Page 22 of Oyster

Kick-off time was fast approaching, and the PSG team huddled in a circle, arm-in-arm, Éti in the thick of it, receiving last-minute instructions from the manager. With her mass of spirally hair already escaping the confines of the hairband, and her comparatively diminutive stature, Éti was always easy to pick out. More so when you had prime seats and she stood next to PSG’s giant of a goalkeeper and team captain, Fabien Pépin. I tried to imagine her in a floaty red dress and glittery gold trainers instead of the plain dark shorts and matching top of PSG’s away strip. Once a whistle blew, heralding the beginning of the match, it was much easier than I thought.

As the match got underway, my worries vanished for a while. Sport was always good for that, soccer especially. Maybe that was why millions of us were glued to our television sets every weekend—to escape the miserable or the mundane. To wallow in the spectacular. When Éti Salvador turned on her special brandof magic, a person could forget their own name, never mind the state of their marriage, their money worries, or their mum’s terminal illness. You didn’t dare tear your eyes away. Even her bad games were good.

For the first few minutes, the opposing teams felt each other out, passing the ball in triangles between defenders, then tapping back to the goalkeeper. Patiently awaiting an opening and hovering around the halfway line, Éti was as much a spectator as the rest of us. Nonetheless, my gaze locked on to her, holding like she was a shooting star.

“Salvador missed the last match,” observed Max, supping his beer. “Flu bug or something. I’m glad he’s back—we’re going to need him for the Champion’s League game next week. We need his strength up front.”

“Yeah,” I agreed with a nod, like my heart wasn’t pumping out of my chest. His use of the wrong pronoun jarred; something I was going to have to get used to.

Unaware, my brother carried on. “Dubois and Ruiz both play better when they’ve got Salvador on the inside. If he’s back to full fitness, this afternoon should be a walk in the park.”

With a dry mouth, I took a long swig before answering. “Yeah.”

At the beginning of her career, Éti had played out on the right wing, using her blistering pace and dancing trickery to run at and beat defenders, before providing a cross to one of the main strikers. As her dominance grew, however, she developed more positional freedom and now mostly occupied a central striking spot herself. In the space of a couple of years, she transformed from fast tricky winger to unrelenting goal scorer and global icon.

And she was my date for next week.

With effort, I dragged my eyes away from her, toward the end of the pitch with the action.

“There are no easy games at this level,” Florian chipped in, like he was fucking Zinedine Zidane. “You cocky PSG supporters shouldn’t count your chickens. My pretty Nantes boys are very solid at defending a counterattack. They aren’t going to be a walkover, not with that flat pack four.”

Seemed my best mate had brought along his favourite footballing clichés. “Flatbackfour, mon ami. For a second there, I almost believed you knew what you were talking about.”

“I do!” Florian pouted, hamming it up for me. “Nantes are my local team! And you know I’ve always fancied teams that play in yellow.”

I snorted. “You just fancy their tall blond centre half.”

From the second she jogged out, Éti was all business as usual. Which meant she was solemn, serious Étienne. During the warmup, while she and her training partner tapped the ball between them, her dark head had filled the big screen. No flirty smiles or fluttery eyelashes this afternoon, no acknowledging waves to the crowd, no chitchat with her teammates. Simply one hundred percent professional concentration. As if 30,000-plus spectators crammed inside the modest Nantes stadium weren’t taking photos and chanting her name, thrilled that, in years to come, they could boast they had once watched the great Étienne Salvador dance.

As she got her first proper touch of the ball, with no sign of the hamstring niggle, a cheer went up from PSG fans, relieved to have her back. Outsmarting a defender, she made a clever little back heel through to her nippy teammate on the right wing, Dubois. Another raucous cheer.

“Come on,” yelled Max, echoing thousands of voices behind him. I couldn’t trust myself to speak. Whatever the average PSG fan experienced, multiplied a hundred times, would nowhere approach the weird sensations coursing through mybloodstream. I felt hot and cold, both hungry and nauseous. Like my life was embarking on a journey I didn’t have a map for.

“Mon dieu, look at those eyes,” cooed Florian when the camera zoomed in on Éti’s solemn face after Dubois went down in a tackle. “So pretty. Sosmouldery.”

Against my ribs, my heart danced a fresh tango. Max rolled his own eyes.

“You think?”

“I know,” said Florian. “It’s that enigmatic thing he has going. Trust me, it gets all the gays wild. Étienne Salvador is a mystery, a closed book.”

“Hardly,” my brother huffed. “He has one of the biggest social media followings in the world!”

Florian wrinkled his nose with disgust. “Yes, but have you seen it? So boring! Reruns of goals and training sessions and fucking nutritional advice!”

“Um… he’s a footballer? That’s kind of what they do?”

“Maybe, but that’s not what the viewing public wants to see!” Florian tutted. “We want pics of our footballers hot and sweaty in the dressing room afterwards, peeling off tight damp shirts. Climbing into those big baths together. Soaping each other’s difficult-to-reach parts.”

He ducked as I clapped him around the head. “So speaks a true football fan.”

“I’m right, though! It’s like Salvador vanishes in a puff of smoke the second he leaves the pitch. He shows and tells the media nothing. That Instagram must be done by a PR company. Such a waste!Sosexy. Nice legs too,” he added, like my younger brother wasn’t turning scarlet. Though, as Eti’s quick feet skipped around a couple of midfielders, her socks at half mast, I found myself in private agreement.

“Le danseurcould dance his way into my bed any time.” Florian remained blissfully unaware my mind had entertainedvague thoughts in the same direction all week. “And you see that yellow number eight with those gorgeous dreadlocks, lining up for a free kick? He could join.”

“Might be a bit of squash with Charles in there too.” I tracked Eti’s slim legs from one edge of the pitch to the other. “Are you planning on actually following the match this afternoon, Flor, or merely scoring all the players on their sex appeal?”

During the first half, Éti’s fire was on a low simmer, aside from a couple of probing runs down the left flank. It was often the way; opposing teams attempted to neutralise her by putting two players on her every move. A decent tactic, but with the predictable side effect of opening up acres of space for the Spanish winger, Ruiz, no slouch himself. Whatever Florian’s partisan views, Nantes had been notoriously weak in defence this season, so his lightning speed was always going to pose problems for the home side’s opposite number. Sure enough, with scant minutes remaining before the half-time whistle, Ruiz cut in around the Nantes left back to deliver a pinpoint cross, converted by an unopposed Dubois with inch-perfect precision. As the ball crashed past the despairing dive of the Nantes goalkeeper and into the roof of the net, a chorus of groans from the home crowd echoed around the stadium.

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