Page 79 of Rookie Recovery

“No, the cart inventor guy.”

“Sylvan Goldman?”

“Sylvan Goldman, that guy. When he didn’t invent the cart until 1937. That leaves two years until the end of the Great Depression. I highly doubt carts were ubiquitous enough to warrant an entire section of a museum.”

I side-eyed him. “Sure, grandpa. We should get you home, yeah?”

Jamie looked at me then and smiled, and I knew Sylvan Goldman hadn’t been occupying his thoughts. “What were you thinking about?” he asked me. “I probably only need one guess, don’t I?”

I mean, he wasn’t wrong. “Actually, I was just thinking about your tattoos.”

Jamie sat up straight and gazed down at his forearms as though only just remembering he had them. He flexed his muscles, and I watched the shoulders of a big black cat twitch.

“You want to know about them?” he asked.

“More than anything.”

“Sure, okay. This sleeve.” He held up his right arm, showing off part of his grizzly-themed decoration there. “This was to celebrate our 2007 win. That’s why it’s mostly bears. This sleeve.” He held up the other arm. “Are reminders of my losses. Not the team’s losses, the Bears’, but mine. Bad checks, cheap shots, fighting, lots of fighting.”

He blew out a breath. “I was the Rowan MacKenzie of my day. Maybe not as scrappy as him, but you know. I let my emotions get in the way. Like him. And when I saw red, that was that. Some of these”—his fingers trailed over ink—“were to remind me that losing control meant losing everything.”

He laughed, but it was a humourless laugh. A snort. A pfffft kind of laugh, and shook his head.

I tried to imagine Jamie fifteen years younger. The control freak without control. An emotional wreck. Throwing down at every opportunity. Without his button-downs, and fancy wristwatch, and manicured hands, and shiny shoes. I tried to imagine him with raw knuckles, and split lips, and that permanent scowl not aimed at me for once. I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t picture it. Couldn’t see how he went from Rowan-esque to this super-polished physio dictator.

There had to be a reason. Did he wake up one day and think, Fuck, I’m a big meanie? I doubted it. Something must have happened to change him this drastically. I wanted to ask him about it. Dig a little deeper, but I had the distinct impression he’d shut down entirely if I did. So I steered the conversation back to his tattoos. The added bonus: I got to unashamedly drink in that magnificent body of his.

“I like this one best,” I said in a whisper.

“Which one?” Jamie’s voice was soft again, as though he was brushing the last two minutes under the picnic blanket.

“This one.” I pushed the hem of his Henley up over his stomach, and sucked in my breath. Jamie obligingly leant back onto his elbows, allowing me to push it higher, revealing the ink on his chest. A phoenix perched on top of a skull, its wings spread wide, surrounded by twisting Celtic knots that disappeared over his shoulders.

“Ah,” he said, and now he was genuinely smiling. “This one is for my family. The phoenix for my mom, because she was born in Greece, and the Celtic pattern because my dad’s family is Scottish.”

“It’s …” Beautiful. Incredible. Mesmerising. But I seemed unable to speak. I held my palm aloft over the dead centre of Jamie’s chest, right above the phoenix.

Jamie nodded his consent, and when I brought my fingers down to caress his skin, his breath stuttered. His eyelids closed. My fingertips traced the inked pathways across his pecs, up near his shoulders, down over his abs, around his belly button. I could have spent hours admiring everything about them and him.

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?” I asked.

“One brother, younger. Dave.”

“Does Dave have a piece on your body?”

“Yeah,” Jamie said, huffing out a laugh, and he turned onto one hip to show me a tattoo on the other, nearly in butt territory.

“Bart Simpson?”

“His middle name is Bartholemew, and he was a fucking troublemaker. When we were kids, we used to prank call our neighbour. Pretend to be Seymour Butts and Mike Rotch. I could never do it with a straight face or without laughing, but he was a pro.”

“What’s your middle name?”

Abruptly, he sat up rigid. “Oh, my God, is that a bald eagle?” He pointed into the distance, at nowhere in particular.

I slapped my hand against his massive bicep. “Oh, come on, tell me. It can’t be that bad. Mine’s Rex by the way. Which is really cool, so …”

“Nope. Hard pass on that.”

---