IR Day 17 - A long week for everyone

Ingrid’s game was over well before yours, but she’s still in her uniform. She’s a bit sweaty, wearing no makeup, and more than a few hairs have escaped her hair tie. To you, she looks radiant.

Before you can take a step toward her, Aki glides in front of you.

You step aside with her. Aki lightly touches your arm with her fingertips, looking into your eyes with her usual expression of mild neutrality. She’s the only girl you know who looks put together both before and after a game.

She doesn’t say anything, but she doesn’t have to.

“It’s fine,” you tell her. “We’re fine.”

She peers at you for a moment longer, as though she isn’t convinced that you mean it. She appears to decide that she believes you, and gives you a little nod.

“We can talk tomorrow if you want,” you tell her, unable to keep yourself from glancing at Ingrid. Aki looks as well, but she doesn’t smile or do anything annoying. She just nods and steps out of your way.

Ingrid looks… cautiously optimistic as you approach. You don’t know what she’s thinking. You’ve been texting her all week, but not spilling your guts or going into detail. In fact, you’ve been acting tough.

You see now that you were not successful in convincing her that you were fine. She’s worried. It makes sense. Ingrid’s English is good, but far from perfect. You can tell that she struggles with texting and there are times when you’re talking, and you notice that you’ve lost her. You don’t know what to say or how to communicate it well. You don’t speak Swedish.

So in the middle of the lobby, where girls mill around, chatter, and hassle Bee for keys and snacks, you hug Ingrid without a word. She seems almost grateful for that, and you realize as you stand there with your arms around her, that she worries about the language barrier even more than you do. She was probably thinking that she needed to be supportive, but she wasn’t confident that she could do it with her limited English.

Surely she has enough problems of her own. You need to be more convincing when you act tough. You don’t want her worrying.

You know that, but you’re still overwhelmed. Lara, Aki, Karin. Your actions have affected and will affect a lot of people. You just wanted to play soccer.

The hug is long, and after this week, you needed that. Her soft, warm body goes a long way to ease away some of the tension. But you’re both disgusting from the game. You need to clean up, but what you want even more is something to eat.