A Return of Some Familiar Faces

I had to write 2,500 words today to stay on track. I'm now at 26,118 words! Some big things are going to go on soon, so stay tuned. Other than this excerpt, Sadie sees Brett on the street and they talk briefly. Sadie realizes that she is better off without him, and how okay she is. She even feels sorry for him.


Brett, in a shocking display of vulnerability, invited Sadie along to the UCLA invitational tournament over Valentine’s Day weekend. He needed her support, he said. He knew that he would play better if she was there watching. Of course Sadie went; she is fully Brett’s girl, and would do almost anything that he asked. And really, it isn’t much of a sacrifice to leave the cruel Boston winter for a weekend in California.

The tournament goes well enough, with Brett playing quite well and the coach not mentioning his perceived (and certainly not real) weight gain. On their last night in LA, the team party took place across two rooms in the hotel. Rich kids on vacation can be pretty horrifying, and Sadie was not ready for the antics, or the sartorial choices, that she witnessed that night.

The infamous Harvard midfielder Antonio Mourinho was wearing silver metallic short shorts and a pink t-shirt with a pink flower tucked into his pink baseball cap. Strangely enough, Antonio wasn’t the only one in the room sporting metallic short shorts—if only with that this was the case. His awful outfit was only rivaled by defender Sergio Ramos’ gold shorts. You can’t make this stuff up. He was sporting a necklace complete with seashells, sea glass, and ceramic shards. How beachy! To top it all off, ‘The Ramos,’ as he is often referred to, was carrying a Louis Vuitton clutch and seemed to have a feathered mullet that would make Journey jealous. And if I’m not mistaken, he seemed to have some kind of hair conditioning treatment in his hair, or at least I hope that’s what it was. It even appeared that Antonio and the Ramos were in competition with each other or something. Winger Timitar Berbatov looked like a sexual predator. He held on to her hand for just a little too long. And that widow’s peak, oh god, that widow’s peak. Central midfielder Hank Lampard from London, England, was wearing a turquoise leather cat suit with fringe under the arms and a plunging neckline, as well as a maroon feather boa. He was also wearing a tiny top hat, with a mesh veil falling over his eyes, adding to his aura of mystery. The goalkeeper of the squad, Julio Iglesias, just seemed weird. Julio was sporting a construction pylon orange mesh wife beater tucked into some high-waisted black trousers, and an oversized orange and red Hawaiian shirt. His nipples featured prominently in the wife beater, causing Sadie to avert her eyes immediately. He was additionally and inexplicably wearing a ski mask, only with small holes for both eyes and his mouth, as well as science safety goggles. He was colouring in a colouring book, and doing a terrible job at that. Her eyes lingered a little too long on the colouring book, and she thought that she noticed a drawing of what appeared to be Emilio Estevez circa ‘St. Elmo’s Fire’ in profile. No one really seemed to notice, and if they did, they didn’t seem all that concerned. Perhaps this was commonplace?

Somehow they had found some girls to join in on the party, and things were soon in full swing. Sergio Ramos even pulled out a bong made out of an apple and started taking hits. He also did a particularly sexy belly dance to ‘Hips Don’t Lie’ while Mourinho looked on jealously. The spotlight wasn’t completely taken by Ramos, however, since Mourinho later did a striptease revealing a gold-plated jock strap. The Ramos then took to his Twitter account, and asked if any girls in the LA area were “DTF.” It was disgusting, but he still got several responses.

The room was lined with tables which held both snacks and photo centerpieces with photos of each player. The guests of honour—the players—were shining with a set of photo frame lanterns. They consisted of three hinged photo frames set around votive candles. The black-and-white photos are printed onto ecru-colored vellum paper, which is translucent enough for the images to be visible by candlelight. The candlelight gave the images a creepy glow, making the players look like ghosts. The ghoulish theme didn’t end there; everyone was drinking something that they referred to as Boo!-bie Brew out of cauldrons. The reason for the name of the drink was unclear, but Sadie decided that the deliciousness of the beverage offset the odd naming choice. Overall, the effect was pleasing.

Shit got real when a girl gave birth in the bathroom; apparently, she didn’t know that she was pregnant. The party ended soon after. In one year’s time, she would feature in the TLC series “I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant,” the show that convinces every viewer that they could in fact be pregnant as well.