Page 31 of We Were Never Lovers
“And your mate Flynn,” Sean shook his head in disgust. He could respect the hell out of the play, he just didn’t like that play being made against him and because of his mistake. And he knew Jack and Flynn were mates, had seen the pictures on their social media pages, like some advertisement for a white boy surfing magazine—the pair of them with arms around the other’s shoulders, tanned bare chests and low slung boardshorts, white teeth smiling as blue eyes crinkled against the sun.
But Jack just laughed, shrugged. “What’re you gonna do? It’s Finn.”
Sean muttered a few insults, mainly at himself. He had no recollection of playing and yet the anger and shame was the same as if he had. Jack wasn’t completely unaffected either; Sean saw the flinch when he brought up Jack’s own errors, how well he’d been shut down, how he needed to learn to shake a tag.
By the time they were having dinner, Jack’s shoulders were so tense Sean regretted going on about it. He wasn’t the Jack from around the team, the locker room Jack, he was the Jack Sean saw at home—more open, more vulnerable—and Sean had to pause, fork in hand, and take in the dejection radiating off him. It was as alarming as it was surprising. Sean had been giving Jack hell for a year—as far as he remembered it—but Jack never let on how much it bothered him aside from the odd flinch Sean caught, the flash of hurt in his eyes, carefully buried before he lifted his gaze.
“Hey,” Sean said, “I’m not tryin’ to be an asshole. I’m not like, attacking you personally.” It felt weird to be explaining himself, even after all these months.
Jack met his eyes and Sean would give his annual salary to be able to read the expression on his face. “Yeah, I know, I guess it’s just,” his gaze turned distant, “weird.”
“I don’t break down your game and give you pointers anymore?” Sean asked.
“Oh no, you do,” Jack chuckled and met Sean’s eyes from under his eyelashes. Men should not be allowed to have eyes that blue that could do that, he thought as he felt desire rush through him. “But ah, you’re both less and more about it, I dunno. It’s hard to explain.”
He started eating and Sean was left staring at him with that piece of non-information.
“Well, maybe ya could try,” he said and tucked into his nutritionist-approved salmon, brown rice and salad.
Jack made a considering noise around his mouthful. “After,” he said once he’d swallowed, pointing his knife at Sean’s plate.
Sean knew he was playing for time, getting all his ducks in a row in his head, but he was hungry, so he’d let him have it.
He knew it was serious when Jack sat down next to him on the couch instead of taking his usual spot in the armchair, gently herding Lola to her bed so he could sit there.
“Ah, hello?” Sean said.
Jack laughed nervously, but he settled back, kicked his legs out like he had at training, clasped his fingers over his stomach, the white shirt pulling taut over his abs and chest. It did not look as relaxed as it had at training, but it was a posture Jack preferred, Sean knew that much. He had a beer on the coffee table, had offered Sean one before he sat down, which Sean declined. He loved a drink as much as the next bloke, but he had to be careful with it since some in his mob had a problem with it; well, mostAustralians were alcoholics, but the Aboriginal mobs copped more shit for it, which made him self-conscious about it, so he generally made a rule of not drinking during the week and very rarely during the season, rarely outside his house. Jack nodded like he’d expected Sean to say no, and Sean got the feeling Jack usually abstained as well.
“Hi,” Jack replied sarcastically, but reached for his beer, took a swig, sat back in the same posture and turned to look at Sean, nothing sardonic in his face. “You wanted to know about our first time and about how you are with me about the game, right?”
Sean was amazed, but he really did, so, “Yeah,” he replied immediately, shifting his posture side on and as open to Jack as he could be with the cast.
Jack nodded, tapped his fingers on his stomach and dropped his head so his hair was falling in his face. “Right, well, the first time was after a fight—”
“After the prelim?” Sean knew it.
“No,” Jack shook his head. “No, that was just a fight.” He said, tone tight. Sean got the feeling there was more to it, but he’d ask later.
“This was, the next year, start of the season—”
“We’ve been fucking for two years?”
“Year and a half, give or take,” Jack said, his tone now carefully indifferent.
Sean whistled. He’d never have thought, not in a million years, they’d be sleeping together at all, never mind for almost two years.
“So, we were at The Clink, most of the team, we’d absolutely destroyed Port Adelaide at home in the first game, you’d played an absolute blinder. Taken a mark that’d win you mark of the year and I’d fed you the kick. It was one of those games, like everything unfolded perfectly, we won by eighty-three points, an absolute pounding, and everyone was high on it, so we went out.Hit The Local first and when that closed, everyone wanted to keep going, go clubbing, so we got cars to The Clink. Everything was good, happy, and we’d all had a few and I was comin’ out of the bathroom when you cornered me, got right up in my face, saying the usual shit.”
Jack threw a hand up and Sean knew what he meant. He watched Jack’s game as closely as his own and never missed an opportunity to tell him everything he’d done wrong. Jack always took it stoically, face pinched, but he never got stuck into Sean in return. Their teammates gave them the side-eye a lot, but no one got involved since Sean never crossed a line—it was always about the game and it toed the line of abusive but never crossed over.
“And I was like, ‘Are you for real?’ Like I say, I’d had a few, and I just let you have it. Said a lot of stuff I’d probably been sitting on from the year before. Like how I didn’t get what your problem was, how we’d just won, how I bloody well set you up over and over again, helped make you the player you are, better since I got back.”
“Yeah, except when you got injured,” Sean retorted.
Jack laughed humourlessly. “Yeah, that’s what you said then, but it was getting kinda out of hand? Like you were yelling over the music, I was yelling back and I was just like, ‘I’m done.’ So I left. I pushed you back and headed out.”
Sean raised his eyebrows, he couldn’t imagine Jack pushing him. Jack clenched and released his hands over his stomach, kept his face in his hair.
