Page 8 of Rookie Recovery

“But I’m not a rookie,” I’d cried. Or maybe I had only replied in my head, since my mouth had been so full of sick. I wasn’t a rookie, but I sure as shit felt like it sometimes. Especially every time I got transferred to a new team. Which seemed to happen more and more frequently these days.

I wanted to say my guardian angel was a woman. But other than that, I was drawing a blank.

What else had happened last night?

The chimes of my phone’s alarm began ringing again. Apparently, my nine gifted minutes of ‘snooze’ had elapsed.

8:09 A.M. on a Sunday! A heinous crime of near biblical proportions.

It’s 1:09 P.M. at home, my brain helpfully told me. A reflexive habit that still hadn’t worn off. Though sometimes got a little muddled during the two weeks when our daylight savings times didn’t align.

I shut off the stupid alarm and rolled out of bed, realising two things. I was stark-bollock naked, and I’d fallen asleep on the sofa, not my bed. I crashed onto the desperately-in-need-of-vacuuming rug, a, thankfully, unused sick bucket, and a half-empty plastic beaker of water. Well, completely empty now. I watched as the contents crept around the leg of the coffee table.

Hmm, someone else had been in my apartment with me last night. No chance in hell I’d have remembered to prepare a barf-bucket, or fetch my duvet from my actual bed without just collapsing there instead.

I figured that whoever had left the sick bucket and the water was the same guardian angel from the bar. My bardian angel, if you will.

Urgh. I groaned at my joke. No wonder I never let the real me interact with other people.

Instinctively, I turned my head to look into my flatmate’s room. His door was wide open, his bed still neatly made, probably gathering a noticeable layer of dust by now. The guy hadn’t been home last night. Not that I was expecting him back anytime soon. Originally, I’d taken on the flatshare in the secret hopes I’d get the whole Joey and Chandler American best buddy experience. But I’d stupidly moved in with a music producer who spent fifty percent of his time in Miami, forty-nine percent of his time in NYC, and less than one percent in Bringham. I’d been living in his schmancy, impersonal, city apartment for two weeks, and I’d seen the guy for a total of thirty-five minutes.

Not even sure I could remember his name. Chad or Chase, or something else so American it made Mum spit take when I told her.

So, not my flatmate then. I clenched and unclenched my butt-hole muscles. Definitely didn’t have sex last night either. I probably should have been more concerned with who'd tucked me in, but there was no time. So I hauled my disgusting ass into the bathroom, because even though I’d end up dripping with sweat at training in a couple of hours, I was absolutely minging.

And nobody wanted to sit next to a minger in the locker room.

In the shower, my innards made one final protest at last night’s antics, emptying whatever remnants of food and alcohol and stomach lining dared to cling on, and then immediately, and without warning, one-eightied to near perishment. And I was struck with a searingly desperate need for a greasy, fried breakfast.

Specifically, a Pauline’s full-English. Fried eggs, bacon, sausages, hashbrowns, mushrooms, grilled tomatoes, black pudding, proper Heinz beans, none of that cheap supermarket shite, toast with fuck-tonnes of butter. I was still yet to find the Maine equivalent. I could make it myself, of course, but that would have required … movement.

My brothers would be there this morning. At Pauline’s. The only greasy-spoon in Bruton Willesbury. No doubt recovering from whatever bender they were on last night.

I am making the right choice.

I am following my dreams.

I only had to say this to myself a squillion more times and I might one day start to believe it.

Though, I supposed, living nearly on your own did sometimes come with benefits. For example, nobody saw me stickhandling in the kitchen at three A.M. in only my pants—underwear to my American friends—and socks. And nobody could see me now, as I walked naked from the bathroom, dodging un-unpacked box after box, on my way to the bedroom.

I probably should move them out of the communal spaces; it wasn’t my apartment after all. But I figured, what was the point? The closer I stored them to the exits, the easier it would be when I got shipped off somewhere else.

Sunday was the day I always called my family. Usually early afternoon for me, so evening for them. I pictured Mum, on the cream leather armchair of the three-piece-suite they’d had since the nineties, slippers abandoned on the carpet, bare feet tucked under her legs. The Strictly results show would be on the telly, or whatever other glitzy programme she was currently watching, and a plate of bubble and squeak and cold roast meat for tea would be nestled on her lap tray.

I’d call, and we’d chat, sometimes for hours. And talk about everything. Hockey (even though I had to re-explain the rules each time), her Zumba classes with Lyn, Dad’s hiking club, rugby, my brothers, rugby.

Like every mum worth her salt, she was intrinsically obsessed with her children's love lives. Or lack thereof. Unfortunately for Mum, her five sons, ranging in age from thirty-nine to twenty-one, were all still in their sowing-wild-oats phase, without any serious prospects of settling down and giving her tiny, red-faced, screaming bundles of shitty-nappied joy.

But since I didn’t know how long I’d be at training today, and since Dad didn’t like me calling after nine P.M. their time, I decided to ring as I was getting dressed.

Mum answered. “Archie! Sausage, we weren’t expecting your call for another few hours.”

In the background, pots clanged against the draining board, something was sizzling, the radio was playing its usual Sunday West End and Broadway segment, my brothers were yelling and “Ooohing” and laughing.

“We’re just about to have dinner,” Mum said. “Call back in an hour?”

“I can’t,” I whinged. “Got training in an hour.”

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