Page 78 of We Were Never Lovers
Jack didn’t say anything, just stared mournfully down at the photo. Sean had hoped he’d fucked the maudlin out of him the night before. Apparently not.
He bumped his bicep. “Hey,” he said as gently as he could, but it sounded annoyed. “C’mon, it’s ya birthday. Can’t be sad on ya birthday.”
“I can do whatever I want,” Jack replied, but he was smiling over at Sean now, a shy look from under the fall of the sleep and sex-mussed hair in his eyes.
Sean grinned at him. “C’mon, come for a run with me and Lola.”
Jack brightened and Sean wondered if he’d always wanted to come along. If he used to. But Jack had said Sean always took her. It hadn’t sounded like a lie or even a half truth.
Jack went to get up and Sean cackled. “Finish ya coffee and fruit first, geez.”
“Right, course,” Jack replied and settled back against the headboard.
“Do ya always just do what I say?” Sean teased.
Jack paused with the cup to his lips. “Umm.”
Sean raised his eyebrows, looked away and focused on his own coffee. So, that was a yes.
28
Jack hadn’t been completelyhonest when he said he never did anything to Sean when they were younger. But then, Jack hadn’t been completely honest about a lot of things. It wasn’t malicious, he didn’t think. His sisters, if he ever told them about it, would call it stupidity. “Not stupid,” Annie would say, “that’s too harsh.”
“But you are kind of dense about some things,” Amy would add, “not like in a bad way, but like, the way some dogs are. Earnest, but not clever enough to figure out they’re getting played. It’s kind of cute.” She would shrug, sip her wine like drawing a comparison between him and a dog was perfectly logical.
“No,” Helen would intone with the gravity of the eldest, “your problem is you keep everything in your head and you think you know what everyone else is thinking up there, except you twist it around and try to make everyone happy, which just makes everyone unhappy.”
Jack would retort that he hadn’t asked for a deep analysis of his personality, which would make them all laugh. They’d had some variation of this conversation since he’d agonised over asking for the trade home, since he’d taken the offer from Fremantle when West Coast had offered him more money and a longer-term contract, since George had stonewalled him. They said he made everything worse in his own mind and then, in trying to make it better for everyone else, he made it worse again.
“Stop telling everyone what they want to hear and just be yourself,” Sarah said like it was easy.
But it wasn’t easy. And Jack had said he’d never done anything to Sean for so many years, he almost believed it. The truth was, he hadn’t known the extent of what’d happened—he had no idea the repercussions of that hit, that was true—but he had covered for his mate and made the situation with Sean so much worse by telling him about it. It’s just, in his mind, that’d all been taken care of when he apologised, when Tony explained. Sean’s ongoing anger baffled him at first. And he told the other guys when they asked if he’d pissed in Hiller’s cornflakes that he’d never done anything, that it was something from high school. He wasn’t lying, but he always felt like he wasn’t being entirely truthful either. But how did he explain he was a chicken shit asshole who’d pretended a kiss when they were seventeen which meant everything had meant nothing? How did he tell people he’d seen the disappointment and flicker of hurt in Sean’s eyes and resolutely ignored it, pretended it wasn’t there?
So when Sean fucked him like it was the last time the night of his birthday, Jack clung to him after and tried to find the words to tell him the truth. If he could make himself say the words, then Sean would stay.
Jack slipped his fingers between Sean’s, clung so tightly it must’ve hurt. Sean gripped him back, his breaths harsh on Jack’s nape.
“You good?” Sean asked against his skin, his breath wet.
It felt like he wanted to say something else.
And when Jack replied, “Yeah, perfect,” it wasn’t what he wanted to say either.
“Jack,” Sean said carefully and Jack knew it was coming then.
“Don’t,” Jack said, and turned in his arms. Sean let him go, but Jack pressed in against his chest.
Sean searched his eyes. “Okay.”
If Jack could pretend for just a little longer, he could hope for a little longer too.
29
The team managed toscrape into the final eight at the end of August. Sean couldn’t believe it—he was stoked for them, especially for the younger blokes who’d made it their mission to do this for Sean, for his last season. No one came out and said that, but he knew the rumours were alive and well, saw it in their anxious faces every time he trained with them in a no-contact vest. And while Sean hadn’t signed anything yet, he had started to pack some of his shit into boxes, talked to a real estate agent about putting the North Freo place on the market, got Jayden to send him listings of places back home. Jack had taken to looking like someone had died, and home was a miserable place to be. But they were having a dinner that night to celebrate making the eight and, though neither of them would say it, it was a goodbye too. Because Sean would sign the medical retirement forms and he would leave once the team got knocked out, which would probably happen in the first final.
He’d lain awake in his own bed the night before for a long time, fighting against the feeling he was doing the wrong thing. Even though it seemed like the only thing he could logically do. Him and Jack weren’t together, so what was he staying for?
He didn’t remember falling asleep, but when he woke up, he blinked his eyes against the first of the light seeping under the bottom of the blind and wondered how he’d managed to sleep at all. He heard the back door slide open, slide closed, the distant sound of Jack outside, murmuring to Lola, the BBQ lid creaking open, the light sound of his laughter as the toy thumped on the stretch of lawn.
