Back to us | Alexia Putellas

Stop.

"Why not?" I asked, the fear inside me building when I got no response from my wife.
"Why not Ale?"

"Isy..." she breathed, placing her hand on my knee.

The feeling of her skin against mine normally made me feel safe, but not in this moment, right now it made me feel sick.

"Did you sleep with her?" I asked in a hushed tone, not wanting to be overheard, but needing to get straight to the point. I wanted to know if my suspicions were correct and if there was something more than just a friendship between them all along.

"No, of course not"

"I get it if you did, you've spent every day together for nearly two months, you've got a past... you were together for years before you met me and you've clearly got close again. I just- I need to know"

"We didn't sleep together Isy, I could never do that to you"

"What is it then?"

"We kissed. I mean, she kissed me, but-"

"Stop talking"

"It meant nothing, please just let me explain" Ale pleaded frantically, her voice still in a whisper as we tried to keep our argument under wraps from the rest of the plane.

"Trust me, you will, but not here. Not while I'm holding our sleeping son and definitely not on a plane full of our friends and their families, I'm not doing this now, so please just stop" I said through gritted teeth, before looking down at Jordi who was snoring gently as his hand gripped the fabric of my shirt in his little hand.

An awkward silence fell between us, my heart was broken, so broken that it seriously had me questioning whether it was beating at all. I felt nothing and everything at the same time. I wanted to run, I wanted to get as far away from her as I possibly could in this moment, but I couldn't for many reasons. Jordi asleep in my arms was the first one and another being that we were over 30,000 feet in the air. I was so close to breaking down, I wanted to cry, I wanted to scream at her, I wanted to confront Jenni about kissing my wife, but I held myself together. Not for them, not for me, but for my son. He had been my number-one priority since the moment that we found out that we were pregnant and that wasn't going to change now just because I was angry.

"You don't seem surprised" Ale said quietly, looking across at me, her eyes desperately searching for mine, but never finding them.

"I'm not" I mumbled as I stared out of the window at the dark night sky.
"You were all over each other for the whole tournament, practically attached at the hip for weeks, and at times it was like you forgot that Jordi and I even existed. I expected it to be honest"

"Isy..."

"Please just leave it, we'll talk when we get home. I can't do this now"

"I didn't forget about you two"

"Well, it sure felt like you did"

Ale's POV

I hated myself. I hated what I'd done, I hated that I'd hurt Isy and I hated that my family might be torn apart before it had even had a chance really get started.

I wanted to go straight home with Isy and Jordi when we landed, but winning meant that there was a victory parade that we all had to go on, it was the last place I wanted to be. I needed to talk to Isy, I needed to explain, even though I didn't really know how it happened myself...

Jenni and I hadn't seen each other properly in a couple of years before the tournament, we'd both been injured, missing out on international camps which was the only time we were in the same place now that she played over in Mexico, but the second the world cup started, it felt like we had never been apart. Not in a romantic way, but in terms of friendship. We'd known each other for over a decade, and we'd been more than friends for some of that time, but we both realized that we were meant to be just friends a long time ago. I met Isy and she moved on.