Page 15 of Trying Sophie

Contrasted with my date with the Samuel days earlier, this was exactly the sort of conversation two people who were getting to know each other should be having. But then I reminded myself this wasn’t a date. This was me stuck in a car with a ridiculously hot man I’d once hated who I was now pretty sure my grandma was trying to foist upon me in some nefarious plot to spice up my love life.

Moving right along …

“That’s a tough question to answer. Every time I travel and things are going well I invariably think to myself, ‘this is the best trip I’ve ever been on.’ And of course it’s hard to compare a week in Bora Bora in an over-water bungalow with a few days in Tokyo surrounded by a million people and all those neon lights. They’re just two very different beasts, you know?”

Declan clenched his jaw so quickly that I would have missed the tic if I weren’t staring at him. Inwardly I wondered what it was I’d said that elicited such a reaction.

“Anyway, enough about me. Tell me about yourself.” I said, trying to draw him out.

“Not much to tell, really.”

He shrugged and while the gesture was meant to be an indifferent one, I read the tension in his body nonetheless.

“Except, you know,” I joked, “the part about you being a rugby god.”

He cast a quick glance my way and then back to the road. “There is that.”

He smiled but then his expression sobered.

“Outside of rugby … well, there isn’t anything. Rugby’s my life and I don’t have time for much else beyond that.”

“Surely there’s an off season?”

“Not a long one. I play for both Dublin and the Irish national team,” he explained, a note of pride lacing his words, “so my season’s longer than most. When we’re not playing in tournaments, we’re playing exhibition and test matches. I’ll get a couple of weeks off in late July but then I go back to training in early August.”

“Wow, that must be exhausting,” I observed, taking in his bruising cheek and the cut above his eye. “And painful,” I added, my hand reaching out to touch him.

Realizing what I was about to do, I quickly dropped it to my lap and hoped he’d missed the gesture since his gaze had been on the road. But then his eyes flicked to my face and down to my hand as a small smile tugged at his lips.

So much for him being unobservant.

Hoping to diffuse the strange tension building between us, I continued asking him about himself. I’d never given one thought to an adult Declan, and now that we’d become reacquainted I found myself wanting to get to know him.

“Do you live in Ballycurra then?”

He laughed. “Dear god, no. I have a small house in the city center, close to the stadium.”

My Irish geography was a bit rusty, but I remembered Ballycurra being about 30 minutes outside of Dublin, which was approximately 30 minutes from the airport, pending traffic. If he didn’t live in Ballycurra, I wondered why he’d volunteered for a long day of driving.

“So you’re going to spend about two hours in the car today just to have picked me up?”

Pulling his eyes from the road, Declan stared but didn’t answer.

What was he hiding?

Eventually, dragging his eyes back to the road, he said, “I’ll stop in to my mom’s after I drop you off. I try to see her at the weekend, or every other weekend if I’m too busy.”

“And you don’t have a game tonight or anything?”

“No, that was last night,” he responded, pointing to his face. “These don’t look so bad after two or three days but the day after I usually look like I lost a fight.” He chuckled. “It’s worth it though if it means we won.”

“And did you?”

Declan smirked. “Of course.”

“Congratulations then. Tell me about your match.”

Normally I hated talking about sports, but I didn’t mind hearing him explain the game. Athletes back home—the superstars—tended to be cocky and arrogant which was a huge turnoff. But Declan wasn’t like that. As he spoke, I could tell he really loved playing—from its history down to its mechanics—and that was what drove him, not the number of fans he had, the endorsement deals I was sure he’d made over the years, or the adoring women who must throw themselves at him. You know, all the things the last soccer player I’d met had regaled me with before I could escape him and fade into the background of the party. But Declan never once mentioned any of that. For him, it was all about what went on during those 80 minutes.

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