Tigers & Devils (42 page)

“Great. Maybe we should just buy our own tickets next time.”

“We can’t. The media would love it if they could publish stories about infighting amongst the partners, and us not sitting here would only fuel them further. We’re here to support Abe and Dec, that’s all we can think about.”

“Man, you’re such a good footballer’s wife,” I said mockingly. “Did you get that from the guidebook?”

“Shut up, you’re one of us now.”

I shuddered. “They better not think I’m turning up to the Brownlows in a dress.”

“I’ll go in pants if you go in a dress,” she challenged me. I laughed. “No way. I’m not
that
stupid.”

Lisa sighed. “Pity.”

THE rest of the game passed without incident, although there seemed to be a tense atmosphere to the whole thing. Once the Devils left the field, all of the WAGs rose as one entity and exited the box.

“Stepford, party of one,” Lisa murmured. She slapped me on the thigh. “Well, you survived. How do you feel?”

“Fine. Just wanting to know how Dec is after all that.”

She nodded. “Yeah. I’m just glad Abe didn’t throw a punch.”

“Well, he’s mellowed in the past couple of years,” I said, remembering vaguely that he used to be known for being a wee bit volatile.

“Only because Dec and I made him. We’re pretty convincing when we gang up.”

“I bet.”

We watched the crowds below us trickle out of the stadium, and when there seemed to be less of a crush, we made our way downstairs.

And that was when I
really
started feeling nervous. Meeting the footballers’ wives had been enough of a frightening prospect, so coming across the footballers themselves seemed even more daunting. I would have tried to escape and meet up with Declan later if Lisa hadn’t kept a tight rein on me.

296 | SEAN KENNEDY

Down in the bowels of the stadium we found a seat a little way from the WAGs and waited for the footballers to emerge. When they did, they were a sorry-looking group. A fight on the field that involved both their captain and the vice-captain plus a loss to the other team meant that they were sullen and silent. No cooing from their supportive partners lifted their spirits as they left in pairs like a Prozac-ridden Noah’s Ark. As they filed past where I was sitting with Lisa, some of them looked stony-faced at me, obviously recognising me. Although a couple nodded, the rest ignored my presence. Except for Rachel, of course, who couldn’t help but smirk.

“Man, I hate her,” Lisa said confidentially. Redundantly.

“Really?” I asked, just as redundantly. “I couldn’t tell.”

“You hate her too,” she continued in a sing-song voice.

“She’s not my favourite person, no.”

The door to the change rooms swung open again, and Declan and Abe emerged. They looked even more drained than the rest of the team. Lisa jumped up and immediately hugged Abe. I hung back, not knowing what to do, and unconsciously jammed my hands in my pockets.

Abe nodded at me and turned to Declan. “Drink?”

Declan shook his head, and it looked as if it took too much effort for him to do so.

“I’ll give it a miss tonight, mate.”

Abe nodded again, knowing not to press it. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Sure.”

Lisa looked at me sympathetically, knowing we were in the same boat. She gave me a quick hug goodbye, and then she and Abe were gone, leaving Declan and me alone in the concourse.

I moved towards him and gave him a hug.

He stood still against me, unresponsive, and I pulled back.

“Oh, now you’ll hug me?” he asked.

“Sorry, I didn’t know what—”

He sighed. “It was only Abe and Lisa. You haven’t worried before.”

The same old argument again. I remained silent.

Declan stared at me, then realising he wasn’t going to get an answer from me he started walking towards the car park.

I followed him. Even though Declan only lived a short distance away, walking distance, really, during games he had decided it was better to drive home than risk having to put up with fans milling around the Docklands area afterwards. Especially as they would have had time to drink between their exit and the players’. It was just common sense for any footballer.

“Are you going to tell me what happened out there?” I asked, referring to the fracas at the beginning of the game.

TIGERS AND DEVILS | 297

He looked at me briefly, but continued walking. “Nothing to say.”

“Ah, so that was just a friendly bust-up, then?”

“Just drop it, Simon, okay?”

Wow, I had been
told
. Starting to fume a little myself, I kept quiet so I wouldn’t explode.

We didn’t say a word until we pulled into the car park at his complex. Declan turned the ignition off and sat there for a moment.

“Look,” I said, my voice sounding a little rusty ever since I had forcibly kept it shut.

“I’m just going to let you stew and go home tonight.”

Declan turned and looked at me. “Don’t. Just come up.”

“You’re pissed, and you’re not talking to me.”

“I’m not pissed, and I
will
talk to you.”

“Wow, that sounds really inviting.”

“Simon, please,” Declan said tiredly.

I took his hand and squeezed it. He squeezed back.

We were silent in the elevator, but there wasn’t the weird tension between us this time. As the doors opened upon his floor, I surprised him by taking his hand. His grip was strong but comfortable as we slowly walked hand-in-hand to his door. Inside, Declan threw his bag in a corner and slumped upon the couch.

“Okay,” I said, sitting beside him. “Talk to me.”

He groaned.

“Come on, you know what my imagination’s like. I’m probably thinking it’s something ten times worse than it actually was.”

“What do you think it was?”

I lightly scratched behind his ears like I did for Maggie and was rewarded with a smile. “Doesn’t take a genius to guess you were sledged.”

“Yeah.”

“What did he say?”

“The usual. Well, not the usual. It was all new.” He took a deep breath. “I mean, I’ve been sledged before. It’s just that this time there was new ammunition to use against me.”

A little niggling thought began to form at the back of my mind, influenced by Rachel’s little dig at me before. “Like you said, sledging isn’t new, and you’ve probably been sledged a hundred times before.”

“More, probably.”

“Okay, you’ve been so calm about everything that’s happened to you since you came out. Why did it get to you today?”

“It just did, that’s all.”

298 | SEAN KENNEDY

Again, that niggling feeling, combined with the fact that he wouldn’t look at me. “It was something about me, wasn’t it?”

“Christ, Simon. Not everything’s about you!” he snapped. I let my hand drop away. “Okay.”

Declan covered his face with his hands and rubbed at it tiredly. “I’m sorry.”

“Just tell me, Dec.”

“Yes!” he admitted finally. “He sledged you.”

I reached over and pulled his hands down so he would have to look at me. “You should have ignored him.”

“You don’t get it. There’s an etiquette. You don’t sledge the family or the girlfriends.”

“Well, that’s it, then,” I said, trying to make light of it. “He didn’t think he was doing anything wrong, because I’m not your girlfriend. A technicality, sure—”

“You know what I mean,” he growled. “And you’re family.”

That made me kiss him madly. And he responded, finally seeming like Declan again.

“Wow, I’ve never had anybody defending my honour before,” I teased.

“He knew what he was doing.”

“Dec, you should have just let it go.”

“I couldn’t.”

“You
don’t
have to defend me. For fuck’s sake, Dec, if they put you on an official reprimand you’ll be out of Brownlow contention.”

“Fuck the Brownlow,” Dec muttered.

“
Fuck
the Brownlow?” I asked in shock. “What kind of footballer are you?”

He studied me and grinned when he realised I was mocking him. “One with integrity.”

“A true white knight,” I admitted.

“What would you have done?” Dec asked. “If it had been you on the field?”

“If they had sledged you?” I asked. “I would have made them pay.”

Declan laughed and flung himself upon me. Crushed, I fell back against the arm of the couch, and once again the team of us closed itself against the world.

I COULD tell Dec was awake and had been for a few minutes longer than me as I struggled against the last vestiges of sleep and opened my eyes.

“Morning,” he murmured.

“Hey,” I grunted. “Were you watching me?”

“Maybe.”

“Stalker.”

“I can’t help it; you’re so pretty.”

I moaned and buried my head back into the pillow.

“Especially when you drool.”

“What were you doing, really?” I asked, muffled by the material. His hand flattened the pillow puffing around my head so that I could see him. “I told you. Watching you. Thinking about how nice it would be to stay in bed forever.”

“We would start to smell pretty quickly.”

“I could live with that.”

“And pretty soon we would be swimming in our own shit.”

My world went dark as his pillow went over my head and pushed me down into my own. “You’re so fucking romantic!” I heard him hiss.

“You love it,” I choked.

I struggled out from beneath his grip for air and rolled over on top of him. He lay supine beneath me, and I drew my thumbs in opposite directions over his jaw. I kissed the bottom of his chin and arched up slightly to kiss him properly. His hands ran along my side, and I shivered as they came to rest on my back and held me against him.

“Is this better?” I breathed.

He gave some sort of strangled moan in reply.

I knew his body so well by now. I ran my finger along the five o’clock shadow that had formed overnight, and it came to rest on a small crescent moon scar caused by a Bulldogs player who had accidentally gouged his cheek two seasons ago.

“What are you doing?” Dec asked.

300 | SEAN KENNEDY

I inched down the length of his body, slipping out of his arms. He arched like a cat as my hand trailed down his chest, and I breathed in the smell of him as I worked my way down his boxers until I faced his infamous knee.

“Admiring you,” I said. And I meant it. One knee was distinctly different from the other, because of the surgical scars. It looked knobbier, and the hair was more sparse than on the other one because the scarring left shiny trails along his skin.

“There’s nothing to admire about that,” Declan said shortly. I looked up at him. “There is.”

I began to massage the knee, as I had in the weeks after his surgery when he’d been able to stand it being touched. Declan closed his eyes and lay back. I worked it for a few minutes, feeling simple pleasure in doing this for him. His hand tenderly stroked my hair as I did it. We were like two cats in the sun stretching for each other. I lowered my head and kissed the scar.

Declan opened his eyes. “Come back up here.”

When I was lying fully against him again, he kissed me on the forehead. “Don’t want to leave here.”

“We can probably push it for a while longer,” I told him.

“Longer than longer,” he breathed.

It sounded good to me.

But eventually even John and Yoko had to get out of bed, and so did we. Had I known what the next away game for the Devils back in Melbourne would bring, I would have gladly stayed in the bed drowning in my own shit.

MY picture had appeared in the papers after the last game. They had captured me standing out like a sore thumb against the WAGs; I might as well have been naked and showing my different genitalia in a game of “one of these things is not like the others” as it couldn’t have been any less subtle.
The Easiest Game of Where’s Wally
? trumpeted the caption beneath the photo in the
Herald Sun
. It was about the only time they were actually funny.

“Don’t stress about it,” Declan had told me.

“I’m not,” I lied.

He studied me carefully. “You can sit the next game out, if you want.”

“I’m not going to give them the satisfaction.”

“Who? The WAGs or the papers?”

“Both,” I growled.

Dec grimaced. “I don’t know whether to love your attitude or worry about it.”

TIGERS AND DEVILS | 301

“It’s all cool,” I said reassuringly, although I secretly agreed with him. But I knew that if I sat out the next game, which was being played in my own hometown, the papers would have even more of a field day over that.

Declan still didn’t look too sure, and when the day itself arrived I wasn’t feeling all that certain myself. I woke up with a bad feeling, which I tried to put down to paranoia, but I think the stars were lining up against me.

I had tried to convince Roger and Fran to come with me if I could get them tickets, but they had already heard my horror story of my previous experience with Rachel of the WAGs so they declined. Luckily I still had Lisa.

“We’re either extremely loyal or gluttons for punishment,” she told me as we met outside the members’ gate of the Dome.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Shoot,” she said, as she inspected the bottom of her shoe and grimaced at the bubblegum stuck to it. She was lucky it wasn’t a syringe.

“Before I came along, didn’t you have
anybody
else friendly in that box?”

Lisa’s eyes were firmly glued to the sole of her shoe. “Uh, sometimes.”

She sounded cagey.

“Who?”

“Oh, just a girl.”

I folded my arms and stared down at her. I could see her peer out below her fringe and realised she was caught out. She sighed, straightened up, and looked somewhat guilty. “Jess came sometimes.”

“Oh.”

“Not all the time—” Lisa said hurriedly.

“Well, of course she would,” I shrugged. “They had a story to maintain.”

She seemed somewhat relieved I wasn’t melodramatically tearing my hair out and wailing at the moon about the “ex”.

“But did you like her more than me?” I teased.

Lisa tilted her head and sized me up. “I like you both in very different ways.”

“Fucking fence-sitter,” I muttered, and we began walking towards the barriers of the entrance.

“I heard that.”

“You were meant to,” I replied perkily.

At that stage it all still seemed pretty normal. When we got to the players’ box we were given the once-over yet again, with Rachel glowering at the thought of me daring to be in there. She wisely kept her mouth shut for the moment, though.

“How are you feeling?” Lisa asked as we took our seats.

“Fine,” I murmured.

302 | SEAN KENNEDY

“Beer?” she asked.

Supporting my boyfriend was going to turn me into an alcoholic, and Lisa would be my enabler. “I’ll go get them.”

“No, you sit,” she said, slapping my knee. “Won’t be long.”

She was throwing me to the lions again, but I remained tight-lipped and slumped into my seat, as if I could hide from view.

It didn’t take long for Rachel to lean over. “Saw you in the paper again.”

I grunted some form of reply.

“Just can’t help yourself, can you?”

“Jealous?” I asked. I don’t know why I was responding to her. I should have known better.

“Hardly,” she snorted.

“Jesus, Rachel,” said one of the other women. I think her name was Anna. “Leave him alone.”

“Looks like you have your supporters,” Rachel sneered.

“Maybe because he doesn’t seem like a psycho,” Anna shot back. “Can we just watch the bloody game?”

I stared ahead of me. The field was empty; the teams were still in the change rooms. This was shaping up to be a long day. If I closed my eyes I could almost swear to smelling blood in the air.

As the Devils ran out onto the field, I recognised Declan by his gait despite the distance between us. He ran with a casual confidence, but favoured his right leg, as that was the uninjured one. I had gotten to know Abe well enough now to pick him out running beside Dec, flanking him like a loyal bodyguard. It made me feel better to know Abe was out there watching his back, at least, as I was still pretty sure Dec didn’t tell me half the things that happened during the game.

“He’s limping slightly,” Lisa said worriedly.

“He’s fine,” I said stoically, although her noticing it as well made me start to worry a little more.

She must have heard it in my voice, because she immediately tried to cover it up.

“I’m sure Scott wouldn’t be playing him if he wasn’t able.”

I nodded, just as much for her as for myself. “It’s cold today. His knee plays up on cold days.”

“Maybe he should try and switch to West Coast,” Lisa said. “At least the weather would only be a problem on away games.”

Horrified, I rapped on the wood underneath my seat. “As if him living in Tasmania isn’t bad enough, you’d banish him to Perth?”

“I could see you living in Perth,” Lisa teased. “All those beaches and sun… you’d probably burst into flames.”

TIGERS AND DEVILS | 303

I wanted to protest, but I was distracted by the roar of the crowd. Lisa and I looked up, only to see ourselves being broadcast on the giant screens around the stadium. Fuck, I hated it when they did this. It usually gave the anonymous people in the crowd a thrill to see their own mug put up there for ten seconds of fame, all it did to me was make my stomach cramp.

Lisa wasn’t too thrilled by it either. She turned her head so her lips were partly obscured and murmured to me, “Crap. Try to look happy.”

Following her lead, I turned my head as well. “You aren’t smiling either.”

“On the count of three, you say something,” Lisa said, “and I’ll laugh like you’re the funniest guy on earth.”

It was generous of her to do that, so I said, “I’m saying something really funny right now.”

Lisa burst out laughing. She should have been an actress, she was that convincing. I could hear Rachel bitch behind me. “Definitely
not
an attention whore.”

I made sure I was still grinning for the camera and then turned and was glad my face was hidden when I stared Rachel in the eye and said, “For fuck’s sake, just shut up.”

Suddenly, a small group of the WAGs burst out laughing, so glad that someone other than Lisa had bitched out Rachel.

I must have looked like I was in control of that box, surrounded by laughing and adoring women. When I turned back in my chair, we were all still on the screen. Then we abruptly disappeared, replaced with another section of the crowd, who were all holding up signs that looked exactly the same.

Lisa managed to decipher what it was first, squinting against the glare. “Fuckers!”

she hissed.

I still couldn’t see it, but I could hear Rachel’s nasty snigger blowing hot in my ear, so I knew it wasn’t going to be good.

Looking up into the screen, I could see myself. About five of me. Except that it all looked odd, because I seemed to be a paper doll with five different outfits on. Women’s outfits. Short skirts, long dresses, boobs hanging out of a halter top. I felt a small trickle of sweat form near my temple. I realised it was a doctored poster from a TV series, as the headline below read “FOOTBALLER’S WIVES”. The camera panned out, and I realised that there were about twenty people clustered in one group who were holding them all. I scanned the crowd and could make out quite a few similar-looking posters scattered within it.

Rachel, enjoying herself far too much, leaned down and whispered into my ear,

“They printed it in a local footy rag. Looks good, huh?”

I swallowed, vowing I wasn’t showing that I was upset. “Amazing what you can do with Photoshop these days. Wish my legs were that good.” It was a lame comeback, but at least Rachel was disappointed by my lack of crying and storming off to the toilets.

304 | SEAN KENNEDY

Besides, Lisa was raging enough for me. “That’s so fucked!” she yelled. And after what Rachel had said, I thought she was about to leap over the seats and tackle her in a catfight worthy of any soap.

“Lisa,” I pleaded, “sit down.”

She did so, recognising that I didn’t want any more attention drawn to me. She sat down with a thud and linked her arm through mine. “Are you okay?”

I couldn’t answer. She squeezed my arm.

“Do you want to go?”

I shook my head.

The footage on the screen switched back to the players, and Declan appeared amongst a scrum that had erupted on the field. I felt a cold déjà vu at this happening again. I could have railed against the world, and the injustices of it all, but I literally felt frozen. I numbly watched the action unfold on the screen. Lisa’s grip on me tightened. The scrum dissipated, and play resumed. Dec looked furious. It was only two minutes before the siren went for the end of the first quarter, but it seemed like it had only begun. There was an uncomfortable silence in our box after the siren stopped sounding, and we watched the players head to their respective coaches.

“I wish you would say something,” Lisa said.

“I’m fine,” I mumbled.

My mobile buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out, expecting Fran or Roger. The number was private. I had no idea if I should pick it up. The last thing I wanted to do was find myself speaking to some contingent from the media and denying them a comment on the situation.