Open Play: Ladies, Goals, The Everything System in-between

Chapter 52: [52] "The Distance Between Conferences"

Monday morning.

Luc’s apartment in the 8th arrondissement had stayed quiet for most of the week he’d been using it. The floor-to-ceiling windows threw white November light across the marble countertop. The Seine was flat and grey outside.

He was on the training pitch in his head, replaying the Phocéen match’s final twenty minutes, before the whistle went.

He pressed the intercom without asking who it was.

The footsteps in the hall were familiar before the knock on the door.

Juliette came through the door with her coat still buttoned, a leather bag over one shoulder and a face that conveyed she had been awake for long hours and was pretending that wasn’t the case.

"You won."

"We won, the whole team. You included."

"Three-two." She dropped her bag by the door and stood in the middle of the room with her coat still on. "I watched the second half from a lounge near my apartment because Alexi was making a lot of noise. There was no sound on the screen so I had to read the body language."

"What did you read?"

"That Phocéen’s keeper is better than his numbers suggest." She pressed a thumb into her coat button but didn’t open it. "And that you went looking for Idriss when you had a cleaner shot yourself."

"He needed it more."

"I know why you did it. I’m not criticizing it. Just saying, it’s unlike you."

She sat on the counter stool, finally unbuttoning the coat. Under it she had a plain grey sweater and dark jeans, the version of Juliette that existed outside the physio room and outside the emerald dress. The version he’d taken to Le Clarence for her birthday.

"How was it?" Luc asked. He was at his trusty expresso machine. After already downing a cup, he put a second cup under the machine.

"The conference?"

"Yeah."

Juliette took the cup. "Brussels was cold and the conference was longer than the programme suggested. There were three panel discussions that should’ve been emails." She drank. "The third one was genuinely useful. A physio out of the Netherlands presented new recovery protocols for ligament injuries. I’m going to use some of it on Hugo."

"He’ll fight you on the timeline."

"He always fights me on the timeline. I always win." She set the cup down. "He cornered me in the corridor of the training facility after I had just landed, can you imagine? Even sent me a voice note while I was still in the taxi, on my way."

Luc almost smiled. "Paris Royal. He wants Paris Royal more than anything in this world."

"He said MD15. I told him I’d look at the scans on Thursday." She straightened the sleeve of her sweater with two fingers. "If Thursday says what this morning’s jog suggested it would say, he’ll be in the squad."

"He’ll be more than in the squad."

"Let me see the scans first."

The espresso machine clicked off. The apartment went back to its particular silence, the kind belonged to people who hadn’t had time to fill them with mych furniture or anything personal yet.

"Alexi said you may have taken one of her jackets here. It was on the back of my sofa. She texted me about it with seven exclamation points."

"The yellow one?"

"You noticed the jacket?"

"It’s hard to miss. It has feathers on it. I wonder how I grabbed it though."

"She’d say they’re structured plumes." Juliette said mockingly. "Did she behave herself while I was gone?"

"She was in Milan for most of it."

"That’s not an answer."

"She was fine... I think. Didn’t really see much of her," Luc said. "She stopped texting me after the first two days you were gone."

"What changed after two days?"

"I told her I’d answer one question per day. She started choosing them more carefully after that."

"You actually did that?"

"Yeah. And I guess it worked, didn’t it."

She pressed her lips together, not quite suppressing it. "You know where she’ll be today?"

Luc picked up his cup. "Milan probably."

"Right."

The light through the windows had shifted slightly, moving from white to a deeper yellow that meant early afternoon was arriving ahead of schedule.

Juliette came off the stool.

She pulled her sweater over her head and put it on the counter.

"I’ve been in Brussels for almost two weeks," she said. "Eating airport sandwiches and listening to a Dutch physio read statistics off a slideshow."

"How were the sandwiches?"

"Terrible." She moved around the counter. "Let’s not talk about sandwiches."

---

The morning after. A Tuesday.

Light came in through the windows at a low angle. The Seine was brighter than it had been the day before, catching a rare November sun.

Juliette was already up, sitting cross-legged on the bed with her tablet on her knee, reviewing something that looked like scan results. Her dark hair was loose and fell forward as she scrolled.

Luc lay back with his arms behind his head looking at the ceiling.

[System Notification]

[Observation: Juliette’s affection level — Elevated.]

[No objective assigned. TES just thought you should know.]

"You’re reading those now?" Luc asked.

"They uploaded overnight." Juliette didn’t look up. "Hugo’s ligament."

"And?"

"I’ll still redo it Thursday, but it’s going to be a shorter conversation than he expects." She closed the tablet and set it on the bedside table. "He’ll get his Paris Royal."

Luc said nothing. He’d known it since the amount of jogs he watched Hugo complete without any visible compensation in his stride.

Juliette put her chin on one knee.

"Just one behind in the wager, huh"

"Yes."

"Paris Royal in about four days. Saturday."

"Yep."

"You know Fontaine won’t be the only danger on that pitch." She reached over and straightened the lamp on the table that hadn’t even been crooked. "His midfield creates for him. You’ll be walking into the best-serviced striker in the league on his own pitch."

"I know his midfield," Luc said. "I’ve watched twelve hours of Paris Royal footage in the last two weeks."

"Twelve hours?"

"Give or take."

Juliette looked at him.

"You’re going to be the most prepared man in that stadium," she said. "You’ll make it look so fucking easy."

"That’s the point."

She reached over and straightened his pillow for him.

"I missed this apartment, remember our early days? Before you started loving my apartment more than me." she said quietly.

"You missed the apartment? Not me?"

"Shut up, American."