The Beginning
by Leah Williamson
When I first met Elle Smith, I’ll be honest—I didn’t think too much of it. She wasn’t what I expected, not at all. At that time in my life, everything revolved around music. Football was taking shape, and I was consumed by the game, the sport, the road ahead. Romance? It wasn’t on my radar. But Elle Smith—she walked into my life like a different kind of melody. Not loud, not flamboyant, just real.
I was used to the chaos of the sport—the wild nights, the constant movement, the noise. My schedule was packed, my mind always spinning with formations, training loads, recovery routines. I lived in that rhythm. Early mornings, late nights, a body that was always sore, and a mind that never really rested. That was my normal. And then came Elle.
We met through a mutual friend—someone who thought it would be funny to throw me into a small dinner party where I’d know practically no one. I almost didn’t go. I was tired, half-injured, frustrated from a week that had felt endless. But I showed up anyway, because sometimes you do things out of obligation. You show up, smile politely, make conversation, and count down the minutes until you can leave.
And that was the plan—until I saw her.
She wasn’t doing anything particularly remarkable. Just sitting at the end of the table, listening, smiling, occasionally chiming in with something quietly funny that made people laugh in that genuine way you can’t fake. She wasn’t the center of attention, but somehow the room seemed to bend toward her. Her presence had this grounding quality—like she made the chaos around her slow down.
I remember the first thing she said to me. It wasn’t some grand introduction, no cliché small talk. She just looked at me across the table and asked, “Do you ever get tired of being looked at all the time?”
I blinked, a bit thrown. Most people, when they realized who I was, either tried too hard to impress me or went the other way—pretending they didn’t know. But she didn’t do either. She just asked a question that cut straight through the surface.
“I don’t think about it much,” I said after a pause. “You just sort of get used to it.”
She nodded slowly, like she understood something deeper than my words. “I think that must be exhausting,” she said.
And for the first time in a long while, someone saw through the uniform.
After that night, I couldn’t stop thinking about her. Not in an obsessive way, but in a quiet, background hum kind of way. Like a song you don’t realize you’re humming until someone points it out. There was something in the way she carried herself—soft-spoken but certain, gentle but strong.
I’d spent years surrounded by people who lived at high volume. Teammates, fans, media, constant travel—it’s a world of noise. Elle was silence in the best way. A space where I could breathe.
We started seeing each other by accident, or so we told ourselves. A coffee here, a walk there. She’d ask about matches, but never in the typical way. Not about results or tactics, but about how it felt to play—to lead. She wanted to understand, not analyze. And I found myself telling her things I didn’t usually share with anyone.
There’s something disarming about someone who listens without trying to fix you.
One evening, after a match that hadn’t gone our way, I found myself driving without purpose. The kind of drive where you don’t want to go home because you’re carrying too much in your chest. I ended up near Elle’s flat. I don’t even remember deciding to go there; my
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