Epilogue Noah
RECOMMENDED LISTENING ‘LOVER’ BY MEGHAN LINSEY
I am in unspeakable pain.
I thought hitting the winning runs and winning the World Cup final again would make the pain go away. Or receiving the Player of the Tournament trophy and answering questions about my game tonight would. Or when I collected the trophy and posed with my mates in front of the banner that read WORLD CHAMPIONS, champagne spraying all over us. Or the afterparty in the dressing room where many tears were shed, and many oaths of fealty and everlasting friendship were made.
Turns out even a world cup champion cannot outrun the pain and consequences of a broken thumb. It hurts like a mother fucker.
“OUCH!” I whine while my doctor checks the wrapping around the splint. “Can you be gentle with me? It hurts.”
The doctor gives me a stern look. “No one asked you to play through the pain and possibly do permanent nerve damage to win the game. Of course, it’s going to hurt.”
“It was the last two overs of the bloody final. What did you expect me to do? Take an injury call?” I am all righteous indignation. “What kind of captain do you think I am?”
“The reckless kind of captain. Who always pushes himself beyond his limits,” the doctor responds tartly.
I grin. “That makes me your kind of captain, Hellcat.”
My Hellcat pushes me back on the cloud-like bed at The Calliope. It’s a seven-star De Rossi Luxury hotel opposite the MCG where the teams have stayed for the duration of the world cup.
She places one knee on my side while still holding my hand in her capable hands. “You cannot sweet talk your way out of this one, Aussie boy. This is a serious injury.”
But she kisses the splint and the white bandage covering my poor, abused thumb. “This is precious to me.” She smiles her scary Hellcat smile – doe-eyed heat and dewy lust. “My clit will never forgive you for messing with her favorite toy.”
“Your clit…what?” I laugh, delighted and more in love than I have any right to be after a decade of being with my girl.
Queenie nods. “I’m selfish about what’s mine. And this?” She taps my poor thumb gently, caressing it softly. Pouring all the love she feels for me in the touch. “This is all mine.”
“What about my…bat?” I run my uninjured hand over the jersey I’ve requested she wear before we leave for the afterparty celebrations in the lounge downstairs.
As with all her other jerseys, starting with the Melbourne Marvels, this one is bedazzled with Dumaine’s Girl. Sometimes, when I can’t sleep because I’m too wound up from an upcoming match or when I miss her because she is off at a neuroscientist’s conference in London or New Delhi, I watch old match highlights. They never fail to pan at least once to my woman wearing my jersey and cheering like a fucking maniac for me.
Every time, I fall a little bit more in love with her for it.
She laughs now. Pushes her short curls back. “What a one-track mind you have, captain Dumaine.”
“It is…” I cup her tit and kiss the nipple. “Singular.”
“I can’t keep falling for your sweet talk.” She sighs and gives me more of her weight. Since she’s wearing just her panties and the jersey, my cock surges a little into the apex of her thighs.
“You can, love,” I encourage her. I bite her nipple through the jersey. “Just one more time.”
She makes my favorite sound. A strangled gasp-moan.
She takes off my champions green and yellow tee shirt, now sticky and dirty with champagne, sweat, dirt and mud. “I’m laminating this shirt.” She kisses the collar, even as she makes an ewww face.
God, I love this woman.
I cup her delicate jaw and look at her. Memorizing her face all over again. There are a few grey streaks in the jet black of her hair. And a few lines on the sides of her eyes and her lips. Her eyes don’t smile as often as they did when we were younger and full of shit.
But, inside and outside, in every way that counts, Dr. Queenie Madhavan-Dumaine, PhD in Neuroscience and Research Fellow at Oxford and RMIT, is the same. My brave courage warrior goddess.
Whether it is tackling her undergrad degree at Thorndon and graduating as valedictorian or flying back and forth between Melbourne and London while she did her masters’ and doctorate on the long-term effects of motoneuron diseases.
The day she received her degree from Oxford was the first time I missed a match – a decider in the India-Australia series. It was a no-brainer for me, of course.
Watching Queenie be feted on her big day was more important for me than it was for her. Because it made all the years of hard work and sacrifice worth it.
The second match I ever missed was the day we got married, two years later. It was a quiet, intimate ceremony even though I kind of sprang it on her. It was the only time Fox, Ares, and our other mates and families could coordinate diaries and schedules.
Missing the T20 league final was a small price to pay to watch Queenie’s face drain of all color when she woke up to our entire gang shouting, “You’re getting married today, Queenie!”
These moments and many others run through my mind as my wife leans down and kisses me. Softly. Sweetly. Perfectly.
“Open up,” I order her. Even as I ride her through my sweaty, dirty uniform pants. And she undulates like a fucking dream over my waist, my thighs.
She doesn’t open up. Instead, she says, “My heart stopped when that fucker Van Joost tried to mutilate your thumb.”
“Better him than your precious Indian team. I’m sure you’d have cheered the demise of my thumb then.”
She smiles, low and pleased at my peeved words. My wife becomes Switzerland during India-Australia clashes and diplomatically says, “May the best team win.” To media personnel who always hope for a controversial statement, our mates in both teams, and even our family.
But I know her. She hopes for a tricolor victory, anyway. Especially when her beloved Chachu is coaching the Indian team.
And you know what? I play a little harder having that knowledge. Whatever the result, Dumaine’s Girl celebrates with me. And I love that too.
It would be easy to call our life together perfect.
But the truth is, we work at it. Every damn day. Between our demanding professions, our personal commitments, having family in three bloody countries – India, England, Australia – our life is a whirlwind. But, Queenie’s surprisingly calm in the middle of chaos and we somehow only have a few barnburner arguments every year.
Two years ago, my wife even dragged me to a marriage counsellor because I was withdrawn after an ACL tear threatened to end my career before I was ready to take the step. Queenie let me mope for two months before we went to therapy, and I was forced to work through our issues. I would never tell her because she’d use it to win every argument, but I am so glad she pushes me to be the best man every damn day.
I’d be a withering wreck without her.
“I told you, Noah.” She interrupts my walk down memory lane by brushing her nose with mine. “It’s you.” She holds her palm above my head. “Then everything else.” She lowers her hand. “Except my country.” Her palm goes two inches above my head.
I raise her palm higher. “That is you for me, you know.”
She shakes her head. “Only when you want to fuck me, sweetheart. Don’t think I don’t know what you want.”
She isn’t wrong. But I’m not going to tell her that.
We now make love with her on top of me, more often than not, because my knees are showing signs of early arthritis.
One of the disadvantages of playing elite sport for a long time? A thirty-year-old body degenerates to a fifty-year-old’s sooner rather than later.
But I have no complaints because the last decade has been kind to me. More than kind. Not only have I played the game of my heart on every continent and every level possible, I have won all the tournaments and series I possibly could.
They call me a God in the making.
I don’t know about that. All I know is I love cricket. My family. My woman. In that order, exactly. Except right now. When nothing matters except Queenie and the sweet hot heat and heart of her.
“Queenie, baby,” I plead with her. Edging the jersey up. “I’ve been such a good boy. I even won a World Cup for you.”
“You won that for your giant…” She strokes my hard cock into painful arousal. “Bat.”
I laugh and try to surge into her through the panties and my jock guard.
But she shakes her head. And slides off me with a last kiss on my parched lips. “Shower first. Party and food next. Sex later. Much, much later.”
“You’re a hard woman to please,” I call out after her.
She drops the jersey on the floor of the expensive hotel. Cups her full breasts with her hands as she gives me a sultry look from lowered lashes. “On the other hand.”
I jump up, on the ready.
“You’re so easy,” she teases me. Then, she runs into the bathroom and slams the door on me.
I groan and lie back on the bed.
My phone rings. Loud and insistent. I consider throwing it away. It’s probably yet another contact of my agent who wants to either sign a brand deal with me or get me on a podcast or do a sponsored platform post. And I am not interested.
I pick it up desultorily.
Open the door, mate. The message reads.
Only four people would dare to disturb Queenie and me. Because only four people know we are here, in the penthouse suite of The Calliope. The rest of the world thinks I am cooped up in the rooms allotted to my teammates on the twelfth floor.
I wrap a lush dressing gown around my waist and lope to the door.
From the bathroom, Queenie screeches a Taylor Swift song. My love is many things – accomplished scientist, amazing wife and partner, dutiful and fun daughter to both sets of parents – but a singer she is not.
I shake my head and open the door.
A phone is thrust in my face.
“Well fuck!” Simon Archer emphasizes from the screen. “I knew I should have come to watch the final myself.”
“Hello to you too, mate.” I invite the phone-holder, Jace Archer and his hulking giant of a younger brother, Cade, inside. I peer around them but the corridor’s empty.
“Congratulations, Noah! This is incredible. And we’re so damn proud of you. Hope the thumb’s okay.”
“Thanks, Simon. The thumb will survive.” Hopefully.
The Archers and us cricket players are now firm friends. Family even, considering how each of us defers to QBee and her annual vacation-planning skills. QBee is closely followed by the other partners’ who take their lead from her. And none of the men have the heart or, honestly, the balls to contradict them.
“Did he punch you in the face?” Ares bounds into the room. Holding a champagne bottle longer than his long arm. “Did he?”
Jace grins, shakes his head. “No. He very nicely said, Thanks, Simon.”
“Pay up.” Fox holds out a hand, strolling inside with a baby strapped to his strapping chest. “Pay up, mate.”
“Have we decided to hold the party here?” I muse, mostly to myself.
“We can.” Ares hoists the champagne bottle high. Bumps me with it. “As your coach and best friend, I give you full permission to get the party started.”
Queenie’s voice screeches so loudly as she sings the hook to ‘Cruel Summer.’
To a man, everyone winces. Fox even protectively covers baby Harry’s ears.
“Maybe we should—” Cade points to the door.
“Yep.” Ares slides back out, tucking a fiver in his billionaire best friend’s hand. The bet winnings. He keeps the champagne on the bed for me.
“We’ll see you in half an hour?” Jace asks.
“I love QBee,” Simon sighs on the phone. A woman yells something off screen at him. And he calls back, “I love you more, moonshine.”
“Half an hour,” I affirm.
They all troop out the way they came.
My phone continues ringing. But this time I switch it off. Then, I shuck the robe and walk to the bathroom.
Queenie’s almost finished with the shower. She’s drying off. I know the map of her body – the contours, the stretch marks, the cellulite and the curves. And I am still mad for every inch of her.
Just like she knows the ridges, bumps, scars and stretch marks on mine. And can’t get enough of me.
We’ve seen each other through everything, good, bad, terribly ugly. And we’re still here.
“Did I hear you talking to someone out there?”
I shake my head and try to step out of my pants. “There’s no one else, desi girl.”
She helps me with undressing, competent and depressingly impersonal. She even opens the shower faucet for me.
But the kiss she gives me is sweet. Endless. Perfect.
“There’s no one else but you,” I whisper against her lips.
Then I kiss her once more in our happy ever after.
The Happy Ever After Continues…