In the summer of 2004, Pablo's daily coaching sessions heat up. One of the youngest players in his football club's primary squad, at the age of 22 he gets nominated into the national team of Spain to represent the country in the 2004 UEFA Championship. Summer is sizzling, and running about the field eight hours a day consumes Pablo's physical energy almost completely. This is exactly what he needs at the moment to distract himself from the unexpected whirlwind of pain within him.
Hanging out with Andrew gave him an immediate remedy for the sadness about his ended romantic relationship, but after the new friend left, Pablo had to confront the aftermath of his breakup. He avoids to see his and his ex-girlfriend's common company because he is overcome with shame — the way she cheated on him makes him feel like a total loser. He avoids going out anywhere and does not want to hook up with anyone new. At the same time, he can't help the realization that he misses Andrew more and more as time goes by, and he cannot make sense of the reason why over a few days of their acquaintance, he became so attached to that Russian guy. He is increasingly haunted by the feelings whose nature he tries his best to deny. By the feelings that he had successfully silenced over many previous years. He intends to continue being friends with Andrew and corresponding with him via email, but as he remembers that Andrew's wife was pregnant at the moment he met them, he believes that Andrew must be busy with taking caring of her and the birth of their child. He decides to keep himself from talking to Andrew in emails as much as he feels he would like to. Instead, trying to cope with his "weird affection", he focuses on the work and dives into exhausting workouts before the Championship, aware that it can become a game changer for his future career. This is how the days, weeks, and months of his summer pass.
Pablo gives a brilliant debut at the event, scoring the majority of goals for the national team, causing a sensation in the sports media of both his home country and the rest of Europe. Millions of people watching the Championship, admiring his performance and becoming his fans, his team mates and coaches, and even his parents have no clue about the fact that during the night before the first game in the tournament, alone in the hotel room in Porto, Pablo suffered an overwhelming psychological stress. The feeling that was whirling in his subconsciousness for months despite his denial finally broke into the foreground of his mind.
He realizes that he feels an irrepressible physical attraction towards another man. Not just attraction. He realizes that he is totally in love with a man, and this man is Andrew.
Pablo hasn't had a precedent to make him clearly aware of his sexuality, but now he can't help the reality that the nature of his affection for Andrew is different from friendship and the intensity of his physical attraction is way beyond what he has ever felt towards any girl. Crushed and appalled at this realization, sleepless through the night before the game, he nevertheless performs perfectly on the field the next day. After he returns to Barcelona, he is smothered in congratulations, praises, and adoration from new fans, as well as invitations to television, radio, and newspaper interviews. Thanks to his personal triumph that brought about another wave of fame to the team, club management pays him a big reward and immediately offers to prolong his contract. Pablo tries to drown his "unnatural" feeling in all this fuss. He struggles to erase Andrew from his thoughts, but when after months of silence he receives Andrew's email congratulation on his success, he realizes he just can't. Be it obsession or love or lust, what he feels only grows stronger with time, and its initially dominating physical character slowly yet steadily gives way to a maturing spiritual feeling in the face of Pablo's continuing attempts to deny his homosexuality. No wonder, he does not share his struggle with his parents, who observe that despite his extraordinary professional achievement he looks depressed, and they cannot make sense of it. After being granted the vacation of an entire month completely free from field workouts, Pablo breaks his strict athletic routine and plunges into nightlife, picking up random girls for hookups, thus trying to prove his masculinity and heterosexuality to himself. He finds himself functioning perfectly "normal" in bed, but, as it turns out, no physical intimacy can weaken the attraction and emotional connection he feels with Andrew, increasingly stoked by their ongoing email conversations. Raised as a Catholic, Pablo is ashamed of his feelings and prays unto God about being liberated from "devil's temptation".
Over following weeks and months, even though he doesn't see Andrew physically and electronic correspondence remains the only way of their communication, his feeling continues to grow. He feels like Andrew is the person he belongs with, and even when he makes an effort of ignoring Andrew's messages in order to wipe out the "temptation" from his life, he realizes he just can't keep the silence. On the one hand, he can't hurt Andrew by this, and on the other hand, he feels that Andrew is too precious a person to let go of, even as a friend. At the same time, reading Andrew's accounts about his newborn daughter, Pablo fully shares his happiness about fatherhood. To be a father has always been Pablo's own dearest dream, which, as he is fully convinced, is incompatible with being a homosexual man.
Andrew is a foreigner. Andrew is married. Andrew has a child. Andrew is a "normal" man and only regards him as a friend. These thoughts haunt the footballer constantly. Granted, Pablo has always considered himself "normal" too, and he believes that if anyone learns he's not, his entire life will be ruined. His Big League career, which has just so gloriously begun after ten years of hard work, will be infamously brought down. There are many external pressures and obstacles making Pablo believe that his relationship with Andrew is impossible and inconceivable. And yet, as the days go by and he gets to know Andrew as a person more and more from their correspondence, his love continues to grow in spite of two thousand miles, a language barrier, and social differences separating them. It all feels too messed up, and Pablo sees no way to fix it.