Page 26 of Offside

“Or give them to someone staying.”

It’s out of my mouth before the scan finishes. I watch it go in the way you watch a tackle you can’t take back.Someone staying.As if the man across from me didn’t bleed for this federation at multiple tournaments. As if his place on the team stops being his the day the boxes arrive.

Damián doesn’t flinch. He does something worse. He looks at me for one second, and then he puts the phone down and lets it be true.

“Okay,” he says. “Fair.”

“Dami…”

“No. It’s fair. I’m the one leaving.”

“It’s not fair.” I lean forward, elbows on knees, because if my hands don’t get a job they’ll organize the coffee table. “I want the programs. I’m asking for your programs to stay with me. And I’m sending you knedlíky every month, frozen, in a crate, because whatever Tobík found is mediocre at best.”

“A crate?”

“A regulation crate. Monthly. It’s going in my calendar as a fixture.”

“You’re going to air-freight dumplings across an ocean because of a bakery in Atlanta.”

“It’s a bakery’s bakery, and yes, and you’ll defrost them wrong the first time and call me.”

He laughs, and the drop of blood between us gets a bandage, and we do ten more minutes of shipping logistics.

Tobík texts when we get back to the hotel.

Coffee. Lobby. I have forty minutes and Mami’s cookies.

My brother is at a corner table with two coffees already ordered, wearing the Czechia team lanyard. He looks good. He looks like a man whose life fits him. He pushes a coffee at me and starts talking before I sit.

"Dami doesn't believe I have a bakery guy. Says I'm exaggerating."

"You've had a bakery guy for nine months, Tobík. Exaggerating would be new information."

"There's a card. With my face on it. Punch ten loaves, the eleventh is free, and mine had three punches on it before I even walked in the first time, because apparently that's how loyal I am." He grins over his cup. "I'm grandfathered into a bread program."

"Nine months and you're bakery royalty."

"Nine months, a standing Tuesday pickup, a card with my face on it, and a woman named Deb who saves me the end piece because she knows I like the crust." He shrugs, entirely too pleased with himself.

"Everyone in that bakery could pick you out of a lineup."

"They could pick me out of several lineups, Tomáš. I brought them kolaches at Christmas. I am beloved."

This is my brother at twenty-two. Easy in his skin. Easy in his life. Funny the way people are funny when they’re not performing. I spent years managing every road around him to make his life as smooth as possible. The bumps and bruises were there anyway. Some of it was from me. And he came through it into this. Whole. Better than whole.

“How’s the week?” he says. “You eating? You look like you’re captaining in your sleep.”

“The week’s a semifinal week.”

“Uh-huh.” He dunks a federation biscuit, taking his time. “You reorganized the kit room today. Dami sent me a picture. There are photos, Tomáš. The bibs are alphabetized.”

“The bibs are numbered.”

“The bibs are NUMBERED, forgive me.”

And then he does it. No wind-up. No angle. Both hands around his cup, my little brother looks at me across a hotel lobby and says, “Who’s it for, the organizing?”

“The semifinal.”