Page 41 of We Were Never Lovers
Jack gave him a surprised look, which morphed into a frown, but he buried that quick and said, “No, and it’s not like you’d hook-up with someone like that, come on.”
Sean didn’t like the dismissive tone, but before Jack could bolt outside again, he demanded, “Then what were you deleting?”
Jack exhaled and he looked like he really didn’t want to say what he was about to say. “Racist shit.”
It landed like a bomb between them and Sean felt the impact like he always did—the moment itself was always coated in thick disbelief, seeing those words on his screen, calling him the usual shit, some of it more creative than others—but it was the aftermath, when the dust settled, that was worse. It created a deep depression inside him and it’d last for days, weeks. Like no matter how well he played—in fact the better he played, the more shit he got—but no matter what he did, he’d still always need to be reminded of his Aboriginality, which meant he was therefore less, a second-class citizen.
He remembered a preseason trip the team took to Vietnam when Sean was in his second season, Hurley certain that if they saw how fearless the Viet Cong had been they’d be inspired. Sean had noticed the pride in the way the Vietnamese tour guide talked as he took them through the Cù Chi tunnels, a pride that extended to the population, an attitude of no fucks given for what these white people on this tour—and the blackfellas—thought of them. And he’d been struck by what an attitude looked like when you beat your invaders compared to when you lost. When you were still losing. There was no treaty, there was no end to this war, just the few of them who remained and tried to carve out a life where people tried to pretend you didn’t really exist, that all the problems you had were your own fault.
He hated getting those messages. Riding high on a win, only to open his phone to that shit. It had the power to devastate him, and he hated that more.
“Did I ask you to do that?” he asked, a bewildered embarrassment crawling under his skin. He didn’t want to be vulnerable about this in front of Jack.
“Kind of,” Jack replied carefully. “We never talked about it, we … I just started doing it and you,” he paused. Sean looked at him—he expected pity, he expected something other than the anger that took over Jack’s face, anger not directed at Sean. “You never said anything, never stopped me.”
“I know you do it, but?”
“Yeah, you know,” Jack nodded.
“Was there anything?”
“Sean …”
“Tell me.” Christ, he wasn’t even playing.
Jack sucked in a breath. “Yeah. I got rid of it.”
Sean dropped his phone to his side and tapped it against his good leg. “Okay,” he said after a moment and then went back to his room.
Dropping his phone on the bedside table, repulsed by it, scared of it, he lay back, rearranged his leg with several tugs and shifts, and stared at the ceiling. It was one of those old ceilings, back when people took ceilings seriously—ornamented flower patterns spun out in a spiral around the light fixture, a carving into plaster someone must’ve taken care to do, must’ve thought it wasn’t just a structure to hold up the roof, it was something someone might look at when they lay down, might take pleasure in. Someone thought that deeply about houses once, someone over a hundred years ago while his people were being hunted like dogs and herded onto missions, put in chains, jailed or shot or poisoned for taking a sheep when the whitefellas were shooting all the roos and fencing all their land, someone else was thinking about how important it was to make this ceiling beautiful.
“Hey,” Jack said from the doorway.
Sean cast his eyes down without moving his head. Jack came in, more calm in his movements than he had been all morning.He got on the bed on the other side of Sean, stretched out with an inch between them and sighed deeply into the stillness.
Lola’s nails skittered on the floorboards as she came down the hall, growing louder as she entered the room, her body landing with the slightest indent on the quilt. She curled into a ball at Sean’s feet and went to sleep.
“Don’t you have a bunch of shit to do for your precious patio?” Sean asked. He heard the snark and felt guilty—Jack didn’t do anything. But Jack didn’t get it either, he’d never get it.
Jack huffed, somewhere between a joyless laugh and a resigned sigh. “No, the workers will do most of it, I was just,” he waved his hand up, fingers fluttering at nothing, “bein’ weird.”
“You’re always bloody weird,” Sean replied.
Jack huffed a laugh then. “Yeah, according to you.” He was serious when he went on. “They’re fuckin’ assholes, Sean. They got no lives, they got nothin’ goin’ for them and so they wanna run you down. It’s got nothin’ to do withyou.”
Sean scrubbed his hands over his face. He hated talking about this. The team mandated a sports psychologist for all the players. A lot of them got out of it, the blackfellas most of all since the team’s Aboriginal Liaison Officer would have a word if they said they didn’t want to talk to some white person about their problems. But he’d been forced to go in his first season after a coordinated attack happened to him and some of the other blackfellas from West Coast. She’d kept saying she understood. “I understand. I know this is frustrating, but you have to talk about it.” But she didn’t understand, she couldn’t. He’d talked to his mum, his aunties, Jayden, the men’s group and the other brothers—they understood. And besides, it never affected his game, made him play even better—the ultimate fuck you—but he was loathe to listen to Jack tell him how to feel about it.
“You don’t—”
“Understand,” Jack finished before he could. “I know.”
Sean saw it then—they’d been through this—how many times? Jack said that with a weight like he really did get it.
He closed his eyes, wished he could call his mum and his eyes burned. He still couldn’t believe she was gone.
Jack’s hand came down and he slid his fingers between Sean’s. Sean jerked at the touch, but he didn’t pull away and neither did Jack; he swept his thumb up and down Sean’s knuckles and stayed quiet.
Sean breathed deep, desperate to get the impending tears under control. He swallowed a few times, blinked and the liquid spilled over, warm and quiet, but that was all.
