Tango with mr footballer

3.

Eden woke up to seventeen missed calls. She gasped and checked the time, it was just 9:09am. She was confused, the calls were from Amara who should have gone to her laundry mart. She had decided to take the rest of the week off, hence she was in bed.

She didn't register anything at first. She then registered the light, it was too bright, the angle wrong and then the unfamiliar weight of a pillow that wasn't hers, and then the slow, arriving understanding that she was in Amara’s own bed, in her own flat, which was fine, that was good, except she had absolutely no memory of deciding to leave.

She remembered the banquette. The city through the glass. His hand.

She did not remember anything that happened after the kiss.

She sat up.

Her dress from last night was folded over the chair by the window, which meant Amara had got home, which meant Amara had seen the state of her, which meant this morning was going to involve a conversation Eden was not remotely prepared for. Her shoes were paired neatly by the door. On the nightstand: a glass of water, two paracetamol, and a Post-it note in Amara's handwriting “we are talking. do not leave this flat.”

Eden drank the water. Took the paracetamol. Picked up her phone again.

Seventeen missed calls.

Three from Amara. Two from a number she didn't recognize. One from her mother, which was immediately alarming because her mother only called in emergencies or on birthdays and it was neither. The rest were unknown numbers, which was the kind of thing that happened to other people.

She scrolled down.

Forty-one new messages. The first was from her friend Jada, sent at six forty-seven in the morning, which Jada never did because Jada had a strict policy against existing before nine.

It said: “eden. EDEN. please tell me you're awake. please tell me you've seen it.”

Eden stared at the word “it” for a long moment.

Then she opened i********:.

Her first indication that something was wrong was that she had four thousand and twelve new followers.

She had, before last night, one hundred and eighty-three followers, most of whom were clients, colleagues, or people she'd gone to university with and never properly unfollowed. She did not have the kind of account that gained four hundred followers overnight. She had the kind of account that posted moodboards of interiors she admired and occasionally a flat lay of fabric swatches when she remembered to.

Four thousand and twelve??

She clicked on her notifications and immediately put her phone face-down on the mattress.

She picked it up again.

There were tags. Dozens of them. People tagging her in something, the same something, over and over, different accounts, different languages, the same image appearing in the thumbnails like a recurring bad dream. She clicked on the first one with the grim focus of someone removing a splinter.

The photo was taken from below and to the left, through glass, with the particular grainy long-lens quality of something not meant to be seen. The lighting was the warm amber of the VIP lounge. The composition was unflattering in the specific way of photos that capture something true.

It was her.

It was him.

His hand was at her jaw. Her hand, she hadn't even realized she'd done this, was curled into the front of his shirt. They were kissing with an intensity of people who had temporarily forgotten there was a room around them, a city below them, a world with phones in it.

The caption on the post she was looking at, from an account called “calcio_insider” with two hundred thousand followers, read:

Matteo Romano spotted at Buio last night, not alone. Who is she??? And what happened to Giulia Ricci??? 👀🔥 #MatteoRomano #SerieA #Scandal

Eden read the caption.

She read it again.

She looked at the photo.

She read the caption a third time.

Matteo Romano.

She typed the name into the search bar with the slow, deliberate calm trying to defuse whatever she was feeling. The results loaded. She looked at them. She put her phone face-down on the mattress again and sat very still for a moment, looking at the wall.

Then she said, out loud, to no one:

"Oh no."

Amara appeared in the doorway some seconds later, already dressed, holding two mugs of coffee, wearing an expression she couldn't read.

"So," Amara said.

"Don't," said Eden.

"I haven't said anything."

"You're about to say something."

"I'm about to give you coffee." Amara crossed the room, handed her a mug, sat on the end of the bed with her legs crossed, and looked at Eden with the patient attention of someone who had all morning and intended to use it. "How much do you remember?"

"Enough." Eden wrapped both hands around the mug. "We talked. We went upstairs. We—" She stopped. "And then I don't know. I wasn't drunk."

"You weren't drunk," Amara confirmed. "You were the other thing."

"What other thing."

"The thing where you forget to be careful because someone is actually interesting to you." Amara said this without judgment, which was almost worse. "I found you at the bar at one in the morning in a state I would describe as significantly defrosted. He was talking to some people across the room. You looked—" she paused, choosing the word with visible care— "loosened."

Eden closed her eyes.

"He put you in a cab," Amara said. "Paid for it. Gave me his number in case there were any problems. I thought that was—"

"Please don't say sweet."

"I was going to say surprisingly organized for someone who'd just been photographed kissing a woman in a nightclub three weeks after denying an affair with the Italian president's daughter."

Eden opened her eyes.

She looked at Amara.

"Say that again," she said. "From the president's daughter part."

Amara pulled out her own phone, already open to something, and turned it around.

It was a news article. Not a gossip account, an actual news site, one of the Italian ones that had an English column, which meant it had traveled, which meant it was a story with enough traction to be worth translating. The headline read:

Romano Scandal Continues: New Woman Identified as Mystery Club Date

And below that, in smaller text:

Footballer denies relationship with Ricci but photographs raise fresh questions about credibility

There was the photo again. Larger this time. Her face was completely visible.