is different."

Clara did not answer immediately.

Because it was. That was the thing neither of them had wanted to say too early, in case naming it made it real.

Jay in therapy had been different for weeks. Not fixed. Clara hated the word fixed. People were not appliances. But lighter, somehow. Still chaotic, still restless, still capable of turning a simple question into stand up comedy if it got too close to the bone, but less armed. Less ready to turn every room into a place she had to survive.

She had arrived at one session with her hoodie inside out and a bite mark on her shoulder that she had insisted was from "fighting a wardrobe", which was not even one of her better lies.

She had spent another session staring at her phone whenever it buzzed, trying and failing not to smile. Clara had said nothing for twelve minutes, because sometimes silence was a better trap than questions. Eventually Jay had looked up and said, "What?"

Clara had said, "Nothing."

Jay had narrowed her eyes. "That was a therapist nothing."

Clara had said, "You seem happy."

Jay had immediately dropped her phone into her own lap and said, "That's invasive."

The phone had buzzed again.

Jay had looked down.

Her face had gone soft.

Utterly, stupidly, dangerously soft.

Clara had seen that face once before, years earlier, but it had passed quickly, because the person attached to it had been wrong for Jay in every way that mattered. This was different. This was not thrill. This was not conquest. This was not Jay enjoying being wanted because wanting was safer than being known.

This was Jay being known.

Or close to it.

Julia's phone buzzed.

Both of them looked.

Another message from Jay.

Jay: I'm so sorry about today. Emergency.

Julia read it aloud.

Then a second message appeared.

Jay: Good emergency.

Then a third.

Jay: Not medical.

Julia stared at the phone.

Clara said, "She is an actual menace."

Julia typed with the precise anger of a woman who had sent too many calendar invites into the void.

Julia: Where are you?

Three dots appeared.

Disappeared.

Appeared again.

Jay: Busy.

Julia closed her eyes.

Clara leaned forward. "Type: with what?"

Julia did.

Julia: With what?

A delay.

Jay: Life.

Julia set the phone down. "I am going to kill her."

"She will dodge."

"She is not home, is she?"

Clara's gaze sharpened. "You checked?"

"I drove past on the way here. Her bike is not outside. Lights off."

"She could be at the gym."

"At this hour?"

Clara glanced at the clock. Four in the afternoon. "Yes."

"Not with that voice note."

"No."

Julia stared out of the café window, jaw working. "I have been trying to get her to sign off on three documents for a week. She has missed two meetings, one sponsor call, one physio admin check, and a sit down with me. She answered my call yesterday and said, 'Sorry, Jules, I'm in the middle of something' while sounding like she was falling down stairs."

"Was she?"

"A woman in the background said, 'Jay, stop talking.'"

Clara's mouth twitched again. "Commanding."

Julia pointed at her. "Do not encourage this."

"I am observing."

"You are enjoying."

"I can enjoy clinically."

"No, you cannot."

Clara put her coffee down. "Julia, I am not discussing session content with you."

"I know."

"But I can tell you what you already know from the outside. Jay is attending therapy. She is more regulated. She is also clearly hiding someone, badly, and her calendar has become a casualty."

Julia nodded. "So we go to her flat."

Clara looked at her.

Julia lifted her eyebrows. "What?"

"That is your solution?"

"She gave me a spare key."

"For emergencies."

"She missed a contract meeting."

"That is not an emergency."

"With Jay, contract meetings are how we prevent emergencies."

Clara considered this.

Annoyingly, it was true.

Jay had given Julia a spare key after locking herself out twice in one week, once wearing full training kit and once wearing only shorts, a sports bra and a towel around her shoulders because she had "stepped outside to check if the rain was real" and the door had shut behind her.

Clara had a spare too because Jay had once forgotten a session, panicked, said she was "on her way" from inside her own flat, then could not find her keys, then cried because she thought Clara would be disappointed. After that, spare keys became less about convenience and more about reducing the number of ways Jay could self sabotage through logistics.

Julia picked up her bag.

Clara sighed. "We are not breaking in."

"We have keys."

"That is not the point."

"We will wait in the living room. If she is dead, useful. If she is not, educational."

"That is a terrible ethical framework."

"It is my agent framework."

Clara stood too.

Julia smiled. "You are coming."

"I am coming to stop you from turning a welfare check into a deposition."

"Excellent. Bring your clinical eyes."

"I hate you."

"No, you don't."

"I do a little."

They found Jay's flat empty.

Not messy empty. Lived in empty. Jay empty.

The kind of empty that told on her.

A hoodie thrown over the back of the sofa. A glass of water on the coffee table, still half full. Trainers by the door, one upright, one lying on its side like it had given up. A stack of unopened post on the kitchen counter. A bowl in the sink with dried cereal cemented to the bottom. Three mugs on the side, which was too many mugs for one person unless that person was Jay, in which case it was either normal or evidence.

Clara stood in the doorway and took it in.

Julia went straight to the kitchen counter.

"Three mugs," Julia said.

"Jay owns more than one mug."

"One has lipstick on it."

Clara slowly turned.

Julia held up the mug by the handle.

There was, faintly but definitely, a mark on the rim.

Clara walked over. "That could be Jay."

"Jay does not wear lipstick."

Clara looked at the mug again.

A soft muted brownish pink.

Elegant.

Definitely not Jay's.

Julia put the mug down with the care of someone setting evidence into an exhibit tray.

From the kitchen, Clara could see other things now.

A second phone charger plugged in near the sofa. Not Jay's. Jay's was black and frayed and had little teeth marks from when she had once tried to hold it in her mouth while carrying groceries. This one was white, neat, looped properly.

A pair of sunglasses on the bookshelf. Expensive. Not Jay's style. Jay's sunglasses always looked like they might be worn by someone illegally driving a motorbike through a music video. These were classic, tasteful, sharp.

On the counter, beside the unopened post, was a tiny paper bag from a bakery Jay did not usually go to because she had once said it made her feel "too underdressed for croissants".

Inside were crumbs.

Two pastries, maybe.

Clara looked at Julia.

Julia looked back.

"Different," Clara said.

Julia nodded. "Different."

They sat in the living room.

They waited.

The first ten minutes were professionally justified.

The next twenty were nosiness.

By the forty minute mark, Julia had found the unsigned documents in a pile under a magazine and was muttering to herself in Spanish while Clara pretended not to inspect the room for behavioural patterns.

Jay's flat had changed subtly. Not dramatically. Not moved in changed. There were no shoes under the bed that did not belong to her, no obvious drawer taken over by someone else. But there were signs of another rhythm brushing against Jay's. A blanket folded properly on the sofa rather than thrown. A bottle of sparkling water in the fridge that Jay would never buy herself because she said "water should not attack". A small container of cut fruit on the second shelf with a sticky note on it.

Clara opened the fridge and read it.

Eat this. Not just coffee.

No name.

But the handwriting was neat, controlled, slanted in a way that made Clara raise an eyebrow.

Julia appeared behind her. "What?"

Clara showed her.

Julia's expression shifted.

"That," Julia said slowly, "is not fling handwriting."

"No?"

"That is sophisticated handwriting."

Clara closed the fridge.

"Sophisticated?"

Julia waved a hand. "You know what I mean. Organised. Bossy. Caring in a threatening way."

"Jay would be into that."

"Jay would be catastrophically into that."

They both went quiet.

Then Clara looked towards the bedroom hallway.

Julia followed her gaze.

"No," Clara said.

"I was not going to."

"You were absolutely thinking about it."

"I am an agent. Details matter."

"You do not need bedroom details."

"I said nothing."

"Your face went to court."

Julia held up her hands. "Fine."

They returned to the sofa.

At exactly one hour and seven minutes after they had let themselves in, the lift doors opened in the hallway outside.

Clara heard laughter first.

Low. Warm. Female.

Then Jay's voice.

"Stop laughing, I'm serious."

The other voice answered, quieter, Spanish accented, amused. "You are never serious."

"I am constantly serious. People know this about me."

The key hit the lock.

Missed.

Hit it again.

Julia sat up.

Clara's eyes widened.

Outside, Jay muttered, "Door's moving."

"The door is not moving."

"It is emotionally evasive."

The second woman laughed again.

The key finally turned.

The door crashed open with the kind of force that suggested Jay had forgotten doors could be opened gently if one was not currently walking backwards while kissing someone.

Jay came through first.

Technically.

Though "came through" implied more coordination than was present.

She was walking the other woman backwards into the flat with one hand at her waist and the other against the doorframe, mouth on hers, laughing into the kiss, completely oblivious to the fact two women were sitting on her sofa like judgement had developed legs. Her hair was a mess. Her jacket was half off one shoulder. Her shirt was already being dragged up with the kind of enthusiasm that suggested the lift ride had been barely survived.

The woman in front of her had both hands in Jay's hair.

Tall. Brown hair. Black coat. Controlled even while being walked backwards. Laughing against Jay's mouth like she had lost an argument and enjoyed it.

Jay kicked the door shut behind them without looking.

It did not shut.

It hit the wall and bounced.

Jay did not notice.

She was already pulling her own top off.

Julia stared.

Clara stared.

Jay's shirt got to her ribs.

Julia said, with deep feeling, "Dios mío."

Jay froze.

Not a small freeze.

A full body statue.

Her shirt was stuck halfway over her head, arms trapped above her, abs exposed, face partly hidden by cotton. For one glorious second she looked less like a world class striker and more like a confused laundry incident.

The woman in front of her went still too.

Jay slowly tugged the shirt back down enough to see.

Her eyes landed on Julia.

Then Clara.

Then Julia again.

"Jules," she said.

Julia folded her arms. "Jay."

Jay looked down at her own state.

Then at the woman in front of her.

Then back at Julia.

"I can explain."

Clara, who had recovered enough to enjoy herself, leaned back into the sofa. "Please do."

Jay opened her mouth.

Nothing came out.

The other woman turned.

And there, in Jay's hallway, hair slightly mussed from Jay's hands, mouth faintly swollen from kissing, eyes wide with the kind of horror only a very controlled person could feel when discovered mid not at all controlled, stood Alexia Putellas.

Julia's eyebrows shot up.

"Alexia?"

Alexia blinked.

Then, because she was Alexia, because she had captained club and country, because she had faced world finals and hostile crowds and apparently now two extremely invested Catalan women in her not quite girlfriend's living room, she straightened her coat with absolute dignity.

"Hola," she said.

Jay closed her eyes.

Clara's grin spread slowly across her face. "This explains a lot."

Nobody moved.

The air in the flat seemed to thicken with all the information arriving at once.

Julia looked from Alexia to Jay's half removed shirt.

Then to Alexia's hand still resting on Jay's waist.

Then back to Jay.

Jay smiled weakly. "Surprise?"

Julia stared at her. "You missed a contract meeting."

Jay nodded. "Yes."

"To do this?"

Jay looked at Alexia.

Alexia looked at Jay.

Both of them tried very hard not to smile.

Julia pointed between them. "Do not look at each other like that when I am angry."

Jay immediately looked at the floor.

Alexia looked at the wall.

Clara was delighted. "Oh, this is much worse than a fling."

Jay's head snapped up. "It's not worse."

"I mean more significant."

"That word is also loud."

Julia stood. "How long?"

Jay scratched the back of her neck. "Define long."

"Jay."

"A month."

Julia closed her eyes.

Clara's mouth dropped open. "A month?"

Alexia's face went pink.

Jay pointed at Clara. "Not every day."

Julia opened one eye.

Jay reconsidered. "Most days."

Alexia made a tiny sound that might have been a laugh dying of embarrassment.

Clara put a hand over her mouth. "Oh, Jay."

"What? I'm being honest."

Julia looked at Alexia. "You knew about the meetings?"

Alexia's eyes widened. "No."

Jay immediately stepped forward. "No, no, she did not. That was me. Fully me. I am the admin criminal."

"Admin criminal," Clara repeated.

"It's a category."

Julia's stare could have frozen soup. "You missed a sponsor call."

"I know."

"You missed a contract review."

"I know."

"You told me you were trapped in a situation."

Jay glanced at Alexia again.

Alexia turned even redder.

Jay looked back at Julia. "Technically accurate."

Julia pointed at her. "Do not technically accurate me while your shirt is still half inside out."

Jay looked down.

Her shirt was, in fact, half inside out now from the aborted removal.

"Right," Jay said. "This is undermining my credibility."

"You have none."

"That feels harsh."

"You were about to take your shirt off in front of your agent and therapist."

"I didn't know you were here."

"That does not improve the situation."

Clara lifted a finger. "For clarity, I am not here as therapist right now. I am here as concerned person with a spare key who has been dragged into fieldwork."

Jay stared at her. "Fieldwork?"

"Yes."

"Am I the field?"

"You are always the field."

Alexia pressed her lips together.

Jay saw it immediately. "Baby, don't laugh."

Julia's head turned sharply.

"Baby?"

Jay froze again.

Alexia closed her eyes.

Clara made a small triumphant noise. "Oh, this is excellent."

Jay pointed at herself. "Slip."

"Of tongue?" Julia asked.

"Yes."

"Only tongue involved?"

"Jules."

Julia held up a hand. "I am allowed one."

"You are my agent."

"You missed meetings because you were making out with Alexia Putellas in lifts."

Jay paused. "We were not making out in the lift."

Alexia looked at her.

Jay's confidence faltered.

"We were having a private disagreement about patience."

Alexia said quietly, "You lost."

Jay's mouth twitched. "I did."

Clara leaned over to Julia. "Did you hear that tone?"

Julia nodded. "I heard."

Jay turned on them both. "You are not tone analysing us."

"We are absolutely tone analysing you," Clara said.

Alexia finally stepped away from Jay by one careful inch, though her hand stayed near Jay's wrist like she had forgotten to fully let go. "Lo siento. I thought Jay told you."

Julia looked at Jay.

Jay looked at the ceiling.

"Jay," Julia said.

Jay sighed. "I was going to."

"When?"

Jay considered this with visible sincerity, which was always a mistake. "When it became less new." Clara's face softened for half a second.

Julia's did too, but she hid it faster.

Alexia looked at Jay.

Jay looked back.

There it was.

The difference.

It was not the sex. Julia and Clara had both known Jay through enough of her life to know when she was using attention as a distraction, when she was chasing someone because being wanted made the silence smaller for a night. Jay after those nights was usually funny but untouched, glittering but separate. She would joke, deflect, make outrageous comments, and keep the person at the edges of her actual life.

But this?

This was Jay glancing at Alexia before answering, not for permission, but because Alexia had become part of the truth. This was Jay's body angling towards her even while she was being scolded. This was Alexia, controlled and embarrassed and still standing close enough to touch. This was not a fling crashing through a door. This was a secret becoming visible because neither of them had been careful enough to hide how much they wanted to come home together.

Clara saw it.

Julia saw it.

Jay realised they saw it and panicked.

"Okay," Jay said, clapping once. "Everyone is clothed enough. Great. Let's reset."

"You are barely clothed enough," Julia said.

"I have a shirt."

"It is half inside out."

"Still legally a shirt."

Clara stood, smiling. "Alexia, would you like water?"

Alexia blinked. "Ah. Yes, gracias."

Jay pointed at Clara. "Why is she getting hospitality? I live here."

Clara looked at her. "Because she appears to be the reason you are finally sleeping properly and attending therapy in a good mood."

Jay's face went hot. "Clara."

Alexia turned to her. "You are attending therapy in good mood?"

Jay looked horrified. "Don't make that sound adorable."

"It is adorable."

"It is clinical betrayal."

Clara walked to the kitchen. "It is observational."

Julia remained standing in the living room with her arms folded. "Sit."

Jay blinked. "Me?"

"Yes."

"In my own flat?"

"Yes."

Jay looked at Alexia. "This is hostile."

Alexia, traitorously, said, "Sit, bebé."

Jay sat.

Immediately.

Julia stared.

Clara, from the kitchen, poked her head round the corner. "Interesting."

Jay pointed at Alexia. "That was unfair. She used the voice."

"What voice?" Julia asked.

"No voice," Alexia said quickly.

Jay slumped back into the sofa, shirt still wrong, hair wrecked, cheeks pink. "This is becoming legally unsafe."

Alexia sat beside her with more dignity, though not as much as she probably wanted. Her coat was still on. Her hair was not quite neat. Her mouth looked like evidence. She folded her hands in her lap, then seemed to realise that looked too formal and reached for the glass Clara handed her.

"Thank you," Alexia said.

Clara smiled. "Of course."

Julia looked between them. "So. A month."

Jay nodded cautiously. "Yes."

"Sleeping together."

Jay winced. "Must we phrase it like a witness statement?"

Julia did not blink.

Jay sighed. "Yes."

Alexia lifted the glass to her mouth and drank with the expression of a woman hoping water could become invisibility.

Clara sat back down. "And that started when?"

Jay stared at her.

Clara lifted both hands. "Not as therapist. As a person who wants to know how long we have been missing obvious signs."

Jay looked at Alexia.

Alexia looked back.

There was a beat.

Then they both smiled.

Small at first. Then bigger.

Julia groaned. "Oh, this is disgusting."

Jay turned to her, offended. "Love is not disgusting."

"I did not say love."

Jay's mouth opened.

Closed.

Alexia went very still beside her.

Clara's eyebrows rose.

Julia's expression sharpened with immediate interest.

Jay looked like she had stepped on a landmine and recognised it only after hearing the click.

"I also did not say love," she said carefully.

"No," Julia said. "You just corrected me with it."

Jay looked at the floor. "Language is slippery."

Clara leaned back, delighted. "Jay."

"No."

"You are in love."

Jay looked up, startled. "I didn't say that."

"You did not have to."

Alexia's hand moved.

Just slightly.

Jay felt it beside her and, without looking, reached for it.

Their fingers touched.

Then linked.

Everyone saw.

Jay realised everyone saw and decided dignity was dead anyway.

She held on.

Alexia looked down at their hands, then up at Julia and Clara with that composed, brave expression she wore when she had decided not to hide from something.

"It is new," Alexia said.

Jay's face softened immediately.

Julia looked at Alexia for a long moment.

Then at Jay.

Her expression changed, not into approval exactly, but something warmer and far more dangerous because Julia's affection always arrived wearing armour.

"Does she know about your calendar?" Julia asked Alexia.

Jay made a betrayed sound. "Jules."

Alexia's eyes flicked to Jay. "I know she forgets things."

Julia laughed once. "No. She does not forget things. She creates a second reality where appointments become suggestions."

Jay muttered, "Poetic."

"She has missed four."

Alexia turned to Jay. "Four?"

Jay looked wounded. "Why did you say it like that?"

"Because four is many."

"Not globally."

"Jay."

Jay sank lower into the sofa. "This is why I didn't tell you. You're all going to form a calendar alliance."

Clara smiled. "We should absolutely form a calendar alliance."

Alexia looked thoughtful. "Could be useful."

Jay sat up. "No. No, absolutely not. I will not be romantically managed through shared scheduling."

Julia pulled out her phone. "Too late."

Jay stared. "You're creating it now?"

"I already had one. I am adding Alexia."

"Jules!"

Alexia looked amused. "There is calendar?"

"There are three," Julia said.

Jay looked at Clara. "Help me."

Clara shook her head. "I once waited thirty minutes outside your flat while you texted me from inside saying you were 'almost there'."

"I was spiritually almost there."

"You were in the shower."

"I'd forgotten water makes time strange."

Alexia laughed.

Jay pointed at her. "Do not laugh with them. We were united five minutes ago when we were getting ambushed."

Alexia's eyes softened. "We were not united. You were removing shirt."

"In unity."

Julia made a strangled sound. "Please never say that again."

They all laughed then.

Even Julia.

The tension loosened properly, breaking into something familiar but changed. The four of them sat in Jay's living room, surrounded by mugs and evidence and the unmistakable aftermath of being caught by people who loved Jay enough to invade her privacy with a spare key and then judge her furniture arrangement.

Clara watched Alexia while Julia asked practical questions.

Not therapist watching. Not exactly. But Clara could not turn off the part of her that noticed how people cared.

Alexia answered calmly, even through embarrassment. Yes, she knew Jay could become distracted. No, she had not realised appointments had been missed. Yes, she cared about Jay's routine. No, she was not trying to take over. Yes, she understood Jay needed space, structure, food, rest, honesty. She spoke like someone who had already learned Jay in details rather than headlines.

Jay, for her part, looked increasingly overwhelmed by being known in stereo.

Julia knew her admin disasters.

Clara knew her emotional escape routes.

Alexia, apparently, knew the exact pressure of her hand when she was anxious because her thumb started moving over Jay's knuckles under the conversation and Jay gradually stopped trying to make jokes every three seconds.

Julia noticed.

Of course she did.

"So," Julia said, setting her phone down. "Is this secret?"

Jay looked at Alexia.

Alexia looked at Jay.

That answer was not simple yet.

They were not public. Not really. Not hidden either, apparently, not if they were crashing through doors half dressed and kissing like sense had failed them. But there was a difference between private and secret, and Jay was terrified of choosing the wrong one.

Alexia squeezed her hand.

"Private," Alexia said.

Jay breathed out.

"Private," she repeated.

Clara nodded.

Julia leaned back. "Good. Then private means you tell the people who manage your life enough that they can stop thinking you've been abducted by a very enthusiastic stranger."

Jay grimaced. "Fair."

"And private does not mean ignoring documents."

"Also fair."

"And if you are going to miss a meeting because you are with Alexia Putellas, you do not send me a voice note saying you are trapped in a situation."

Jay's mouth twitched. "What should I say?"

Julia stared at her.

Jay nodded. "Right. Nothing. I should not miss meetings."

"Correct."

Clara smiled. "Growth."

Jay looked at her. "Do not therapy me in my own living room."

"I am not. I am mocking you with professional vocabulary."

Alexia turned to Jay, voice soft but firm. "You should not miss meetings."

Jay stared at her.

Then sighed with her whole body. "This is the calendar alliance beginning."

"Yes," Alexia said.

"You're on their side?"

"I am on your side."

"That sounds suspiciously like their side."

"It is the side where you sign documents and eat lunch."

Jay looked at Julia. "You see? Caring in a threatening way. I knew it."

Julia lifted her eyebrows. "You chose her."

Jay looked at Alexia.

Alexia's smile was small, warm, a little embarrassed.

Jay's whole face softened.

"Yeah," she said quietly. "I did."

The room went briefly silent again.

Then Clara ruined it because she was kind, but not merciful.

"You are going to be unbearable."

Jay snapped back to her. "I'm already unbearable."

"Yes, but now you are unbearable and happy. It is a much louder condition."

Alexia laughed into her glass.

Jay grinned at her, because if Alexia laughed, the whole room became worth surviving.

Julia stood. "We are leaving."

Jay blinked. "Already?"

"You want us to stay?"

Jay looked at Alexia.

Alexia looked at her.

Julia made a face. "Do not answer."

Clara stood too, picking up her bag. "I am glad you are alive."

Jay smiled. "Mostly."

"And happy."

Jay's smile grew quieter. "Yeah."

Clara's expression softened. "Good."

Julia pointed at Jay. "Meeting tomorrow. Eleven. In person."

Jay groaned. "Jules."

"In person."

"I have training."

"After training."

"I may be tired."

"You may be alive because Alexia wakes you up."

Alexia coughed on her water.

Jay's mouth fell open. "Julia."

Julia smiled sweetly. "I meant for the meeting."

"No, you didn't."

"No, I didn't."

Clara laughed as she moved towards the door. "Alexia, it was nice to officially discover you."

Alexia stood as well, polite even now. "You too."

Julia paused by the hallway and looked back at Jay. "You should have told me."

Jay's grin faded. "I know."

Julia held her gaze, then nodded once. "But I understand why you didn't."

Jay swallowed.

Julia added, "Next time, tell me before your shirt is above your ribs."

Jay immediately groaned. "Can we stop referencing my shirt?"

"No," Clara said. "It was an important witness."

Alexia's mouth twitched.

Jay pointed at her. "You are enjoying this too much."

"Sí."

Julia opened the door.

Then stopped.

She looked at Alexia, then Jay, then their joined hands.

"Also," Julia said, "if either of you make my job harder, I will put both of you in a room with Clara and a shared calendar."

Clara lifted a finger. "That is not how therapy works."

"It is how consequences work."

Jay looked horrified. "Shared calendar therapy?"

Alexia whispered, "Could be useful."

Jay turned to her. "You are supposed to be sexy, not administrative."

Alexia raised one eyebrow.

Jay's expression changed immediately.

"Sorry," she said.

Julia stared. "That is terrifying."

Clara smiled. "Fascinating."

Alexia looked pleased with herself.

Jay muttered, "Voice. Again."

Julia and Clara left at last, the door clicking shut behind them.

For a moment, the flat was quiet.

Jay stood in the middle of the living room, still in the inside out shirt, hair wrecked, cheeks flushed, looking like a woman who had survived a police raid conducted by loved ones.

Alexia leaned back against the sofa arm, arms folded, eyes bright.

Jay looked at her. "Well."

Alexia's mouth curved. "Well."

"That happened."

"Sí."

"Your dignity held up better than mine."

"You were taking your shirt off."

"In my home."

"With the door open."

"It bounced."

"You kicked it."

"It resisted."

Alexia laughed.

Jay watched her for a second, then walked over and stopped between her knees, hands resting carefully on the sofa either side of her.

"You okay?" Jay asked, softer.

Alexia's expression warmed at once. "Yes."

"Embarrassed?"

"Very."

"Angry?"

"No."

"Regretful?"

Alexia looked at her like she had asked something stupid.

"No."

Jay's shoulders loosened.

Alexia reached for the hem of Jay's shirt and tugged it lightly. "Inside out."

Jay looked down. "Yeah, I lost a fight."

"With your own clothes."

"You distracted me."

"I was standing."

"You were giggling Spanishly."

Alexia tilted her head. "Spanishly?"

"Yes. Dangerous. Warm. No respect for my nervous system."

Alexia's smile deepened. "You are ridiculous."

"And yet you were kissing me in a hallway."

"Yes," Alexia said softly. "I was."

Jay went quiet.

The humour did not leave her face completely, but it gentled. The whole ridiculous scene, the spare keys, the voice notes, the missed meetings, Julia's horror, Clara's grin, all of it settled around something simple.

They had been found out.

Not by the world.

Not by cameras.

By people who knew Jay's patterns well enough to see when one had changed.

Jay touched Alexia's wrist. "I'll do better with the meetings."

"I know."

"No, I mean it."

"I know."

"I wasn't trying to hide you like that."

Alexia's eyes softened. "I know, amor."

Jay breathed in.

Then smiled faintly. "They're going to be awful about this forever."

"Yes."

"Julia's going to create three calendars."

"Probably."

"Clara's going to call this an emotional event."

"It is."

"Mapi can never know."

Alexia stared at her.

Jay stared back.

Then both of them started laughing, because Mapi was absolutely going to know. Somehow. Eventually. Perhaps through scent. Perhaps through the natural migration of gossip. Perhaps because Julia would mention "calendar alliance" in front of the wrong person and the entire club would turn into a court hearing.

Jay leaned closer, forehead nearly touching Alexia's.

"We had a good month," she said solemnly.

Alexia's hands slid to Jay's waist. "Private month."

"Secretly excellent."

"Administratively terrible."

Jay nodded. "Romance has costs."

"You will sign documents tomorrow."

"Yes, baby."

"And go to your meeting."

"Yes."

"And answer Julia."

"Yes."

"And stop saying you are trapped in situations."

Jay grinned. "What if I am?"

Alexia's eyes dropped briefly to her mouth, then lifted again with dangerous calm.

"Then you say you are unavailable."

Jay swallowed.

"Right."

"And now," Alexia said, fingers curling into the fabric of Jay's inside out shirt, "take this off properly."

Jay froze.

Then looked towards the front door.

Then back at Alexia.

"Do you think they're still outside?"

Alexia laughed. "No."

"With Julia, you never know."

"Jay."

Jay's grin returned, bright and helpless and entirely hers.

"Yes, La Reina?"

Alexia tugged her closer.

"Stop talking."

Jay smiled against her mouth. "Best instruction I've had all day."

And this time, when Jay's shirt came off, no one said dios mío from the sofa.

This was sharper than that. More dangerous. It came with images she had not ordered and did not know how to return. Alexia barefoot in their kitchen with a child on her hip. Tiny football boots by the door. A small hand wrapped around Jay’s thumb. Someone calling her Mama with complete trust, as if Jay Jones was a place you could run to and not a place you had to survive.

That last part was what scared her.

Not nappies. Not screaming. Not the logistics of IVF, sperm donors, hormones, clinics, schedules, legal documents, parental rights, birth plans, night feeds, tiny socks that looked too small to be real and therefore emotionally manipulative. Jay could make a plan. Jay could over plan. Jay could turn becoming a mother into a colour coded operation with folders, tabs, emergency snacks and a level of intensity that would make Clara take her glasses off and stare for a long, professional second.

But the trust terrified her.

Children trusted because they did not know better yet. Jay knew that better than most. She knew how small a child could feel in a hallway that smelled of old carpet and boiled vegetables, listening for footsteps that might be kind or might be tired or might be angry.

She knew how quickly a child learned the weather in other people’s bodies. The slam of a cupboard. The pause before a voice answered. The difference between silence that meant peace and silence that meant danger. She knew what it was to grow up collecting rules nobody had written down, rules about being easy, being useful, being funny at the right time, being invisible at the better time. She had spent years becoming impossible to abandon by pretending she did not need anyone to stay.

And then Alexia had stayed.

Alexia had stayed with all the quiet stubbornness of a woman who had captained dressing rooms, won finals, carried countries and still somehow found the patience to sit on the bathroom floor with Jay when Jay’s nervous system decided a dropped plate was the end of the world. Alexia stayed when Jay was charming.

She stayed when Jay was difficult. She stayed when Jay was loud, silent, restless, needy, funny, unbearable, brilliant, scared. She stayed like it was the most obvious thing in the world, as if love was not something you earned by behaving properly but something that lived in the room with you and kept breathing even when you messed up.

That was also what scared Jay.

Because if Alexia wanted children, Jay wanted to say yes so badly it made her chest hurt. She wanted the life that came after the yes. She wanted their mornings torn apart by small chaos. She wanted Alexia Spanish and sleepy, hair everywhere, muttering, “Bebé, your daughter is eating the remote,” while Jay replied, “That’s probably sensory development,” from somewhere under a blanket.

She wanted to teach a little girl how to strike a ball, then immediately lose all authority when Alexia corrected the technique from the garden chair. She wanted the ridiculousness of it. The tenderness. The exhaustion. The permanent evidence that the love between them had become a house with more rooms.

But wanting did not make her safe.

That was the thought she could never get past.

So she did not mention it.

She mentioned other things. She mentioned coffee. Training. A stupid video Lucy had sent her of a dog refusing to walk past a cucumber. She mentioned that the neighbour’s cat had developed a vendetta against her bike cover and that she respected him as an enemy.

She mentioned holiday plans, Champions League fixtures, the leaking tap in the downstairs bathroom and whether Alexia thought a person could die from eating too many pistachios. She mentioned everything except the one thing that had started appearing in her chest whenever Alexia smiled at babies in cafe’s, or absent mindedly folded tiny Barça shirts in the club shop before putting them back with a look Jay could not read without feeling like she might fall through the floor.

Alexia noticed.

Of course Alexia noticed.

Alexia noticed everything eventually. She did not always say it straight away, because she was patient in that Spanish, terrifying, captainly way that made silence feel less like absence and more like an incoming tactical adjustment. She let Jay orbit difficult things until Jay either came down safely or crashed into furniture.

But over the last few months, there had been moments. Little pauses. Alexia’s hand lingering over Jay’s when a baby cried at the next table. Alexia watching Jay hold Mapi’s niece with an expression so soft it made Jay immediately hand the child back because her organs had started behaving strangely.

Alexia sitting beside her on the sofa one evening, half turned towards her, and saying, very casually, “You are good with children,” while Jay had nearly choked on a grape and replied, “That’s because I treat them like drunk adults with less shame.”

Alexia had laughed, but she had not looked away.

That Friday night, Alexia went for drinks with Alba.

Jay was not there because Alba had said, with affectionate bluntness, that she wanted one evening with her sister without Jay “appearing from nowhere like a tattooed golden retriever with abs,” which Jay had accepted with dignity for nearly thirteen seconds before asking Alexia whether she was more golden retriever or Doberman. Alexia had kissed her at the door, slow and smiling, one hand cupping Jay’s jaw, and said, “Depends on the day, bebé.” Jay had spent the rest of the evening at home pretending not to miss her like an idiot.

The house was too quiet without Alexia. It had all the right furniture, all the lamps warm in the corners, the kitchen clean except for the mug Jay had left by the sink despite personally promising herself not to do that again, and still the place felt like it was waiting for its centre to return. Jay made herself dinner, ate half of it, forgot the other half existed, found it later and apologised to it. She watched twenty minutes of a documentary about deep sea creatures before deciding the ocean was a badly managed nightmare. She stretched on the living room rug. She checked her phone too often.

At 11:43 p.m., Alba texted.

Your girlfriend has had wine and is talking about genetics. Prepare yourself.

Jay stared at the message.

Then another arrived.

She just said your jawline should be “inherited for the good of society.”

Jay sat up slowly.

A third message came in, this one a voice note. Jay pressed play, and Alba’s voice filled the living room, dry with laughter and exhaustion. “Jay, I am putting her in a taxi in ten minutes. She is fine, do not panic, she is just drunk enough to believe she is making sense. Also she has told a waiter he has kind eyes and would be a good sperm donor, but only emotionally, because biologically she is not accepting applications. I do not know what that means. Good luck.”

In the background, Alexia’s voice rose, warm and offended. “Alba, do not tell her this. I am being serious.”

“You are telling the olives they are symmetrical.”

“They are.”

The voice note ended.

Jay lowered the phone into her lap and stared at the opposite wall.

“Well,” she said to the empty room, “that sounds normal.”

By the time the taxi pulled up outside, Jay was already at the door. She had intended to be casual about it, maybe lean against the frame like she had not spent the last fifteen minutes pacing between the hallway and the kitchen, but then the car stopped and Alba climbed out first, and Jay immediately abandoned coolness as a concept.

Alexia emerged after her with the solemn care of a woman stepping onto land after a difficult sea voyage. She was wearing black trousers, a silky cream shirt half tucked in, gold earrings catching the porch light, her hair loose and a little wild around her face. She looked beautiful, flushed from wine and laughter, mouth soft, eyes bright, one heel in her hand for reasons that were not immediately clear. The other heel was still on her foot, which seemed to offend Alba on a personal level.

“She refused to take both off,” Alba said, walking her up the path with one hand braced at Alexia’s elbow.

“I have balance,” Alexia protested.

“You have one shoe.”

“I have enough balance for one shoe.”

Jay opened the door wider, trying not to smile too hard and failing. “Evening, captain.”

Alexia looked up at her, and the whole world seemed to turn stupidly golden. Her face changed at once, irritation melting into delight so open that Jay’s chest tightened. “Bebé.”

“Oh no,” Jay said softly. “You’re properly drunk.”

“I am elegantly drunk.”

Alba snorted. “She tried to pay the taxi driver with a loyalty card.”

“It had points.”

“It was for a pharmacy.”

Jay stepped forward and took Alexia’s free hand, the warmth of her fingers sliding into Jay’s like they had been made there. “Come here, you.”

Alexia came willingly, though not in a straight line. She folded herself against Jay with immediate, boneless affection, pressing her face into Jay’s neck and making a satisfied little sound that went directly through Jay’s body and settled somewhere dangerous. Jay caught her around the waist, steadying her, one hand flat against her back, and kissed the top of her head.

“You smell nice,” Alexia murmured into her skin.

“I smell like our laundry detergent and fear.”

“Mmm. Sexy fear.”

Alba made a noise of disgust. “I am leaving before this becomes worse.”

Jay looked over Alexia’s head. “Thank you for bringing her home.”

“You’re welcome. She is your problem now.”

“I am not a problem,” Alexia said, without lifting her face.

Alba kissed her sister’s cheek, then pointed at Jay with the authority of someone who had grown up with Alexia and therefore feared very little. “Water. Bed. No letting her make decisions. She has been using the phrase reproductive destiny.”

Jay’s eyebrows rose. “Has she?”

Alexia finally lifted her head, indignant and glowing. “Because it is destiny.”

Alba closed her eyes. “Goodnight.”

“Get home safe,” Jay called, still holding Alexia upright.

Alba waved without turning. “Do not make babies tonight.”

Jay choked.

Alexia waved after her with the hand holding the shoe. “We might.”

“No, we absolutely might not,” Jay said.

The taxi rolled away. The night settled around them, warm and quiet, and Alexia turned back to Jay with the serious, unfocused intensity of a woman who had been waiting all evening to deliver a speech.

Jay recognised the expression and immediately became nervous.

“Inside,” she said, gently guiding Alexia over the threshold. “Before you declare anything to the neighbours.”

“The neighbours should know.”

“They really shouldn’t.”

“They should be happy for us.”

“About what?”

Alexia stopped in the hallway, one shoe on, one shoe off, hair falling into her eyes, cheeks flushed and beautiful enough to make Jay question several laws of physics. She placed both hands on Jay’s chest with great ceremony, the shoe dangling from two fingers, and looked up at her.

“I want your babies.”

Jay stared at her.

The hallway lamp hummed softly. Somewhere in the kitchen, the fridge clicked on. Alexia waited with the serene confidence of a woman who had just said something perfectly reasonable.

Then Jay laughed.

She did not mean to. It burst out of her, startled and helpless, not because the words did not matter but because Alexia had delivered them like she was ordering dessert. Alexia frowned at once, wounded in the dramatic, wine soft way that made her look twelve per cent more Spanish.

“Do not laugh.”

“I’m sorry,” Jay said, still laughing, catching Alexia’s face between her hands and kissing her forehead. “I’m sorry, babe. It’s just, that’s not how it works.”

Alexia’s eyes narrowed. “I know how it works, bebé.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“You just asked for my babies.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t currently have the equipment to provide that service.”

Alexia waved the shoe as if this was irrelevant bureaucracy. “I know biology. I am not stupid.”

“I didn’t say you were stupid.”

“You laughed.”

“Because you said it like I could just, I don’t know, concentrate really hard and make sperm appear.”

Alexia considered this, then glanced down Jay’s body with drunken seriousness. “You are very determined.”

“That is flattering but medically unsound.”

“I just want babies with you.”

The laughter softened out of Jay.

There it was. Not the joke. Not the wine. Not the ridiculous phrasing or the shoe or Alba’s warning echoing in the street outside. The truth underneath it. It stood between them suddenly, small and bright and terrifying.

Jay’s hands stayed on Alexia’s face. “You’re drunk.”

“I am drunk,” Alexia agreed, nodding carefully, “but I know what I want.”

Jay swallowed.

Alexia leaned closer, her palms sliding from Jay’s chest to her shoulders, fingers curling into the fabric of her T shirt. “I want babies with you,” she said again, quieter now, her accent thickening around the softness of it. “Not because of wine. The wine only made me say it without doing the patient thing.”

“The patient thing?”

“Waiting for you to stop pretending you do not think about it.”

Jay’s breath caught.

Alexia saw it. Even drunk, she saw it. Her face softened, and one hand came up to brush Jay’s cheek with a tenderness so familiar it nearly undid her. “Ay, bebé.”

Jay looked away for half a second, towards the stairs, the kitchen, anywhere that was not Alexia’s beautiful, wine bright face. “We can talk about it in the morning.”

“I won’t change my mind.”

“We’ll see.”

“I will not.”

“You might wake up and decide you actually wanted toast with me.”

“I also want toast with you.”

“Good to know.”

“And babies.”

“Morning, Alexia.”

Alexia pouted. Actually pouted. It was so unlike her usual composed captain’s face that Jay almost laughed again, but there was something tender under it too, something that made humour feel like a blanket rather than an escape. Alexia slid both arms around Jay’s neck and pulled herself closer, until their bodies met in the hallway and Jay had to steady her with both hands at her waist.

“Now, bebé,” Alexia murmured, mouth brushing Jay’s jaw. “Let’s go make a baby.”

Jay closed her eyes.

For one wild second, her body reacted before her common sense could get a hand on the steering wheel. Alexia was warm against her, soft with wine and want, smelling faintly of perfume and white wine and night air. Her lips touched the corner of Jay’s mouth, then her cheek, affectionate and persuasive in the way that usually made Jay forget at least two of her own principles. But this was different. This mattered. Alexia was drunk, and the thing between them was too important to let the wine hold any part of it.

Jay caught Alexia’s wrists gently and brought her hands down, kissing her knuckles before holding them between their bodies.

“No, guapa.”

Alexia blinked at her, affronted. “No?”

“No making babies while you’re drunk.”

“But I am very romantic.”

“You are incredibly romantic. You are also missing a shoe.”

Alexia looked down as if this was new information. “Oh.”

“Exactly.”

“I have the other one.”

“You’re holding it like a weapon.”

“It is designer.”

“That doesn’t make it less threatening.”

Alexia’s mouth twitched. “You do not want to make babies with me?”

The question was soft enough to hurt.

Jay’s face changed before she could stop it. Alexia’s drunken teasing faded at once, her gaze sharpening through the haze, and Jay knew she had revealed too much because Alexia’s hand came up again, this time not playful but searching.

“Jay,” she whispered.

Jay forced herself to smile, though it came out crooked. “I want to get you water, take your make up off, find your other shoe a loving home, and put you to bed.”

“That is not what I asked.”

“I know.”

“Then answer.”

Jay let out a breath, slow and careful. “I want everything with you.”

Alexia went still.

Jay looked at her then because she owed her that. “Everything. But not tonight like this. Not because you’re drunk and horny and apparently inspired by olives.”

Alexia narrowed her eyes. “They were very symmetrical.”

“I’m sure they were stunning.”

“Like your face.”

“Thank you.”

“And your arms.”

“Focus.”

“I am focused. On your genetic contribution.”

“Jesus Christ.”

Alexia smiled, drunk and pleased with herself, and Jay laughed because she had to. The fear did not leave, not fully, but it shifted. It made room for the absurdity of Alexia Putellas standing in their hallway with one shoe, discussing fertility like she was selecting a starting eleven.

Jay bent and kissed her forehead again. “Come on. Bed.”

“I am not finished seducing you.”

“You are finished seducing me.”

“I am never finished.”

“Tonight you are.”

“You are very bossy for someone I am trying to get to agree to having a baby with me.”

Jay made a strangled sound. “Baby… bed.”

Alexia allowed herself to be guided upstairs, though she continued muttering in a mixture of English, Spanish and wine logic. On the landing, she paused to inform a framed photograph of them from the Ballon d’Or that their children would have excellent bone structure. In the bedroom, she sat on the edge of the bed and watched Jay kneel to remove the remaining heel with a softness that made Jay feel exposed.

“You take care of me,” Alexia said.

Jay slid the shoe off and placed it beside the other one. “Someone has to. You tried to financially negotiate with a taxi using pharmacy points.”

“They were valuable.”

“They were not.”

“You don’t know.”

“I know many things.”

Alexia tilted her head. “Do you know you will be a good mama?”

Jay’s hands stilled around Alexia’s ankle.

The room seemed to quiet around them. The joke had been there a second before, warm and easy, and then it was gone so suddenly Jay almost missed it. Alexia was watching her with that soft, devastating directness that alcohol had not dulled, only stripped of hesitation. There was no accusation in her face. No pressure. Just belief, which was sometimes worse.

Jay set Alexia’s foot gently down. “Make up,” she said.

Alexia sighed. “Coward.”

“Correct.”

But she took the make up wipes from the bedside drawer and sat beside Alexia, turning her face carefully towards the lamp. Alexia let her, because Alexia trusted her even when she was annoyed. Jay wiped the mascara from beneath her eyes, slow and gentle, thumb steady at her jaw. It was one of their quiet rituals after nights out, something that had started by accident and become sacred without either of them naming it. Alexia’s eyes fluttered closed. Her hand found Jay’s thigh and rested there, heavy and warm.

“You did not answer,” Alexia murmured.

“You’re drunk.”

“You keep saying this like I do not know guapa.”

“Because drunk questions get morning answers.”

“This one gets now answer.”

Jay paused.

Alexia opened her eyes.

The courage went through Jay like cold water. She looked at the wipe in her hand, then at Alexia, then back at the wipe as if it might have advice printed on it. It did not. It had foundation on it and nothing useful to say.

“I don’t know if I’d be good,” Jay admitted.

Alexia’s face changed, sobering not in body but in heart.

Jay tried to laugh, but it barely arrived. “I know that’s not romantic. I know I’m meant to say yes, obviously, I’ll be amazing, I’m fit, I can open jars, children love tattoos, whatever. But I don’t know. I don’t have… I don’t have a map for that. I know what not to do, which is useful, but not the same thing as knowing what to do.”

Alexia said nothing. She reached for Jay’s free hand and held it.

Jay breathed in, then out. “And I love you too much to pretend it doesn’t scare me.”

There it was. Not all of it, but enough. A crack in the door.

Alexia lifted Jay’s hand to her mouth and kissed her knuckles, one by one, with drunken tenderness and sober understanding. “Morning,” she said softly.

Jay blinked. “What?”

“You are right. We talk in the morning.” Alexia’s thumb moved over Jay’s fingers. “But I will not change my mind.”

Jay’s throat worked.

Alexia leaned forward, kissed her softly once, then again, a little clumsy from wine but full of love. “And I think you are wrong.”

“About what?”

“You have a map.” Alexia touched Jay’s chest, directly over her heart. “It is here. It is messy, sí, and sometimes it sends you to the wrong place and makes you buy too many emergency snacks, but it is good.”

Jay huffed a laugh, eyes suddenly hot. “That is not how maps work.”

“It is how your map works.”

“My map once took me to Girona because I missed a turning.”

“And you came back with pastries.”

“That part was good.”

“Exactly.”

Jay laughed properly then, quiet and cracked at the edges. Alexia smiled as if she had won something, then yawned so hugely that the entire emotional conversation briefly lost dignity.

“Bed,” Jay said, relieved.

“Bed,” Alexia agreed, then added, with a sleepy little grin, “But tomorrow, babies.”

“Tomorrow, conversation.”

“Conversation about babies.”

“Fine.”

“And then babies.”

“Alexia.”

“I am manifesting.”

“You are going to sleep.”

“I am going to dream of your babies.”

Jay pressed her lips together so she would not laugh too loudly. “That’s still not how it works.”

But Alexia was already half gone, pliant and warm as Jay helped her under the covers. She curled immediately towards Jay’s side of the bed, even before Jay had turned off the lamp, one hand reaching blindly for her. Jay changed quickly, brushed her teeth, placed a glass of water and painkillers on the bedside table, then slid in beside her. Alexia found her instantly, as if pulled by gravity, tucking herself into Jay’s body with a satisfied sigh.

“Te amo,” she murmured into Jay’s shirt.

Jay stared into the dark.

Then she wrapped her arms around Alexia and held on.

“Love you too, babe.”

Alexia slept within minutes.

Jay did not.

She lay awake with Alexia warm against her and the whole house quiet around them, staring at the ceiling while the conversation replayed in pieces. I want your babies. I know how it works, bebé. I just want babies with you. You will be a good mum. It should have been funny, and it was funny, because Alexia had said half of it while armed with one shoe and medically overestimating Jay’s reproductive abilities. But beneath the comedy, the truth had landed. Alexia wanted children. Not someday in the abstract. Not as a distant possibility tucked behind career plans and travel and the next season. She wanted them with Jay.

And Jay wanted them too.

The admission sat inside her with frightening clarity.

She imagined a child again, then two because apparently once her mind opened the door it decided to redecorate the whole room. She imagined dark hair or blonde hair, Alexia’s eyes, Jay’s grin, Alexia’s stubbornness, Jay’s inability to keep track of socks. She imagined teaching them English swear words by accident and being exiled from bedtime by Alexia for crimes against language. She imagined a little girl asleep on Alexia’s chest after a match, tiny fist curled in the collar of her shirt. She imagined herself in the doorway, watching them, feeling a love so large it had nowhere to go except into terror.

What if she hurt them without meaning to?

What if fear made her controlling? What if hyper vigilance became pressure? What if she mistook protection for love and built them a house full of caution? What if one day she heard her own panic come out as anger and saw a child flinch? The thought made her stomach twist so sharply she had to close her eyes.

Alexia shifted in her sleep, mumbling something in Spanish, and tucked her face more firmly into Jay’s neck. Jay’s hand moved automatically to her hair.

That was the other truth. Jay had learned love here, in small repetitions. Alexia’s hand reaching for hers in public. Alexia saying, “Breathe,” when Jay forgot she had a body. Alexia laughing when Jay was ridiculous and staying when Jay was not. Love had not arrived as a miracle. It had been built. Chosen. Practised. Repaired. Maybe motherhood was not something you were automatically ready for because your childhood had been kind. Maybe it was something you learned the way Jay had learned everything that mattered, badly at first, honestly after, and with enough love to keep trying.

She did not sleep until dawn had begun to grey the edges of the curtains.

When Jay woke again, Alexia was not beside her.

For one horrible second, old fear snapped awake before logic did. Then she heard a faint groan from the bathroom and relaxed so quickly she almost became liquid.

“Babe?” she called.

A pause.

Then Alexia’s voice, hoarse and tragic. “I am alive, but I do not respect wine.”

Jay smiled into the pillow. “Good morning to you too.”

Alexia appeared in the doorway wearing one of Jay’s oversized T shirts, her hair piled badly on top of her head, her face scrubbed clean and pale with hangover. She looked less like a Ballon d’Or winner and more like a woman who had gone to war with three glasses of Albariño and lost on penalties. She leaned against the frame with one hand over her eyes.

“Do not look at me.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“I’m admiring you privately.”

“I can feel it.”

Jay sat up, sheets pooling around her waist. “Water and painkillers are on your side.”

Alexia shuffled over, took both with the solemn gratitude of someone receiving medical aid in a historical drama, then sat on the bed with a groan. “Alba has texted me.”

“Oh good.”

“She says I owe a waiter an apology for interviewing him about fertility.”

Jay laughed. “He had kind eyes.”

Alexia slowly turned her head. “What did I say?”

“So many things.”

“Jay.”

Jay reached for her hand, unable to help herself. Alexia let her take it. Their fingers slid together, morning warm and familiar.

“You told me you wanted my babies,” Jay said.

Alexia closed her eyes. “Dios.”

“You said you knew how it worked.”

“I do know how it works.”

“You suggested we make a baby immediately.”

Alexia opened one eye. “That sounds like me.”

“You were missing a shoe.”

“That also sounds like me.”

“You called it reproductive destiny.”

Alexia covered her face with both hands. “Madre mía.”

Jay’s laughter softened. She tugged Alexia gently closer until Alexia came with a reluctant little sound, sitting beside her against the pillows. Jay kissed her shoulder through the T shirt. “Still want to talk about it?”

Alexia lowered her hands.

The hangover was still there. The embarrassment too. But beneath both, steady as stone, was the same look from the night before.

“Yes,” she said.

Jay’s pulse kicked.

Alexia watched her carefully. “I told you. I would not change my mind.”

Jay nodded, looking down at their joined hands.

For once, Alexia did not rush to fill the silence. She sat beside Jay in the pale morning light, smelling faintly of toothpaste and last night’s perfume, thumb moving over Jay’s knuckles. Outside, the city had begun its slow Sunday stir. A motorbike passed somewhere beyond the window. A dog barked. Their house felt suspended between one life and another, as if the walls were listening.

Jay cleared her throat. “How long have you been thinking about it?”

Alexia’s mouth curved, small and guilty. “A while.”

“A while like weeks or a while like you have a secret folder?”

“I do not have a secret folder.”

Jay stared at her.

Alexia looked away.

“Oh my God.”

“It is not secret. It is private.”

“You have a folder.”

“It is a note.”

“With subheadings?”

Alexia said nothing.

Jay’s eyebrows climbed. “Alexia Putellas, have you made a tactical document for our unborn children?”

“It is not tactical.”

“Does it have bullet points?”

“Maybe.”

“That’s tactical.”

“It is organised.”

“That’s Spanish for tactical.”

Alexia gave her a look. “Do you want to hear or do you want to be annoying?”

“I want both, ideally.”

“Jay.”

“Sorry. Hearing.”

Alexia adjusted herself against the pillows, tucking one leg under her. She looked nervous now in a way Jay rarely saw, not because Alexia did not get nervous, but because she usually wore it under composure. This was softer. More open. Her hand stayed in Jay’s.

“I think I started seriously thinking about it when you held Mapi’s niece,” Alexia said. “At the barbecue. Do you remember?”

Jay did remember. She remembered the baby being warm and surprisingly heavy, with a damp fist gripping her finger and dark lashes resting on round cheeks. She remembered panicking internally because everyone had looked at her and gone quiet in that terrible way people did when they were moved by something. She had made a joke about the baby respecting her sleeve tattoos and handed her back as quickly as possible.

“You looked terrified,” Alexia said, smiling faintly. “But you were so gentle. Like you were holding something breakable and sacred. And then when she started crying, you did not panic. You just walked with her and talked nonsense about how taxes are unfair and naps are important.”

“Both true.”

“She stopped crying.”

“She was probably confused.”

“She was safe,” Alexia corrected quietly.

Jay looked away.

Alexia squeezed her hand. “I saw you, bebé. I thought, if we had a child, they would know that feeling. Your hands. Your voice. The way you notice everything even when you pretend you do not.”

Jay’s throat tightened. “That’s the thing though.”

“What?”

“I notice everything because I had to.”

Alexia nodded, not flinching.

Jay took a breath. The instinct to make a joke rose up, bright and desperate, but she let it pass. “I’m scared I’ll bring too much of that into it. Like, I don’t know where the line is between being attentive and being… too much. I know what it feels like to be unsafe, so what if I go too far the other way? What if I make them scared of the world because I’m scared for them?”

Alexia listened with her whole body. It was one of the things Jay loved most about her. When Alexia listened, she did not wait for her turn to speak. She received. She held.

Jay continued, slower now. “And I know people say you’re not your parents, or you’re not what happened to you, and that’s nice, but children don’t care about inspirational quotes, do they? They care about whether you show up right. Every day. Even when you’re tired. Even when they’re screaming. Even when they hate you for saying no. And I didn’t have that. I don’t know what normal looks like from the inside.”

Alexia shifted closer until their shoulders touched. “Normal is overrated.”

“That sounds like something someone says before raising a child who eats crayons.”

“Our child may eat crayons.”

“See, already chaos.”

“If they are your child, they will organise the crayons by emotional importance first.”

Jay snorted despite herself. “The blue one will have abandonment issues.”

Alexia laughed, then pressed a kiss to Jay’s shoulder. “Mi amor, listen to me. You do not have to know everything because no one knows everything. Not even people with perfect childhoods. They are also guessing. Maybe with more confidence, but still guessing.”

Jay looked at her. “You’d be so good at it.”

Alexia blinked, surprised by the sudden certainty in Jay’s voice.

“You would,” Jay said. “You’d be ridiculous. Like, obviously too competitive at school sports day, and probably emotionally intense about bedtime routines, and God help any teacher who underestimates our kid, but you’d be amazing.”

Alexia’s face softened. “You think?”

“I know.” Jay traced her thumb over Alexia’s hand. “You make people feel held without making them feel weak. You expect a lot, but not in a cruel way. You’re warm. You’re steady. You pretend you’re not funny, which is arrogant because you’re very funny. You love like you’ve already decided you’re not leaving.”

Alexia’s eyes shone.

Jay swallowed. “That’s what a kid should have.”

“And you,” Alexia said, voice rough, “would give them joy.”

Jay laughed under her breath. “That feels less useful.”

“It is not less useful. It is everything. You would give them joy, and courage, and silliness, and the feeling that being different is not something to hide. You would make them brave. You would make them laugh when they are scared. You would know when the room is too loud before they have words for it. You would understand the things other people miss.”

Jay’s jaw tightened.

Alexia reached up and turned Jay’s face back to her, gentle but firm. “Your childhood took many things from you. It did not take your ability to love. I know this because I live inside it every day.”

Jay’s eyes burned. “That was rude.”

Alexia frowned. “Rude?”

“Yeah. Saying something that nice before I’ve had coffee.”

Alexia laughed softly, the sound catching in her throat. “Perdón.”

“No, you’re not sorry.”

“No.”

Jay leaned her forehead against Alexia’s, breathing her in. For a while neither of them spoke. Their hands stayed tangled between them, Alexia’s thumb moving slowly against Jay’s skin, Jay’s knee pressed against hers under the duvet. It felt like standing at the edge of something enormous together. Not jumping yet. Just looking. Admitting the view was beautiful and terrifying at the same time.

Eventually, Jay said, “What does your note say?”

Alexia groaned. “Do not mock me.”

“I’m absolutely going to mock you, but with love.”

“That is not reassuring.”

“It’s honest.”

Alexia reached for her phone on the bedside table, hesitated, then unlocked it. Jay watched her open the notes app with the solemnity of someone revealing classified documents. The note title read, in plain black text: Baby thoughts.

Jay stared.

Alexia turned the phone slightly away. “Do not make the face.”

“I’m not making a face.”

“You are making the face.”

“I just expected something more intense. Like Project Tiny Putellas-Jones.”

Alexia’s cheeks coloured. “There is another note.”

Jay’s mouth fell open. “There’s another note?”

“It was a working title.”

“A working title?”

“Do you want to read or no?”

“I have never wanted anything more in my life.”

Alexia muttered something in Spanish that sounded deeply insulting, but she handed over the phone. Jay took it carefully.

The note was not a full tactical document, despite Alexia’s earlier denial being suspiciously weak. It had sections. Of course it had sections. Timing. Career. Clinic options. Legal. Family support. Names? The question mark after names nearly killed Jay on sight.

“You have a names section,” Jay said, voice going strange.

“Only ideas.”

Jay tapped it before Alexia could stop her.

There were names there. Beautiful ones. Spanish names, Catalan names, English names. Some Jay recognised from conversations they had never officially had, names that had drifted past them in films, in family stories, in football, in cafés. Near the bottom, two names sat beside each other with no explanation.

Luna. Aurora.

Jay stared at them for too long.

Alexia noticed. “I just liked them,” she said quietly. “They felt… I don’t know. Light and night. Different but together.”

Jay’s lips parted, but nothing came out.

Alexia took the phone from her gently and set it aside. “Too much?”

“No.” Jay shook her head, then laughed once, overwhelmed. “No, it’s just very annoying that you’re good at naming hypothetical children while hungover.”

“I am good at many things hungover.”

“You cried earlier because the bathroom light was too bright.”

“It was aggressive.”

“It’s a bulb.”

“It knows what it did bebe.”

Jay laughed, and Alexia smiled, pleased to have brought her back. But the emotion stayed under the laughter, warm and trembling. Jay rubbed both hands over her face, then let them fall into her lap.

“So,” she said carefully. “You want to carry?”

Alexia’s expression shifted. “I think so. If I can. I know with football, timing is difficult. My body, recovery, age, contracts, everything. But yes, I think I want to. At least once.”

Jay nodded, absorbing it with the seriousness it deserved. “And you want… donor?”

“Yes. A clinic. Proper legal process. No waiters with kind eyes.”

“Shame. Alba said he had potential.”

Alexia gave her a flat look. “Do not.”

“Sorry.”

“I thought maybe…” Alexia hesitated, then looked down at their hands. “Maybe my eggs. I carry. But they are ours. Not mine. Ours.”

Jay’s chest tightened.

Alexia looked up quickly. “Unless that hurts you. Unless you would want another way. I have thought also about reciprocal IVF, but then maybe I carry your egg, or you carry, or…”

“Babe,” Jay said softly.

Alexia stopped.

Jay took both her hands. “You carrying your egg would not make them less mine.”

Alexia’s eyes searched hers.

“It wouldn’t,” Jay said, firmer now. “I mean, yes, I’ll probably have a weird moment because my brain loves admin and trauma, but no. If we do this, if we choose them together, if we raise them together, they’re ours. Biology can join the queue behind love, sleeplessness and whoever gets vomited on first.”

Alexia’s mouth trembled into a smile. “You would be vomited on first.”

“Absolutely. I have that energy.”

“You do.”

“Babies would look at me and think, yes, this one is washable.”

Alexia laughed and leaned into her, pressing her face into Jay’s shoulder. Jay wrapped an arm around her, kissing her hair. The conversation was still terrifying, but it was no longer locked behind the door. It was in the room now, sitting beside them in the morning light, and somehow it had not destroyed anything. Somehow it had made the room warmer.

“I’m scared too,” Alexia admitted after a while.

Jay turned her head. “Yeah?”

“Sí. Of course. I am not calm about this. I only look calm because my face is disciplined.”

“Your face is very disciplined.”

“Thank you.”

“Mine has no chain of command.”

“I know, bebé.”

Jay smiled against her hair.

Alexia continued, quieter. “I am scared of my body changing. Of leaving football. Of coming back and not being the same. Of wanting it too much. Of not being able to have it. Of having it and being overwhelmed. Of loving them so much I cannot breathe. Of doing something wrong and not knowing until years later.”

Jay closed her eyes.

There was relief in hearing it, not because she wanted Alexia afraid, but because fear sounded different when it was shared. Less like prophecy. More like weather.

“We’ll do things wrong,” Jay said.

Alexia lifted her head, unimpressed. “Comforting.”

“No, I mean, we will. Everyone does. But maybe the thing is we repair it. We apologise. We don’t make them carry our pride.”

Alexia looked at her for a long moment. “That sounds like a very good mother.”

Jay’s throat tightened again. “Don’t.”

“It does.”

“I’m fragile and uncaffeinated.”

“You are always fragile when praised.”

“It’s a medical condition.”

“I will write it in the baby note.”

“Please don’t.”

Alexia smiled, then reached up and kissed her. It was soft, morning slow, tasting faintly of toothpaste and sleep, nothing like the wine warm kisses from the night before. This one was sober. Certain. A quiet promise rather than a spark. Jay sank into it, hand cupping Alexia’s jaw, and for the first time the idea of children did not feel like a door with something terrible behind it. It felt like a door they might open together.

When Alexia pulled back, she rested her forehead against Jay’s. “So we talk to someone?”

Jay nodded. “Clinic?”

“Doctor first. Information.”

“Clara for legal stuff?”

“Sí.”

“Julia for schedules, because she’ll have a breakdown if we don’t tell her until you’re suddenly pregnant.”

Alexia snorted. “Julia will create a folder.”

“Everyone has folders but me.”

“You would create a folder.”

“I would create a command centre.”

“I know.”

Jay thought for a second. “We should probably not tell Mapi until there is something to tell.”

“Agreed.”

“She’ll start buying tiny leather jackets.”

“You would also buy tiny leather jackets.”

Jay’s face became distant. “Oh my God.”

“No.”

“They’d be so small.”

“No, Jay.”

“Tiny jackets, Alexia.”

“No.”

“With little boots.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Not for everyday. Just formal occasions.”

“What formal occasions require a baby leather jacket?”

“Meeting Lucy.”

Alexia laughed so hard she had to lean into Jay, and Jay caught her, grinning, because this was what made the fear bearable. Not pretending it wasn’t there. Not solving every wound before beginning. This. Alexia hungover and laughing in Jay’s T-shirt, their hands tangled, baby names hidden in a phone note, the future suddenly full of impossible things and tiny leather jackets with no formal purpose.

After a moment, Alexia sighed, her laughter fading into a tenderness so deep it changed her whole face. “I meant it,” she said. “Last night. Badly, maybe.”

“Beautifully, actually. The shoe helped.”

“I meant that I want them with you. Not just children. Your children. Our children. However biology works. However we make it. I want to look at them and see us. Not only faces. Us. The way we love. The way we fight to stay gentle. The way you make breakfast badly but with feeling.”

“My breakfasts have improved.”

“You burned toast yesterday.”

“That toaster has a personal issue with me.”

Alexia kissed her cheek. “I want a family with you, amor.”

Jay went very quiet.

The sentence entered her like sunlight into a closed room. A family with you. Not a family despite her. Not a family she had to earn her way into by being useful enough, funny enough, lovable enough. With her. Built around her too. Alexia had a way of saying things so simply they left no hiding place.

Jay looked down at their hands, at Alexia’s fingers threaded through hers, strong and elegant and real.

“I want that,” she said.

Alexia barely breathed.

Jay looked up, eyes bright and terrified and certain. “I’m scared out of my mind. Like, genuinely, I may need supervised access to Google because I can already feel myself about to search whether babies can sense emotional instability through walls. But I want it. With you. I want a family with you.”

Alexia’s face crumpled in the smallest, softest way.

Then she was in Jay’s lap, or as much as she could be without either of them falling off the bed, arms around Jay’s neck, kissing her with a sudden overwhelmed tenderness that made Jay laugh into her mouth before she kissed her back. It was messy and full of smiles, not the hungry drunken persuasion of the night before, but something brighter and more frightening. Joy, maybe. Hope. The dangerous kind. The kind that asked you to believe life could give you something beautiful and not take it away immediately.

Jay held her tight.

After a while, Alexia pulled back only far enough to murmur, “So now we make a baby.”

Jay stared at her.

Alexia’s mouth twitched.

“You are hungover,” Jay said.

“I am sober.”

“You are also in pain from wine.”

“That is separate.”

“And making a baby involves appointments, donor selection, a clinic, probably blood tests, more legal paperwork than either of us wants to acknowledge, and, tragically, not me simply looking determined.”

Alexia sighed dramatically. “Lesbian biology is very inconvenient.”

“It really is.”

“I still think you could do it if you focused.”

Jay laughed, tipping her head back. “Stop saying medically insane things while looking that beautiful. It’s confusing for my nervous system.”

Alexia smiled, smug now. “You think I am beautiful?”

“Oh, don’t start.”

“You do.”

“I always think you’re beautiful.”

“Even hungover?”

“Especially hungover. Very brave. Very tragic. Like a hot Victorian widow.”

Alexia narrowed her eyes. “Widow?”

“I’m alive in this scenario, just emotionally unavailable due to tuberculosis.”

“You are so strange.”

“You chose me for your reproductive destiny.”

“I did.” Alexia kissed the corner of her mouth. “And I stand by it.”

Jay’s laughter softened into something almost unbearably fond. She brushed Alexia’s hair back from her face, tucking loose strands behind her ear, then let her hand rest at her cheek. “Coffee first?”

Alexia nodded. “Coffee first. Then maybe we look at the note.”

“The baby note?”

“And the other one.”

Jay grinned slowly. “Project Tiny Putellas-Jones?”

Alexia’s blush was immediate and glorious.

Jay gasped. “That is actually what it’s called.”

“No.”

“It is.”

“It is not.”

“Show me.”

“No.”

“Alexia.”

“It was temporary.”

“You named our hypothetical children’s planning document Project Tiny Putellas-Jones and you let me think I was the chaotic one?”

Alexia shoved her shoulder, laughing despite herself. “Go make coffee, idiota.”

Jay caught her hand and kissed the palm. “Anything for the mother of my hypothetical leather jacket babies.”

“No leather jackets.”

“One.”

“No.”

“Fine. Tiny denim.”

“Jay.”

Jay kissed her again, quick and delighted, then slipped out of bed before Alexia could threaten her properly. At the door, she turned back.

Alexia was still sitting against the pillows in Jay’s T shirt, hair messy, face pale from hangover and soft with happiness, and the sight of her nearly stopped Jay in place. Not because it was dramatic. Because it was ordinary. Because maybe this was how a family began, not with certainty, not with perfect healing, not with every fear neatly solved, but with a drunken confession, a missing shoe, a morning conversation, and two women brave enough to admit they wanted something they could not fully control.

Jay leaned against the doorframe, smiling.

“What?” Alexia asked, suspicious.

“Nothing.”

“You are staring.”

“I’m appreciating.”

“You always say this when you are staring.”

“Because it’s always true.”

Alexia’s expression softened. “Coffee, bebé.”

Jay nodded. “Coffee.”

She went downstairs with her heart still racing, the house brighter than it had been the night before. In the kitchen, she filled the kettle, opened the cupboard, forgot why she had opened it, remembered, then took down two mugs. Her hands shook slightly when she set them on the counter, but not only from fear now.

From want.

From hope.

From the terrifying, ridiculous possibility that one day this kitchen would be louder. That there would be cereal on the floor and tiny socks under the table and Alexia correcting someone’s Spanish pronunciation while Jay argued that “mama” was a flexible title if said with enough swagger. That a child might run through this house and never once have to wonder whether love was leaving. That Jay might become the sort of place she had once needed.

Behind her, from upstairs, Alexia called, “Jay?”

“Yeah?”

A pause. Then, warm and dry and unmistakably hers, “Do not Google anything weird.”

Jay froze with her hand halfway to her phone.

“I wasn’t.”

“You were.”

Jay slowly moved the phone away from the counter.

Alexia’s voice floated down again. “And no tiny leather jackets.”

Jay looked towards the ceiling, deeply offended. “You’re killing culture.”

“I hear you.”

“That’s my line.”

“I am using it.”

Jay laughed, bright and helpless, and the sound filled the kitchen like a promise.

Maybe she did not have a map. Maybe Alexia was right and she did. Maybe it was messy and full of wrong turns, old warnings, emergency snacks and roads that led accidentally to Girona. But upstairs, Alexia was waiting with a baby note on her phone and a hangover she refused to respect, and Jay knew, with a certainty that scared her and steadied her at the same time, that whatever path they took from here, they would take it together.

She was supposed to be at home, resting. Resting, in Alexia's very firm and frequently repeated definition, meant lying on the sofa, taking painkillers on schedule, eating actual food, walking short careful laps around the apartment, not bending dramatically for dropped objects, not trying to prove she could still do calf raises, and absolutely not appearing at Barça's training facility in sunglasses, loose shorts, an oversized hoodie, fresh surgical dressings under her shirt and the expression of a woman who had brought the room a gift no one had asked for.

Alexia saw her first from across the corridor.

She stopped so abruptly that Patri walked into the back of her.

"Ow," Patri said, then followed Alexia's gaze. "Oh no."

Jay was standing near the players' lounge with a tote bag hanging from one shoulder and a takeaway coffee in her hand, looking pale but offensively pleased with herself. She had that post-hospital glow people got when they had survived something serious and immediately decided survival meant they were immune to consequences.

Her sunglasses were pushed up into her hair. Her hoodie was zipped halfway, swallowing her frame more than usual, and she was leaning against the wall in a way that was probably meant to look casual but mostly looked like she had tried standing normally and her body had filed a complaint.

Alexia's face changed.

The whole corridor felt it.

Jay, sensing danger in the same way small animals sensed storms, lifted her free hand.

"Before you get hot in a bad way," she called, "I'm not here to train."

Alexia walked towards her.

Jay's smile faltered by exactly one responsible centimetre. "Or run."

Alexia kept walking.

"Or lift."

Still walking.

"Or emotionally inspire anyone to lift."

Alexia stopped in front of her, close enough that Jay's grin softened automatically because proximity to Alexia still rewired her priorities no matter how much trouble she was in. Alexia took Jay's chin gently in one hand and turned her face from side to side, inspecting her like a doctor, girlfriend and disappointed captain all at once.

"You are meant to be resting," Alexia said.

Jay's eyes flicked to Patri, who had followed at a safe distance for entertainment, then back to Alexia. "I am resting vertically."

"No."

"I travelled seated."

"No."

"I walked slowly from the car."

"You drove?"

"No, Julia drove me."

Alexia narrowed her eyes. "Julia brought you here?"

Jay winced. "In Julia's defence, she did not know what was in the bag."

Patri immediately looked at the tote.

Alexia looked at the tote.

Jay hugged it closer.

The corridor went quiet in the very specific way that meant a third problem had just presented itself.

Alexia's voice lowered. "Jay."

Jay smiled, too wide. "It's not medical equipment."

"That does not comfort me."

"It's not alive."

Patri said, "Why would that be the second thing you clarify?"

Jay pointed at her. "Excellent question, and I respect your investigative instincts."

Alexia held out her hand. "Give me the bag."

Jay pulled it slightly behind her. "No."

"Jay."

"No, because you're going to judge the bag before you understand the bag."

"I am already judging the bag."

"That is exactly the prejudice I feared."

By then, Mapi had appeared from the dressing room, still adjusting the sleeves of her training top, Ingrid behind her with the patient expression of someone who had heard commotion and correctly assumed Jay was responsible. Lucy came next, then Keira, then Jana, because Barça players had the collective survival instinct of meerkats when drama entered a hallway. Within thirty seconds, a small crowd had formed.

Jay looked delighted.

Alexia looked betrayed by physics, architecture, and the concept of doors.

"Why are you all here?" Alexia asked.

Mapi pointed at Jay. "Because she has a bag and you have the face."

Lucy leaned against the wall. "That combination has historically produced excellent content."

Jay touched her chest. "I am recovering from organ violence and you are making me sound untrustworthy."

"You are untrustworthy," Alexia said.

Jay turned back to her, wounded. "Baby."

"You left hospital four days ago and texted me yesterday asking if sneezing counted as core training."

"It engages the area."

"No."

Jana had gone pale at the word organ. "Is this about the appendix?"

Jay's expression softened immediately. "Baby Jana, come here."

Jana blinked. "Why did you call me that?"

Everyone looked at Jay.

Jay's hand tightened on the tote strap.

Alexia closed her eyes. "No."

Jay's face brightened. "You don't know what it is yet."

"I know enough."

"You don't."

“You just called her Baby Jana."

Jana made a very small noise.

Mapi whispered, "This is already my favourite day."

Jay straightened carefully, then winced, tried to disguise the wince as a cool adjustment of her hoodie, and failed because Alexia saw everything. Alexia's hand went at once to her waist, steadying her with firm, protective warmth.

"Sit down," Alexia said.

"I'm doing a presentation."

"You can present sitting."

"Leadership requires posture."

"Recovery requires not being stupid."

Jay considered arguing, looked at Alexia's face, then allowed herself to be guided into the players' lounge with all the dignity of a woman being escorted by love and medical necessity. Alexia kept one hand at the small of her back the entire way, fingers spread protectively, and Jay, despite the suspicious tote and the entire team following them like a funeral procession of gossip, leaned into the touch with a softness that gave away how tired she really was.

The lounge became full almost immediately.

Someone dragged a chair out for Jay. Alexia made her sit in it. Jay objected until Alexia placed both hands on the arms of the chair, leaned down into her space, and said, very calmly, "Sit, bebé."

Jay sat.

Lucy muttered, "Powerful."

Mapi nodded. "Medical authority and girlfriend authority combined."

Jana hovered near the edge of the group, looking increasingly alarmed. "Why am I involved?"

Jay reached into the tote bag with ceremonial gravity. "Because, Jana Fernández, life has connected us in a way neither of us asked for."

Jana whispered, "I don't like this."

"You will."

"I won't."

"You might."

"I really don't think I will."

Alexia stood beside Jay with her arms folded, trying very hard to look angry and not curious. It was not going well. Jay saw the curiosity and smiled up at her.

"You're intrigued."

"I am worried."

"Those can hold hands."

"No."

Jay lifted the object from the bag.

Silence fell.

For one second, nobody understood what they were looking at.

It was a clear jar, medium sized, with a silver lid. Inside, suspended in pale yellowish liquid, floated a small pink rubbery object that looked vaguely organic if one had no knowledge of anatomy and a troubling amount of confidence. A label had been stuck neatly to the front of the jar. In Jay's uneven handwriting, it read…

BABY JANA

1994-2024

GONE BUT MEDICALLY INCONVENIENT

No one breathed.

Then Lucy made a sound like a kettle exploding.

Mapi bent forward with both hands on her knees.

Patri turned away at once, shoulders shaking.

Jana stared at the jar in horror.

Alexia looked from the jar to Jay, then back to the jar, as if her brain had chosen, wisely, not to accept the information all at once.

"Jay," she said slowly. "What is that?"

Jay held the jar up with grave tenderness. "My appendix."

Alexia stared. "No."

Jay sighed. "Emotionally it’s mine.”

"Jay."

"Physically it’s not because my real one could not be recovered."

"It was infected medical waste."

"It was part of me."

"It tried to kill you."

"And now I will never get closure."

Mapi slid down the wall laughing.

Ingrid covered her mouth with one hand, eyes bright.

Jana pointed weakly at the jar. "Why is it called Baby Jana?"

Jay turned towards her with deep seriousness. "Because my appendix situation began after your stomach bug rumours, and while you are innocent legally, spiritually the timeline is complicated."

"I didn't do anything!"

"I know." Jay nodded compassionately. "That's why this is not Big Jana. It's Baby Jana."

Jana sat down on the nearest sofa as if her knees had stopped supporting the weight of the conversation.

Alexia pressed her fingers to the bridge of her nose. "Dios mío."

Jay looked up at her, hopeful. "You hate it?"

"Yes."

"But in a loving way?"

“No."

"A little?"

Alexia looked at the jar again. The fake appendix bobbed gently in the liquid like a cursed sea creature. "Where did you get this?"

Jay hesitated.

"Jay."

“Online."

"You ordered a fake appendix?"

"I was grieving."

"You were on pain medication."

"Which enhanced my emotional clarity."

Lucy wiped tears from her face. "Please tell me you ordered it from hospital."

Jay looked offended. "I waited until I was home. I'm not reckless."

Alexia stared at her.

Jay's mouth curved. "Okay, I ordered it from hospital."

The room collapsed.

Keira had to sit on the arm of the sofa. Patri was laughing silently into her own hands. Mapi was on the floor now, one hand pressed to her stomach, wheezing, "Gone but medically inconvenient," like it was scripture. Even Ingrid, usually the most dignified person in any room Mapi occupied, had turned into the wall and was shaking with laughter.

Jana looked at Jay with wide, betrayed eyes. "You named your fake organ after me."

Jay reached for her hand, then remembered she was holding a jar of fake organ and wisely did not. "With affection."

"That is not affection!"

"It's legacy."

"I don't want legacy!"

"You're in history now, mate."

Alexia, despite herself, made a sound.

Not a laugh.

Almost.

Jay's head snapped up. "Ha! You laughed."

"I did not."

"You nearly laughed."

"I nearly fainted."

"Same facial region."

Alexia put one hand on the back of Jay's chair, the other on her own hip. "You were told to rest."

"I am resting."

"You came to the training centre with a fake appendix in a jar."

"For morale."

"For chaos."

"Morale's weird cousin."

Alexia looked at her for a long moment, and beneath the absurdity, beneath the jar and the label and the entire team losing their minds around them, her face softened. Jay was pale. Still sore. Still moving like every laugh pulled at something tender in her abdomen. But her eyes were bright again. Not fever bright. Not pain bright. Jay bright. The kind that made rooms bend towards her, the kind Alexia had missed so much in the hospital that seeing it now made her throat tighten.

Jay saw the shift.

She always did.

Her own smile softened. "I'm okay, baby."

Alexia's expression warned her not to lie.

"I'm sore," Jay amended. "And tired. And Julia is outside in the car threatening to call you if I exceed forty minutes. But I'm okay."

Alexia leaned down and kissed her forehead, long enough that the room softened for a second despite itself. "You scared me."

Jay closed her eyes briefly under the kiss. "I know."

"You are still scaring me."

"With Baby Jana?"

"With everything."

Jay reached up with her free hand, fingers curling gently around Alexia's wrist. "I promise I'm not training. I just wanted to see everyone."

"And show them your fake appendix."

Jay's eyes brightened again. "Yes, exactly."

Alexia sighed, but the sound had surrendered at the edges. "Dios mio."

Jay turned to the team and lifted the jar. "I would like everyone to sign Baby Jana."

Jana made a strangled sound. "Please stop saying that."

"No."

"Jay."

"You're the godmother."

"I'm the victim."

"Both can be true."

Lucy was laughing so hard she had to lean against Keira. "Where do we sign?"

Alexia looked at Lucy. "Do not encourage her."

Lucy took the marker Jay produced from the tote bag because apparently this had been planned with unsettling detail. "Too late. I'm emotionally committed."

Jay held the jar carefully while Lucy signed the glass with great ceremony.

Lucy Bronze: RIP little traitor

Jay read it and nodded. "Strong. Respectful."

Keira signed next, hand shaking with laughter.

Keira Walsh: Glad you're gone x

Mapi crawled up from the floor, grabbed the marker, and wrote in letters far too large for the jar: MAPI WAS HERE AND DID NOT APPROVE THE MURDER ATTEMPT

Jay held the jar away. "You've taken up a quarter of the memorial space."

Mapi wiped her eyes. "My grief is large."

Ingrid signed neatly beneath it.

Ingrid Engen: Rest badly.

Jay stared at it, delighted. "Dark. Scandinavian. Excellent."

Patri took the marker with the exhausted dignity of a woman who knew she would participate even while judging everyone.

Patri Guijarro: You are all insane.

Jay looked at it. "Patri, this is about the appendix, not us."

"It applies broadly."

Cata drew a tiny face on the fake appendix through the glass.

Alexia immediately said, "No."

Cata stepped back. "Too late."

The team surged closer to look.

The fake appendix now had two tiny eyes and an expression of profound regret.

Jay pressed the jar to her chest. "She has personality."

Jana covered her face. "She?"

Jay looked down at the jar. "Baby Jana is complex."

"This is bullying."

"This is remembrance."

Ona signed with a tiny heart. Pina wrote dramatic forever in our stomachs, which made Alexia say, "That is not where the appendix is," and Jay reply, "Baby, let artists work." Aitana signed very neatly and then asked if Jay was actually allowed to be laughing this much, which made Alexia immediately point at Jay and say, "Exactly," and Jay immediately sit straighter as if posture could prove medical compliance.

When the jar finally reached Jana, the room quieted in anticipation.

Jana looked at it like it was a legal summons.

Jay held it out with both hands. "It would mean a lot to Baby Jana."

Jana stared at her.

Jay's eyes widened slightly, soft and pleading. "She looks up to you."

"She does not have eyes."

"Cata gave her eyes."

Jana looked.

The tiny drawn face stared back through the glass.

Jana broke.

She laughed so hard she had to sit down again, head in her hands, shoulders shaking while everyone applauded like she had scored in a final. Jay looked triumphant, then immediately winced and pressed one hand lightly to her abdomen.

Alexia saw it.

Her hand was on Jay's shoulder instantly. "Enough."

"I'm fine."

"You winced."

"I laughed internally wrong."

"You are going home."

"But Jana hasn't signed."

Jana, still crying with laughter, reached for the marker. "Give it here before I change my mind."

Jay brightened and held the jar out.

Jana wrote very slowly, while everyone watched.

Jana Fernández: I am innocent.

Jay read it, then looked at her with solemn respect. "Powerful statement. Legally useful."

Jana pointed at her. "Do not name another organ after me."

"I cannot promise that."

"Jay!"

Alexia took the jar from Jay before she could defend future organ rights. "No more organs. No more jars. No more training centre visits without approval."

Jay looked up at her, instantly softer because Alexia was holding the jar with the careful disgust of a woman in love beyond reason. "You're holding Baby Jana."

"I am confiscating Baby Jana."

"That's basically co parenting."

Alexia closed her eyes.

The team howled.

Mapi, who had recovered enough to stand, pointed between them. "This is the weirdest family I have ever seen."

Jay leaned back in her chair, pale but glowing. "Thank you."

"It was not praise."

"I receive all feedback as praise while recovering."

Alexia touched the side of Jay's face, gently turning her attention away from Mapi. "You are tired."

Jay's humour softened into honesty. "Yeah."

The team quieted slightly.

Alexia crouched in front of her, the jar tucked safely under one arm because apparently this was her life now, and placed her free hand on Jay's knee. "You saw everyone. They signed the terrible jar. Now you go home and rest."

Jay looked at her, eyes warm and a little vulnerable beneath the jokes. "Come with me?"

Alexia's face softened immediately. "I have ten minutes. Then I have to finish meeting with staff."

Jay's mouth curved. "Ten minutes of escort by captain?"

"Ten minutes of making sure you do not start a cult around Baby Jana."

"Too late. Mapi's already in."

Mapi raised her hand. "I am treasurer."

"No," Alexia said.

Jay laughed, then winced again.

Alexia stood at once. "Car. Now."

This time Jay did not argue.

That, more than the wince, told Alexia she really was tired.

The team gave her an absurd farewell as Alexia helped her up, everyone calling things after her as if she were leaving for war rather than returning to the sofa under strict medical supervision.

"Rest, idiot," Lucy said warmly.

"Goodbye, Baby Jana," Mapi called, pressing a hand dramatically to her heart.

"I am innocent," Jana shouted again, just in case the room had forgotten.

Jay lifted one hand without turning. "History will decide."

Alexia slid an arm carefully around Jay's waist, not holding her up exactly, because Jay would hate that, but close enough to support if she needed it. Jay leaned into her more than she probably meant to. In the corridor, away from the team's laughter, she went quieter.

Alexia glanced at her. "Pain?"

"Little bit."

"Jay."

"Medium little bit."

"Car."

"I'm going."

"You are leaning."

"Affectionately."

Alexia stopped beside the exit and turned Jay gently towards her. "Look at me."

Jay looked.

The teasing fell away as soon as their eyes met.

Alexia touched Jay's cheek, thumb moving softly beneath the edge of her sunglasses. "You do not have to make everyone laugh to prove you are okay."

Jay swallowed.

"I know," she said.

Alexia's expression said, Do you?

Jay's mouth twisted faintly. "I wanted them to stop looking scared."

Alexia's heart ached.

Of course.

Of course beneath the fake appendix and the jar signatures and Baby Jana's cursed memorial label, there had been that too. Jay trying to return herself to people as something funny, something bright, something recognisable. Jay trying to say I am still here in the only language that made fear less heavy for everyone else.

Alexia stepped closer, careful of her stomach, and kissed her.

Softly at first. Then again, warmer, one hand at Jay's jaw, the other still absurdly holding the signed fake appendix jar between them. Jay smiled into the second kiss, tired and tender and entirely hers.

When Alexia drew back, she murmured, "You are okay even when you are not funny."

Jay's eyes went a little bright.

Then she glanced down at the jar tucked under Alexia's arm. "What about when I'm hilarious?"

Alexia rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. "Then you are annoying also."

"Loved?"

"Sí, bebé. Very loved."

Jay's smile softened properly then.

Julia was waiting outside in the car with the engine running and the expression of a woman who had already received three messages about the jar and was reconsidering several life choices. She looked at Jay as Alexia helped her in, then at the jar in Alexia's hand.

"Absolutely not," Julia said.

Jay settled gingerly into the passenger seat. "Baby Jana needs a legal guardian."

Julia put the car in gear. "I am driving you home and then calling Clara."

Jay looked at Alexia through the open door. "She's jealous."

Alexia leaned in, kissed her forehead, then placed the jar gently into Jay's lap because despite everything, despite the horror of it, despite the fact that she would never admit this to anyone, it had made Jay smile.

"Go home," Alexia said. "Rest. I come after training."

Jay looked up at her. "Promise?"

Alexia touched her face one last time. "Claro."

Jay's fingers curled around her wrist for a second, quick and needy before she let go. "Love you, Ale."

Alexia's throat warmed. "Te amo. And no more online shopping while medicated."

Jay glanced at Baby Jana.

Alexia followed her gaze.

Jay smiled faintly. "No promises."

"Jay."

Julia drove away before Alexia could climb into the car and confiscate the entire recovered patient.

Alexia stood at the kerb for a moment, watching them go, one hand still warm from Jay's grip. Behind her, through the training centre doors, she could hear the team laughing again, Mapi's voice rising above everyone else as she declared herself Baby Jana's honorary aunt.

Alexia closed her eyes.

Then she laughed too.

Because Jay was home.

Because Jay was healing.

Because somewhere in Julia's car, her impossible girlfriend was cradling a fake appendix in a signed jar and probably planning a retirement ceremony for it.

Because fear had not won.

But the screen stayed flat and silent in her hand, bright with useless information. Time. Battery. Notifications from the team group she could not open yet. No messages from Jay. No missed calls from Jay. No little typing bubble. No proof, in the language of modern life, that the woman Alexia loved was still close enough to reach.

Of course there was nothing.

Jay was in surgery.

Jay was under bright lights with strangers around her, body opened because something inside her had ruptured while Alexia was on a football pitch passing a ball.

The thought landed so violently that Alexia bent forward, one hand clamping over her mouth, the other gripping her phone until the edges bit into her palm. It was not a clean thought. It did not come as a sentence and leave. It came as image after image, cruel and disordered. Jay pale in bed that morning, still grinning because she had never met pain she did not try to flirt through. Jay asking for a kiss in that ridiculous, hopeful voice. Alexia stepping away because she thought Jay had Jana's stomach bug, because she was being careful, because she had believed there would be time later.

No mouth, Alexia had said.

You're cruel, Jay had replied, hand pressed dramatically to her stomach.

I am careful.

Cruelfully careful.

At the time, Alexia had rolled her eyes and smiled because it had been Jay being Jay. Sick, annoying, affectionate, still trying to pull Alexia down by the wrist for a kiss she had no intention of letting her have while there was a possible stomach virus in the apartment. Alexia had kissed her forehead instead. Had tucked the sheet around her. Had told her to drink water and not be dramatic. Had gone to training because Jay had waved her away and muttered something about suffering bravely beneath oppression.

Now Jay's appendix had burst.

Now the joke had teeth.

Alexia made a small sound into her hand.

Eli, driving with more care than speed despite the panic sitting in the car like a third person, reached across at the red light and wrapped her fingers around Alexia's wrist.

"Respira, cariño," she said softly. "Breathe."

Alexia shook her head. The movement was tiny, almost childlike. "I left her."

Eli's hand tightened. "You are going to say this many times."

"Because it is true."

"And I will tell you many times that it is not the truth you think it is."

Alexia turned towards her mother, tears already thickening her vision. "She was alone on the floor."

Eli's face changed. Not much, because Eli had lived long enough to know that fear sometimes needed someone steady beside it, not another person collapsing into it. But her mouth tightened, and grief passed through her eyes like weather. "Julia found her."

"She should not have needed Julia."

"She had Julia because she is loved by many people."

"I am her person."

"Sí," Eli said. "You are. And being her person does not mean you become God. You cannot know everything before it happens."

Alexia looked away, out through the windscreen at the city moving past in unbearable normality. Scooters cut between lanes. A woman crossed the street with a coffee in one hand and a bag in the other. Sunlight flashed off balconies. Barcelona was golden and careless and alive, continuing around them while Alexia sat in the passenger seat with her training clothes still clinging to her skin and the morning splitting open behind her.

"She asked me for a kiss," Alexia whispered.

"I know."

"I thought it was funny."

"It was funny."

Alexia looked back at her.

Eli's eyes softened. "It was funny because Jay made it funny. Because she loves to flirt with you. Because she is ridiculous and she knows you love this." Her thumb moved over Alexia's wrist, slow and firm. "Do not turn every sweet moment into a weapon against yourself."

Alexia closed her eyes.

Jay appeared immediately.

Pale. Fever bright. Still smiling. Still trying to chase Alexia's mouth when Alexia leaned close enough to check her temperature. Her blonde hair sticking up against the pillow. One hand on her stomach, the other reaching lazily for Alexia's hoodie sleeve.

Babe, I need healing.

You need water.

Mouth to mouth is mostly water adjacent.

No.

You're violating my rights.

You are contagious.

I am romantic.

Alexia pressed her fingers to her lips hard enough to hurt.

"I should have stayed."

"You thought she had a stomach virus."

"She looked wrong."

"You say this now."

"She did."

"And if you had stayed," Eli said gently, "you would still not have known her appendix had burst until she became worse. You are not a doctor."

"I know her."

"Yes. You know her. And Jay is very good at making herself look less hurt than she is."

Alexia let out a broken breath because that was the thing, the exact thing, the old unfair truth of Jay that made love frightening. Jay could charm through pain. She could joke through fear. She could flirt when she was dizzy, tease when she was shaking, turn a collapsing body into a performance if she thought it would stop someone else from panicking. Alexia had learned that over the last year, but learning it and catching it every time were not the same.

"She nearly called me," Alexia said.

Eli glanced at her. "Julia told you?"

Alexia nodded, jaw trembling. "She wanted to. Then she called Clara because she thought Clara would be practical and I would be scared."

"And was she wrong?"

Alexia looked at her mother.

Eli's expression stayed gentle, but not indulgent. "You would have been scared because you love her. That does not make Jay right, but it explains why she did it."

"It makes me want to shake her."

"When she wakes up, you may threaten this."

"I will."

"Softly."

"No."

Eli almost smiled. "Vale. Medium softly."

A laugh tried to break out of Alexia and failed halfway, turning into another small sob. She pressed the heel of her hand against her chest, where everything felt too tight, too full, too much.

"When she wakes up," Eli said, quieter now, "you will kiss her."

Alexia nodded, tears slipping down again. "Sí."

"And she will make a stupid joke."

Alexia's mouth trembled. "She will."

"She will say something terrible about the appendix."

"Probably."

"She will flirt with you while looking like death."

A tiny, shattered laugh escaped Alexia. "Claro."

"And you will be angry."

"I am already angry."

"And grateful."

Alexia nodded again. "So grateful."

The hospital appeared ahead, bright and clean and terrible.

Alexia opened the car door before Eli had fully stopped. She had one foot on the pavement, body already moving, when Eli said her name in that tone mothers used when panic needed a leash.

"Alexia."

Alexia froze with one hand on the door.

Eli parked properly, then turned to her. "You cannot run into the hospital like a storm and then collapse before you reach her. Breathe. We go together."

Alexia swallowed.

It took everything in her to sit still for two more seconds.

Then they moved.

The hospital entrance was too bright, too polished, too full of people whose lives had not just been rearranged by a phone call. Alexia walked in wearing training kit and trainers, hair pulled back too tightly, face pale, phone clutched in one hand. She could feel people looking, recognition flickering and then fading as soon as they saw her face. No one approached her. Thank God. If anyone had asked for a photo, she might have started screaming and never stopped.

Clara was waiting near reception.

That frightened Alexia more than she expected.

Clara did not look frightened. Clara rarely looked frightened. She looked polished, composed, exactly as she always did, but Alexia had learned the small signs over the past year. The tension beneath the stillness. The way her shoulders sat too square. The way her mouth had gone calm in that legal, controlled way that meant feeling had been locked somewhere it could not interfere with function.

Her eyes found Alexia and softened before the rest of her face could decide whether to.

Alexia walked faster.

"Where is she?"

"In theatre," Clara said. "Julia is outside the surgical unit. They took Jay in a few minutes ago."

Alexia stopped.

A few minutes.

She had missed her by a few minutes.

Not hours. Not long enough to tell herself there was nothing she could have done. Minutes. Jay had been conscious somewhere in this building while Alexia was still trying to arrive, and now she was behind doors Alexia could not open.

The thought almost buckled her.

Clara reached for her hand before she could fold. "She was conscious before. In severe pain, but conscious. She knew what was happening."

Alexia's voice came out thin. "Was she scared?"

Clara did not lie.

"Yes."

Alexia's face crumpled.

Clara held her hand tighter. "And she was asking for you. And making jokes. Both things can be true."

Alexia swallowed against the pain in her throat. "Julia told me."

"She asked for you before they took her in."

"I was not here."

"No," Clara said, softer. "But she knew you were coming."

Alexia looked at her.

Clara's composure shifted, tenderness breaking through the professional steadiness. "Julia told her. She said, Alexia is coming. Jay heard it."

Alexia shut her eyes.

For the first time since Eli had walked onto the training pitch with the wrong face and said hospital, she breathed properly. Not calmly. Not well. But fully.

Jay knew.

Jay knew she was coming.

That had to be enough until it could become true.

Julia stood when they reached the waiting area.

She looked wrecked in the most Julia way possible, which meant she was still upright, still sharp, still dressed like she could negotiate with a government if necessary, but her eyes were red and her blouse was creased from where someone had gripped the fabric too tightly. Jay. Alexia knew it before Julia said anything. She saw the folds in the material and felt the air leave her.

Julia was holding Jay's phone.

That almost undid her.

Jay's phone in Julia's hand. The black indestructible case covered in tiny scratches from being dropped in changing rooms, kitchens, taxis and once, spectacularly, into a bowl of cereal because Jay had been watching Alexia make coffee and had forgotten object permanence.

Alexia stared at it.

Julia noticed and held it out.

"She wanted me to make sure Lucy did not see her search history."

Alexia took the phone with shaking hands.

For half a second, all she could do was look at it.

Then a laugh broke out of her, small and broken and disbelieving. "Dios mío."

Julia's mouth trembled. "She also said the floor started it."

Alexia covered her eyes with Jay's phone. "Of course she did."

"And that she listened emotionally when you told her not to get up."

Alexia lowered the phone slowly.

Julia winced. "I told her that would not help."

"No," Alexia said, voice thick. "It does not."

"She was trying not to scare you."

"I know."

"She nearly called you."

Alexia's eyes filled again.

Julia stepped closer, the hardness falling out of her face now that Alexia was there to receive the truth. "She wanted you. She was scared and she wanted you. But she also did not want to make you afraid if it turned out to be nothing. It was stupid, yes. Deeply. Spectacularly. I will be drafting a formal complaint against her decision making. But it came from love."

Alexia nodded, pressing Jay's phone to her chest. "I know. That is what hurts."

Julia's face softened.

Then, because she was Julia, because emotion could only be allowed to exist for a few seconds before she put structure around it, she inhaled and straightened. "The surgeon said the appendix had likely ruptured before they got her in. They are removing it and cleaning the infection from the abdomen. She will need IV antibiotics. They moved fast, Ale. Fast is good."

Alexia nodded again, trying to make the information settle into places she could manage.

Appendix ruptured.

Removing it.

Cleaning infection.

Antibiotics.

Fast is good.

She sat because Eli guided her into a chair. Clara sat on one side, Eli on the other. Julia remained standing for a moment as if sitting would make everything too real, then finally lowered herself opposite them, elbows on her knees, hands clasped tightly enough to blanch her knuckles.

Jay's absence occupied the empty space between them like another person.

Waiting was its own cruelty.

There were no useful actions in it. That was what Alexia hated most. No drill to repeat. No pass to perfect. No match to read. No opponent to study. Nothing to captain. Nothing to fix. Just fluorescent lights, hard chairs, the faint smell of disinfectant, the distant beep of machines, Clara's hand occasionally covering hers, Eli murmuring soft prayers under her breath, and Julia staring at the surgical doors as if she could legally compel them to open.

Alexia unlocked Jay's phone because Julia gave her the code without needing to ask. Jay had changed it months ago from Alexia's birthday to their anniversary and announced this with such pride that Alexia had kissed her in a supermarket car park and made an elderly man drop a bag of oranges. Now the screen glowed in Alexia's lap, too bright, too intimate, full of Jay's ridiculous open tabs and half finished thoughts.

A search tab for motorcycle jackets.

Another for can parrots understand insults.

Another, horrifyingly recent, for right side stomach pain when sneezing bad?

Alexia stared at that one until the words blurred.

"She looked it up," she whispered.

Julia lifted her head. "What?"

Alexia turned the phone slightly so Julia could see.

Julia's face changed. Not much. Just enough. A small tightening at the mouth, a flash of anger with nowhere useful to go.

"Of course she did," Julia said quietly. "Of course she Googled it and still called Clara instead of you because she thought that was somehow the sensible option."

Alexia looked back at the screen. "She was scared."

"Yes."

"And alone."

"For some of it."

Alexia shut her eyes.

Clara's hand covered hers at once, warm and steady over Jay's phone. "Alexia."

"I know what you are going to say."

"Then listen anyway."

Alexia opened her eyes, but she did not look up. If she looked at Clara's face, at Eli's worry, at Julia's red eyes, the control she had left might come apart completely. "You will say I could not know. You will say she told me to go. You will say she called for help. You will say this is not my fault."

"Yes."

"I know all this."

"And you still believe the opposite."

Alexia's thumb moved over the edge of Jay's phone case. There was a tiny crack near the corner from where Jay had dropped it outside the training ground and immediately blamed gravity for poor conduct. "I know it in my head."

Clara nodded. "Your heart is being stupid."

Julia huffed out a laugh before she could stop herself.

Alexia looked up, startled by the bluntness.

Clara shrugged faintly. "It happens to the best of us."

For one absurd second, Alexia almost smiled. Not because anything was funny, not truly, but because Jay would have loved that. Jay would have pointed weakly at Clara from a hospital bed and said, See, legal woman says your heart is being thick. Then Alexia would have told her not to call Clara legal woman, and Jay would have immediately called Julia emergency adult just to make everyone worse.

The almost smile vanished.

Eli's arm stayed around Alexia's shoulders. She had not let go for long since they sat down, as though Alexia might physically come loose if no one held her in place. Every few minutes, Eli murmured something in Catalan, not fully prayer, not fully comfort, more like speaking to the world in the language Alexia had known since childhood and asking it, firmly, to behave.

Julia stood suddenly.

Alexia's whole body reacted.

"What?"

"Nothing," Julia said, though her eyes had flicked towards the surgical doors again. "I just cannot sit still."

Alexia almost laughed at that too, because Julia could sit still through negotiations that lasted four hours and made grown men sweat through their shirts. But now she paced three steps one way, three steps back, Jay's absence tugging at her like a leash.

"You should drink water," Eli said gently.

Julia looked at the unopened bottle in her hand as if it had appeared by magic. "Yes. Sure."

She did not drink.

Clara reached over, took the bottle, opened it and handed it back.

Julia stared at it. "Do not manage me."

"I am not managing you. I am preventing dehydration with evidence."

"That is managing."

"Drink."

Julia drank.

Alexia watched them and felt the faintest edge of reality return. Their rhythm. Familiar even here. Clara controlled and quietly fierce. Julia sharp because fear made her sharper. Eli soft but immovable. All of them here for Jay. All of them orbiting the same closed doors, waiting for news of a woman who had somehow become the centre of so many people's lives while acting like she was merely passing through with tattoos, terrible ideas and a dangerous smile.

Alexia looked down when her phone buzzed.

Lucy.

Any update? Everyone is here. We are not coming in unless you want us. Jana is crying and Mapi has threatened to duct tape her to a chair if she apologises again. We love you both.

Alexia stared at the message for a long moment.

Then she typed slowly because her fingers were still shaking.

Still in surgery. I will tell you when we know. Tell Jana it is not her fault. Tell everyone thank you.

She hesitated.

Then added: Jay will say the appendix was Jana's fault when she wakes up. Do not let Jana believe her.

Lucy replied almost immediately.

That sounds exactly like Jay. We are waiting. Love you, Ale.

Alexia pressed the phone to her chest.

Love you, Ale.

People had said things like that to Alexia for years. Fans. Teammates. Friends. Family. She had always valued it, but at a distance, as something warm and real and manageable. Jay had changed the scale of love in her life. Jay made love ridiculous. Daily. Physical. Unignorable. She kissed Alexia in corridors, touched her knee under tables, sent her voice notes about absolutely nothing, left notes on the fridge that said marry me if you remember to buy oat milk and you looked hot shouting at training, respectfully.

She loved loudly, but there was nothing careless about it. Beneath the chaos was attention. Jay noticed when Alexia's shoulders were too tight. When she had not eaten enough after a late match. When her Spanish became clipped because she was angry and trying to be professional. Jay noticed the person beneath the captain and loved her with a devotion that made Alexia feel seen and sometimes terrified.

And now Jay was beyond doors Alexia could not open.

The waiting stretched.

A nurse passed.

Alexia looked up too quickly.

Not them.

A doctor crossed another corridor.

Not them.

Eli squeezed her shoulder. "Calma."

Alexia shook her head. "I cannot."

"I know."

"I keep seeing her face this morning."

"Tell me."

Alexia swallowed. She did not know why she did. Perhaps because silence was becoming unbearable. Perhaps because speaking the morning out loud made it less like a weapon inside her. "She was pale. But still making jokes. She asked for a kiss many times. She said I was choosing hygiene over romance."

Julia made a sound that was almost a laugh. "Of course she did."

"She said our relationship was toast-based now."

Clara blinked. "Toast based?"

"I fed her toast. Cut into triangles."

Julia put a hand over her mouth.

Alexia looked at her. "What?"

"Nothing."

"That is Jay's word."

Julia lowered her hand. "I am not laughing at you."

"I know."

"I am laughing because she was probably in agony and still deeply committed to accusing you of emotional neglect via breakfast."

Alexia's eyes burned. "I should have known the jokes were too much."

Clara leaned forward. "No. That is the trap. You cannot decide after the fact that everything was a sign you should have understood. Jay jokes when she has a splinter. Jay jokes when she is hungry. Jay jokes when she is frightened. Jay jokes when she is happy. If we treated every joke as a medical emergency, she would live permanently in an ambulance."

Despite herself, despite everything, Alexia let out a shaky breath that almost became a laugh.

Julia pointed at Clara. "Annoyingly correct."

"Thank you."

"It was not a compliment."

"I accepted it as one."

The doors opened.

All four of them stood.

It happened so fast that Alexia barely registered the movement. One moment she was seated with Jay's phone in her lap, and the next she was on her feet, heart in her throat, body pulled forward before she knew who had come through.

A surgeon stepped into the waiting area, mask lowered beneath her chin, cap still on, eyes scanning briefly until they found the little group that had risen like one body.

"Family for Jay Jones?"

Alexia stepped forward. "Yes. I am her partner."

Her voice was steady.

She had no idea how.

The surgeon's expression softened in that careful hospital way. Not pity. Not celebration. Professional kindness. The kind that held both good and bad news until the words decided which they would become.

"She is out of surgery."

Alexia's knees nearly gave.

Eli's hand caught her back.

"She is stable," the surgeon continued. "The appendix had ruptured, and there was infection in the abdomen. We removed the appendix and cleaned the area thoroughly. She is on IV antibiotics and will be monitored closely. She will be sore and groggy when she wakes, and we will watch for fever and signs of infection over the next twenty four to forty eight hours. But the surgery went well."

The surgery went well.

Alexia heard the words from far away.

Julia sat down suddenly, one hand over her mouth.

Clara closed her eyes.

Eli whispered, "Gracias a Dios."

Alexia could not speak.

She tried, but something had locked inside her throat. The pressure in her chest broke apart too quickly, relief flooding in so violently it almost hurt worse than fear. Stable. Surgery went well. Removed. Cleaned. Antibiotics. Monitored. Jay was not safe in the uncomplicated way Alexia wanted her safe. Not yet. But she was alive. She was through.

The surgeon waited, patient.

Alexia forced air into her lungs. "Can I see her?"

"She is in recovery now. It may be a little while before she is fully awake, but yes. One of you can come in shortly."

"Her," Julia said immediately, voice rough.

Clara nodded. "Alexia."

Eli kissed Alexia's temple. "Go when they say, cariño."

Alexia looked at all of them, suddenly unable to bear the generosity. "You should see her too."

"We will," Julia said. "But she will be looking for you first. Even if she pretends she is looking for snacks."

"She may ask for a lawyer," Clara added.

Julia wiped under one eye with the heel of her hand. "If she does, I am billing her."

The surgeon gave practical instructions then, and Alexia forced herself to absorb them. Recovery. Pain relief. No food at first. Fluids. Antibiotics. Fever expected but watched. Movement limited. No training, absolutely no training, and that last part made Julia actually laugh once, sharp and exhausted.

"Good luck with that," Julia muttered.

The surgeon's brows lifted.

Clara said, very calmly, "We will restrain her with affection and legal threats."

"Whatever works," the surgeon said.

Then she left them.

They waited again, but this waiting had air in it.

Alexia sat because Eli guided her back down, and for a moment she bent forward, Jay's phone held between both hands, and breathed. Her shoulders shook once. Then again. She pressed her fingers to her mouth, trying to contain it, but relief had made her body loose and useless. Eli wrapped both arms around her. Clara's hand rested on her back. Julia's knee knocked gently against hers from opposite, a small contact, a tether.

"She is stable," Eli murmured. "Mi niña, she is stable."

Alexia nodded into her hands.

"She is going to be unbearable," Julia said, voice trembling.

Clara exhaled. "Absolutely unbearable."

"She will milk this for weeks."

"Months," Clara corrected.

Alexia lifted her head slightly, wiping her face with the sleeve of her training jacket. "She will say she lost an organ and deserves a motorcycle."

Julia pointed at her. "Do not give her ideas."

"She already has ideas."

"Then do not give them funding."

Alexia let out a real laugh then.

Small. Wet. Broken around the edges, but real.

The sound loosened all of them. Eli smiled through tears. Clara looked briefly at the ceiling like she was grateful and furious with the universe in equal measure. Julia leaned back and covered her face with both hands.

"God," Julia said. "I hate her appendix."

"I also hate it," Alexia said immediately.

"It is gone now."

"Good."

"Jay will want to name it."

Alexia closed her eyes. "Do not."

"She will."

"She will call it Jana," Clara said.

They all went quiet.

Then Julia started laughing.

Not loudly. Not properly. But helplessly, with one hand still over her face. Clara followed, a breath of laughter breaking into something near tears. Eli shook her head, whispering, "Ay, Jay," with such affection that Alexia's chest ached.

Alexia laughed too.

Because Jay was alive.

Because Jay was going to wake up.

Because the woman she loved had gone into emergency surgery and somehow everyone in the waiting room was already preparing for her first stupid joke.

A nurse came for Alexia twenty minutes later.

"Only one for now," she said gently.