The Football Agent System

Chapter 18: Chapter 18: The Friends He Left Behind I

Garcia walked in just before seven and heard Ben before he had fully cleared the door.

"There he is." Ben was already standing, arms spread, grinning at him from across the room like Garcia had just come back from a war. "Ladies and gentlemen, a dead man walks."

The pub was the same. Corner table by the window, the one they had claimed so many times over the years that the staff knew to leave it if any of them were coming in. Football highlights played on the screen above the bar without sound. The smell of fried food, old wood, and spilled beer had not changed. Neither had the sticky laminate on the tables or the way the light came in orange and low from the fixtures overhead.

Theo looked up from his glass, took Garcia in from head to toe, and said, "You look tired."

"Thanks," Garcia said.

"It is not a compliment."

Rafi did not look up at all. He was sitting with his arms folded and a pint already half gone in front of him, his eyes on the table or somewhere past it. He looked like a man who had made a decision before Garcia arrived and was holding it.

Garcia took the empty chair without being told to.

Before he could say anything, Ben raised his hand toward the bar. Their regular order came back without being asked — the same round they had been drinking together for years. The beer appeared in front of Garcia, and Ben sat back down like he had not just done something kind.

"So," Ben said. "Are you going to tell us where you’ve been, or are we doing this the hard way?"

Garcia did not wait for the question to get sharper.

"I owe you an apology," he said. He kept his voice level because he had practised this part in the car. "I should have answered your calls. I should have replied when you texted me. I should not have disappeared the way I did."

Ben opened his mouth and Garcia could already see the joke coming.

"Don’t," Theo said.

Ben closed his mouth.

"After Vantage," Garcia said, "after the job, after my clients, after Sofia — I was ashamed. I did not want anyone to see me like that. I told myself I needed space, but I kept letting it go longer and longer until coming back felt too difficult, and then it just kept getting worse."

"That was about a week in," Theo said. "Then you stopped answering entirely."

"I know."

"For months."

"I know."

Rafi said nothing and drank.

"I’m not here to give you a speech about why I did it," Garcia said. "I did it because I was ashamed and I did not handle it right. That is the whole of it."

Ben leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling. "I feel like I should be angrier than I am."

"I am angry enough for everyone," Theo said. "Drink your beer, Garcia. I need something to eat before this becomes a counselling session."

He flagged the waiter and ordered without looking at the menu, because none of them had needed the menu in years. Rafi still said nothing.

The food order went in and the table settled into an uncomfortable kind of quiet that was trying to pass itself off as normal. Ben talked about a lower-league story he was chasing, some manager who had been sacked and was claiming he had never been told. Theo said something dry about employment law. Garcia added where he could and drank his beer and tried not to look at Rafi too often.

Then Rafi finished his pint and reached for the next one and something in his face changed.

"You want to know what the worst part was?"

Nobody answered.

"We asked people about you." His voice was louder than the pub noise around them. "We actually went and asked people if you were alright. I called one of your old colleagues from Vantage because I was worried you’d done something stupid."

"Rafi—" Ben started.

"No." He turned in his chair to face Garcia directly. "You made us feel useless. You made us feel like we were nobody to you. We called you, we texted you, we asked around about you, and you treated us like you’d never met us."

Garcia held his gaze and said nothing.

"We have known each other since school," Rafi said, and his voice was cracking now at the edges even though he did not seem to have noticed. "Since school, Garcia. If you were broke, if you were finished, if she left you, whatever it was — you come to us. That’s it. That’s how it works."

"I know," Garcia said.

"Then why didn’t you?"

Garcia did not have an answer for that beyond the one he had already given, and giving it again would have sounded like an excuse, so he sat there instead. Rafi was still looking at him, his eyes going wet now, his jaw tight, and then his face went through something complicated and he looked away and pressed a hand over his mouth like he was trying to stop something coming out.

"I’m not crying," he said.

"Nobody said anything," Theo told him.

"I’m not crying, I’m angry."

"You can be both," Ben said, quietly, which was not like him.

Rafi took a breath that did not quite work and pushed his beer away from himself. Theo reached across and moved it further. Rafi did not fight him on it.

Garcia felt his own chest tighten in a way he had not expected sitting at a corner table in a pub.

He had spent three months being ashamed, and shame was a cold feeling, controlled and private. This was different. Rafi’s face had done something to him.

"I was embarrassed," Garcia said. "Not of you — of myself. I hated the thought of you looking at me and having to pretend I was not finished. I hated being the story. I hated—" His voice caught once and he let it, then pushed through. "I hated needing help and not knowing how to ask for it."

Rafi wiped his face with the back of his wrist. "Idiot," he said.

"I know."

"You complete idiot."

"Yes."

Garcia stood up and crossed around the table and put his arms around him. The hug was awkward because Rafi was still sitting and still stiff and did not immediately put his arms up, and for a second Garcia held someone who was not quite accepting it. Then Rafi muttered something into his shoulder that sounded like a curse and his arms came up reluctantly.

"Still angry," he said.

"I know," Garcia said.

"Don’t think this means I’m fine with it."

"I’m not asking you to be."

"Good. Because I’m not."

They stayed like that for a second longer than was comfortable. Theo said nothing. Ben, for once, said nothing either. Then Rafi shoved Garcia away with both hands, not gently, and told him to sit down before he made it worse, and Garcia sat down, and Ben exhaled like he had been holding his breath.

"Right," Theo said. He raised his glass. "That was horrible. Let’s eat."

"Hear, hear," Ben said, and clinked it.

Food arrived, and the table found its way back to something warmer and more familiar. Theo made Rafi drink a glass of water before he touched anything else. Rafi complained through the whole glass but drank it. Ben ate too much too fast and talked at the same time, which he had always done.

Garcia asked them about themselves properly for the first time.

Ben was still covering lower-league football and helping at his father’s restaurant on weekends. He had started writing pieces for two more outlets and was working on something longer, a book or something close to it, though he kept saying he did not know if it would come to anything. He had also broken up with someone, but he said it in such a fast, light way that it clearly still hurt. He moved on before anyone could ask.

Theo had moved up at the firm. He was doing well, properly well by the sound of it, but he said the money kept disappearing into rent, tax, and a lifestyle that had inflated around him without him noticing. He said he was tired all the time. Ben said he was rich. Theo said being rich and being tired were not mutually exclusive and Ben was not qualified to speak on either.

Rafi talked last. He said coaching had been rough. He had a handful of players, some academy rejects, a couple of semi-pros trying to hold on, one or two youth prospects whose parents thought he was a miracle worker. The money was inconsistent. The parents were difficult. The players wanted shortcuts and big badges and did not always want the actual work that came with it.

"I have thought about stopping," he said. It came out plain, not dramatic.

"And?" Garcia asked.

Rafi shrugged. "And I haven’t stopped. But I’ve thought about it."

Garcia set his glass down and let a pause settle.

"I started my own agency," he said.