Chapter 10
I TOSSED and turned most of Thursday night, thinking of Declan at his parents’ house and wondering what they really knew about their son and his private life. I couldn’t help but try to imagine what they might think of me if they ever met me, which if truth be told, seemed to be a moot point anyway. And I wasn’t sure if that was merely the moment or the whole of the unforeseeable future.
When I wasn’t thinking of Declan, I was thinking of Roger; how I felt justifiably pissed off and also slightly ashamed of how I had reacted to him.
Roger and I never fought for long periods of time, but I had never felt so resentful of him before. There are times when you have to suck it up and let your friends do what they have to do, even if you know it’s the wrong course of action to take. Fuck knows I had done it with Roger before. I had said my piece initially and then kept my trap shut until it was time to help him pick up the pieces.
That was what I needed for him to do for me right now, but he wouldn’t grant me the same favour in return.
As I got off my tram at the corner of Collins and Elizabeth streets, I saw Fran on the opposite side of the road heading up from Flinders. She must have caught the train rather than the tram, which she only ever did if she was running late. I wanted to run over and catch up with her, but my feet failed to move. I watched her disappear within her building and made my way to my own.
Nyssa was biting at her fingernail and studying an unruly file full of papers when I walked into the office. “Hey,” she said without looking up. “Alice Provotna called. She wants to film you today.”
I groaned. “It’s not on the schedule.”
“She won’t be able to make it Monday, so she’s coming today.”
“But there’s nothing for her to film today, really.”
Nyssa slapped the file shut. “Well, she’ll get a realistic depiction of the office, then.”
“Nice.”
“Oh, and Roger rang. He wants you to call him back. It sounded urgent.”
I managed to stop myself from making a dismissive huff and just nodded before walking into my office.
THE day passed relatively smoothly, although I was a bit troubled by the fact that Roger never called back again and that Fran didn’t even try once. I know that I had taken the step of ignoring them in the first place and it was extremely hypocritical for me to be upset when they started doing the same, but I now felt that as I supposedly had the moral upper hand I couldn’t cave in.
Yeah, I know. You don’t have to say it.
The interview with Alice Provotna was a perfunctory one, at least on my end, and I was glad of it. It was a series of questions dealing with how it could take all year to plan for a festival that only took place for a couple of weeks towards the end of the year.
Basically, it was me justifying my job. Seeing as I had to do a performance review with the board every year, I felt I could do it by rote.
I knew my answers would be sliced into sound bites and probably used as voiceovers with different bits of footage throughout the doco so I made sure they were serviceable and tried not to sound too bored. Alice tried not to look too bored as she hovered over her camera and asked her questions.
Declan sent me a brief text during lunch, and I wished him luck for the game. Even his text sounded preoccupied and stressed about what might happen that night. He sounded like a man staggering under the weight of expectation, and I wished there was something I could have done for him. But there wasn’t anything I could do.
By the time of our customary knockoff for Bog-off-to-the-Pub Fridays, I was ready to call it a day. As Nyssa hovered in the doorway, I waved her on.
“Can’t make it tonight,” I told her. “Tell the guys I said sorry.”
She slumped into the chair opposite me. “You’re not coming?”
“Can’t. Sorry.”
“Why not?”
I started throwing things I didn’t even need into my messenger bag, so I wouldn’t be hooked by her imploring look. “I have things to do.”
“Yeah, like coming to the pub,” she asserted. “You never miss the pub on a Friday.”
“Well, I have to today.”
“But why?”
“I told you, I have things to do,” I said. Vaguely.
“What things?”
“Give it a rest, Nyss.”
She glowered, her light eyes suddenly seeming dark. Which was kind of scary. “Are you fighting with Fran?”
Wrong person, but close. “No. Why?”
“I saw her on the street during my break. She seemed remarkably vague about you when I said something.”
Great. Now Nyssa thought she was a private dick. “I’m not fighting with Fran.”
“Is this about your secret boyfriend?”
I knew I must have been turning red, because I could feel the heat rising in my treacherous face. Even though this had nothing to do with Declan! Nothing!
Well, not directly.
“I don’t have a secret boyfriend,” I lied. Unsuccessfully, I’m sure.
“Uh-huh.” Private Dick Nyssa saw right through me.
I couldn’t even use him as an excuse because then Nyssa would probably say something to Fran and Roger about it at the pub, and the last thing I needed was them thinking they were being ditched for the boyfriend. Nothing stirs up bad blood between the friends and the partner like being dumped in a blatant display of favouritism.
So I trotted out Old Faithful. “Of course, you could do one more ring-around of the sponsors—”
Nyssa gathered up her bag. “Gotta go if I don’t want to miss the tram.”
At this time of day, there was one every six minutes. “Have a good weekend, Nyss.”
The slamming front door was her reply. Great. I was losing friends at a substantial rate, and I only had myself to blame.
Rather than breaking out the world’s tiniest violin to play an ode to myself, I turned off all the lights in the office and locked the doors behind me.
I WAS just getting off the tram and walking towards my house when a message sounded from my mobile.
Opening it, I saw it was from Roger.
You’re not even coming to the Napier? No balls, Simon.
Ouch. I was definitely pushing it too far. I hoped my response would come across as somewhat conciliatory.
I just can’t handle it tonight. I’ll call you tomorrow.
There was no reply from him.
I kicked off my boots as soon as I got inside and sought sanctuary within my bedroom. Maggie was stretched out upon the bed; I fell upon it next to her and buried my face in her fur.
I woke up unexpectedly in the dark; Maggie had in the meantime fled for safer ground. I stumbled groggily into the lounge room and turned on the Devils and Bombers game. It was only the pregame banter, so I called Maggie and realised she was on the chair behind me. Once she was fed, I grabbed a beer and collapsed onto the couch.
“…the eagerly awaited return of star midfielder Declan Tyler.”
My body sprang into action unbidden, sitting me up and pushing me forward as if that distance of two extra inches would allow me to see the television more clearly.
The footage switched to Declan in the change room, togged out in the Devils’ orange and green guernsey as he nervously batted a football between both of his hands.
Someone spoke to him off camera; he nodded and moved towards another player and they started handballing between themselves.
“That is a man who is holding the entire weight of a team’s hope on his shoulders,” said one of the commentators. “Let’s hope it isn’t too much for him.”
His colleague did the faux wince to camera. “If anything, Tyler has proved in the past he is more than capable of supporting his team. It’s his body that’s the problem.”
I don’t know, I thought it was an exceptional body. For altruistic reasons, of course.
“Tyler is probably the most injury-prone player in the past decade of AFL,” the first commentator agreed.
The footage switched back to Declan. The team was now in a circle with coach Scott Frasier in the middle. It was time for the pregame litany of go out there and win.
No do your best. They were Devils; they had to act like such. Blah blah blah. It would have perhaps been more inspiring if they weren’t so close to the bottom of the ladder.
“Let’s hope he remains injury-free tonight,” commentator two said in his overly ingratiating tone.
I hoped for Declan’s sake he would as well.
THEY rested him at halftime.
Declan kicked two glorious goals over the first quarter, but by the start of the second the strain on his body was starting to become apparent. The commentators were very pleased with themselves having predestined a potential tragedy unfolding on the ground they could talk about endlessly.
“What was meant to be Declan Tyler’s night of triumph has quickly turned into one which we’ve seen all too often before,” the annoying one said, his arch smile threatening to split the screen in two.
It was official before the third quarter even began. Declan was out of the game, being rested upon the advice of the team doctor. Although he hadn’t done any further damage to his knee, it was obvious to everybody that he couldn’t play on.
“We brought him back too soon,” the team doctor said on camera. The footage cut back to the two commentators of the game, who shook their heads with seasoned perfection.
As the third-quarter siren sounded, the cameras cut away to a dejected Declan sitting on the bench, staring blankly out onto the ground where his teammates continued to play without him. I just knew that would be the picture all over tomorrow’s sport pages in the papers, with some pithy caption designed especially to twist the knife in further, rather than a photo of his body stretched triumphantly as he booted in one of his two goals.
I wanted to call him, but I knew I couldn’t. And that was when it hit me for the first time; a girlfriend probably would have been able to do so, with no questions asked. But a male, who wasn’t an immediate family member? That would just look strange. Mind you, a girlfriend would probably already be at the field, doing the loyal partner thing.
The footballer’s wife. And I was no Posh Spice.
Devil’s advocate always nagged at me, though. If I were Declan (don’t laugh), Roger would certainly be calling me at this point of time, and we weren’t fucking. But I guess that’s always the guilt and the secrecy of the gays masquerading as straight.
It was too late at night for my thoughts to be this heavy.
In the end, the Devils lost again. As they walked off the field, the reporters attacked them in waves, most making a beeline for Declan. Stony-faced, he mumbled brief answers that gave very little away.
“Declan, how do you feel after tonight’s game?”
“Crap, of course.”
“Declan, do you think you’ll be able to play next week?”
“It’s up to the coach.”
And that was the last bit of footage they showed of him. The Devils seemed to restrict entry to the change rooms, because there was a crossover to the Bombers’ victory song in their room, and that was where the camera stayed for the rest of the broadcast.
If I had to find a bright side, at least my parents would be happy.
I stayed up a couple of hours after that, just in case Declan called. He didn’t.
I WAS woken by the ringing of my mobile at about half past two.
“Hello,” I mumbled, still in that stage between coma and the shot of adrenaline you get when your phone goes off in the early morning and you automatically expect some form of tragic news.
“Simon, sorry to wake you.”
It was Declan. I immediately sat up. “Dec, hey. Stupid question, how are you?”
His voice sounded slightly shaky. “Yeah, not so good.”
“I wanted to call you earlier—”
“I wish you had.”
Damn. I should have done it.
“I only just got out of the debriefing with the coaches and the doctors.”
“What did they say?”
He hesitated.
“What is it?” I could now feel the worry starting in me.
“Do you mind if I come over?”
“No, of course not.”
“Cool. I’ll see you soon.”
I closed my mobile and sat there groggily for a few moments. I stumbled back into the lounge and turned on the heater as it was freezing in there. I wasn’t sure if either of us wanted coffee, but it felt good to be going through the motions by making a pot anyway. With the sound of the water hissing through the grounds in the filter and then spitting into the carafe, I sat on the couch and promptly fell back asleep.
I woke again at the sound of Declan knocking on the front door and the smell of freshly brewed coffee perking up my senses.
Declan still looked just as unhappy as he had on the television. “Hi,” he said. He sounded like saying one syllable required too much exertion for his body.
I pulled him into the house and into my arms while simultaneously kicking the door shut with my foot. He didn’t shy away from my hug; in fact, he welcomed it.
Instinctively, years of living with my mother kicked in. Obviously if you’re upset, you need food.
“You must be hungry,” I told him. “I could make something. I also put on coffee, if you want coffee. Do you want coffee?”
He gave a slight laugh. “Coffee would be good.”
It was three in the morning. Coffee might not be good. But hey, it wasn’t exactly like I had Horlicks in the house. We weren’t ready for our seniors’ cards yet.
Declan sat down on the couch, his long legs stretched straight out in front of him, which I realised was in order to take pressure off his knee. However, I was also concerned by the fact his hands remained jammed deep into his pockets in a defensive position.
“That must have been a long meeting,” I said amiably as I prepared our drinks.
“Yeah, they wanted to go over every possible scenario,” he replied glumly.
I handed him his coffee. “Do you want a cushion or something to elevate your knee?”
He shook his head and took a grateful gulp from the mug. “I’m wearing a compression bandage, thanks.”
“Is it uncomfortable?” I sat beside him.
“No, you get used to it pretty quickly. Feels weirder when it’s off, once you’re used to it.”
“Bet you won’t be saying that once you get it off.”
He gave me a small, tired smile. “Probably not.”
“So what did they talk to you about for so long?” I wasn’t sure if I should be prying, but I hoped he felt like he could tell me to shut up if he wanted me to.
Declan wrapped both hands around his mug, using it for warmth. “Just plans. Plan A, Plan B, all the way through to Plan Z, Part Four. All the possible ways to fix me and all the possible contingencies should they fail.”
“Sounds fucking clinical,” I couldn’t help but say.
“You got that right,” he sighed. “It is. They were sitting there talking to each other, rather than me. As if I didn’t have a say in it.”
“I bet you didn’t put up with that.”
He bit his lip and looked even more defeated. “To tell you the truth, I did. I was so fucking miserable by that point I didn’t care one way or another.”
That did it. I put down my mug and swung myself over to his side of the couch. “Scoot.” He leaned forward and I squeezed in behind him, my legs uncomfortably splayed on either side of his. He leaned back into me, and I wrapped my arms around him.
“So, what’s Plan A, then?” I murmured into his ear.
Declan’s hands rested over mine. “Intensive physio. I’ll probably be off for another couple of weeks before they decide to try me out again.”
I kissed the back of his neck. “Don’t let this get you down too much. I know it’s easy for me to say that, but getting depressed will make it worse.”
“It is easy to say,” he agreed, but he didn’t sound mad. He leaned his cheek against mine, using the crook of my neck as a pillow.
“I wish there was something I could do for you,” I said, feeling as helpful as a calculator in an English exam.
“You are,” he murmured.
It was a big concession to make, and I didn’t ruin the moment by trying to get further clarification. Even though my legs were aching, I closed my eyes, and found sleep wanting to take me as Declan’s body warmth seeped through into my own. I was vaguely aware of hearing a slight snore come from him before I probably added to it.
I JERKED awake with a massive leg cramp that had me leaping over Declan and almost causing him to fall to the floor. He mumbled something incomprehensible as I jumped around in the middle of the lounge room, hissing a litany of fuckfuckfucketyfuckfuck.
Declan shakily got to his feet and approached me. “Left or right?”
“Fuckfuckfuckrightfuckfuckfuck!”
He couldn’t help grinning as he grabbed my hip with one hand to keep me in one spot and then ran his other down my calf. I leaned on his shoulder, trying to resist the urge to start jumping around again as pain shot up and down my leg. He began rubbing my calf gently, and I think it was probably the psychological effect of his ministrations more than anything else that made me calm down as I started to feel my muscles relax.
“You trying to beat me in the bad leg stakes?” Declan laughed, his second hand now travelling down my leg to begin working in unison with the other.
“Yes, my night cramp is jealous of your million dollar injury,” I said, embarrassed I had made such a spectacle of myself. Way to go to, drama queen.
“Feeling better?” he asked, looking up at me.
I nodded. “Thanks.” I helped him back to his feet.
“I just realised,” he said slowly. “I haven’t done this tonight yet.”
We kissed, long and deep and hungry. But there was no denying we were too tired to take it any further.
“Better late than never,” I murmured.
And I realised I really needed to pee. I ran to the bathroom without another word. When I finished and came back out, Declan was in my bedroom and undressing. I hung back for a moment and couldn’t help but perve as his clothes fell away until he stood there in only his boxers and began turning down the bed. I walked around to jump in beside him.
“You have too many clothes on,” he complained.
I let him pull my T-shirt over my head, and he kissed my shoulder. His hands tugged at my trakkies until they were caught around my feet, and I gracelessly kicked them out the side of the bed.
“That’s better,” he said with a smile.
My body tried to suggest I was ready for action but sleep was more insistent for both of us, and I don’t even remember how the bedside light got turned off.
THE sun was warm upon my face, and Declan was even warmer curled up beside me. We stayed in bed the whole morning, sometimes with coffee, sometimes playing around and the rest of the time napping from our exertions.
At one point while Declan was asleep I ran out onto my front lawn, knowing that the paper would have been delivered. I kicked the offending object until it was concealed underneath a bush, where its articles on Declan’s short return to the field would not be seen by him.
The rest of the day stretched before us beautifully, and the night promised even more. I stretched blissfully when I woke again around midday and watched Declan as he slept. The lines of stress on his face from only hours before seemed to disappear during down time.
I ran my thumb gently over his lower lip, and his eyes opened.
“Sorry,” I said, not having meant to wake him.
“’s okay,” he said. He looked over my shoulder at the alarm clock. “Shit.”
“We’ve still got the whole afternoon.”
He grabbed me quickly before I could defend myself and rolled over onto me, grinding me down into the mattress. “As much as I would love to keep you in here all day, I think I have to prove I like you for more than sex.”
I shook my head and laughed. “I’m not a girl.”
“Come on, let’s go and grab some lunch, and then I’ll watch the Richmond game with you.”
I wondered if it was such a good idea, as undoubtedly his injury would be brought up yet again to be dissected by the commentators during lulls in today’s game. “Wow, you must like me.”
He looked down at me seriously. “I do.”
I kissed him. “Just so you know, the feeling’s mutual.”
He moaned as I continued kissing him. “Don’t start again or else we’ll never leave.”
More kisses. “Would that be so bad?”
He pushed me against the pillow. “What would Richmond say?”
I pushed him back. “You’re right. Get off me.”
Declan now seemed to be practicing passive resistance as he sagged against me and became dead weight. “Nah, I’ve changed my mind now.”
“Bastard.” I struggled against him, but he was too heavy for me to budge him.
Which you know, it’s not that bad a thing to have Declan Tyler naked and on top of you, but it does start to make breathing slightly difficult after a while.
He took pity on me and rolled off. “Shower, then a late lunch and watch Richmond get slaughtered again.”
You never know, it could be Richmond’s day. After all, it seemed to be mine.
WE HAD just showered and were getting ready to go out when both of our mobiles rang within seconds of each other.
“Scott,” Declan said unhappily. He had been hoping to get through the day without a call from his coach.
“Roger,” I said, almost as unhappily. I was not ready for the talk that we needed to have. Especially now.
I left Declan in the bedroom to have privacy while I took mine into the study and closed the door so we wouldn’t be heard in the background of each other’s calls.
“You picked up,” Roger said, sounding surprised.
“Yeah, I meant to call you before this.”
“Oh.”
Silence. Apparently now that we were talking, we had nothing to say.
“Look, I’m sorry,” Roger said, finally.
“It’s okay,” I mumbled.
“Not really, it’s not,” he replied. “Just, as your friend, I get to be concerned for you, okay?”
I made some kind of noise of agreement.
“How about if I come over, bring some beer, and watch the game with you?”
Oh fuck. There was no way this situation would end well.
He could sense the hesitation in me.
“What the fuck, Simon? Are you still really that mad at me?”
“No,” I said quickly. “It’s just… Declan’s here.”
“Oh.”
Funny how that one little word, one syllable, two letters, could mean a thousand different things.
“Look, he’s just really upset because of what went down yesterday, so today probably isn’t a good day to do the meet-the-friend thing.”
“Yep.”
Fuck, he was pissed now. The tables had turned. “I’m sure you saw what happened at the game last night, Rog. He’s… not in a great state.”
Maybe I was exaggerating a little. But with things still unsorted between me and Roger, and with him being free and easy about his opinion on my new relationship, I couldn’t guarantee a thermonuclear-free day if the three of us got together.
“Roger?”
“Yeah, fine. That’s cool, if that’s what you want.”
And just like that, my needle swung back into the red zone. “Hey, it’s not like when you and Fran first got together you didn’t disappear for the first month or so, and I never gave you any shit for it.”
I had him there, and he knew it. But he wasn’t going to let it go.
“Like I said, Simon, fine.”
“Fine. Speak to you soon.”
And I hung up on him.
It wasn’t a good thing to do, but with the way things were heading in our conversation one of us was going to do it in the end. Might as well be me. I childishly turned my mobile off so that if Roger tried calling back, which I doubted he would, he wouldn’t be able to get me. And if he rang the landline, there was always the answering machine.
I opened the door to the study and listened to ascertain whether Declan was still on his call. It was dead quiet in the house, so I walked back towards the bedroom.
Declan was sitting on the bed, all vestiges of the carefree aura he had had all morning wiped away. He was back in his defensive position, staring at the floor.
“Hey, what is it?” I asked, sitting beside him.
He sighed heavily. “You’re going to kill me.”
“I doubt that. Why, what have you done?”
“I have to leave for Hobart. This afternoon.”
Okay. Not a killable offence, but one which would make my day a whole lot less pleasant. “You’re kidding.”
“I wish I was. I’d try to wrestle my way out of it, but they’ve hired a special private jet that flies at a low altitude so there won’t be any further pressure on my knee.”
That’s when it finally hit me that I was dealing with a totally different world. A world where no expense was spared to protect a million-dollar investment, which is what my boyfriend was. I had joked before with Declan, calling him the million dollar baby, but the truth was he was more. He earned about one and a half million annually just in salary from the club. I had no idea how much his endorsements and sponsorships would be worth, but they would be even more than that. He was important enough that special planes were now being hired to ferry him home with as little inconvenience as possible.
I tried not to hyperventilate audibly and to laugh it off. “You would think they would rather keep you safe in Melbourne, instead of shuffling you back and forth.”
“Believe me, I would prefer it.”
I kissed him, with a hint of desperation I really didn’t want to show.
He looked at me, and although I wanted to look away I couldn’t. “I’m sorry, Simon.”
“Dec, it’s not your fault.”
“But I promised you—”
“I think there are larger issues here than a thwarted dirty weekend.”
I regretted saying that, because he looked disappointed that I had reduced it to that when it meant so much more to me. Now it was my turn to apologise. “I’m sorry, that was stupid.”
“See, you are upset.”
“Of course I am!” I admitted, deciding that honesty was the best policy. After all, look at the problems caused by concealment last time we were together. “But not at you. Just upset because we see each other intermittently, when normally any other couple would be in each other’s pockets getting to know each other for the first month at least.”
My conversation with Roger couldn’t help rearing its ugly head. “But this is our situation, and we can’t feel shitty about it. We just have to enjoy when we see each other.”
“I’m enjoying seeing you,” Declan said. “If it wasn’t for this fucking jet, I would have told them to piss off.”
I nodded. “So, when do you have to go?”
He winced. “Now,” he said regretfully.
Fucking typical. I nodded.
To soothe the pain, he kissed me. And for a few seconds, it almost worked. But as he pulled away, the feeling of shittiness returned.
I watched him zip up his bag, and he flung it over his shoulder. I could tell he wanted a quick getaway, and in essence I agreed with him because there was no use in prolonging what we were both unhappy about.
At the front door, he reached for me. “I’ll call you when I get home.”
I nodded. “Fly safe.”
“You know what they say,” he said, opening the door, “you’re more likely to die in the car on the way to the airport.”
Wow. They say couples start to look like each other. At that moment, he sounded like me. That was the end of conversation between us for now. We kissed, and it felt like the last time for a long time. Then he was gone, obscured by the tinted windows of his hire car. He pulled out of the driveway, and I was left standing on the veranda.
The morning had started out so promising. Now I only had the inevitable defeat of Richmond to look forward to for the afternoon.