Chapter 1 #2
“Don’t go,” Eggo says. It’s barely audible, and the sudden overloud thumping of my heart makes me question whether he’d said anything at all.
“What else am I gonna—”
“Seriously, though,” Dan says, his deep voice cutting through the stuffy classroom. “I need to apologise for getting so pissed. At least I wasn’t throwing up in the koi pond. Hey, Pi?”
Jesus, now we’re talking about how drunk I was on Saturday. I groan, pull my cap lower, and slink down in my chair. God, I’d forgotten about the koi pond. Those poor fish.
Everybody laughs. Eggo smacks the hat off my head and ruffles my hair.
“Right, so . . .” Dan says, and the change in his demeanour is like a light being switched on. He’s in rugby-business mode now and is about to announce what we all already know. That they’ve awarded the captaincy role to Gadget.
Abs glares at the back of Jones’s head. If looks could kill, Gadget would be phasered to death.
“Some of you may have heard a few rumours about the capt—” Dan says.
Snatch interrupts. “We wouldn’t have heard them if you weren’t shouting your fat mouth off!”
Dan has the decency to scrunch his face up and look apologetic.
“Well, whatever you heard is wrong. I got it wrong, okay? I’m sorry.
” He holds up his palms like a bad guy surrendering to the sheriff in an old Western.
“You may have heard that I told Gadget he had the position of captain, but well . . . Gadget has . . . withdrawn himself from consideration.”
I’m sitting up now, suddenly a lot less hungover.
Abs turns to me, mouth hanging open. He’s been desperate to prove himself and win the role over Gadget, and I’d humoured him and said, “Yeah, of course, mate. You’re a shoo-in.
” He’s my best bro after all, but I never thought for one second he actually might get it.
This throws everything into the air again.
“I’m not going to go into too many details,” Dan says, cutting through the quiet chatter that had broken out.
“But just so you all know, Gadget will not be the next Cents captain, through his own choosing. But Eksteen and I have been chatting, and we have someone in mind who we’d like to test out over the next few weeks, and if it all goes well, we’ll announce it at the awards ceremony at the end of the month. So we were thinking . . .”
He pauses. The room goes deathly silent. My heart thrums against my chest. It’s a drumbeat. The boys are slapping their thighs.
Abs is like a block of marble beside me. His foot shoots out, knocking into mine, and Dan turns to him.
Holy crap, maybe they will choose Harry. Now I feel guilty for ever having doubted him. I’ll make it up, I guess.
“Aiden,” Dan says.
Not Harry. Holy fucking shit.
“We’d really like you to give the captaincy a shot.”
Not Abs. Me. Me!
“What do you say?”
I try to steady my breaths. In all of my wildest daydreams, this is something I never imagined would happen. A chance to lead my team to glory. Me, Pi, the foreign nerd who talks funny and chunders all over his teammate’s ex-boyfriend’s country estate.
Is Dan even sure he meant to say my name? Maybe he was planning on saying Harry, but looked at me and the wrong name accidentally fell from his lips. And now that it’s out there he can’t take it back or he’ll look stupid.
Abs turns his phaser gaze on me. I think I’m melting. Oh, god, how did this happen? How did they even choose me?
Eventually Harry gives me a wobbly, wholly unconvincing thumbs-up.
I side-eye him, turn my attention to Dan, then Eksteen, and point to myself. “Me?”
They both nod enthusiastically.
Huh. How bizarre.
“Bloody ripper,” I say. Everyone’s still looking at me, but my mind has emptied itself of any thoughts whatsoever.
Beside me, Abs deflates. I am the world’s shittiest friend.
Dan continues to speak over the electrical humming in my brain. “But we were thinking maybe you don’t have to do it all on your own, Aiden. A lot of teams these days are opting for co-captaincy.”
Co-captaincy. My mind’s still blank, but it’s like it’s being slowly turned on again. Warming up like one of the fluorescent bulbs overhead.
Co-captaincy.
But with whom?
I can’t imagine it’d be Abs. Two bumbling backs leading the entire squad?
But I feel him buzzing beside me. Can sense him crossing his fingers, toes, and eyes in desperation.
Fuck, I’m not sure I even want it to be Abs.
Don’t get me wrong, I love him, it’s just that . . . he’d be fucking awful at this.
If anything, I want them to choose—
“Finn, you fancy being Aiden’s partner in crime?” Dan says.
My backstabbing relief is drowned out by the whooping and cheering from some of the other guys. Beside me, Abs is silent and statuesque, though his face is flaming its trademark cherry red.
Eggo squeezes my thigh three times in quick succession, stands, and salutes Dan. “I won’t let you down, boss!” he says, and then starts a jerky butt dance.
“This is either going to be brilliant,” Eggo says, crowding right into my space after sitting back down, his lips almost brushing my ear. “Or awkward as fuck.”
I nod. “If those are the only two options, I’m willing to bet cold hard cash on the latter.”
He laughs, threads his fingers into the back of my mullet, and butts his forehead against mine. “It’s you and me, pard. Are you ready?”
Eksteen checks his watch and glances up at the clouds. It’s dry today, but the sky is lavender grey and the air has that heavy warmth that promises rain.
“So, this is the plan for this morning. You two are going to test the waters with your new skipper roles. We’re gonna do some attacking and passing drills and then some scrums, and if we’ve got time, we’ll play a little practice game.
It’s your job to make sure all your boys are where they should be, and that they’re all doing exactly what they’re supposed to be doing.
Don’t worry too much about scoring at the moment.
We’re concentrating on form and tightness only.
So, let’s see what you’ve got, what we’re working with already, and then we can look at areas that need improvement. ”
Eggo and I nod.
“I’m talking about your managerial abilities and how we might fine-tune them. You’re gonna get sick of me saying this, but none of this was my idea. It’s all Chelford’s doing. If I had my way, we wouldn’t have taken Jones’s no for an answer. But here we are.”
“That’s okay, Coach, don’t hold back on our account,” Eggo says. “No need to spare our feelings.”
“Just make it work. Whatever this thing is you’ve got going on between you two . . .” He pauses, and I shoot Eggo a glance. He fucking winks at me. “Sort it out. We need you on the same page. Right, dish out the bibs and get your boys ready.”
“He thinks we have beef with each other,” Eggo says as we run out onto the pitch.
“D’you reckon?”
Eggo slaps me on the shoulder. “He thinks there’s something between us that we have to ‘sort out.’”
Well, Coach wouldn’t be wrong there.
He has us line up. Team Bibs are the attackers, and Team No Bibs are the defenders. We pass the ball to the try line, starting off by practicing switch passes, the aim being to open up a gap in their defensive wall, slip through, and score a try.
Then we move to decoy runners, and everything is going . . . well, not exactly swimmingly, but it’s okay, which is a relief. I’d had visions of this being much, much worse.
We huddle for a few moments in our little group of six and formulate strategies. Everyone has a turn to tender their ideas, yet Eggo hangs back, barely contributing. Eksteen’s in the middle of the pitch with his notepad in his hand, watching.
Always fucking watching.
“We’ve got five seconds to decide what play we’re doing,” I say to the rest of my team of bib wearers, but I’m mainly speaking to Eggo.
I throw another glance over my shoulder to check for Eksteen, and he’s right there, as ever, sucking his teeth like he’s been eating corn on the cob.
My future co-captain’s not forthcoming with an answer, so I jab him in the hip with my thumbnail.
“Ahh, fuck. Um, let’s try blindside decoy?” he suggests.
We nod our agreement and line up again.
Darby has the ball to start, and as we planned, he passes to Abs, but Gadget’s on Team No Bibs, and in real time I see him figure out what our next move will be. He’s already calling on Snatch to reposition.
Eggo hasn’t seen what I’ve seen. “Abs, on this side!”
But I’m in the perfect position to take a switch.
“Here!” I yell.
Harry hops from his left foot to his right and whips his head round, and time slows. His eyes flick to Eggo, then to me. I’m closing in on the opposition, and a beautiful gap opens between Gadget and Snatch, but neither Abs nor Eggo sees it.
“Abs!” Eggo yells.
“No, Abs, switch!”
He’s panicking. His eyes are wide. Instead of throwing it to either of us, he clutches it tighter to his chest, turns, and runs, but he’s met with Gadget’s adamantine six-five form, and crashes unswervingly into him.
Abs’s temple kisses Gadget’s squared shoulder, and his head snaps backwards. Less than a second later, he’s on the ground cradling his skull.
A whistle blows.
“What the fuck was that?!” Eksteen shouts, jogging over. “This is supposed to be a non-contact drill.” He drops to the turf and puts his arm over Abs. A medic runs over.
“I’m okay,” Abs says, but even he sounds shocked.
“Take him off for an HIA,” Eksteen says to the medic.
“I’m fine, though.” But Abs is ushered off. As he goes, he glares at me.
He knows this was all my fault. I should have just let the play run as we’d agreed, but yet again I let my stupid overthinking brain get in the way, and now my friend might be injured.
“What happened?” Eksteen says, his hands on his hips. “We’re practicing passing, not giving each other fucking concussions.”
I open my mouth to tell him how it was all my fault, that we’d planned to run things a certain way but I’d tried to change it at the last second and confused him. Over Coach’s shoulder, I catch Eggo shaking his head and mouthing, “No.” I snap my jaw shut.
“Get your shit together, boys.” He blows the whistle. “Right, lads, come in tight.”
The other groups of guys jog over.
“Okay, we’ll have a ten-minute break, and we’ll move to scrums,” Eksteen says. He looks Eggo and me up and down, then puffs out the world’s longest sigh.
“We fucked that up,” Eggo says, as we run to the side to grab our drinks.
“Yeah, we did. Shit.”