#it’s great seeing them in casual wear in the cartoon they’re always in their jumpsuits or PJs

[jocelynships]

God he’s so cute and for WHAT REASON I’m losing my mind

[3one3]

The Sequel -775

Juan’s Dinner Party, Part 1

André Schürrle, Juan Mata, other Chelsea and BVB players, and random awesome OC’s

(okay they’re less random now but they’re still pretty awesome)

original epic tale

all chapters of The Sequel

“Hiiiiii. Sorry we’re a bit late. We needed to have a little nap in the car,” Christina explained apologetically with a cranky child in one arm and shopping bag full of gifts on the other in Juan’s doorway on Monday evening. Chelsea beat Bournemouth 3-0 and Stamford Bridge was rocking. It was all a touch too much for Lukas to handle.

“You’re not late.” Juan gave him a kiss on the cheek, and then moved on to give his mother one too. “Long time no see,” he said to André, who got a handshake. He was stuck carrying Christina’s purse and the bag of stuff meant to keep Lukas well behaved all night. The Spaniard was all smiles and holiday cheer. The German told himself he would try to be social and pleasant. That vow was already on shaky legs though because watching his old team bag their 12th win on the trot and maintain their 6-point lead at the top of the Premier League was bittersweet. He was happy to see his old teammates and friends succeed, and he loved the club, and the supporters. It was just hard not to think he made the wrong decision in leaving. His new club was sitting 6th, miles from the top, not playing well, and not playing with him. There was no telling if Antonio Conte would have fit André into the new look Chelsea, but hardly playing for the league leaders is always going to be better than hardly playing for a title contender squirming under pressure way down the table.

“Chris! Oh, bring me that baby,” Juan’s mom cooed while he took the newcomers’ coats, including Lukas’ tiny wool pea coat. He was upset about having to take it off though, just as he was about putting it on. Mama Mata swooped in to steal him for a hug, and he kept saying “Down, Mommy! Down!”

“It turns out he prefers to be in the family suite at the Bridge,” Christina explained. “Not in the nice loungey suite for mere VIP friends of the club and in the outside seats, in all the noise.”

“Aww, poor little angel. Do you remember me? I remember you! I barely recognize you though! So big!”

“Mommy, dowwwwn!” the little blonde in the Fair Isle cardigan whined. André was about to take him. He didn’t like seeing someone else’s mom hold him like a grandmother, and especially not when he appeared to hate that person.

“Sorry,” Christina cringed, reaching to take him back and set him on the floor. Juan squatted down to his level and straightened out his hair while Mrs. Mata greeted André and gave the rider hello-kisses.

“I think Santa delivered one of your presents here by mistake. Do you want to see what it is?”

Lukas peered speculatively at the scruffy player, glanced up at Mommy, and back at him. Juan offered him his hand, to take him to this extra Christmas present, and Christina told him it was okay to go. Lukas grabbed two fingers and went willingly. André didn’t like that either. His son was normally shy around strangers. At his most outgoing he might stand near one and nonchalantly try to get attention, but he would be scared to accept a hand to hold, or to be picked up. It was very clear that Lukas was very comfortable with the Chelsea player.

Everyone followed them into the living room, where they were introduced to Juan’s aunts, uncles, and cousins. Everyone had wine or cocktails, and the dining room table had some kind of extension added in the distance and was already set for tons of people. None of the kids were close to Lukas’ age, and Christina immediately worried that they were in for a difficult night. They couldn’t just set him loose to play with the other children, but those kids were young enough that he would identify with them and want to be involved with them, so they couldn’t keep him separated either. One of his parents would need to sort of play with him with the other kids. Juan had a solution for that though. He kneeled by his rather sparsely decorated Christmas tree and slid a very big box out from under it.

Oh, there she is, Christina thought while Lukas began the painstakingly slow process of tearing the cartoon reindeer paper from the large box. She spotted Taylor and two people she assumed were Taylor’s parents walk in from the hallway to the master bedroom. They were conspicuously absent from the introductions. The author was wearing an all white, wide-leg, one-shoulder jumpsuit in baggy elastane with a sleeve down to her pointy elbow. Her pointy elbows always irritated the other American girl. The fact that she looked 8’ tall in the solid jumpsuit was irritating too, and so was the level of cliché WASPyness attained by her parents. Her mom was in slim black trousers and a rose-pink silk “poncho type thing” with cascading ruffles, and black peep-toe Jimmy Choos. Her dyed blonde hair was chin length and soft, and crisply level all the way around. To Christina she was the picture of a middle-aged Palm Beach wife. Her husband wore an oxford shirt, a v-neck sweater, and a navy sport coat. The brass buttons on it gave Christina flashbacks to her country club childhood.

“Woooow, do you know what that is?” Juan asked Lukas, pointing at the picture on the box. His talk-to-little-kids voice made his ex-girlfriend want to laugh sometimes. It was like he tried too hard. She knew he was normally more relaxed around her son. Normally he was just cute with him. There must be like, extra pressure to do well with the kids when he’s got them running all over, she surmised, though the handful of young cousins- aged about 5 to 10 and a mix of boys and girls- were stationary, and watching to see what toy the new kid got. “It’s a Ferrari. And you can drive it.” Lukas had no idea what that explanation meant, but he sure got it when Juan Sr. provided a knife to cut open the box and get the miniature Formula 1 pedal car out. It had a rear wing with lifelike DRS flap, a low nose and wide front wing, air inlets in the sidepods for the imaginary radiators, a rollbar, wing mirrors, slick tires, and replica open-wheel style suspension arms at the front. In addition to the Scuderia Ferrari badging, the red racer was festooned in sponsor stickers- Shell, Vodafone, Santander, Bridgestone, etc. Some of them were from much older eras of Formula 1 racing and didn’t really fit with some of the styling elements of the car, but Lukas wouldn’t know that. His blue eyes grew huge when Juan showed him that his new toy could roll. He loved anything with wheels.

“Ohmygosh,” Christina gushed. I fucking want one. “How cool is this?” She smoothed her extra-long stretchy pencil skirt and got down on her knees to help Lukas check out his racecar. Her pumps had already been deposited under the side table out of habit, so there was no pain in sitting on her heels.

“Want to get in?” Juan asked. He reached in to pat the seat and Lukas nodded emphatically, so he lifted him into it and tried to wedge his arm down in between his legs to show him how the pedals work. “Hold onto the wheel. You’re moving!”

“Does he know how to pedal?” Juan’s mom asked André, who was internally harping on the fact that his former teammate probably had to pre-assemble the Ferrari. It came out of the box perfect, with no Styrofoam, or instruction booklets. It had tons of moving parts. That he took the time to do that surprised the German.

“He has a three-wheel bike thing that he knows how to ride,” he confirmed just as Lukas seemed to get the hang of his new setup. The car rolled a couple of feet before Christina intercepted him. There were too many potential hazards in the immediate vicinity to let him go, like the Christmas tree, and adults holding Cabernet.

“Do you love it?” she asked the happy child, who wore a face splitting grin and bounced in his racing-inspired seat. “Can you say “thank you” to Juan for giving you such a cool toy?”

“Thank you!” Lukas repeated, excited. He held his arms out for a hug too, and Juan obliged. Also to André’s surprise, he seemed genuinely happy to have pleased the child. His second thought after the some-assembly-required thing was that he just got the car to impress Christina. It even said “Vettel” on it. “Daddy, push!” Oh no he did not, the German said to himself. He did not just- “Daddy, puuuuush.” Lukas turned around to find his dad, and consequently put out the fire he’d just started. André thought he was calling Juan “Daddy”.

“Push with your feet, Munchkin,” Christina advised. “It’s not like your wagon. It’s like your trike. You make it go.”

“Do you want to take it to the hallway and the entrance so he can drive up and down in the empty space?” the Chelsea midfielder suggested.

“I’ll go with him,” the ex-Chelsea midfielder volunteered. I would definitely rather go play with Mausi in the hall than stand here holding Chris’ bag.

“Me too. I wanna see Eva in action,” Christina smiled. “That’s what Seb named his first Ferrari.”

“Chris, what can I get you to drink?” Juan’s mom asked as she got up and fixed her skirt again. The rider woke up feeling “very Calvin Klein” and thought the silhouette of the stretchy black below-the-knee pencil skirt and another white ultra-soft James Perse tee was very fitting, but then when she tried the combo on it felt too casual, so she spiffed it up with the opera length strand of Mikimoto Akoya pearls André gave her as a present once, and her new lightning bracelet, and a sparkly metallic smoky eye she had to do in the car after the match because it never would have survived her squinting against the wind at the Bridge. Naturally that annoyed André too, because she was putting so much effort into looking great to make an impression on some other guy’s family.

“Umm...I’m okay for now, actually. Babe, do you want something? Here, lemme take that. I’m sorry.” Christina reached for her purse and the other bag and paused to smooch his cheek too, then picked up her shopping bag as well. “Juan, do you want your presents? None of them are from Ferrari, sadly.”

“Bring to the hallway. I’ll open while he drives the car. I’m just going to make you something. You’ll like,” the younger Juan smiled. Christina quietly told him to make something for her husband too, under her breath, since the other player was already pushing Lukas toward the hall. And then when she fell into step behind him with her three bags she realized they were going to pass right by Taylor and her family, who were kind of loitering behind one side of the couch and not mingling with the footballer’s family, who went back to whatever they were doing before there was a cute kid getting a Ferrari in front of them. The adults were talking in Spanish and drinking, it seemed, and the kids had some kind of board game happening on the floor in front of the coffee table. And so begins the awkwardness, Christina narrated as she neared the author, her perfect mother, and her some-kind-of-big-US-military-general-guy father, and prepared to pretend like she was just noticing them for the first time. Taylor beat her to it.

“Hey André. Hey Chris,” the beautiful blonde said with a smile just the fake side of warm.

“Hey! Merry Christmas! Love your outfit!” No I don’t. Screw jumpsuits. How is she gonna pee in that?

“Thanks. This is my mom, Whitney, and my dad, John. These are Juan’s friends.”

Of course they’re Whitney and John, Christina thought while shaking hands. André did too but he had Lukas as an excuse to keep going, and excused himself to keep up with the child who had just figured out he could drive his racecar on his own. Juan’s sister, Paula, appeared out of thin air to put the brakes on the imminent awkwardness that would follow the exchange of pleasantries when the rider and the other Americans would have no logical segue or follow up point of interest. She said she wanted to play with Lukas too, and Christina said she had a present for her in the bag as well, so it made sense for the two of them to leave the group, though the expat figured it still looked rude. She didn’t know how much the parents knew about her and her relationship with Juan.

There was a narrow table by the front door with some pictures on it, but other than that the hallway that ran the full length of the apartment and opened in the middle to a pretty big foyer and second, shorter hallway to the door was empty of potential crash hazards, though the walls themselves were in jeopardy. André cringed as his ecstatic little one drove directly into the wall and thankfully didn’t leave a mark on it. Lukas wasn’t very good at steering. He intentionally rode into the brick edging on the driveway at home to help him turn his plastic trike with the big wheels, and he rode his new scooter into just about everything the previous afternoon. The girls watched him figure out his Ferrari for about 30 seconds before switching their focus to Christmas gifts. Christina bought Hermès silk scarves for Paula and her mom, and swiped some of the silk pocket squares she requested from Dolce & Gabbana for all of her friends for Juan Sr..

“Here’s for you, cariña,” Juan said when he interrupted their chat. Paula opened all four scarves so she could pick which she wanted, with no regard for her mom, which both girls were sure was fine, and they were discussing the pros and cons of each different print. He had two glasses of murky, light brown liquid with a lot of ice and a rosemary sprig stuck in the middle. Christina eyed them suspiciously. “Apple cider margarita. Try.”

“It’s really good,” Paula assured. “I taught him how to make it.” The rider did a cautious taste test, shrugged, and asked if the other glass was for André, who was trying to get the Formula 1 car turned around at the end of the hall.

“No, but it can be. How is Lukas getting on with the car?”

“He’s great. Thank you so much for getting him that, but duuuuude.” Christina glared with wide, accusatory eyes at her ex-boyfriend to scold him for not bringing André a drink. She knew he wouldn’t like the apple cider margarita either. Taylor-related discomfort and Lukas tantrums or boredom weren’t her only concerns about the Boxing Day dinner. She knew André didn’t really want to be subjected to the whole experience. “Hold this.” Her purse was thrust into the Spanish player’s chest and she headed for the kitchen. “And open your presents,” she called over her shoulder.

She didn’t want to let a husband who didn’t want to be there dissuade from the truth that she did want to be there. Boxing Day was wonderful and nothing would ruin it for her. Being at the game was magical. Eden was magical. Christina texted Natasha to ask her what she was feeding him, because he showed off a different ridiculous turn every time he was on the ball, skipped away from gangs of opponents trying to close him in, and damn near scored from an edge of the box rabona executed with such natural instinct and timing that the entire football world would have simply exploded into tinsel confetti had it been a couple of inches lower and gone in. He earned and scored a penalty later on instead to double Pedro’s beauty of a scooped out strike, and the Spaniard doing his best to make up for the suspended Diego’s absence tried to double his own tally in injury time, but the third was officially counted as a Bournemouth own goal. The feeling of being part of a crowd treated to dazzling and biting football was something Christina’s soul certainly missed. Natasha told her that Eden was full of cheese from Christmas, but that he’d been performing on a similar level all season and that it just doesn’t always look as amazing on TV. She told her to come to more games.

“Here ya go, babe.” Christina managed to get herself out of a chat about the game with Juan’s mom in the kitchen while she analyzed all the open wine bottles to select a red for André, and presented it to him back in the hall. He was standing with Juan and Paula, and they were all watching Lukas try to make a circle in the car.

“Thanks. What are you drinking?”

“An apple and tequila thing. Has he figured out how to pedal backward yet or does he keep getting stuck?” Lukas was in a position where he couldn’t go forward any more because of the table and the wall. André sighed and went to help him. “Open your presents,” his wife whined at her friend. She reached into the shopping bag and pulled out a large, squishy gift. He gave his drink to Paula to hold and smirked as soon as he got his hands on the silver wrapping paper.

“I know what this is,” he declared.

“No you don’t.” The rider shook her head and popped her hip.

“It’s one of those cashmere blankets.”

“I hate you.”

“What cashmere blankets?” Paula asked, confused. Her brother tore the paper away to show her the navy James Perse throw. He looked very satisfied with himself, and explained that Christina tried to get him to buy it because she was “abnormally obsessed with them”.

“Well these I know you were not expecting,” Christina declared defiantly upon lifting two bundles of three small paperbacks each, bound in dark silver grosgrain ribbon. She didn’t like to wrap books on the off chance that the necessary tape wouldn’t come off cleanly. A damaged book was to her a ruined book.

“Hmm...”Murder Begets Murder, “Troubled Death”, “Two Faced Death”. These are cheerful, uplifting holiday titles,” the footballer laughed.

“So there’s this guy Roderic Jeffries who has been writing these Inspector Alvarez mysteries since the mid-70s,” his friend explained as Taylor quietly joined the group around the then empty present bag. “He’s with the Mallorca police, so all of the stories take place in Mallorca. There’s like 40 of them. I got the first 6 to get you started. You can get in your cashmere blanky and read them at the house on one of the 12 couches or the 12 terraces. Or the little room with the big chair and the doors to the jungle garden and the tree trunk side table. That one’s perfect for reading. There’s so much natural light.”

“You’ve been to the house?” Taylor inquired with a one-eyed squint that bordered on a twitch. Christina’s blood pressure skyrocketed. Did he not tell her? What do I say? What do I do? GIVE ME A SIGNAL, she willed Juan, who looked only at his stack of books. THIS IS DRAGGING ON TOO LONG. I MUST ANSWER.

“Yeah, I- I’m just trying to count back how long ago it was,” she said with entirely faked confidence, hoping she’d explained away the pause that felt like an eternity.

“About a month ago,” Juan supplied before clearing his throat. “Have you read them yet? Are they any good?”

“No, but if he’s been publishing them for 40 years there must be people who like to read them,” she shrugged, avoiding whatever expression might be on Taylor’s face.

“Uh, your mom said its time to sit at the table,” the author said, clearly distracted.

“Okay. Thanks for this, Chris. I’ll let you know if this Inspector Alvarez is any good.”

“Welcome.” And sorry for blowing up your spot with Tay Tay. How was I supposed to know she didn’t know I was there? He looks mad, Christina thought as Juan took the folded blanket from between his legs and headed down the hall toward his room, presumably to put his gifts down. Paula took the other stuff back to the living room. Taylor just kind of awkwardly turned around.

“Good job, Prinzessin,” André whispered in his wife’s ear from behind. He listened to the whole exchange while trying to show Lukas how to pedal in the other direction. It amused him greatly. He loved when his former teammate was caught in a fib or an omitted truth, though he did feel slightly sorry for Taylor, as he believed he knew all about everything that happened between Juan and Christina and the author only knew of about half, at most. He felt good knowing he wasn’t being made a fool of that way.

“He didn’t tell me!” the latter hissed. “Do you want to hold the Munchkin in your lap to eat or should I unpack the highchair?”

“He can sit with me. I need his sippy cup though. And I don’t know if I can actually get him out of the car. How does it feel to be upstaged?”

“I actually totally don’t mind,” Christina smiled after spinning around. “If someone gave you some awesome gift you liked better than mine then I would be jealous, but for him, if it makes him happy, I don’t care.”

“So his personal happiness is more important to you than mine? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes, babe. Let’s eat. The smell of roast lamb in this joint is like physical torture. And you’re better off putting him in the highchair if you want to eat it instead of wear it.”

The first few courses went nicely, though Juan’s mom set the table up almost as if it were her intention to create tension. She gave André an end seat and Christina the first one on the side so that they could put Lukas’ portable highchair on a seat in between them at the corner and have plenty of room to help him with his food, and so that he wouldn’t get food on anyone else, or be too distracted by strangers to eat. She put Juan to Christina’s left, and then Taylor. She sat across from Christina, with Paula to her right, across from Juan, and Whitney and John in the next two seats. Juan’s aunts and uncles filled in the rest of the spots down to his father at the other end of the long table. The 5 other children were set up on a folding card table between the dining room and the living room so that they could still talk to the adults. The big table was full of stacked plates of different sizes, four glasses per person- one for white wine, one for red, one for water, and another for sidra or soda, open bottles of water and wine, and pretty red and white flowers. Mrs. Mata served a seafood soup first. She had a prawn cocktail for Christina though, because she knew the rider didn’t like anything that started with fish broth. Lukas enjoyed it, however. Then there was sea urchin with some kind of weird hollandaise sauce, served at the same time as braised boar with corn gnocchi, chestnut, apple, and truffle. Then came sea snails with cider cream, onion, and potato, and crispy corncakes with Cabrales cheese. Lukas’ parents had a system going whereby anything suspect went to Dad, anything yummy went to Mom, and anything soft and small went to him.  

Everybody talked about football for a while, and Juan’s aunt questioned Christina about how her riding and her horses compared with the “working” equitation school of Spain, which is like doing “cowboy” work but in a fancy, technical way. That conversation happened in Spanish, and lots of other people chimed in. André found it entertaining. He had no idea what anyone was saying, but he could tell Taylor’s parents were uncomfortable as the two sides of the table talked over them in the middle. Then Mrs. Mata served up mini portions of her fabada and Taylor started telling everyone how she offered to make it for Juan when he had a bad cold for a few days earlier in December.

“He told me nobody makes it like Mama and to try is to disappoint and fail,” Taylor laughed while Christina’s eyes got big, her spoon poised to taste the reddish stew. Her tiny bowl had a handful of the giant white beans, and one single-bite-sized piece each of the chorizo, blood sausage, and pork belly. She didn’t really want to eat it but her upbringing dictated that she couldn’t just not have some. She’d realized an hour prior that Lukas was a godsend in that regard, because she could just try a little of whatever she didn’t want and then try to feed it to him instead, since he didn’t get his own servings and his dad was trying to keep his. If he didn’t like it then it could keep going to André and no one was the wiser.

“Didn’t Chris make it for you once?” Mama Mata asked. With the amount of up and down she was doing to tend to things in the kitchen or to serve the food, her seating arrangements were thus far her only attempt to create mischief. “You said it was fantastic.”

“Not as good as yours, I’m sure,” the rider demurred. Is she trying to create a war? She’s too smart to be this oblivious.

“How would you know? You didn’t even eat it.” Juan elbowed her in the side and tried not to smile as she nearly spilled the stew broth on her white shirt. With the amount of paprika and saffron in it, there would be no getting it out. Lukas was triple protected by a small towel tucked into his shirt, a large paper towel, and a conventional bib. His smart clothes would not be ruined. “Are you even eating it now, or are you pretending?”

“Yes I’m eating it! I’m just...saving some for Luke.”

“There is plenty more,” Mrs. Mata assured.

“She’s holding out for tortilla.”

“It’s coming! I serve it with the roast lamb, next. I made it in advance and it probably doesn’t taste as good heated as when it comes right from the pan, but it had to be.”

“I love Chris’ tortilla and she complains that it’s not to the standard as you make, so I’m looking forward to this one,” André interjected. “I like anything with fried potatoes and onions.”

“You like anything with any kind of potatoes,” his wife smiled sweetly at him over Lukas’ head. “You are basically 50% potato today after all the mashed potatoes yesterday.” She stuck her face out in a cute and taunting sort of way, and he leaned over to almost meet it.

“That’s because you bought a giant sack of potatoes and forgot to stop peeling after a normal amount of potatoes and you had to cook all of your peeled potatoes and there were so many that you had to use the lobster pot to boil them,” he replied before kissing the indignant frown that spread across her face. “Now we have to eat mashed potatoes with every meal until New Year’s. Today for breakfast she gives me beautifully poached eggs sitting next to a flattened, black, mushy mashed potato pancake thing.”

“Which you gladly ate,” Christina shot back while cutting up her chorizo for Lukas. He liked all the sausages they had at Christmas Eve dinner.

“How long have you two been married?” Whitney questioned curiously.

“Long enough to have fed him like 900lbs of potatoes in every style one can serve potatoes,” the other expat laughed

“Five and a half years,” the German supplied. I’m going to make everyone uncomfortable, he decided, feeling good about the way Christina behaved with him even in front of Juan and his family. He appreciated that she tried to include him in everything, and she still did or said “cute” things he figured she wouldn’t want the Spaniard to see. The dinner turned out a lot better than he expected. He had to remind himself that there was a time in the recent past when the three of them were together a lot and everything was normal. Christina didn’t go out of her way to shield Juan from their relationship. She made a savoring grunting sound about the Cabrales cheese and the Chelsea player turned to look at her in a way that made the Dortmund man think of their time together spend doing less innocent things. If he could “share” Christina with him in his bed, he could eat dinner with him at his table. “We met 6 years ago in a couple of weeks though, and we almost didn’t get very far beyond that because I didn’t think she would move here from the States just for me. Juan convinced me I had to try. He told me not to let the best thing to happen to me just go back where she came from.”

“I just wanted there to be someone in this building who knows how to cook,” Juan laughed. “He used to live downstairs,” he added as context for those who didn’t know. Christina couldn’t look up from her bowl. She could hear his unbothered comment but she was afraid she would see a different response on his face. André had just brought up Juan’s self-proclaimed biggest regret- that he didn’t make some kind of play for her before his teammate did- and there was no way it wouldn’t have hurt, especially in light of his just having mentioned the length of their marriage. She fed Lukas the little bits of chorizo and refused to look at either of the players, disappointed in one for making a cheap power move, and sympathetic for the other who had to find a way to take the shot without exposing how much it hurt.

The serving of the delicious smelling leg of lamb and the much anticipated tortilla came as a welcome reprieve from that monkey in the middle feeling, but was spoiled by Lukas’ reaction to the spicy sausage. It was just too spicy. He got upset a couple of minutes after swallowing it, and upset turned into tears. He kept opening and closing his mouth and that was how everyone decided it was the chorizo that caused the problem. Plus he turned an alarming shade of red. Paula got him some milk to try to neutralize the heat, but by then the little boy was as upset about being upset as he was about the burning in his throat and tummy. Christina took him, the milk, and a piece of bread to Juan’s room to calm down. At first she was just going to walk around with him until he realized he was out of the stimulating environment of the big dinner party, but when she got to the end of the hall she figured it would be even better if she went into the bedroom and shut the door.