Page 79 of We Were Never Lovers
A feeling so familiar washed over him with that laugh, an image of Jack’s face looking at him after Sean said, “Ya better fuckin’ not be,” and Jack’s laughter turning into a grin. Jack had said, “Well, I’m not fuckin’ anybody else, so.” And Sean had snapped at him; he’d been jealous, possessive. It hadn’t been just fucking, not ever.
Sean sat up quickly, like his movement could chase the memory. His mind flicked back to the locker room, to Jack pressed against the locker, Sean’s chest against his. He sucked in a breath as he saw himself looking at Jack’s lips, remembered Jack’s voice breaking as he said, “You’re not worth it,” and then he saw what happened next: he darted his gaze up to Jack’s eyes—Jack had looked scared, the anger disappearing for a second and his voice was unbearably unsure when he whispered, “Sean?”
“Yeah?” Sean had replied gruffly, his eyes darting back to Jack’s lips.
Sean remembered wetting his own, pushing forward, his heart hammering as he kissed him, nothing fake about it. The adrenaline surged through him, waiting for Jack to shove him off, but Jack sagged back and let Sean kiss him, kissed him back.Sean could feel the memory of his hands sliding into his hair to pull him close, the rush of arousal when their tongues met.
It was Sean who’d pulled back, startled. He’d stepped away and they’d stared at each other, blinking. Jack’s chest had been heaving and he was still slumped against the locker, shirt creased, tie askew and hair mussed from Sean’s hands. Sean had wanted to kiss him again, but he’d turned away, shocked and embarrassed. His hands shook as he reached for his clothes; he could hear Jack breathing behind him.
“Sean?” Jack asked hopefully.
Sean shuddered. He’d yanked his boxers on, his pants, kept his back to him. He wanted to go to him, do it again, to take him home and do a lot more, but the awful memory of Jack’s seventeen-year-old voice, “It’s just like a joke, right? Just messin’ around. I’m not, I’m not like that”—those words were scorched into his brain even though he’d been trying to forget them for years. It was those words that made him say, “Just go home.” He listened fearfully to the long pause when Jack didn’t move or say anything from behind him.
But he had left. He hadn’t said anything. Sean had sat on the bench with his head in his hands for a long time afterwards. It’d taken him a week to finally message. He’d written and erased several messages, but it’d been the thirst traps that’d eventually sent him over the edge. He’d wondered who Jack was fucking. He’d hated thinking about it. He’d decided to call him out on it. But Jack, insufferably earnest, didn’t take it like that and Sean remembered why he’d liked him all those years ago; and he started to let the boy he’d met back in, too curious about the man he’d become to let it go.
He threw the blanket off and started dressing quickly. His mind felt like a building that’d been detonated and he was watching the floors crash down in slow motion, each crumbling level another memory. Following Jack out of the club, seethingand turned on and unable to control himself anymore—the fire ignited inside him by that kiss finally too great to ignore. Fucking Jack that night for the first time, the exact moment he’d realised Jack wasn’t just letting him be the one to fuck him, Jack wanted to get fucked. Jack had told him the truth—they didn’t manage to get their shoes off, there was nothing romantic about it, but there was something in it, even back then.
He saw it again now, brilliantly alive in his memory—pushing Jack’s pants down roughly, crowding over his back on Jack’s bed, spitting into his hand to lubricate Jack’s hole, the way Jack shuddered and gasped helplessly against the bedspread. Sean had gripped his hip tightly as he leaned over to the bedside table and pumped some moisturiser into his hand, fingered it into him. Jack never said a word, but he pushed back against his hand, rode his fingers; Sean remembered the harsh sound of his breathing against the bedspread, the way he’d tried to spread his legs wider when Sean lined up to push inside. Sean felt like he’d been sucker-punched, overwhelmed by how Jack was not only letting him do it, but begging for it in the way he arched his back, in the way he relaxed as he let Sean in with a gasp that turned into a smothered moan, rocked into his thrusts with these little broken sounds that tugged at Sean’s heart, burned themselves into Sean’s chest.
The hit on Jay Cully cascaded through his mind as he yanked his shirt on; he’d been so terrified for Jack he could barely function in that game. All he could see was Jack’s big body reduced to laying prone in bed, the black smudges under his eyes after a week of saying he was so tired, he felt stiff, he felt sick. Sean had eventually ignored Harris and the training staff telling him it was just the recovery; he’d smashed the button on his phone to end a call with Harris with a “Fuck this,” before hauling Jack out of bed and taking him to hospital late at night.
He’d been there when they diagnosed him with osteomyelitis—a bone infection contracted during the surgery for the knee reconstruction—and he’d been there every day while he did a round of antibiotics in hospital, remembered gruffly telling Jack to “stop being fucking stupid” when Jack confided his fears that this was it, his career was over and he wasn’t going to be able to walk again.
He’d taken him home, looked after him through another round of intravenous antibiotics at home because he still wasn’t getting better. And Sean had to leave him to play in a Western Derby, had to get on the field and be Sean Hiller, had to stop thinking about how he was as fucking shit-scared as Jack was. So when Cully gave him a weak chirp over missing a shot on goal, he’d driven all his fear and anger into Cully’s chest with a crack of his elbow.
He went into the hall and saw all the places where Jack had taken down the pictures of them—photos from BBQs and dinners and the photo of them cuddled on the couch with Lola when she was a puppy. A photo from Gracetown on the beach, Jack in his wetsuit with the top half off, hanging loose around his bare waist, Sean in his trackies and hoodie with his arm snug around Jack’s waist—he’d put his phone on the rocks to get the shot, and Jack was laughing in the photo because Sean had reiterated how he was the smart one to not be surfing in shark-infested waters in the dead of winter.
He looked at the blank space missing the blown up photo of a curry—the dinner Sean had cooked for Jack the first night in their house; he’d whipped out a container of Keens curry and told Jack he’d be cooking him a meal to christen their kitchen. He remembered Jack’s delight when he took the photo, framed it and put it on the wall, of how it had delighted him that Jack wanted a photo of a stupid meal he’d made up on the wall, which always led him to thinking about how they christened thenew bed, the memory of Jack’s flushed face against the sheets as Sean tried to show him how soft he was for him for wanting to capture those memories. He remembered wondering if he was succeeding.
As he passed the calendar, he realised Jack had changed it—this one was clean save for games and Lola’s stuff, but their calendar had had dates circled with stars and Jack’s clumsily drawn fireworks. Sean had snorted a laugh when Jack told him it was for their days off, and when Sean got the innuendo, he hustled him into their room to “show him some damn fireworks,” and Jack had snickered, pleased with himself. Their calendar had both their birthdays (with more fireworks), the Bali trip (lots of fireworks), and asterisks drawn by Jack for the nights they had dinner plans.
Then he saw Jack’s nervous face flash in his mind when he’d caught Sean in the garage after the game and asked him to get dinner. The moment Sean realised what he was really asking and the fluttering of nerves in his own stomach because he wanted that too. That night in bed when Sean told him about the hit and Jack’s horror—he hadn’t known.
Oh God, Sean thought now as he went through the living room. Jack had never known. He’d worn that guilt and horror for weeks, no matter how many times Sean told him it was fine, he was just one to hold one hell of a grudge, they were kids and if Jack hadn’t meant it, had never known Sean ended up in hospital, missed the TAC Cup because the concussion symptoms plagued him for months—and Sean believed him, Jack was not that good of an actor—then there was no harm, no foul.
Jack explaining his shame and regret for taking the fall for his friend, for mistakenly thinking Sean knew about it and hated him for it and forcing him to live it. And Sean understanding in the stilted space of Jack’s explanations while they lay in bed in the dark how it’d gone down—those feelings when you’re youngand everything feels magnified, like the end of the world, Jack making a bad call based on a rule he’d set for himself, ‘always stick up for your mates,’ and not knowing how to do anything else even when doing it absolutely repulsed him.
And Jack telling him that kiss when they were seventeen had been real, that kiss had been something he’d thought about every day for years, that he’d been stupid and scared and thought he could make it up to him except Sean stopped talking to him. The way he’d said, “Remember when we kissed when we were like, at that carnival?” his hand slipping down to hold Sean’s in the darkness of his bedroom in the old cottage he lived in on Annie’s street.
“Yeah,” Sean had replied, tensing.
“I fucked up,” Jack said quickly.
Sean was already getting ready to get out of bed.
“It wasn’t a joke, it was never a joke. I was, I was…”
Sean had gone still. “You were?” he’d asked carefully.
“So fuckin’ into it,” Jack said on a heartfelt breath.
Sean remembered exhaling roughly, his words coming with it, “Me too. Fuck man, me too.”
Jack gripped his hand tightly. “I’m so sorry I acted the way I did, I really fucked it up.”
“I kinda wanted to punch you,” Sean replied and squeezed his hand. He took a deep breath. “It’s why I’ve always kinda wanted to punch you.”
“You should’ve,” Jack replied and rolled closer. “I woulda deserved it.”
