Rooster: A Secret Baby Sports Romance Page 6

  There are calls to the referee to send Rory to the penalty box again for another infraction, but this time the officials let the game continue, even though there is clearly fighting from both sides.

  Rory doesn’t seem to be affected by the violence of the game, and every time he skates past slowly enough that I can see him, it’s clear that he’s smiling underneath his helmet. He’s like a big puppy dog let out to play with a bunch of kittens, and what for them seems rough, is just Rory being a little bit over excited.

  Sometimes he even helps the players up from the ice after knocking them down, only so he can knock them down again more quickly.

  It’s great to watch, for everyone who isn’t a Bruins fan, and it’s the most fun I’ve probably had here for as long as I can remember. Even his own players seem to be taking to Rory’s particular brand of hockey, even though it’s nothing they’ve ever seen in their lives before.

  No-one’s even seen anything like this before, either in this sport or any other.

  Rory doesn’t come out for the last period, which results in an ear-splitting chant for his return, Francis is happy not to give in to. They give away a sloppy goal, and it's clear that without Rory to bully the opponents, the two sides are more evenly matched.

  When they pull another goal back and it goes 3-2, there is a little mini resurgence from the Bruins supporters, that’s quickly quelled when Rangers break on the counter attack, make the game 4-2 and push it out of the reach of the visiting team.

  It ends 4-2, and Rangers net their first win of the season, the first win in any competition, anywhere, for months.

  Rory is clearly the star of the show and after the final whistle has gone, he comes back onto the ice with the rest of the players to give a lap of honor. With his helmet off, his face clearly on view to me now, I’m immediately transported back to the night in the shadows of the alleyway, when he showed me exactly what he was capable of.

  Tonight he’s proved everyone wrong, me included, and without even breaking a sweat.

  I had a feeling this guy was dangerous, now I know there isn’t any doubt at all.

  Rory

  Wow, what a fucking blast. That’s almost as good as playing hurling. Obviously, it’s nowhere fucking near but for a piss around before a pint just to get yourself in the mood, I can think of tons of stuff that would be way worse. Turns out I’m alright at it as well, which doesn’t come as much of a surprise to me, as much as every other fucking cunt in America.

  All I need to do now is collect my money and go and find those cheerleaders. Last year I was a nobody, but right now, judging by the way the crowd was reacting, I’m famous, which means I’ll have absolutely no trouble in getting laid.

  A pub with a proper pint would top it all off and make me a very happy man indeed.

  For a team that’s just won, the mood in this locker room seems way too downbeat. I go over to Kowalski who’s got a face like a slapped ass.

  “Cheer up, mate”, I say. “You did enough to be selected again next week.”

  Kowalski looks anything but happy.

  “That’s not ice hockey”, he snarls at me.

  I don’t get a chance to react before Francis bounces into the locker room.

  “Press conference in five minutes. Kowalski, you’re up with Rory, so get ready. The rest of you go and celebrate. Fucking great game by the way.”

  I raise my eyes and give Kowalski a smile but all that stern fucker does is bump past me towards the showers. The rest of the team seem alright, still a bit distant but not as bad as they were when I first got here, but Kowalski seems like someone’s stuck one of the sticks up his squared off Polish ass, wide end first.

  I don’t mind press conferences. Some people hate them, but for me, it’s all part of the game. I don’t give a flying fuck what the press print either, half of it they’re going to make up anyway, so the other half you might as well have at least some say in. I got into trouble constantly in Ireland for speaking my mind so much they actually put a ban on me from doing so. Here, I expect even less tolerance to my particular brand of candidness which makes the whole thing even more enjoyable for me.

  I like it when people get offended by what I say because it makes me want to wind them up even more.

  People take things in this world far too seriously and Kowalski’s a case in point.

  What else am I going to do tonight? I’ve hardly got a busy schedule, and I have no idea what Kowalski’s grumbling about. That fucker can’t have much else planned either. He doesn’t really look like the type to go skinny dipping with a trio of cheerleaders after all.

  My plan for coming to America was to play some kind of sport that has a passing similarity to my own, earn a stack of dollars to take back home and fight my hurling ban with, have as much fun as possible along the way and then eventually return home and get back into my one and only true sport. That game was a lot of fun but it’s not something I see myself doing long term.

  One year in prison has given me more than enough time to work out my priorities and the one thing people regretted not doing or not doing early enough was falling in love and popping out a family. Believe it or not, that’s something I’ve always wanted to do, but never found the right girl to do it with.

  When I get this ban sorted and I’ve made myself a millionaire over here, I want to find that sexy girl, the one that’s just right for me, settle down and get her to give me a fucking family. What I don’t ever want to do is go back to prison or even think about never playing hurling again.

  I’m only twenty-six, but I don’t want to leave it so long I haven’t got any energy left to play with them. I like kids, and weirdly, those fuckers seem to even like me.

  That might be what’s up with Kowalski. If he has kids and they are as ugly as him, it’s no wonder he constantly looks disappointed.

  The press room is about the same size as one of my shoe boxes. Even so, it’s more than we get after a hurling match. If a TV crew turns up to one of our matches, we usually do the interviews in the clubhouse afterward with a pint of Guinness in both of our hands.

  Here it seems way more organized, much more formal. So formal, in fact, I feel like I probably should have put on a T-shirt.

  Fuck it, it’s too late now. As prudish as these people can be sometimes, they must have seen someone’s chest before.

  I look at Francis, Francis looks at Kowalski and Kowalski shakes his head. Reporters of all shapes and sizes smile at us with looks of bewilderment, three seats wide six seats deep. I feel like I’m in the world’s smallest theater production, the microphones on the table the size of lollipops. I can barely fit in here either, my back bent over, my knees up against the bottom of the table.

  “Hi”, I say, because nobody else is fucking saying anything, and the women in the front row giggle like schoolgirls.

  Finally, someone asks a question. “How long have you been playing ice hockey for?”

  “An hour”, I say. “And I’m already better than Kowalski.”

  “You fucking prick-”, Kowalski mumbles under his breath while the audience humor me with a wave of laughter.

  “You seem to have proved that you can handle yourself, is there anything about the game that scares you?” someone else asks.

  “The only thing that scares me is not being able to find a good pint of Guinness”, I say.

  “And Francis”, a reporter from the second row calls out. “Your decision to rest Rory in the third period, was that tactical or because he’d picked up an injury-.”

  “No, not at all”, Francis says. “I just didn’t think it was fair on the Bruins to keep him on.”

  Everyone in the room apart from Kowalski laughs a little at that.

  “Do you think opinion will change after tonight about your decision to offer a contract to a player that has no experience in this game at all?” another reporter asks.

  “You tell me”, Francis says challengingly. “You do the write ups while we concentrate on the
game.”

  “Was that really ice hockey though?” another reporter calls out. “There have already been official complaints by the Bruins, who have three players injured, two seriously. I’ve been watching and reporting on ice hockey for a number of years and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything as ugly or vicious.”

  Francis begins to answer but the reporter cuts him short. “Kowalski, perhaps you can answer that question.”

  Kowalski looks across the table at myself and Francis before looking back out over the crowd of reporters. “We won the game, sometimes you have to do that by playing ugly”, he says.

  “Yeah but-”

  “We won the game”, Kowalski says firmly. “Next question.”

  In the corridor outside the press room he squares up to me, his arm flat across my chest, his elbow digging into my ribs. I could snap it in half in a second, but I let him say what he needs to say just to get it out of his system.

  “When they drag you down, don’t take me with you”, he spits.

  “We won the game”, I say to him, repeating what he said only five minutes before.

  He takes his elbow out of my chest and walks back towards the locker room. “Like I said, Irish, that wasn’t ice hockey.”

  Francis joins me a moment later. “What the fuck is his problem?” I ask him.

  “Nothing, just play your game and ignore him. Kowalski’s a good player but he’s a miserable fucker, even when we win. He seems to think hockey is a dance, not a fight. He’ll get over it.”

  “He won’t have much choice if you keep playing me. I tried dancing at my cousin’s wedding once, I’m fucking shit at it”, I say.

  I shower, I get changed, and then I try and find the cheerleaders before I leave, but I can’t. There’s a special door that the players use to avoid all of the waiting fans, but it takes you round the back of the stadium and too far away from the bars for my liking, so I decide to head out the normal way.

  I may be a big deal for this team, but that doesn’t mean I need to separate myself from the crowd because of it. I’m a sports fan as much as I am a player, I started off that way and I’m going to finish up that way too, so it doesn’t bother me in the slightest.

  How many fans can there be anyway? I mean, I’m hardly a seasoned pro in this sport, and nobody knows a single thing about mine. If anyone wants an autograph, I can’t imagine there being much of a line to get one. With any luck there’ll be a couple of girls who’ll be keen enough to join me for a pint and real enough they like my often too direct for most attitude.

  I could do with that, especially as all of the rest of the players have fucked off and Francis says he’s busy with the post match admin work.

  I don’t mind drinking on my own, but it’s way more interesting with someone to banter with.

  I push open the doors to the square in the same way I would stepping out of the gates at an airport when I know nobody is there to meet me, but look just in case anyway.

  I expect to walk away from the ground as quietly as I entered it, but as soon as my face is out in the open I’m absolutely fucking swarmed. I’ve never seen anything like it. Hurling’s a popular sport in Ireland, and back there I’m like fucking royalty, but even so, it’s nothing at all like this.

  I’m barely a meter out of the ground when a crowd of at least a hundred people run towards me, match brochures in hand, smiles the size of slices of melon.

  One game in and I already feel like The Beatles. What’s going to happen if I make it to the end of the season?

  It takes me about an hour to get through everybody and obviously nobody’s obliging me to do it, but there’s no way I’m going to turn around and say no, because I’m not a dick like Kowalski.

  I don’t mind either. I remember doing the same when I was a kid and even back then the access was much easier. We’ve still got a similar thing in hurling, but when I look at soccer and some of the other big sports, rugby, and field hockey included, some of those players don’t think they have any responsibility to be part of it.

  Whatever. A selfie is a selfie at the end of the day and an autograph means nothing to me but it’s like fucking gold dust and leprechaun's tears to an eight-year-old with nothing else on their mind but their favorite game.

  When the crowd finally parts, everyone has got the autograph or the photo or the handshake they came for, and I’ve waited long enough to make sure there is nobody left, I finally make my way out of there.

  Before I’ve even made it halfway across the square a voice from behind me stops me dead in my tracks.

  “Hey, you forgot to do mine.”

  I know it’s her even before I’ve turned around. A voice like that, you don’t forget easily.

  “Holy fuck, my back alley angel”, I say.

  “Hello, Rory”, Izzy says, and smiles.

  This is fucking bizarre. I mean, I knew there was always a chance of us bumping into each other, but here? Hunted down outside my place of work only a week after I’m back in the country? I know I’m good, but I didn’t expect this. Not in a million years.

  “Real girl”, I confirm.

  “The very same.”

  She’s even better looking than I remember, and it feels even better than I thought it might to see her. Until now, I’d known this girl for less time than this whole conversation, yet I’ve thought about her almost every night since. That’s fucking weird, especially because she’s now standing right in front of me, as real as a hurling stick.

  “How long’s it been?” I ask.

  Izzy shrugs. “A year I’d guess, maybe more.”

  “What a weird fucking coincidence”, I say.

  “You played well, especially for your first game”, she says.

  “Oh, you saw that?”

  Izzy holds up her entrance ticket. “Imagine my surprise when I found out who was on the roster. I thought it might be rude if I didn’t say hello.”

  “And here you are.”

  “And here I am”, she says. “Turns out you really are famous.”

  I smile.

  “I told you I was worth it”, I say.

  A moment passes while we take each other in, two former lovers who bumped hard in the night a year ago, now crossing the same orbit for the second time around. I thought this night couldn’t get any better, but here we are, a guaranteed fuck with my number one fan thrown into the bargain.

  “We need to talk”, Izzy says.

  I raise my eyebrows and smile. Even easier than it was last time. “I thought you’d never ask”, I say, already thinking about where the nearest alleyway might be.

  Four.

  Izzy

  Same intense stare, same solid arms, same cheeky smile. Oscar has that smile, and here it is again, the original version beaming down at me in all its glory.

  “I can’t believe you are here”, he says, arms in the air to draw out my form.

  “I live here”, I say. “If anything, I’m the one that should be surprised.”

  “You look good.”

  “I can’t believe you actually remember me”, I say.

  “Are you serious? No-one has ever made me feel like that, before or since. Plus, I’ve been thinking about you a lot.”

  “Oh.”

  “There’s not much else to do in jail but think”, he says.

  “That’s very flattering, thank you.”

  Rory gulps at his pint but doesn’t keep his eyes off me.

  “So, have you come back for round two?” he asks.

  “You mean you haven’t found anyone else yet?” I ask.

  Rory shakes his head. “Real girls are thin on the ground.”

  “You might have to get used to that if you’ve signed a contract for a year”, I point out.

  “Don’t tell me you’ve moved on without me”, he says.

  “It has been a year.”

  “You were the one that ran away.”

  I shrug. “Holiday romance.”

  “Except I’m back now�
��, he says.

  “You don’t look like the type that likes to get serious”, I point out.

  “And you don’t look like the type that likes to fuck in back alleyways.”

  “Was it that good or are you that desperate?” I ask.

  “Like I said, I’ve been thinking about you a lot since I last saw you.”

  “Round two?”

  “For a start”, he says.

  I sip my beer, careful not to take my eyes off him. This is the first proper conversation I’ve ever had with the father of my child - which, by the way, is one of the strangest sentences I think I’ll ever say - and I don’t know where it’s going or where I want it to end up. Did I come here to tell Rory about his son? To get money? Because I’m lonely and the last time we bumped into each other it was good enough to make me come so hard the bricks on the wall behind me began to crumble?

  “You said you wanted to talk”, he says.

  “We didn’t really get a chance last time.”

  “Did you want to last time?”

  I shake my head. “No.”

  “But you do now?” he asks.

  “You do talk as well as fuck, right? I mean, that is part of your repertoire?”

  Rory leans back into his chair, a smile as wide as the crescent moon. For a man that plays a sport that actively encourages fighting, he has somehow maintained a perfect row of teeth.

  “I knew you were a real girl the moment I saw you”, he says, a bar mat in his hand to demonstrate his point.

  “How do you figure that?” I ask.

  “You’re not into all this theater and bullshit, you say it like it is.”

  My eyes drop to the table for a moment, while I think about the secret I’m hiding from him. I know the action will look humble, but I still feel bad about what I’m not saying and should. The thing is, I do have to play this the right way, or I’m going to risk everything and get nothing. Round two thrown into the mix as well as some child support money? I certainly wouldn’t complain at that.

  “I think it’s pretty ballsy to do what you did”, he says.

  “What did I do?” I ask.

  “Well, what we did in the first place not many girls would do, and now this, you waiting for me after the game. That’s pretty progressive.”