The Meeting

Leah

Leah POV

Life without Alex was weird, kind of empty if I'm honest. I smile but I'm smiling with my face rather than my heart, like I used to when we first got together. I didn't blame her for leaving me though, I mean technically I pushed her. I had my reasons though, reasons that I probably should have told her.

I thought about giving up football, for a while. It's hard being in the public eye all the time, everyone deciphers your body language, panics when you haven't been spotted in a while and makes assumptions about why I mistimed a tackle against someone, purely a mistake but on social media it was because my heart was so broken that I couldn't concentrate.

In the end though, I captained my team to a World Cup win. My reasoning for not giving up was purely Alex. Of course I took my parents, brother and team into consideration but when it came down to the final moments, Alex was who I thought about. I knew if she read that I had given up on my passion, she would worry about me. Maybe even end up taking me back for fear that I wouldn't be okay. As much as I wanted her back though, I couldn't allow her to take me back for that reason. I had been selfish enough and selfishness and love are not two components that mix well together.

I know my teammates worry about me a lot, especially the night of the World Cup after party. I was never one to stay at parties until the final hour but that night, I cut the cake and raised a toast to the team and took myself to bed. I tossed and turned, read through my old messages with Alex and scrolled through our photos together. One in particular stood out to me, taken by my mum at a family gathering. I was sat beside Alex as she spoke to my Aunt, my mum sent it to me the next day with the caption "I wish someone looked at me the way you looked at her!"

Mum was mad at me after Mauritius, she told me I couldn't keep letting my mind do this to me but I couldn't help it. I thought about telling her we had grown apart, leaving out the part about Harriet to save myself the earache but I knew that my mum would automatically think Alex had broken my heart and I couldn't bare the thought of Alex being someone my mum didn't see as the good, loyal and loving person that she was. Is.

It was easier when I knew I was still on her mind. She used to watch my stories almost right away, liked my posts and tweets before anyone else really had. Text me good luck before important matches and text me randomly asking if something was in my apartment, knowing that it wasn't but it made our names come up on each other's phone that one last time. Sometimes I wondered if she got notifications for my posts. But recently, Alex would rarely even watch them. I would endlessly scroll through the views in the hope of seeing her name but it never came. She would like my posts about football but never my personal pictures. I don't blame her though, every time she liked a picture, Twitter would blow up with notifications from people suggesting we were talking again, it made it hard to enjoy time on social media at all.

I've spent a lot of time trying to heal, developing new hobbies and studying. My friends have tried to get me to date several times but I have no interest. I firmly believe that Alex is my person and I lost her. That was my own fault and if I have to live with that forever then I will. The thought of being with someone else makes my stomach feel like it's been in a blender. The last lips to touch mine belonged to Alex, and I was happy with that.

We have a match tonight, against City. We've been performing better in the last few seasons, revenue has increased from tickets sales soaring and we have been able to secure better players. It's an important game for us, so as always I'll stay off social media before it to try to avoid reading any negativity that would take my head to somewhere else other than the game. I arrived at the stadium, checking my fake smile in the mirror before I got out of my car. I greeted some fans who stood at the gates of the entrance, signing autographs and taking pictures before entering the changing rooms and trying to join in with the atmosphere but still feeling the same heaviness in my heart.