Page 50 of We Were Never Lovers
“Are you gonna open it?” Jack asked, his eyes darting up, a strained smile on his face. “Twenty-seven, eh? Gettin’ old. Where does the time go?”
Sean rolled his eyes and slid his finger under the ribbon, pulled out the card. “It ain’t like we’re ancient. And you’re the same age as me.”
“Not yet,” Jack said.
Sean glanced up at him. Jack was still smiling, but polite now. Right, because Sean probably knew when his was birthday was. Before-Sean would’ve known. Well, if this fucker was going to go around getting him gag gifts, he’d have to find out and repay the favour. He knew it was around the end of winter—djilba, the tail end of winter and start of spring; Noongars knew this Country had six seasons, not four—and he remembered someone saying happy birthday in the locker room around that time during the first season Jack was back.
He pulled the card out. It was thick, one of those classy cards they sell in expensive book shops tucked down the laneways in Fremantle, a painting of a dog on the front it, the eyes shining and alive-looking. He opened and read Jack’s sloping and ornate handwriting:Dear Sean, Happy 27thBirthday!!! We can’t wait for 27 more, and more. Love, Jack and Lola. He’d drawn the love heart next to the word. Sean stared at it.
“Thank you,” he said insufficiently. He didn’t know what to say, it was thoughtful in a way he still couldn’t get used to from Jack.
“You’re welcome,” Jack replied.
Sean slid his index finger under the sticky tape and opened the gift. It was a book. He turned it over and raised both eyebrows.
“How…”
“I got him to send me an advanced copy, comes out in a couple of months. Open it,” Jack said, his voice excited but still unsure.
Sean opened to the first page. It was an autobiography by the greatest footballer of all time in Sean’s opinion, but he might’ve been biased since they were both Wiilman Noongars, which meant Sean could get a copy of his book if he’d known he was writing one, but it meant something that Jack had gotten in touch to get this for him.
It was signed and addressed to Sean.
Sean smiled, it felt watery, which was kind of stupid—he knew what this book would be about, they all knew, the level of racism those earlier players endured and the way they’d fought back in the 1990s was legendary. But it meant something that Jack knew how much this would mean to him.
“Thank you,” Sean said. “This is… Shit, Jack, yeah…”
“Open it up,” Jack said, “I got you a bookmark too.”
Sean flicked it open to the creased page and now he was going to cry. How in the fuck did Jack know? The bookmark was adorned with ringnecks. He blinked his eyes to stop the tears. He needed to thank him, but he didn’t know how.
Jack, who didn’t know how to read a room but seemed to know how to read Sean, even if his response drenched the atmosphere with further awkward it at least the broke tension, clapped his hands and said, “Awesome, well, I’m gonna make you pancakes. It’s your birthday, so, can cheat the diet a bit.”
And he went into the kitchen, giving Sean a moment to get his fucking shit together. He traced his forefinger over the green and blue ink of the bird’s feathers, the yellow ring around its neck. His mum said the ringnecks were sneaky little buggers, “Not like the galahs,” she’d smile and wink. The galahs who waited until it was warm to get up, who took flight in pairs and shrieked on their way to their feeding ground, rousing their mates from the other trees on their way until the sky was full of pink and grey, filled with their excited shrieking. “The ringneck, he gets up at dawn, makes the most of it, and he always keeps his secrets,” his mum said. “You might see ‘em fly in flocks, but they spend most of their day hidden in the tallest trees with their partners, whistling to one another.” You didn’t see them as much in the city, but if you went out to the bush, you’d hear them, the rhythmic low-high whistle, and if you looked up, you’d get a peek of their sleek green wings catching the sunlight through the canopy, the honkey nuts thudding on the groundafter they’d eaten them. Furtive with quiet chatter, they’d dart out and take flight, then glide, flap a little bit, and glide again before disappearing into another tree. All he had to do was hear a ringneck and think of his mum, of home, to, “Feel ya secret strength,” his mum used to say. “Ya ain’t ever gonna be as big and loud as a galah, but ya don’t need to be.”
He tucked the card inside the book, ran his finger down the bookmark again, got it together enough to join Jack in the kitchen.
“Thank you,” he managed to say again once he was across the bench in front of Jack, the room lit in a warm glow from the lamps in the living area and the globe over the range covering the stove, the sun yet to makes its appearance for the day but promising to with the way the clouds were lightening from below outside the sliding glass doors.
“Yeah, course,” Jack shot him a quick smile, but Sean didn’t miss the pleased flush to his cheeks, the sincerity in his eyes.
“No, really,” Sean tried again. He wanted to say this. “I guess ya really do know me, eh?” It was meant to be a joke, but it came out too serious.
“Yeah,” Jack straightened, his white shirt stretching over his shoulders as he rolled them back, met Sean’s eyes and nodded. “I know you,” he said before faltering, “we’re best mates.”
It should’ve been reassuring, even if they were apparently best mates who fucked, but it sliced through Sean with the blade of a lie.
“Yeah, but,” Sean didn’t know why he wanted to push this now, but he knew himself and he wouldn’t have told just anyone about the birds. He’d never told anyone. It was just between him and his mum, Jayden and his dad, his family.
“But how did you know?” he asked.
Jack shrugged like it was no big deal. “Ben told me about the book, so I just called around—”
“No,” Sean said. The book wasn’t a stretch—the most famous, or infamous depending on how you looked at it, player wrote an autobiography, a guy from Sean’s hometown, one of his mob—of course Sean would read that book.
“How’d ya know about the birds,” he said. It felt like throwing down a gauntlet and it surprised him how it was this, not the fucking, not even the weird cuddling they did after—that was intimate, but this was personal. This crossed a line.
Jack turned, giving Sean his back, his head down as he flipped pancakes.
