Chapter 2
Red Card: Red cards are shown to players who have been ordered off the rugby pitch for foul play, violent conduct, or for committing
two offenses resulting in yellow cards, which results in the team playing one player down.
Translation: Only complete psychopaths get red cards.
Everly
Being inside College Park for a rugby game is like stepping straight into the world’s most charming, slightly insane, and
oddly smelly postcard.
You’ve got these grand old Trinity buildings towering over you like grumpy ancient professors, but then there’s this bright,
lush stretch of green field that seems to glow under the hazy Irish sun.
That glow must make everyone high because I swear the people around me are on some sort of acid trip as they scream and thrash
around every twenty seconds about God only knows what.
Some twenty-year-old guy with mutton chops dumped his drink down my back earlier while screaming at the refs, and Cliona looked
at me with tearstained eyes like I was just anointed with holy water.
And when Trinity scores, I seriously fight the urge to hide under my bleacher and cry a little.
This is rugby.
Who the hell came up with it?
At a glance, it’s a bunch of barbaric-looking guys in way-too-short shorts and jerseys that are two sizes too small feeling
each other up and doing Cirque du Soleil acrobatics just to catch an overinflated football. Seriously, if I wanted to watch
thirty guys hugging for eighty minutes, I could have stayed in my dorm and watched gay porn. At least then my back would be
dry.
And the fact that these men bash into each other with no pads on is absolute lunacy! They wear fewer clothes than I do to
bed and take hits so hard I swear I hear their bones crunch. And they do this all while clutching an egg-shaped ball and trying
not to die? What the actual fuck?
Cliona called one weird maneuver a scrum, like that simple word somehow makes this all make sense, but the reality is rugby is straight violence.
And completely erotic.
When they do that hoisting thing where they lift one of their teammates up into the air? I think it’s called a “lineout”?
That’s just an excuse for a man to show what he’s packing in his tiny shorts. Total grape smugglers, these rugby guys. Whatever
nut protectors they wear leave very little to the imagination. I could guess every single one of these dudes’ condom sizes
after watching just the first half.
And why is the ball shaped like an egg? No one knows. It just is.
Rugby is quite simply just hot, sexy, violent nonsense.
But if I breathed a word of this out loud here in College Park, it would be off with my head. Seriously, I would probably
be kicked out of Trinity, stripped of my degree, and deported from Ireland. And that’s only if Cliona didn’t kick my ass first!
“Jaysus, this match is feckin’ mental!” Cliona screams, her eyes bloodshot from how feral she’s been during this entire game.
She slices her fingers through her long, dark hair, which started off so cute and curled into wavy tendrils but now is a frizzy disaster.
The rest of her is still somewhat adorable.
She’s wearing her rugby jersey, and she paired it with some baggy jeans. She looks effortlessly cool.
I, on the other hand, look like I’m cosplaying as a rugby fan. She forced me to wear one of her brother’s hunter green Trinity
Rugby T-shirts that’s enormous on me. I tucked it up into my bra to have a sort of baggy, cropped look, but I can’t stop fiddling
with it, fretting that people can tell I’m a rugby virgin . . . which, in fairness, I am. But I’d at least like to look the
part.
Oftentimes, people think I’m athletic because I’m six feet tall, and standing next to Cliona, they maybe assume I’m a student
athlete as well. But they couldn’t be more wrong.
I was in gymnastics when I was little and wasn’t half-bad until I hit a crazy growth spurt, and my height made me lose whatever
coordination I had. My uncles called me Baby Giraffe when I was a teenager for a reason.
Now, after four years in college, I’ve lost a lot of that gymnast body definition I once had, but I still manage to feel relatively
confident in my own skin. I’ve just never worn a men’s shirt this big before. The sleeves go past my elbows, and I swear the
fabric still smells like Cliona’s brother, even though I know it’s clean. I get hints of cedar and soap and something darker
I can’t name, but it causes a tight ache between my legs every time I breathe it in.
God, why do some guys smell so fucking good? Like excuse me, I don’t need to feel the exact location of my ovaries in the
middle of a rugby match, thank you very much.
It’s ridiculous how something as simple as a giant T-shirt can elicit such elemental sensations. It’s just too big, too boyish, too much of him. It inspires thoughts of prehistoric gender roles—me getting knocked over the head and carried back into the big, strong
caveman’s lair. You, Tarzan. Me, Jane. Me, horny for big, strong thighs.
Gross, Everly! Get your shit together. You’re more evolved than this.
I push my long blonde hair behind my shoulders and force myself to stop messing with Wolf’s giant shirt to refocus on the
field. This is apparently a big game for the men’s team. Cliona said this is the semifinal match that earns Trinity a chance
to play for the Bateman Cup, also known as the All-Ireland Winner’s Cup. And knowing the Irish after four years of attending
university here, I’m guessing the cup will be filled with booze if they win.
Partying is one thing the Irish do exceedingly well.
That and apparently rugby.
So here I sit, wide-eyed and clueless about what exactly is going on down on that field, but no less turned on by the feral
magnetism the game emits. It’s bizarre to be terrified and aroused in equal measure.
“What do you think?” Cliona asks with a hopeful smile. “Grand, isn’t it? You couldn’t have picked a better match to pop your
rugby cherry with.”
I smile and nod, blinking back at my Irish bestie. “I still have no idea what’s happening.”
She rolls her eyes and drapes her arm over my shoulder, pulling me in close so she doesn’t have to yell so loud.
“Alright, Fletch, let’s go over this one more time, yeah?
You’ve got fifteen players on each side.
The main goal is to carry or kick the ball over the other team’s try line and touch it down.
That’s called a try, and it’s worth five points.
After that, you get a chance at a conversion kick for an extra two points.
You can also kick for penalty goals or drop goals during open play.
Those are worth three points. The tricky bit is you can only pass the ball backward or sideways, never forward.
To move the ball forward, you must run it or kick it. ”
“Why is there so much hugging?” I ask, glancing down as a group of guys form a sort of dome-shaped igloo of bodies and arms.
Cliona’s lips thin. “Those are called scrums. It’s how we restart play after a minor foul. Then there are rucks and mauls,
basically everyone piles in trying to win the ball back either off the ground or in a player’s arms.”
“This is kind of like American football and soccer had a baby,” I exclaim with a cheery smile, feeling like maybe I understand
a bit more now.
“And the Saints wept,” Cliona murmurs, her head jerking around in fear of someone overhearing what I just said. “Of all the
roommates I could have been paired with my final year at college . . .”
I frown and smile and then frown again because I can’t tell if she’s saying that in a bad way or a good way.
Cliona licks her lips and grips my shoulders. “Rugby is ten times more physical than soccer. And it’s been around for ages.
It was a hooligan’s game played by gentlemen. Though admittedly, there’s not much gentle about Wolf. But all these other sports
have just stolen bits from rugby. And American football is a joke. All those pads and the constant starting and stopping to
hold a wee committee before every play. My God, what do they always have to talk about in those huddles?”
I shrug. “I don’t really know much about American football either.”
Cliona pinches the bridge of her nose and looks back toward the field, clearly giving up on me.
I laugh and wrap my arm around her elbow, knowing full well this girl will forgive my ignorance.
She once told me she loved that I didn’t know or care about sports because she needed one part of her life to not revolve around athletics.
Apparently, that appreciation is waning today for reasons I still don’t understand because . . . rugby.
“Come on, Wolf! Finish this!” Cliona screams and points to where he’s at on the field. “My brother has been running the pitch
today in the no. 8 spot, which is brilliant because Trinity has been bolloxin’ it up the whole feckin’ game. We were a lost
cause until Wolf turned things around. The timing of this couldn’t be better for him.”
“Why is that?” I ask, turning my attention back to the field, and my eyes can’t help but fall on him. My eyes haven’t left
him for most of the game, I’m afraid. He’s magnetic on that grass. Nimble for a guy of his stature, and he’s easily the biggest
on the team.
The dirt and sweat clinging to his body is mesmerizing. His dark, nearly black hair, which is normally this floppy, unkempt
mess, gets curlier the more he sweats. It’s very human of him when he’s down there looking inhumane. The rage on his face when he’s doing that hugging thing?
It sends shivers down my spine.
Also, what is it with rugby boys and their thighs? They’re friggin’ tree trunks! And the fact that they wear such tiny shorts
means we can’t help but gawk at them. They ripple in places I didn’t know thighs could ripple. Wolf’s legs are especially
interesting because he’s got a full display of ink on his left quad that gives him such an edge. Plus, he has a half sleeve