13. Robbie
ROBBIE
It was a bad decision. It was a bad decision to drive her home. It was a bad decision to follow her into her house. It was a bad decision to get on a surfboard. And it was a bad decision to nearly kiss her.
So why do I regret none of it?
By the time I got home, I was exhausted from the full body workout she’d put me through, not to mention the mental workout it took to not take up her offer and join her in the shower.
I had an ice cold shower by myself the second I got inside, rinsing off the salt and freezing my bollocks off until I calmed down enough.
The next morning, I’m pushing hard on the bike when I get a video call from my brother.
“Alright?” he asks, his Welsh accent thick.
I don’t sound anything like him, because I picked up London English from my teammates at the Academy.
Like me, he doesn’t speak the language, but his wife Gwen is fluent and insisted on sending both the kids to a Welsh language school where they speak it full-time in class.
It’s cute when they accidentally blend sentences in English and Welsh, but most of the time we’re all just jealous that they’re bilingual before they’re ten years old.
“Are you on that bike again? You need to hook it up to your electrics, save yourself a fortune.”
I power off the bike. “I don’t need to,” I remind him with a raised eyebrow.
“Ooh, I’m Robbie King.” Iwan mocks. “I win Golden Boots and shit them out again.”
“Fuck off,” I laugh, wiping sweat from my forehead. “What do you want anyway?”
“Can’t a man call his baby brother out of the blue?”
I raise my eyebrow expectantly.
“It’s Ffion,” he sighs exasperatedly. My brother never usually asks me for anything.
He barely accepted the car I got him for his birthday one year, and it was a struggle to let me pay for half of his wedding.
My parents were the same, refused to let me help them on the refurbs on the house until the heating packed in for the tenth time in as many years, and they finally let me hire a professional.
My niece is a different story. As soon as she was able to ask her father for things, my brother was on the phone to me. He has a lot of pride, but he’d do anything for his daughter. And honestly so would I.
“What does she want?”
“She’s got wind that you apparently know Cassandra, so I promised I’d find out if you have an in for an autograph.”
I concentrate on walking up the stairs from my basement. If I can avoid looking at him, he won’t be able to see just how well I know Cassandra.
“What makes her say that?”
“You’re all over the internet driving her around, mun.”
Fuck’s sake. How did that even get out? I didn’t see any paparazzi outside the stadium, but there must have been one lingering after the game to spot us.
My mind should jump straight to damage control.
If people start speculating that we’re friendly, it might be just one step away from a scandal, but instead I can’t find it in me to regret last night for even a second.
Except maybe that I left.
“Why is your nine year old on the internet?”
“Why are you driving around Cassandra?”
“Can you stop saying it like that?”
“Like what? Cassandra?”
“It’s just Cassie.”
“Just Cassie, eh?” He sends me a knowing look that I dutifully ignore. I prop my my phone on the counter as I pull out chicken and rice my nutritionist left me from the fridge.
“Look,” I tell him, concentrating on my tupperware. “She’s the owner's daughter, she comes to games, there’s not much else to say.”
“Can you ask your boss?”
I level him a flat look through the screen.
“Okay, fair play,” he says, running his hands through his messy hair. “Well, at least I can tell her I tried.”
My gut sinks at the thought of letting Ffion down. She has such a tiny face and huge brown eyes, and she knows just how to wield them.
“Fi,” Iwan calls off screen. “Come say hi to Uncle Robbie!”
I wipe my hands over my face before said big brown eyes appear on the screen.
“Hi Uncle Robbie,” she yells excitedly, squeezing into the frame beside her dad.
“Hi Fi.” I wave, leaning closer to the camera. “You okay?”
“Yeah-is-it-true-you-know-Cassandra?” she asks with the breathless excitement that only a nine year old can exude.
Iwan hides a smirk behind his hand through the camera.
I sigh. “I don’t know know her…”
Ffion visibly deflates in front of me and I find myself blurting out, “But I’ll see what I can do about an autograph.”
“Yay!” Ffion squeals hitting a decibel I’m not sure dogs will even be able to hear. “You’re the best Uncle ever.”
“I’m your only uncle,” I remind her.
“That’s why you’re number one.”
She blows me a kiss through the screen that I catch and return before she dashes off to wreak havoc somewhere else.
“You’re evil.” I stab my fork in my chicken.
Iwan cackles. “You fold too easily, mun. Hold firm.” He raises his first in the air.
“You hold firm,” I grumble. “How’s Sammy?”
He’s quiet for a second. “He’s good, but he’s missing his favorite uncle.”
“Again”—I take a bite of chicken—“I’m his only uncle.”
“I tried to get him to play some one-on-ones with me in the garden at the weekend, and he wanted nothing to do with it. I’m chopped liver compared to you.”
I laugh. “He knows who the better player is that’s why.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Dad came round, and he was all over him. Typical.”
Our dad loves the game as much as we do.
There wasn’t a weekend in our childhood that wasn’t spent at the local park having a kick about, or at the stadium for a game.
It only got more intense when scouts started sniffing around the youth squad.
I’m the only one out of any of us that ever got to make money from it though.
“When do you reckon you’ll be back over for a visit?” Iwan asks and I swallow a mouthful of rice to hide my grimace.
The season is in full swing now, and I doubt I’ll have enough days in a row to grab a quick trip back across the Atlantic, what with the jet lag and the time difference. “I’m not sure.”
“Well, maybe we can come out there when the kids break up for summer.”
I nod. “Yeah, that would be good.”
“How’s the new team? Made any friends yet?”
I roll my eyes as I dig into my dinner. “It’s not the Academy, Iwan. I’m not a kid on my first day at a new school."
“Alright, alright.” Iwan leans back in his chair with a sigh. “Just making sure you’re all good. We worry, you know.”
“Well.” The chicken tastes dry in my mouth. “Stop it. It’s all good here.”
“It must be good if you’re hanging out with Cassandra.” Iwan wiggles his eyebrows.
“I’m hanging up now.” I tell him, grabbing my phone from where I’ve had it propped up. “Goodbye.”
Iwan is still laughing at his own joke as he hangs up the phone, and I’m left in the quiet of my kitchen, where the only sound is my fork scraping the bottom of my tupperware.