Chapter 159: [159] "Some privacy"
Even Bachra stopped arguing with Zara, his mouth hanging open as he watched the waitress casually hijack his teammate’s table.
"You..." Hugo started, his voice barely a raspy whisper. He swallowed the dry lump in his throat and tried again, forcing the words out through sheer willpower. "You are sitting down."
Talia raised an eyebrow, a spark of mischief dancing in her eyes. "I am. Very observant. Do you mind? I’m technically done for the day, and this is the only table that isn’t completely covered in dirty plates."
"I... no," Hugo managed to say, his hands gripping the edge of the table so tightly his knuckles turned white. "I do not mind."
"Good," Talia said, stretching her legs out under the table. Her boot accidentally bumped against Hugo’s sneaker.
Hugo flinched as if he had been struck by a high-voltage electrical current, immediately pulling his feet back under his chair.
Talia laughed. She didn’t apologize for the contact. Instead, she leaned forward slightly, resting her arms flat against the table.
"So," Talia said, her gaze locking onto his. "You’re clearly not a local. I know everyone in this neighborhood, and I’ve never seen you here before. What’s your deal, quiet guy? What do you do when you’re not... you know?"
Luc took a slow sip of his black coffee, hiding his grin behind the rim of the ceramic mug. The prodigy, the mastermind of SC Valois, was at the mercy of a teenage waitress.
Hugo Blanc opened his mouth, desperately searching for something. He could calculate the exact spin required to drop a ball over a defender’s shoulder from forty yards away while moving at full speed...but staring across the table at Talia...
He recognized the failure. That was the first step in recovery.
The seventeen-year-old realized, with startling clarity, that he actually did not want to ruin this interaction. He didn’t want to be the weird, robotic athlete who couldn’t hold a basic conversation with a girl. He wanted to be normal. For just ten minutes, he wanted to strip away the suffocating label of being one of SC Valois’ generational talents.
He took a slow breath, treating his own rising panic like an aggressive opposition. He found the release. His shoulders, previously hiked almost up to his ears in defense, dropped a fraction of an inch. He rested his forearms on the table, deliberately uncurling his white-knuckled grip from the wooden edges of the furniture.
Talia watched him, her eyes reflecting the warm light of the bistro. She didn’t look away, nor did she seem deterred by his initial stuttering.
"I play football when I’m not playing football," Hugo said. His voice was lower than usual, stripped of the defensive edge that had laced his tone when Bachra was teasing him. It was steady. "Most of my time is spent training or reviewing match footage. I don’t really go out much."
From the adjacent two-seater, Luc Beaumont watched the transformation unfold. He took a slow sip of his black coffee, the liquid cooling against his tongue. Beside him, Rose Montgomery leaned her chin on her hand, her sharp eyes tracking the exact same subtle shifts in the teenager’s posture.
"Wow," Rose murmured, her voice pitched perfectly. "Give him a second. He might actually survive this."
Talia leaned forward slightly, resting her chin on her knuckles. "More Football after football. Right. I should have guessed. Marcel usually gets a few of the academy kids in here on weekends, but you guys look a little older than the academy crowd. At least, he does." She nodded toward Luc without breaking eye contact with Hugo.
Whatever Hugo said next was swallowed by the sudden, sharp clatter of Marcel dumping a bin of silverware into a plastic tub behind the wooden bar.
Luc strained his ears slightly, invested in the outcome of his playmaker’s romantic endeavor, but the acoustic layout of Le Petit Chêne was working against him. The background music combined with the scraping of chairs from the front of the restaurant rendered the conversation at Hugo’s table inaudible.
It was a private frequency they shared.
Luc watched the teenager’s face. The stoic face that Hugo wore like a shield was gone. He was gesturing slightly with his left hand, explaining something that made Talia tilt her head in curiosity.
"It’s strange, isn’t it?" Rose asked quietly, swirling the remaining dark red wine in her glass.
Luc turned his attention back to her. "What is?"
"Seeing them act their age," Rose replied, her gaze drifting toward the booth where Zara was currently swatting Bachra’s hand away from the remaining bread basket. "We demand so much from them on the grass. We expect them to process and play like seasoned veterans, to handle media scrutiny without cracking, and to shoulder the expectations of billionaire owners. You forget that under the kit, they are basically still children."
"The league doesn’t care how old you are," Luc said, setting his mug down. "If you step onto the pitch, you’re a target."
"I know," Rose agreed softly. "That’s why moments like this are important. If they don’t have something outside of the stadium, the pressure eventually hollows them out."
Luc didn’t argue. He understood the sentiment. His mind briefly flickered back to a night with Juliette, the sanctuary she provided when the noise of the Golden Boot race became too deafening.
He looked back at the small table.
Talia suddenly let out an unrestrained laugh. It was a genuine, full-chested sound of amusement that forced her to lean back in her chair and cover her mouth with her hand.
Hugo gave a small, incredibly rare smile across his face. It altered his features, making him look less like a calculating machine and more like a normal, somewhat awkward teenage boy who had just successfully landed a joke.
"Unbelievable," Bachra whispered loudly, leaning over the leather divider. "He’s actually doing it. Nice game."
"Turn around, Bachra," Zara commanded, getting up and grabbing her brother by the collar of his expensive jacket and hauling him back into his seat. "Give them some privacy. You’re hovering like a vulture."