Chapter 181 - 180 — The Day He Wasn’t a Footballer
Chapter 180 — The Day He Wasn’t a Footballer
Sean woke to the smell of food.
For a few seconds he just lay there, staring at the ceiling, not entirely sure what had pulled him out of sleep. Then he heard it — his sister arguing with their mother somewhere in the kitchen, voices carrying easily through the thin apartment walls.
"I’m telling you, I can cook."
"You burned eggs yesterday."
"That was one time."
"You burned the pan too."
Sean smiled before he’d even properly opened his eyes, swinging his legs out of bed. He’d forgotten what mornings sounded like when his family was actually around. At the academy, mornings were measured out precisely — alarms, training schedules, nutrition plans, recovery windows, the constant low hum of awareness that every hour of the day could feed back into his career somehow.
This was nothing like that. There was arguing. Laughter. Cupboards opening and closing in quick succession. Someone complaining loudly about the size of the kitchen. Someone else demanding to know where the bread had gone.
For once, none of it had a single thing to do with football.
Sean wandered in still half-asleep. His sister pointed at him the second he appeared in the doorway.
"Tell Mum I’m right."
He looked between the two of them. "No."
"You haven’t even heard the argument yet."
"I know you."
Their mother laughed at that, delighted. His sister folded her arms, wounded. "You’re both against me."
Sean opened the fridge, more out of habit than hunger. "What happened?"
"She wanted to make breakfast," his mother said.
"I *can* make breakfast."
"You can make toast."
"That’s still breakfast."
His father walked in behind him, already dressed, looking mildly amused at whatever he’d just walked into. "What’s happening?"
His sister pointed at their mother. "She doesn’t believe in me."
His father glanced between them, entirely unbothered. "She’s probably right."
The kitchen erupted. His sister stared at him, betrayed. "Dad!"
His father simply pulled out a chair and sat down, unfazed, reaching for the coffee already waiting for him. Sean watched him for a second, half-smiling. For a man who usually said so little, his timing had gotten considerably better since Sean had last lived under the same roof.
---
After breakfast, his sister announced she had a list.
Sean went immediately suspicious. "What kind of list?"
"Places. Twenty-three of them," she said, pulling out her phone to prove it.
Sean nearly choked on his water. "You’re here for a few days."
"Exactly."
"You can’t see twenty-three places in a few days."
"Why not?"
"Because half of these are in different cities."
She smiled, entirely unbothered by that logistical detail. "That’s why you have a car."
Sean looked to his father for backup. His father took the phone, scanned the list once, and handed it back without much sympathy.
"Take her."
"Dad."
"You’re her brother."
His sister beamed. "This is why Dad’s my favourite."
"You said that about Mum yesterday," Sean reminded her.
"I’m allowed two favourites."
Their mother shook her head, already waving them both toward the door. "Go get dressed, the both of you."
Sean scanned the list one more time on the way to his room — museums, a couple of restaurants, shopping streets, a park, a stadium tour tucked near the bottom. He tapped that last one. "Why’s this on here?"
"Because you live here."
"So?"
"I want to understand where you actually are, Sean. Not just hear about it over the phone."
That answer caught him off guard more than he expected. She wasn’t entirely joking, he realized. Not this time.
He nodded. "Fine."
---
The first few hours passed without anything dramatic happening, which was exactly what made them worth remembering. They walked through the city at an easy pace. His mother stopped every few minutes to study a shop window. His sister photographed almost everything they passed, useful or not. His father walked alongside Sean, occasionally offering an observation about prices, or the architecture, or some small difference between here and home.
Sean answered what he could. Sometimes he genuinely didn’t know the answer. Sometimes his sister supplied one anyway, whether or not she’d actually been asked.
They stopped for lunch at a small place near one of the squares. When the bill came, Sean reached for his wallet out of habit.
His father stopped him with a hand on his arm. "I’ll get it."
"You don’t have to."
"I know."
He handed the money to the waiter before Sean could argue further. Sean didn’t say anything about it, but he noticed it — the small, deliberate weight of the gesture. His father had traveled thousands of kilometers to see the life his son had built here. Maybe paying for lunch was just his way of reminding Sean, quietly, that he was still his father in all of this. Not a visitor standing outside his son’s professional world, looking in.
Just his father.
---
After lunch they kept walking, and eventually his sister and mother fell a little behind, drawn into a shop window neither of them could resist, leaving Sean and his father several paces ahead on their own.
His father spoke without turning to look at him. "You’ve changed."
Sean glanced over. "How do you mean?"
"You don’t look like the boy who left Nigeria."
Sean smiled slightly. "I hope that’s a good thing."
"It is." His father kept his eyes ahead as he walked. "You’re more careful now."
"With money?"
"With everything."
Sean didn’t answer right away. His father looked at him properly this time.
"You used to act before you thought."
Sean laughed. "I still do, sometimes."
"Not as much as you used to."
They walked in silence for a stretch after that, the kind of silence that didn’t need filling. Then, out of nowhere, his father asked, "Are you happy?"
The question caught Sean completely off guard. He’d braced himself for questions about his contract, his training load, his future — the usual territory. Not this.
He looked ahead at the street. "Yes."
His father nodded once. "Good."
A pause, longer than the last one.
"Don’t forget that part."
Sean frowned slightly. "What part?"
"Being happy." His father’s voice stayed even, unhurried. "Football can give you money. Recognition. It can take you places you never imagined as a boy. But if you get all of that and end up hating the life you’re actually living, you haven’t won anything at all." He glanced sideways. "Your mother and I didn’t send you here so you could become somebody else."
"You didn’t send me," Sean said. "I chose to come."
His father allowed himself a small smile at that. "You know what I meant."
Sean nodded. He did.
---
The conversation drifted toward money not long after, the way it always eventually did with his father. How much was he earning now. How much was he saving. Was he spending sensibly. Did he have anything set aside for the unexpected. Had he signed a single document he hadn’t fully understood before putting his name to it.
Sean answered each question honestly, in order, the way he always had. His father listened carefully to every answer, nodding along without interrupting.
When Sean finished, his father nodded again, slower this time. "You’re doing better than I expected."
Sean laughed. "Is that a compliment?"
"Yes."
"I’ll take it, then."
His father’s expression sobered slightly. "But don’t get comfortable."
Sean’s smile faded a little. "Why not?"
"Because football can change very quickly. Faster than you think it can."
It wasn’t said as a warning meant to frighten him. It was practical, the same way most things his father said were practical. One injury could undo a season. One careless decision could undo a career. One bad financial choice could quietly erase years of work before anyone even noticed it happening. His father wasn’t telling him to live afraid of any of that.
He was telling him to stay ready for it.
"I won’t waste what I’ve built," Sean said.
His father nodded, satisfied. "That’s all I wanted to hear."
---
The stadium came later that afternoon. Sean had played there more times than he could easily count, but walking in with his family beside him made the whole place feel strangely unfamiliar, like he was seeing it fresh.
His sister stared up at the empty stands. "This is where people actually watch you play?"
"Yes."
"Thousands of people?"
"Sometimes."
She turned to look at him properly. "And you don’t get nervous anymore?"
"Not really, no."
His mother touched his shoulder gently. "You were nervous at first, though?"
"Of course I was."
His sister laughed. "I wish I’d seen that."
"You’d have made it worse."
"I would have helped."
"You would’ve made it worse."
His father had drifted a little apart from the rest of them, standing quietly near the edge of the pitch. Sean watched him for a moment. He wasn’t looking up at the empty stands the way everyone else was. He was looking down at the grass — the same grass Sean had played on in front of thousands of strangers, the same patch of ground where all of this had actually started to become real.
His father finally turned back toward him. "You really play here."
"Yes."
His father just nodded, and somehow that plain response carried more weight than any amount of praise could have.
---
They spent the rest of the afternoon deliberately away from anything football-related. Shopping, mostly. His sister bought clothes she swore she couldn’t find back home. His mother picked up a small collection of kitchen items Sean genuinely didn’t understand the purpose of. His father bought nothing at all, or so Sean assumed, right up until they got back to the apartment and he noticed a small paper bag sitting on the table.
"What did you buy?"
"Nothing," his father said, not looking up.
Sean opened the bag anyway. Inside was a plain wristwatch — nothing extravagant, nothing flashy, just well made, the kind of thing that would still look right in ten years.
"Dad."
His father shrugged, like it was nothing. "You needed one."
"I have a phone."
"Your phone doesn’t look right with everything you wear now."
Sean laughed. "You bought me a watch because you don’t like how my phone looks?"
"Yes."
His sister appeared from the hallway and snatched it out of his hands before he could react. "Let me see." She turned it over once. "It’s actually nice."
"Your father picked it out himself," their mother added, watching from the kitchen doorway.
Sean looked back at his father. "Thank you."
His father just nodded. "Wear it."
"I will."
---
That evening Isabella joined them for dinner, and this time Sean noticed something had shifted. His father spoke to her more than he had the night before — not a lot, but noticeably more, real questions rather than polite formalities. Her family. Her studies. What she actually wanted to do once she finished. Isabella answered all of it easily, no trace of the nerves from that first evening.
His mother watched the whole exchange with a quiet, satisfied smile. His sister watched it with far less subtlety, leaning toward Sean at one point to whisper, "Dad likes her."
"Stop."
"I can tell."
"You’re embarrassing me."
"Good."
Isabella heard enough of it to look over. "What are you two whispering about?"
"Nothing," Sean said quickly.
His sister smiled sweetly. "Sean thinks Dad doesn’t like you."
Isabella turned to him. "You said that?"
"I didn’t say that."
His father looked up from his plate. "Sean."
Sean closed his eyes briefly. "Yes?"
"Don’t lie."
His sister burst out laughing. Isabella pressed a hand over her mouth, failing to hide her own laugh. Sean stared hard at the table, and his mother just shook her head at all of them.
"This family."
Dinner carried on with more laughter than Sean could remember having in weeks. It wasn’t sophisticated. It wasn’t some carefully staged celebration of anything. They just ate, argued, laughed, passed dishes back and forth without much ceremony — and somewhere in the middle of it, Sean realized these were exactly the moments he’d been quietly missing while he’d been busy chasing the next level of everything else.
---
Later, once Isabella had left and his sister had gone to bed, and his mother had insisted on cleaning the kitchen despite Sean telling her twice to leave it until morning, his father stayed behind in the living room. Sean joined him there. Neither of them said anything at first — the television was on, but neither of them was really watching it.
Eventually his father spoke. "She’s good."
Sean looked over. "Isabella?"
His father nodded.
Sean smiled. "You like her?"
"I said she’s good."
"That’s not quite the same thing."
His father gave him a look. "You’re asking too many questions."
Sean laughed, then watched his father’s expression settle into something more serious.
"If she matters to you, treat her properly."
"I will."
"Don’t let football become an excuse for everything you get wrong elsewhere."
"I won’t."
His father leaned back into the sofa. "You’ve got a difficult career ahead of you still. People are going to want things from you — money, attention, opportunities, all of it. Some of them will actually care about you underneath that. Some won’t." He paused. "Your job is learning to tell the difference before it costs you something."
Sean nodded slowly, taking it in properly.
His father glanced toward the hallway where the rest of the family had gone to sleep. "Your mother and I won’t always be here to remind you of any of this."
Something tightened in Sean’s chest. "I know."
"But while we are—" his father paused, choosing the words carefully "—you can always ask."
There was nothing dramatic about the moment that followed. No embrace, no long speech. His father just reached over and set a hand briefly on his shoulder, then took it away again.
Somehow, that was enough.
---
When Sean finally went to bed, he set the new watch down on the table beside his phone.
The phone represented the part of his life that never stopped moving — messages, football, training schedules, money, news, whatever opportunity happened to be arriving next. The watch felt like something else entirely. Time, plainly. The time he’d already spent. The time he still had left. The time he needed to keep setting aside, deliberately, for the people who actually mattered to him.
He lay back and let the day settle over him properly. For one full day, he’d barely thought about football at all. Strangely, that didn’t leave him feeling guilty the way it might have a year ago.
Tomorrow he’d be back at the academy. He’d train. He’d work. He’d keep becoming whatever version of a player he was still building toward.
But tonight had reminded him of something underneath all of that. Before Sean Nelson had ever been a footballer, he’d been somebody’s son. Somebody’s brother. Somebody’s friend. Somebody’s love. None of that had disappeared just because his career had grown around it.
It had only gotten a little harder to protect.
Maybe that was its own part of becoming something worth being — not letting success decide, quietly and without permission, which parts of himself were still worth keeping.
END OF Chapter 180