An afternoon conversation
Caro knew she was late and it made her more anxious; she was never late, and everyone knew it. But today was a special day, not in a good way, obviously.
“Get out of the car” she said to herself.
She checked her phone one last time; she didn’t have any important messages. Ada didn’t write her anything new and none of their teammates knew she was there… oh, excuse me, non of *** her *** teammates.
Ada was no longer on the national team.
Before leaving the car she promised to herself that she would answer the other messages, the non important ones, later. Everyone around her noticed that something was wrong with her: her relatives, her friends… they would check on her every now and then. It is not that their messages weren’t important (in fact, Caro felt so blessed to have people who cared that much about her) but they weren’t related to that specific subject that worried Caro that much.
Ada asked her to meet her at the Radisson Blu Scandinavia Hotel in Oslo. At first Caro thought it was too much to pick such a fancy hotel to have an argument but then she realized Ada didn’t just go to Oslo to see her. She had other things to do.
When Caro realized this she got so angry. She couldn’t believe that their meeting was just another plan on Ada’s agenda and not the top priority. Caro would have travelled no matter where just to see her.
But then she tried to see the situation from Ada’s point of view. If she were Ada, she probably wouldn’t want to see her.
Caro decided that she should just appreciate the opportunity that was given to her. She didn’t expect to fix things between them but...
“What am I expecting from this?” Caro thought as she was walking to the hotel.
Then she got a message from Ada “Go straight to my room”. And then her ex teammate wrote in which room she was staying.
Okay, Caro didn’t see that coming. She stopped walking in the middle of the street. She needed to think.
First of all, there was a big chance Ada saw her leaving the car from her hotel window… yes, it had to be this, there was no chance Ada wrote that message if she wasn’t sure Caro would come.
“So probably she’s seeing how you are stuck here looking at your phone”, said a voice in Caro’s head.
That was enough to force herself to walk again.
Second of all, Caro thought about that time, two or three years ago, when Ada and her were hanging out after training. Where were they? Caro couldn’t remember, but it wasn’t in Norway and they were alone.
That day, Caro confessed to Ada that once they were back in Norway, she would have to break up with her girlfriend but she didn’t know how to do this.
“The way you do this is up to you” Ada said “I would focus more about the place. I mean, if it’s a friendly break up, it can be no matter where, but if you think you’ll have a big argument, I would recommend you to meet her at a quiet café or something.”
“Why?” Caro asked.
“Look, I don’t know her that much but I don’t like her” Ada answered.
“Ah… I still don’t understand the café thing”
Ada looked at her as if she was talking to a 5 years old kid.
“Do you think it will be a friendly break up?”
“No”
“Girl, you didn’t even have to think the answer! Do you want to be stuck in a room with her so she can call you whatever she wants just because you’ve decided you deserve better?”
Caro remembered how shocked she was after Ada said that. Not gonna lie, Caro wasn’t in the healthiest relationship but she didn’t expect Ada to know it too. And then, Caro never thought about breaking up with her girlfriend because “she deserved better”, she just didn’t like/love her anymore.
Caro didn’t say anything for a few minutes so Ada spoke again.
“This time you will be the one running the situation, if you tell her to meet you in a place where there’s people around, there aren’t that many chances that she will say awful and hurtful things.Or at least she won’t scream to you, I don’t like her voice either”
Ada was clearly super proud of herself, Caro could see it in her face.
“So what you are trying to say is: if you want to have a decent conversation with someone you know you’ll have an argument with, go to a place where people are around”.
“Exactly” Ada said “And that you deserve better”.
“Yep”.
“You have to say it!”
“And that I deserve better,” Caro finally said. It felt so good to say it as she meant it. It felt too good to have a friend like Ada that actually believed it.
Ada hugged her.
“Everything will be alright”.
“It will” Caro said.
This memory almost made Caro cry in the middle of the street. What happened to them? How could they be in this situation, not talking to each other, avoiding each other…
And according to what Ada said that day, Caro expected them to meet at the restaurant’s hotel. But she wasn’t running the situation this time. And probably Ada wouldn’t want to be polite.
“Shit” Caro thought before receiving another message. It was Ada’s.
“???” was the message.
Instead of answering, Caro started walking and in less than five minutes she was already in front of Ada’s hotel room.
“The door's open” Ada said.
Caro got in. The room was actually so big. It had a living room with two couches and a door that led to the private room.
Ada was just getting out of there. She closed the door a little fast and it made a lot of noise. Caro thought that, at the end of the day, Ada was also a bit nervous. Their following conversation wouldn’t be nice for either of them.
“There” Ada said, pointing to one of the couches.
Caro could tell that Ada wasn’t at her best moment. Just like her. In some interviews Ada said that, before deciding to leave the national team, she had problems sleeping and that she was anxious all the time. Somehow, Caro was expecting to see at her best now that the decision had finally been made.
But Ada wasn’t clearly at her best. Caro could tell she was tired but that she tried to fix her tired face with make up. She couldn’t blame her because she did the exact same thing.
At the point Caro realized that, somehow, Ada was in a worse position than her. She was alone. A lot of fans didn’t understand and support her decision so she was getting some hate on social media. The journalists that were covering the drama weren’t the worst in the world but they didn’t agree with her either and you could tell this by reading their articles.
Oh, and don’t forget the interviews that her ex teammates conceded to those journalists (Caro included). They were all too polite to say something extremely polemic but it was clear that none of them supported Ada.
They sat in silence for some seconds, or maybe minutes. How knows what Ada was thinking. Caro would have given anything to be able to read her mind.
“How are you?” Caro asked in a deep voice.
“Do you even care?” Ada asked back. Caro was aware that Ada had the right to be mad at her but she didn’t expect her to show it from the start.
“What do you even want?” Ada kept asking. “Just tell me, I’m curious.”
Caro was in a difficult situation. She couldn’t pick the right words to say because there were no right words. Ada would “fight” her back no matter what she said.
“Can I talk without interruptions?” Caro said louder than she expected.
She didn’t want to make things worse but Ada was talking to her in a way that made her feel angry too.
“If you came here to scream at me like this you can leave” Ada answered.
“I didn’t scream” Caro thought, but there was no point saying it and she knew it.
“No, sorry” Caro said instead.
That answer seemed to relax Ada. She even told her she could talk without being interrupted. It already was a little win for Caro.
“I know I don’t have the right to ask for an explanation but I am begging you to give me one” Caro said “Why are you doing this? And why did you do it that way? I know things weren’t going well at the national team but were they that bad? Why didn’t you ask for help when things started to go wrong? I mean, if something felt wrong you could have told me, but you decided to say nothing and then leave”.
For a moment Caro thought Ada would get mad at her. Maybe she was expecting an apology and not thousands of questions…
“Why didn’t I tell you?” Ada wasn’t mad, she was clearly hurted. That was even worse. “I felt like I couldn’t speak to you like before. I don’t know what happened but things changed between us and… I guess… I guess I thought you wouldn’t understand me.”
“Understand what?”
That was such a frustrating conversation; Caro wanted to say a lot of things but she didn’t find the proper way. And apparently the same happened with Ada.
However, Caro didn’t want to miss that chance to make things clear with her ex teammate (and appretenyl, ex friend also), so she decided she would try to run the conversation to the point she wanted.
“I know something changed between us” Caro said “We used to be so close and somehow we stopped talking and trusting each other… maybe we should have talked about this before…”
“I tried to talk to you!” Ada said “I know I said I wouldn’t interrupt you but I think you are misunderstanding the situation. One day we were fine and the next one you were extremely cold with me, everyone noticed this! Andrine tried to talk to you and you ignored her. We thought you had a personal problem so we were so worried, but apparently I was your problem. So maybe I’ll be the one to ask an explanation today”.
“Girl, this is not how you run a conversation” Caro thought by herself.
“Ok, keep your silence as you’ve been doing for such a long time” whispered Ada.
Caro didn’t want to admit how much these words affected her. Just the thought of having hurted Ada made her feel terribly bad. Obviously she knew she had hurted her but seeing the pain in Ada’s eyes was horrible.
“I wanted to fix this situation but you left without saying anything so I don’t really know how to act… the only thing I can do is apologise for my attitude but I feel nothing would have changed if you didn’t start distancing yourself from the team.”
“How on earth can you be so blind, Caro?” Ada used the same tone of voice she used to explain to Caro why she should break up with her girlfriend in a café; as she was talking to a little girl that wasn’t able to understand anything. “That’s exactly the problem. You only focus on the team. You knew I wasn’t comfortable in it and you did nothing. You only started caring about me when I left, because that affects the team.”
Caro wanted to say something but Ada wasn’t done yet.
“I realized this when your attitude changed towards me and you wouldn’t want to talk to me or Andrine. The team was doing fine so why to worry, right? Then the Euros happened and it seemed you saw me again as a human being for the first time in so many years. It was like you wanted to have the relationship we had before, but it was too late for me. Now you are here, not as a friend or even as an ex friend, just as an ex teammate”.
Caro never thought about herself in that way. Was she really the person Ada was describing? Did she deserve the guilty feeling she was feeling at that moment.
“It took me so long to decide if I wanted to talk to you, after you asked me to meet me”. continued Ada “I was afraid you would only try to convince me to go back to the team. At least you didn’t try it”.
Wait… did Ada just give her a sad smile? Did that mean that there was still hope? But hope for what? Caro thought that fixing things with Ada meant 1) having a good relationship with her and 2) giving her back to the national team.
Caro felt she would need hours to think about that so she couldn’t give Ada a proper answer.
“Maybe you’re right and I was focusing too much on the team but I thought you would still trust me if something was wrong… maybe I didn’t deserve your trust, maybe none of us did, but leaving the team the way you did was not a mature action. Oh, don’t give me that look. Coming here I knew we all messed up things with you, on the Euros it was clear that you and Andrine didn’t feel that good on the team. There was an “us” and a “you”. I don’t know when this happened or why… and I don’t know either when or why things changed between me and you… but don’t expect me to just sit here and beg your forgiveness when we all made mistakes”.
Ada clearly wanted to talk but this time was Caro who wanted to add some more things.
“Nobody can force you to play with us and yes, maybe I was expecting me to convince you to come back but forget it, it’s fine. I think all I want now is make things a little clear and stop talking about this to journalists instead of talking to each other. Obviously there will be questions and we will have to answer them but we shouldn’t make a war through the media.”
“I agree with you.”
“If I ever hurted you or made you feel bad, I apologise, it definitely wasn’t my intention. I’ll only give you this.” Caro said.
They sat in silence for at least ten minutes. It wasn’t uncomfortable at all. Caro always loved this about Ada: she always felt so good around her, even if none of them was talking and they were mad at each other.
That’s why Ada didn’t want to chat at a café or in a public space. “She would never hurt me or say awful things on purpose” Caro thought. “And she hoped I would do the same”.
And that thought made Caro realize that she didn’t want to lose her. Her biggest concern, for the first time in so long, wasn’t the national team. It was Ada, her friendship (or whatever they had) with her.
“I offer you a deal” Caro said.