Page 6 of We Were Never Lovers
“If you like,” Jack said calmly, his expression impossible to interpret.
“Well, I don’t know what I like,” he replied, exasperated. He was getting a headache. That wasn’t true—he’d had a headache since he woke up the first time and that headache was now pulsing, making his eyes hurt. He knew they’d give him more pain meds soon and he’d drift, the noon sunshine turning to afternoon, and his room and the wide, concrete corridors beyond his room would be crossed in golden shards of light. And he’d fade in and out of sleep and once it was dark enough, Jack would appear beside him. A confusing conjugation from Sean’s twisted mind that hated Jack and loved being around him for that very reason; he loved sinking into that feeling, bathing in it, watching Jack track him like he was pretending he wasn’t, waiting for Sean to snap at him and trying to be prepared.
“Alright, well, if you’re happy to go with Jack…” Harris was saying and arrangements were made as Sean closed his eyes. Jack was coming to stay with him. Would he move in or just drop in and out like the nurses? He knew his needs were high—he needed help using the bathroom, showering, even getting in and out of bed took two orderlies with the mammoth cast on his thigh. Even if his mum had been here, she’d have needed help. She was a little wiry thing, a kindy teacher, hardly built for lifting full grown men in and out of bed. Sean’s eyes heated and welled with tears under the lids. He was small for a footballer, five foot ten inches, seventy-eight kilos, perfect for his position as a winger, but Sean was still a full-grown adult male, not someonehis mum could help with avoiding a fall in the shower. Jack, at six foot three inches and around ninety kilos, could probably handle lifting him around without too much trouble.
“Sean?” Jack asked quietly. “We can hire a nurse, carers, you don’t have to do anything that makes you uncomfortable.”
Sean blinked, scrubbed at his eyes quickly and tried to make it look like he was trying to wake up. “If you don’t wanna do it, just say so,” he snapped, but it came out wet.
“That’s not what I said,” Jack replied, expression calm but he was getting annoyed, Sean could tell—his voice went breathy.
“We’ll certainly be organising some care staff to support Jack,” Harris said smoothly, oblivious to the tension. “But it is best for you to live with someone at least until the concussion symptoms ease up. You could probably do with a hand with those broken ribs and the fractured femur as well,” he chuckled.
Sean didn’t know if he liked Harris before or not, but Harris talked to him with a familiarity that suggested he did, suggested he agreed and went along with him. That wasn’t unusual—Sean wasn’t known as being a difficult patient, a difficult player. He got the job done, kept to himself, hung out with the team, liked the team, had never had a single outburst in the locker room until they got Jack.
“Yeah,” he replied to Harris because the old man seemed to be waiting for it and everything was settled.
Jack would pick him up tomorrow morning and then come and live with him. Because Sean now lived in a parallel universe.
“I just don’t get why you can’t come down,” Sean said to his brother on the phone that afternoon.
Jayden laughed. “I’m not comin’ down to look afta ya sick ass. I got two kids of my own.”
Sean took a deep breath to calm down. Jayden had one kid. A daughter. He wasn’t going to ask who this other kid was because it would come back, it would all come back.
“Do ya reckon you can come down at all, but? Just for a visit,” Sean said and looked out the window. It was another glorious sunset—the golden rays reflecting off the glass as they hit the buildings, the last brush from a sun that’d already dropped below the line of the ocean ten kilometres from where Sean sat propped up in his hospital bed with a stack of pillows graciously prepared by one of the patient, yet awe-struck nurses.
Jayden was quiet for a moment. “Ya doin’ alright?”
“Dunno,” he slipped his eyes closed. “Not like, I’m not like mentally fucked or whatever. I’m just, I dunno. Injured. Proper koonyi.”
“Yeah, don’t I know it. Sucks so bad,” Jayden replied wistfully. Sean was aware Jayden was back in their hometown permanently, a couple of hours east of Perth, and not in Melbourne, playing in the league; it’d come up when they talked about where Sean would go. Jayden was as good if not better than him, so he knew it wasn’t form that’d forced an early retirement. He didn’t want to ask.
“I’ll see if Jules is cool with it, I’ll come down this weekend,” Jayden said. “Bub’s only six weeks old, but. So gonna have to come down and back in one day.”
Sean had the sudden urge to tell him he didn’t have to, but actually, he did, he needed to see someone who made sense, who always made sense.
“Thanks,” he said quietly.
“Alright, no need to crack out the beers,” Jayden chuckled and they talked about other stuff until Jayden had to go because hiskid wanted him and Jules was busy with the newborn Sean had never met.
They’d parked him in a wheelchair in front of the pick-up zone the following morning after Jack had come in and grabbed all his stuff, explained he’d bring the car around before disappearing downstairs after the orderly said he’d bring Sean down.
Sean was dressed in his oldest, softest, most favourite hoodie, the top up over his head, and some new tracksuit pants several sizes too big to fit over the cast that was sticking out at a parallel angle, elevating his leg off the ground. His entire outfit had come courtesy of Jack. Sean supposed it wasn’t that much of a stretch he’d know this was Sean’s favourite hoodie—he wore it all winter when he wasn’t in the team gear—and the nurses would’ve told Jack to get the tracksuit pants. It was still odd.
A black Range Rover drove up, Jack behind the wheel, the tyres quiet on the concrete. Sean snorted under his breath—of course Jack drove an even more pretentious car now than the Mercedes sedan he’d started out with when he joined the team. Except Sean had secretly always wanted this exact model and colour Range Rover and it grated that Jack had it because now he sure as shit couldn’t buy one. And no doubt he was going to need another car since his was probably in the scrap yard. Sean was frugal with his cash, but a fancy car was the one thing he’d always planned to splash out on.
Jack parked, got out, came around, eyes surreptitiously checking Sean over. “What?” he asked when he saw Sean’s smirk.
“Nice car,” Sean replied.
Jack said, “It’s,” then snapped his mouth shut, shook his head and went to wheel Sean over to the car.
“I got it,” Sean said. He reached down for the wheel and hissed as a sharp pain shot through his side.
“You don’t got it,” Jack said, surprisingly quiet.
Sean was busy sucking in air around the pain—his ribs, his broken fucking ribs—to argue or ask why Jack sounded so hurt over Sean trying to have some autonomy over his life.
