“Thanks.” He looks to Mam and Dad. “Can you give me some space, please? I need to rest, after all.”
I’m stuck in the middle. I know what Mike is like, and I also know our parents are in a state of ‘cotton wool’ deployment. If Mam had her way, she’d let none of us leave the house.
“I’ll be back in half an hour to check on you. In the meantime, please try to get some rest, Michael,” Mam says. Then she gives me the nod to follow her, and like a puppy, I do.
We leave him and Dad to talk for a few minutes, heading down to the coffee shop. The same place where Johnny Koenig and a few of the other guys are waiting, Styrofoam cups in hand, around a large circular table. Luckily, he doesn’t see us, but he pulls his phone out of his pocket and sticks it to his ear, before sliding his chair to stand up.
We join the queue as Dad strides in.
“Did you bring my handbag, Tony?” Mam says, looking him up and down.
“Does it look like I have your handbag, love?” Dad huffsbefore he turns to me. “Kelly, be a star and fetch Mam’s handbag, will you?”
I turn on the spot and stalk back towards Mike’s room, the anxiety of bumping into Johnny sitting in my chest.
As soon as Mike’s room comes into view, I see Johnny through the window of the door, standing next to his bed as they talk.
The silence from the corridor allows me to pick up a mumbling of raised voices from within the room. Hesitantly, I push the door open. There’s no avoiding him this time.
“Just leave it, will you? For Christ’s sake. Quit nagging me about it,” my brother snaps, his ire aimed towards Johnny.
But they both turn their heads towards me, and Johnny’s eyes lock with mine, his face softening for a fraction of a second before he looks away again.
Mike’s room suddenly seems cramped. It’s as if the walls are closing in on me. Johnny’s six-foot-whatever frame makes me feel fun-sized and I can’t help but stare at him. Tom was right, of course. He is handsome.
“Alright, Kel? How’s it going?” Mike adjusts himself in bed and offers me a warm smile.
“I need to grab Mam’s bag,” I say, bending slightly to reach down and grab it from the floor next to his bed. My face flames. Is this my very own ‘I carried a watermelon’ moment?
My knees wobble a little, but I use all my strength to stand up straight again.
“No worries. Oh, have you met Johnny? Johnny, this is my sister, Kelly. Kelly, this is Johnny, the team captain.”
He bows his head slightly, so he’s not looking directly at me.
“Hi, Johnny. It’s nice to meet you,” I say.
My voice doesn’t sound like mine when the words are in the air. I sound frail and pathetic.
Then he looks at me. Fully this time, relaxing his face again as he shoves his hands in his pockets. He looks older in person with a beard. Nervous, too. But confidence oozes from his voice when he speaks.
“Hi Kelly, I’m Johnny. But you can call me John.”
And just like that, my heart stops. It couldn’t be... could it?
Mike bursts out laughing. “You can call me John? Are you expecting her to call you captain, too?”
Johnny doesn’t answer him. Instead, he pulls his phone out of his pocket and glares at the screen, his cheeks turning pink. “Shit, I need to get going, Betts. I’ll call you later, yeah?”
He strides out of the room, leaving nothing but the scent of cologne behind him. I make a mental note to tell Tom that even though Johnny is a douche, he at least smells good.
“That was fucking weird,” Mike says, looking at the door Johnny closed behind him.
But our conversation ends there, thankfully, when the door creaks open, and a nurse comes in, wheeling a machine. She announces that it’s time to check his observations, so I use that as my cue to leave. But I don’t make it back to the café. I get to the end of the corridor and come face-to-face with Johnny Koenig.
There are a millionquestions running around in my head as I process what just happened.
Kelly.