Page 25 of Not Falling for the Forward
Jack looks incredible in dark jeans and a navy long sleeved shirt, only a hint of his tattoos poke out of the sleeves and collar. He’s wearing a black cap over his distinctive copper hair, which he has apologised for but wants to keep on because it helps him not get recognised. Although the landlady greeted him by name, no one else seems to have noticed who is sitting in the bar.
He ordered me a glass of wine and got himself a diet coke stating he doesn’t drink often during the season, and never if he is driving. A reminder that I am on a date with a professional athlete. I need the wine, to calm my nerves. My hands haven’t stopped sweating, and I can still hear my heartbeat in my ears.
“This wasn’t what I was expecting,” I blurt, unsure of what else to say.
“Oh?” He looks at me sceptically.
“Well, I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t looked you up online and it looks like you’re always in fancy places with fancy people.” I look down slightly embarrassed at my confession of stalking.
“Fancy people?”
“Oh, you know. Models, actresses, reality TV stars.” I reel off holding out my fingers as I say each one, putting up two when I get to the reality TV stars to see if he gets my drift. He does as he replies with a small shrug, “Okay, OKAY, I get it, I was young and they were hot. You can’t blame me.” I guess I can’t really when I think about it. What else is a guy in his early twenties going to do when women literally fall at his feet? It doesn’t help me feel better about the situation though. “Ifyou looked at the dates of those articles, you’d see that I haven’t been like that for a while,” Jack continues. Now I come to think of it, they were from a few years ago—one of the reality TV stars hasn’t been in that series for years now.
“So, you’ve settled down?” I ask prying.
“You could say that…” he hedges. “It’s kind of a long story."
“Isn’t that what dates are for?”
He fidgets as if uncomfortable, “I’m assuming your detective skills brought you across my accident?” I only nod in return letting him tell me as much or as little as he wants to. I already know most of the story anyway, it was front page news for weeks after it happened. One of Jack’s friends was driving them home from a bar the night before a match, the car went off the road and hit a tree. The driver and the passenger behind him both died, Jack was seriously injured and another walked away. The accident totally upended his career and is why he is no longer playing in the premiership.
“Well, Harry was my best friend, had been since the first day of year seven when we got into an argument over whether Ashley Cole and Phil Neville were a good left and right back team.” A small smile crests his lips as if remembering the fight. “We were literally inseparable, even when I got signed and he went to uni, he picked to go in Manchester so we would be close. He did a physio course so obviously as soon as he was qualified, he became part of my team. He was driving and didn’t make it.” He gulps.
“I’m so sorry,” I say, as he sits back in his chair. He shrugs, looking down and nervously playing with his hands.
“I broke my pelvis and femur in the accident. Twelve weeks on bed rest in traction, followed by two surgeries and eighteen months of physiotherapy to get me back to being able to play the game me and Harry bonded over all those years ago. It was only the thought ofwhat he would say to me that kept me going on the really bad days. He would have been furious if I gave up, so I never did, in honour of him.” He sighs and finally looks at me again the pain of his friend’s death is written on his face. I wonder if he knows how easy he is to read when he isn’t playing his cocky, self-assured press persona. It’s so easy to see how much blame he carries over the accident. Of being the one still here.
“Anyway,” he sighs running a hand over the back of his neck. “After everything, the one game I wanted to play so badly, that I was incredible at, became really, really hard. I couldn’t keep up with the top teams and I had to put a lot more effort in to training. So, I stopped with all the partying and the bullshit it came with. Because, what’s the point if it was getting in the way? So yeah, you could say I have settled down now.” He lifts his head, eyes meeting mine with a small, shy smile that I return.
It’s amazing how one story can change your whole perspective on a person. I knew about the accident, but I didn’t know he lost his best friend and has been dealing with that for years. He could have gone completely off the rails, having his life turned upside down in such a traumatic way but instead he grew up and became better for it. I had believed what the press had said—party boy in drunk driving accident following a night out—but it wasn’t some drunk party goer; it was Jack’s Jess. I don’t know how I would survive if Jess was taken from me, let alone continue to do the one thing we bonded over.
I reach over the table, grab his hand and trace my thumb over his, ignoring the electricity that shoots up my arm at the touch. He jumps slightly. Did he feel it too? My soothing gesture must work because when he looks up again his face is lighter.
“Tell me more about the two of you, I imagine you used to get in to all sorts of trouble and I want to know everything.” His face really does light up at that and he dives into a story from his past.
***
Jack
Nothing like a trauma dump on your first date…Smooth Jack. Smooth.
I couldn’t help but tell her about H, once I’d started it just all came out. I haven’t spoken about him for a long time. Christ, I don’t think I’ve told anyone about the accident, if you don’t count my therapist and Aimee. The way she just sat and let me talk. When was the last time anyone has wanted to have a conversation with me that isn’t about football? I wanted to tell her about H because I want her to know my past. I want to start this as I mean to go on and that means being fully transparent even about my shittiest days.
I haven’t told her everything yet. Haven’t told her that it wasn’t just H that I lost, but the other person that hadn’t made it out was his new fiancé, my other best friend, Jaz. That it’s completely my fault that we were in that bar anyway. I had forced them to celebrate their engagement, not just because I was happy for them but because I was so fucking jealous of what they had. The thought of spending the night on my own whilst my best friends were never going to be alone again had made me desperate to find any faceless woman to bury myself in for the night so I could stop whatever I was feeling. Now I know it was fear of being left behind of being alone, and now I’m morealone than I have ever been. I will never fully forgive myself for my part in that night. But I can either wallow in self-pity and do nothing with my life or play every game for Harry and Jaz.
We’ve been sat in The Lamb’s Head for well over two hours at this little table talking about everything, getting to know each other. Conversation with Emily feels warm and safe, like I don’t have to hide behind my toothy grin and cocky laugh. She’s opened up about some things too: being brought up by a single mum, how she is both jealous and not jealous of her friend Dan’s family life—jealous because she would love a stable family unit, not jealous because she loves sleep—and how she has absolutely no interest in progressing in her job, she’s happy as a floor nurse, management is not her style.
She has no siblings whereas I have an abundance of them. “Five kids is crazy!” she had said when I told her about them.
“Yeah, but mum was desperate for a girl after her three boys,” I laughed along.
“So how do you explain Olivia?” She had asked regarding my youngest sibling who arrived eleven years after Aimee was born, fully eliminating her role as the spoilt brat she had been fulfilling so well.
“She was dropped off by a stalk. There is no way my parents had sex on five different occasions.” This sent her head back and that dirty, infectious laugh I love barked from her mouth. I’d been dying to be the one to make her laugh like that, ever since I first heard it across the field. It felt as good as I thought it would.
Turns out, Emily was a straight A student with no detentions in school, the complete opposite to the trouble me and H used to get ourselves into almost on a daily basis. I finish telling her the story of how we genuinely, accidentally broke the glass on a fire alarm point, resulting in the whole school having to be evacuated and I am rewardedwith a snort. “We were in detention for three weeks straight after that one, a complete accident!” I grin.
“Accident.” She holds up two fingers on each hand and air quotes the word snorting again on her laugh which sends her howling.
