Deserve it
Ingrid stays locked up inside her apartment for days. She barely eats, barely sleeps, barely exists. She ignores the calls. First from Mapi. Then from Frido. Then from Pere.
Mapi knocks once. Twice. Then stops trying. She doesn’t linger, doesn’t force her way inside, and for some reason, that makes Ingrid feel worse. She’s grateful for the quiet, but it’s also deafening.
Pere is mad. She can tell from the single text he’d sent after she’d ignored his calls.
“Ingrid, call me. This isn’t acceptable.”
She doesn’t respond; doesn’t blame him. She knows she should have at least said something, should have given an excuse better than the weak, pathetic, half-hearted “I’m sick” message she’d sent to the team group chat two days ago. She’d missed that important match against Real Madrid, and there would be hell to pay for that too.
She knows the other girls are probably mad for that, too. She’d left them a man down for no reason with no warning.
And Mapi…
Ingrid swallows.
Mapi should be mad, because Ingrid had left her. Had ignored her for seemingly no reason and had run away without so much as an explanation. But Mapi isn’t like Isabelle. She won’t bang on Ingrid’s door, demanding answers. Won’t force her to talk. That should be a good thing, so why doesn’t it feel like it?
The apartment feels suffocating, the air stale, the curtains drawn so tightly that Ingrid isn’t even sure if it’s day or night. Her phone buzzes beside her on the couch, but she doesn’t check it.It was probably Pere again, giving her a final warning. She curls into herself, staring blankly at the television screen.
Running from her issues won’t make them go away, Ingrid knows that.
But it’s the only thing she’s ever been good at.
By the fourth day, Ingrid knows that she has to go back to training and face whatever consequences Pere is going to give her. It takes everything in her to get out of bed, put on her training kit, and actually leave her apartment. Her hands tremble as she locks up, her stomach twisting with anxiety. She expects the walk to her car to be lonely, to have nothing but her thoughts clawing at her, but when she steps outside, she freezes.
Mapi is leaning against the wall outside of her apartment, already dressed in her training kit, a bag slung over her shoulder. She looks at Ingrid, her expression unreadable. Ingrid can’t tell if she’s mad, and it makes her want to run. Her pulse pounds in her ears as she hesitates, staring at Mapi, waiting for her to say something. But Mapi doesn’t. She simply turns and begins walking towards the garage.
Ingrid swallows hard and follows her, each step feeling heavier than the last. The silence between them is suffocating, but she doesn’t dare break it. When they reach the garage, Mapi unlocks her car, and Ingrid mechanically places her bag into the boot alongside Mapi’s. She keeps her head down, focusing on the mundane task of opening the car door, desperate to avoid the inevitable conversation. But before she can climb in, she feels a tug on the back of her shirt.
Her breath catches as Mapi gently pulls her around to face her. Ingrid braces herself, waiting for the anger, the disappointment, the questions she has no answers to. But Mapi just looks at her, her deep brown eyes searching, and after a long, heavy second, she sighs.
Then, without a word, she steps forward and wraps Ingrid in a hug.
Ingrid stiffens, caught off guard, her body fighting itself between the instinct to pull away and the overwhelming need to stay. Mapi tucks her nose into the curve of Ingrid’s neck, her arms strong and secure around Ingrid’s waist. There’s no hesitation in her embrace, no frustration -just warmth. Just understanding.
A sharp breath escapes Ingrid as her vision blurs with tears she doesn’t want to shed. She doesn’t deserve this -not after how she ran, after how she ignored Mapi, after how she abandoned her without an explanation. How she keeps running. Keeps hurting her. But Mapi is still here. Still holding her. Still choosing to stay.
Ingrid lets out a shuddering breath and, hesitantly, she lifts her arms, wrapping them around Mapi’s shoulders. She feels Mapi’s hold tighten slightly, reassuring, grounding. She presses her eyes shut, swallowing past the lump in her throat.
For the first time in four days, she doesn’t feel like she’s drowning.
Ingrid swallows hard after a few silent moments, her arms still looped around Mapi’s shoulders as she exhales shakily. Her chest feels tight, the weight of guilt pressing down on her. She has to say something. Mapi deserves that much.
“I’m sorry,” Ingrid murmurs, her voice raw and quiet, but earnest. It’s the only thing she can offer, the only thing she can say without completely breaking apart. “I shouldn’t have -I didn’t mean to-“ She squeezes her eyes shut, frustration welling in her throat as she struggles to find the right words. “I’m just…I’m sorry.”
Mapi doesn’t pull away, doesn’t loosen her hold. She simply nods, her nose still pressed against Ingrid’s shoulder. “We’ll talk after training,” she murmurs, her voice muffled against Ingrid’s skin.
Ingrid stiffens at the unspoken meaning behind her words. They wouldn’t just be talking. They’d be talking about everything.
Why she ran. Why she avoided her. Why she had been pulling away, even when she so desperately wanted to do the opposite.
And Ingrid doesn’t know if she can tell her the truth. That the reason she ran wasn’t because of Mapi, but because of herself. Because she likes her. More than she should. More than a friend should. And that realization terrifies her more than anything.
Her last relationship had broken her. Left her so mentally fucked up that even months later, she was still picking up the shattered pieces of herself. And Mapi…Mapi had snuck in when Ingrid wasn’t looking, had made her feel safe, made her feel something she hadn’t allowed herself to feel in years.
But she couldn’t tell her that. She wasn’t ready. So instead, Ingrid nods, pulling back just enough to meet Mapi’s eyes.
“Okay,” she whispers, barely more than a breath.
Mapi searches her face for a moment, then gives Ingrid’s waist one last reassuring squeeze before finally stepping back and pulling open the passenger side door. Ingrid hesitates for only a second before climbing in.
She doesn’t know what she’s going to say later. But right now, she focuses on getting through training. On ignoring the way her heart still pounds in her chest.
From the moment Pere tells her to start running, Ingrid knows she’s in for hell. He doesn’t yell, doesn’t scold her in front of the team. He simply fixes her with that hard, knowing stare, arms crossed over his chest, and says, “Run.”
And so she does.
She starts at a steady pace, her cleats kicking up the damp grass as she makes her way around the perimeter of the pitch. The first lap is easy. The second is tolerable. By the third, her lungs are starting to ache, but she doesn’t slow down. Pere watches from the sidelines, his expression unreadable, and Ingrid knows better than to stop.
The fourth lap turns into the fifth. Then the tenth. Then the fifteenth.
Her legs burn. The sun beats down relentlessly, sweat dripping down her back, soaking her shirt. She pushes through it, ignoring the sharp sting in her thighs, the way her breath comes shorter with every lap.
More.
She tells herself she deserves this. She deserves the exhaustion, the pain, the overwhelming heat crawling beneath her skin. Her body screams at her to stop, but she won’t.
Faster.
She grits her teeth and picks up her pace, arms pumping as she forces her body forward. The ground blurs beneath her feet. The ache in her legs morphs into something unbearable, but she won’t let herself falter.
She doesn’t know how much time has passed before Pere finally calls her in. It could have been an hour. Two. It feels like a lifetime.
She staggers to a stop, hands on her knees, gasping for air. Her chest heaves, her throat dry and raw. The world tilts slightly, her vision blurring at the edges. Sweat drips from her forehead, clings to her eyelashes, slips down her neck in sticky rivulets.
But she’s not done. There’s no time to recover before Pere jerks his chin toward the rest of the squad.
“Join in.”
It isn’t a suggestion.
With shaking legs, Ingrid forces herself upright and stumbles toward her teammates, preparing herself for whatever punishment they have in store for her. The girls barely spare her a glance as she steps in, stretching out the soreness in her thighs before positioning herself in the drill.
At first, they keep it subtle. A sharp pass that’s just a little too fast, forcing her to sprint after it on legs that barely want to move. A shoulder that collides with hers just a little too hard, sending her stumbling a step back. None of it is aggressive enough to call out, but she knows. They’re punishing her in their own way.
Then the tackles start.
The first one catches her off guard, a sudden sweep of the ball from under her feet that sends her crashing onto the grass. She lands hard on her side, her hip slamming into the ground, and for a moment, she just lies there, blinking up at the sky. Someone -she doesn’t even see who- grabs the ball and moves on without a second glance.
Fine. That’s fine.
She hauls herself up, ignoring the ache in her bones, the way her hands shake slightly as she pushes off the ground. The game doesn’t stop for her, so she keeps going.
The next tackle is worse. She barely has time to register the blur of movement before someone slams into her from the side. It’s a proper challenge this time, full-bodied, meant to send a message. Ingrid grits her teeth as she goes down again, barely managing to twist at the last second so she doesn’t land straight on her knee.
Her head spins when she pushes up, but she forces herself to keep moving.
She doesn’t know how many times it happens after that. All she knows is that she’s hitting the ground more than she’s staying upright, her body aching from the repeated impacts. She can hear a few of the girls muttering under their breath, words she can’t quite make out, but she knows they’re directed at her.
And maybe they’re right to be pissed.
Maybe she deserves all of this.
Her lungs burn with every inhale, her heart pounding so hard in her chest that she can feel it in her skull. The world feels slightly off-kilter, and she can’t tell if it’s from the exhaustion, the lack of food, or the sheer weight of guilt pressing down on her.
At some point, Mapi’s voice cuts through the haze.
“Ingrid.”
She doesn’t look. Doesn’t respond.
She just keeps going.
By the time Pere finally blows the whistle, signaling the end of training, Ingrid can barely stand. Every inch of her body screams in protest, her muscles trembling under the weight of exhaustion. Sweat clings to her skin, soaking through her kit and making her shirt stick uncomfortably to her back. Her heart pounds so hard she can hear it in her ears, a steady, relentless thud that matches the pulsing ache in her skull.
She forces herself to keep walking, one foot in front of the other, even as her vision blurs at the edges. Her breath comes in shallow, uneven gasps, her lungs still burning from the hours of running and relentless tackles. She feels sick. Lightheaded. She knows she should sit down, take a moment to steady herself, but she refuses to let herself. She doesn’t deserve the relief.
The team filters past her, most of them too caught up in their own post-training exhaustion to spare her a glance. A few of the girls send her lingering looks—none of them smug, none of them triumphant. Their earlier frustration with her seems to have ebbed away, replaced with something else. Something that looks uncomfortably like guilt. Ingrid ignores it.
It’s only when she reaches the edge of the pitch that she catches sight of Mapi, standing near the entrance to the changing rooms. She’s already pulled her training top off, a plain tank top underneath, her arms crossed as she watches Ingrid approach. Her expression is unreadable, lips pressed together, brows slightly furrowed.
Ingrid doesn’t look at her for long. She drops her gaze almost immediately, staring at the ground as she trudges forward, her legs nearly giving out beneath her with every step.
She knows Mapi has been quiet with her all day. Not unkind, not cruel -just quiet. Distant. And Ingrid doesn’t blame her for it. She doesn’t expect anything else. She’d run from Mapi, ignored her calls, avoided her for days. She’d left her.
So whatever sympathy Mapi might be feeling now, Ingrid doesn’t deserve it.
She clenches her jaw, pushing past the heavy weight of exhaustion as she steps into the changing rooms, determined to keep moving, determined not to let herself crumble in front of Mapi.
She just needs to get through this. Then she can go home and fall apart in private.