Sunsets and footballers

Lucy Bronze x Reader (44) & Jordan Nobbs x Leah Williamson Mini (6)

Jordan woke shortly after 7am, her body programmed to, regardless of how late she went to sleep. She was alone on the couch when she woke, a blanket covering her and could hear soft whispers as if they were trying to avoid disturbing her. She rubbed her eyes and sat up, looking over the back of the couch to YFN and Lucy who were sitting on the kitchen counter stools opposite each other. YFN winced as Lucy gently rubbed some cream into her palms. She'd been knocked down in Barcelona just a few days prior and although her knees had been protected with her pants, her hands had copped quite a scraping. She watched as they interacted, sitting close so their thighs were touching and looking at each other when the other wasn't looking as if they were high-school sweethearts. She and Leah had been similar once, for seven years almost. After they'd broken up, Jordan had thought it was because she'd done something wrong at first, and then she thought perhaps Leah had just fallen out of that love for each other that she still felt. Seeing her around so often hurt like a knife in the heart. The thought that what was once the promise of a lifetime, reduced to nothing. Their sweet nothings, torn away, replaced by generic teammate speech and not even the good, fun kind like with Katie and Caitlin and Lucy, but the bad kind; the ignoring, the minimal words, the monotone, the lack of emotion as if Leah really wanted to get it through to her that she meant nothing to her anymore. It had broken her, and she hadn't fought it. She hadn't seen the point. When Leah makes a decision, she makes a decision. Captain Leah Williamson. Truthfully, Jordan never felt like she was good enough for Leah with the dresses, interviews, events, paparazzi. With her fame and the expectation that surrounded her. It took a while for her to be thankful of that, because it had meant it was easier to understand why they broke up. It took a while, of course; with the five stages of grief. The denial came from shock and was immediate as her mind simply refused to believe it. The anger came next when she'd seen Leah laughing and enjoying herself around their friends. Then came the bargaining as she delved deep in herself to understand why and think back on their relationship to try and find the cracks, what she'd done wrong or what Leah had done that wasn't so perfect either. She couldn't find them, though. Leah was perfect to her. She was messy, stubborn, insistent, always being pulled every direction by people like a puppet. She remembered times where Leah had been crying on the couch with the pain of her endometriosis; Jordan tucking her in with some painkillers and a hot water bottle on her lower belly, and other times where she came home almost a shell of a person because she'd been stretched too far and hadn't seen her psychologist in a while. But Jordan never saw any of those things as less than perfection. Leah always spoke about her imperfections, and Jordan had listened as she always did, Leah complaining about herself, and that Jordan probably wouldn't remember anyways. Truth is, she remembered a lot of those little things, she would just forget the things that weren't so important to her. And with Leah's self-proclaimed imperfections, came the happiness Jordan couldn't forget. Leah loving to sing in the shower, so loud Jordan would chuckle at it from the kitchen. Her confidence. Her sense of humour. The fact that she never liked being the butt of jokes. Her love of golf. Her ability to drive confidence into a team, regardless of if she was captaining the side or not, just her presence and aura. She really tried to hang on the 'bad', but it wasn't bad to her. Instead, the happy memories had flooded her mind and with that, Jordan fell deep into stage four of grieving. Depression. That's when YFN had found her at the beach. She hadn't known how long Jordan had been going for, but truthfully, it had been months. She'd only been at that beach for a week or so during the International break, however prior to that, she'd been sitting in whatever park she could find, just laying back and staring at the sky as it darkened. She thought she'd be stuck in that fourth stage forever, hitting her lowest point when she'd met the Australian. She was the perfect person at the perfect time. An unbiased ear, uninvolved in any of the drama of women's football. Jordan hadn't gone to anyone else because they were all so involved. Everyone knew Leah. She never realised just how much her whole life, all her friends, all of her everything was involved in the sport and the people in it. It was sobering and terrifying to be in that mind state. There had been times where she knew she should have reached out to someone, anyone, but she couldn't. She knew if she spoke to Leah that she would have been there for her, but Jordan never let her know how low she had fallen. If she'd known, she would have dropped anything and Jordan knew that. Luckily, YFN had brought something else into her life. A different perspective, a different kind of friendship. Pure empathy and love from a stranger who just wanted to see Jordan happy again with nothing in return. Only after being around her and speaking with her did Jordan realise how dark her mind had become, and so she automatically gravitated towards the light that was YFN. Spending time with her and chatting about anything and everything, lots of which wasn't football, which was new to her. She'd encouraged her to go on dates, and even held her feelings for Lucy aside. Jordan still didn't know how she did that; just looking at the two, they were magnetic. And looking at them now over the back of the couch, Jordan realised for the first time that maybe this was a hard lesson she needed to go through, because now she was stronger, and if it hadn't happened, she wouldn't have a new friend, and YFN and Lucy would have never met.