Rooster: A Secret Baby Sports Romance Page 5

  Rangers have gone mad. Rory is an ex-con brute who can’t even skate. This is either an act of madness from an owner long past his sell by date, or a piece of creative genius only Francisco Callaghan could have conceived of.

  I can’t believe it. Here he is as clear as day, my one-time snapshot from a year ago playing for my one time team of the year. Banned from his sport, fresh out of prison, even sexier than I remember him.

  That’s not all either.

  Flown in from across the pond, allowed a work visa on a technicality and worth a cool million dollars for his efforts.

  Let me repeat that.

  One season, one million dollars.

  My eyes go six coffees wide.

  I happen to be New York Rangers most dedicated season ticket holder, which means Oscar might finally get to meet his daddy after all.

  Three.

  Rory

  I feel like the fucking Michelin man.

  I guess if it takes more time to get ready than it does to play the fucking sport itself, you know you’re in America. This is ridiculous. Pads, protectors, helmets, knee guards, gloves, I might as well be playing a videogame.

  I still can’t believe I’m here at all, and nor can the rest of this team. We’ve done all the bullshit publicity, I’ve been given a basic rundown of the rules, and now, after only a week of skating lessons, I’m making my fucking debut.

  Let me just break that down again for you. One week of skating lessons and Francis is putting me in his starting line-up.

  Not on the bench, not in the audience, out on the fucking ice with the rest of these professionals.

  I’m a hurling player, not an ice hockey player, and even though I know my way around a similar sport, I’ve had less than a week on the ice to get up to speed. And fuck me do these players blitz around this rink.

  I guess he’s satisfied with my progress. Either that or he’s having a nervous fucking breakdown.

  I can skate, that much is clear. I’m not an Olympic champion by any means, but I certainly don’t fall over easily. I’m working on my speed with the puck, but Francis says that’s not even that important. As long as I can stop them scoring - stop them moving at all actually - the native players can look after the rest.

  It’s absolutely fine with me. If he’s going to pay me a million dollars to fight, I’ll carry on until he tells me to stop.

  We’re up against the Boston Bruins, who are apparently even bigger cunts than we are, which in my estimation so far, is saying something. I’ve seen the way we play, and there is absolutely nothing sporting about it at all. I saw more honesty in the card games inside.

  I haven’t met a single person here I’d want to go for a pint with either, with the exception of Francis and some of the female staff members.

  Seriously. I’ve had even more of a negative reception than I did going back to my hurling side, more hostility than I got coming through border control. I get that these twats are all worried about me stealing their places in the starting line-up, but I’m not here to break records and eclipse my own players, I’m here to break noses and work hard so we can win as a team, which is something these lot seem to have forgotten how to do.

  If I’m asked to play, it’s because someone isn’t doing their job properly, which is hardly my fault at all. If it wasn’t me, it’d be some other two metre tall, two hundred pound fighting machine, so it’s not exactly personal.

  Besides which, even though I can’t navigate the ice like a fucking penguin yet, I’m probably better than most of these players. This is supposed to be a professional sport, and either this team is a poor representation of that, or the level in general just isn’t very high.

  There’s a whole bunch of complicated rules I’m supposed to have learned this week, which Francis thankfully distils for me before we head into the cage.

  “Put the puck in the goal more times than the other team and we win. Besides that, just make sure you announce yourself properly”, he says.

  Other team members have other pieces of advice, ranging from threats to simple aggression, but all it does is make me laugh at how serious this whole thing is for them.

  For me, it’s nothing but another fucking game. I don’t like losing, but I’m not going to let that happen anyway, so I’m not going to stress myself out about it. Plus, this isn’t my sport after all. It’s similar - we fight, we hold sticks, we put something in a net - the fact we do it on ice instead of grass is nothing but a detail, so I’m going to enjoy myself, get messy and see if I can show everyone how to fight like men, if not play this sport like it should be played to ensure we win.

  I’m glad I’m not epileptic because trapped inside this cage the lights and noises around the ground are even more amplified than they are on the other side. I thought hurling audiences were bad too, these lot look like the prison set I left behind in Ireland. I’m glad we’ve got this fence up because some of the crowd look even uglier than the players we’ve got to face.

  I’m told this is a grudge match. It’s not a city derby but it’s almost as important. The Bruins, by all accounts, are a Boston side made up of ex-cons and wife beaters, who will try to win the game as dishonestly as possible. I can’t see how that’s any different to our team, but there we go.

  I haven’t been here long enough to find out the history of every single one of our players, but I do know that more emphasis has been put on bringing down the opposition as often as possible, rather than learning the rules. A win is a win after all, no matter what you have to do to get there.

  The crowd whoop and cheer and it gets my blood going. Before every hurling match I felt like I was going into battle, and even though I’m covered in enough protection to fill a queen sized mattress, the cage around me, the lights, and the passion of the fans is beginning to make me feel the same.

  Hurling was what I was born to do, but if that’s no longer an option this feels more and more like a viable second choice. I might have to make some adjustments on the equipment for the coming games, but right now I definitely feel excited. I have no idea what the fuck is going on, but that doesn’t matter to me.

  I’m going to do my job to the best of my ability, and Francis has been very clear about what that job is. Chase them down and fuck them up. I can do that in hurling, I can do it here and I’d be able to do it if the sport was rugby, football or judo.

  Just before we line up to begin, Kowalski skates over to me. He’s the captain of our team and an even bigger cunt than the rest of them.

  “Don’t fuck this up, Irish”, he politely informs me, his stick pressed hard into my chest.

  He’s about a foot shorter than me but as wide as a fucking door, which makes him look like a bowling ball. He’s had his nose broken so many times it looks like it’s on upside down and his eyebrows meet in the middle. He can play but he’s as ugly as fuck.

  I swipe the stick away, and then grab it and pull it quickly towards me so Kowalski gets jerked along with it. He’s up against my chest, chin up and neck tilted back before he can do anything about it.

  “When I’m done with everyone else, I’m going to come for you, in the night if I have to, when you’re sleeping. I don’t mess around, Kowalski, and I don’t like being threatened. You do your job and I’ll do mine”, I say.

  Finally, he manages to pull himself away from me. “Fucking asshole”, he says and skates into position.

  I get looks of disbelief from all of the players, ours and theirs, in turn, aggressive chants from the crowd and head shakes from the official. Francis has his hands up against the cage, an insane smile plastered across his face, other members of the management and training team sat down behind him wondering what the fuck he’s done bringing me here.

  No one thinks I can do this. The teams, the papers, the public, the word on the street is one game and I’ll be so embarrassed I’ll leave myself. One minute and I’ll be on my ass, my nose broken and my teeth spinning on the ice like marbles.

  We’ll see.
>
  I love being put to the test and I thrive in pressure situations. If there is one person who can make this world their own, it’s me. I know how to win and I know how to get what I want.

  This is it. Sticks down, eyes up, game on.

  The puck drops, the audience explode in a wave of noise and everything around me melts into a blur.

  Izzy

  It feels weird to be back here, even weirder that one of the players is the father of my child and doesn’t even know it. I’m sat with the die-hard Rangers fans, enough rows back from the cage that neither Rory, nor the rest of the technical and managerial staff will be able to see me here.

  I still have no idea how I’m going to do this. Actually, I have no idea whether I’m going to do this at all. I didn’t really think past the coming here bit, so the rest is a little fuzzy still. For people that share a human being together, we have said remarkably few words to each other, and because I never thought I’d see him again, I never really thought about what would happen if I did.

  I’m here because my situation has left me with little other option, and Rory has a right to know he has a son in this world. That doesn’t mean I want us to repeat what happened in the alleyway, it just means it’s time for Rory to take financial responsibility for those incredible few minutes we shared.

  Another week has come and gone, another half a dozen interviews without success. If I want to continue living in this city, and move forward instead of backward, I need someone to help me do it. I don’t want Rory to take Oscar back to Ireland with him, and as scared as I am of that happening, it’s a risk I have no option but to take.

  I need a new apartment. I need enough money to pay for childcare. I need to pay for doctor’s bills and medication and if I can’t do any of that, I can’t be a mother to my son in the way that he deserves, and the way that I want to be.

  I need Rory, and it isn’t fair, now that the opportunity has presented itself, for me to keep the news about Oscar quiet.

  He may tell me to fuck off back to where I came from. He may deny it all and want nothing to do with me. He may not remember the connection we had in the same way at all, but I can’t leave it any longer before finding out.

  I still can’t believe it and I’m not the only one. Everyone in this crowd is calling for Francis’s head. Rory is a huge man, but he’s not a professional ice hockey player and even before the game has started it shows.

  He’s competent enough on the skates, but it’s clear he doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing. As far as I can tell he’s had one week to come up to speed, and everything else he’s bringing over from his own sport, a kind of bloodthirsty cross between rugby, lacrosse, and field hockey.

  He clearly knows how to handle himself, whether he knows how to do it while skating on ice is another thing entirely.

  I fully expect him to get wiped out as soon as the game begins. The Bruins are dirty players at the best of times, most of all when they have something to prove, and I know they’ll want to target him specifically, even if it means losing the game, just to make an example. It’s no secret that every single hockey player from New York to San Francisco is up in arms about the transfer, even more so because Francis has decided to put him immediately into the first team on a salary even higher than some of the veteran players.

  They don’t like their sport being mocked, even less by an Irish ex-con whose talent seems to lie solely in his physique and disposition for violent conduct. It’s a little hypocritical from some of the players, but from others, I can see where they are coming from.

  I’ve been a fan of this sport for as long as I’ve been able to stand up, and I’ve never seen anything like it. Rory might be the king of hurling back in his own country, but here he’s starting as nothing more than a pawn. It’s a sacrifice Francis seems willing to make, even if it’s costing him a million dollars for the pleasure, and as they line up for the start of the game, Rory looks every bit as complicit.

  Francis could well be going mad. The Rangers were at the tail end of a downward slide when I was here last year, and this season looks every bit like that promises to continue. The money to pay for Rory’s contract could easily have brought in two talented journeyman players, which might have been enough coupled with some tactical nous to shift things around in their favor. We’ll never know now, because what Francis has brought in instead, is an Irish ex-con, the father of my child and easily the biggest player on the field, even if he has no idea which position he’s playing in.

  This is going to be interesting.

  I just hope he survives long enough to collect at least the first month of that promised money, because if not, I’m going to have to work out a whole different plan for my future with Oscar.

  Rangers have no chance of winning anything this year, and they wouldn’t even if they had the best player in their league to bolster their squad, so as long as Rory isn’t completely shit, there’s very little he can do wrong. All he needs to do is keep his head down, work hard, stay out of trouble and fall in love with the idea of being a Daddy.

  If he’s anything like that microcosm version I saw of him too, I’d be very happy for him to stick around even longer. If he’s not, I’m also happy to have a repeat of that fucking awesome night. Again, it’s been way too long for me, and with Oscar, I don’t see that changing all that soon, not unless Brad grows some balls and comes back, but to be honest, out of the two, I know who I would choose without hesitation.

  I’d choose the man in the middle of the rink, pounding seven bells of shit out of an opposition player, his stick laying on the ice to the side of him, completely and utterly forgotten, the game stopped already and the official and the official's assistant doing everything in their power to pull them apart.

  What can I say? I like real men, even if they have no idea how to play hockey.

  Rory is sent to the penalty box a bunch of times in the first period, but not before he makes it absolutely clear to every single one of the opposition that he’s here to do a job, whether they like it or not. Two of their player are injured in the first five minutes, one with a twisted knee from falling awkwardly and the other knocked out cold completely, which almost leads to a full on riot, both on the rink and within the crowd. It’s not exactly sportsmanlike but I’m not too bothered, the Bruins have consistently done the same over the last ten years and it serves them right to get a taste of their own medicine for once.

  Rory seems to be fighting more than he is skating, but it’s having the desired effect. Even with time spent in the penalty box, the Bruins can’t seem to gather themselves enough against the onslaught, and while trying to work out how to get past this new Irish mountain, Kowalski slips in and steals a couple of goals.

  It’s ugly hockey but it seems to be working and at the end of the first period, for the first time in a long time, the Rangers are actually winning.

  It’s difficult to work out what people are making of him. It’s clear he’s having an effect on the game, but the crowd around me seem to be wary that even though the Rangers are winning, the way Rory’s playing jeopardizes that lead unnecessarily. When they filter onto the rink for the second period, it’s clear that Francis and the rest of the technical team seem to share that opinion.

  Rory is still ready to engage in a fight when the opportunity presents itself, but he’s definitely much more subdued. He seems more confident on the skates too, a little bit quicker on the ice and happy to move forward into the opposition half even if he knows it’ll take him longer to get back.

  Nobody passes to him, though, so he only gets the puck when it breaks free or when he’s able to steal it out from an opposition player, which he seems to be more than capable of achieving. When he gets the puck, which is much less often than I would like, he looks like he’s absolutely unstoppable. No-one can wrestle it off him, and he moves the stick so deftly he makes it almost impossible for someone to nick the ball out from underneath him.

  A little over halfway through
the second period, the ball breaks free after an attempt on the Ranger’s goal goes wide and Rory smashes a player into the wall to pick it up, driving mercilessly through one of his own players intent on doing the same. Leaving them both on their asses in his wake, and traveling slowly because of his lack of experience on the ice, he fends off two of their largest players, swatting them away like flies, while protecting the puck expertly and advancing on the goal.

  With the whole crowd on their feet around the cage, Rory flicks the puck up into the air, bounces it along the shaft of his stick quick enough that no-one has even had a chance to guess what he’s doing before it’s too late, before smashing it with the full force of a speeding truck at a thousand miles an hour towards the goal.

  It’s too quick for the goaltender to react in time, and with a thud that resounds around the stadium like a bomb going off, the puck catches him square on the helmet, cracking it dramatically and knocking him unconscious and flat on his ass. Kowalski is the quickest to respond, and with a simple tap in makes the score 3-0 in Rangers favor.

  It’s an incredible bit of individual brilliance and I can barely believe it. I know little to nothing about hurling, other than the fact that they use sticks, and often finish games with fewer body parts than they started with. I never knew that bouncing a puck on that stick was something Rory would have any idea how to do, and I guess neither did anyone else because they certainly don’t seem to have expected to see it.

  The goaltender has to be stretchered off the field for treatment, while Rory works the crowd as though he’s already won the game, and every single player, Rangers or Bruins alike, look at him with their is this guy even human eyes. April doesn’t even have that look in her locker, and if she does, I haven’t seen it yet. Perhaps that’s the look I gave him the night he took me into the alleyway.

  When the game resumes, a third substitution on for the injured goaltender, the Rangers crowd is more animated than I’ve seen for a long time, the visiting Bruins supporters completely stunned.