Page 25 of We Were Never Lovers
“Shearing. That’s all else I got. That’s what Jayden’s doin’.”
It was true. He wasn’t good with media like some of the other blackfellas. And he wasn’t a leader, wouldn’t be making a career in coaching or advocacy. He could play footy and he could shear sheep. His dad had been a shearer and he’d taught him and Jayden, had made that his work until he dropped dead from a heart attack when Sean was fifteen. That’s what they did—played footy until they couldn’t anymore, then moved back home and joined a shearing team when the money ran out. He’d beenhoping for a few more years in the league, but what could he do? When the show was over, it was time to go.
“You’re not bloody well shearing,” Jack said vehemently. “You’re gonna be fine. Maybe you can’t play this season, so you rehab, you get better. You’ll be back next season.”
Sean rubbed the fuzz of hair over the scar on his head. His brain was “perfect”, the specialist reiterated, but—the inevitable ‘but’—with his memory loss they “weren’t sure”, they “couldn’t say one way or another” what the league would do with him. Add his leg, which seemed to be healing fine, but “never know with a break like that, we’ll have to see where it’s at when the cast comes off,” the club’s orthopaedic surgeon had said. He had a metal plate holding the bone in place, and the X-rays showed it healing well, no signs of infection, which had been the greatest concern since the bone had snapped and protruded out of his thigh on impact. How strong the bone would be once they took the cast off was yet to be determined.
Jack might not want to think about all this, but Sean had to.
“What am I gonna do? Sit on your couch forever while you run around after me?” Sean asked.
“Yes,” Jack replied.
Sean shook his head and looked away. Jack made a left-hand turn at the lights and they were on the West Coast Highway, the Indian Ocean an expanse of blue to their right, a few container ships dotting the horizon, waiting to make berth with their rows of cars and cheap furniture and gadgets and poorly made junk from China.
They were parking when Jack spoke again. Sean had felt it in the air between them; he was getting used to that now, the way Jack needed to say something but sat on it until he—and this was a new realisation—had arranged the words right in his head. Sean had thought he did it to think of the best way to line up his manipulations, but since they’d been living together, he’drealised Jack needed to figure out how to put his feelings into words. He wasn’t being manipulative; he was having too many feelings. You’d think having four older sisters would make him an expert in feelings, but apparently not.
“You’re gonna stay here. With me and Lola. And we’ll get you better, okay? And we’ll see different doctors if that’s what it takes.” They sat there, the car heating up with the engine cut, the summer heat only a few seconds and small space away from an air conditioner being turned off.
“You don’t gotta do that, man,” Sean rolled his head on the seat to look up at him. “If it’s the end, I’ll figure it out. I always knew this was comin’ and this is what I’d do. It’s alright. Bit sooner than I expected, but well,” he shrugged and unclipped his seatbelt. He could reach back and grab the crutches and get himself out, but Jack always jumped out and got them for him, helped him out of the car until he righted himself.
“No,” Jack said softly and gripped Sean’s wrist. “That’s not the plan. That’s not been the plan for a while, okay? Trust me. This is not what you want to do.”
Jack’s fingers circled his wrist, squeezing and releasing, his voice sure and his blue eyes, for a change, steady on Sean’s.
Sean really wondered what kind of friends they were at times like this—so close they could tell the other one what the future held? So close they touched dicks except not again because this Sean wouldn’t do it right? They were the weirdest fucking friends he’d ever heard about.
Sweat beaded under Jack’s thumb and forefinger, the heat inside quickly matching and surpassing outside.
“Is this another one of those things where you’re gonna tell me to go along with it but not tell me why?” he asked.
“Another thing?”
“Yeah, like the ‘we fuck but we don’t fuck ‘cos past me don’t know how to fuck future you properly’,” Sean replied.
Jack let him go and sat back. “That’s not, I didn’t mean,” Jack threw his hands around, that blush rising on his throat. Sean was growing increasingly fascinated with how easy it was to fluster him. In the year they’d been playing together he’d seen Jack get flustered by stupid questions about whether or not he had a girlfriend. Sean had rolled his eyes in disdain at the reaction—why was Jack acting so taken aback? Of course everyone’s asking that question; Jack had never had one, never even bothered to hide it either, he didn’t even bother taking a woman that could be mistaken for his girlfriend to the Brownlow’s, to the club Best & Fairest functions. He took his sisters, his aunt one year, he took a friend from school, a male friend since he went to an all-boys school, and still, he was shocked when some girl fromThe West’ssocial pages asked him if he had someone special he was keeping under wraps for some reason. That same blush rising up his throat, the inability to form a coherent sentence in response.
But unlike some chick fishing with her own agenda, Sean wasn’t going to laugh it off and take his non-response for an endearing admission of truth. He was going to wait for an answer.
“It’s hot, come on,” Jack opened the door.
“I’ll come inside if you promise to tell me what kinda friends we are and why we can’t fuck again. For real, not just this, ‘old you don’t fuck me proper’ bullshit,” Sean said.
“Or what? You’ll just sit out here in the car and die of heat stroke?” Jack wasn’t making eye contact now, instead staring at the house.
“I’m tougher than that. Also, you’ll leave the keys and I’ll just turn the air conditioner on if it gets too hot,” he opened his door, extended his leg out and settled in, crossing his arms over his chest.
Jack huffed but didn’t look at him. Sean was surprised he was taking so long to think about it—he’d have pegged Jack as caving on this immediately. Sean was the one who’d wait something like this out, call the bluff. The fact Jack was half sitting out of the car, eyes on the house but stare a million miles away, a hand running through his hair to push the sweat beading on his forehead into it and thinking about it was unexpected.
“It’s not that I don’t want to tell you,” he finally said.
Sean snorted. “Coulda fooled me.”
Jack shook his head, resigned. “You’re not gonna like it. That’s all I’m sayin’.”
He got out, shut his door and Sean was surprised—he’d never have thought Jack would leave him here. But then Jack was there, getting his crutches out of the back seat, closing the back door quietly, stepping in front of Sean and waiting.
“I meant it, I’m not comin’ in—”
