Page 93 of Spring Awakening

Mali wonders if he regrets saying they should be friends for the remainder of his time here. Somewhere, she knows it makes sense to him. He’ll think she’ll be a little hurt now, and she’ll get over it. Somewhere in his tortured heart, he has no idea how much she loves him. How her entire world turned upside down the moment he called her bro in the office.

She swallows. “It’s going to be fine. The premiership will be good for you, and don’t tell Frankie, but I’ll work on sponsors for you. You can buy yourself out so fast. Maybe you’ll even like it there.”

“Frankie heard nothing,” Frankie replies. She looks at Ezra, then at her plate. “Mal, how is the Goliath sponsorship coming along?”

She perks up a little. This contract has been so stressful because she feels like so many people’s dreams are pinned on it. Zach put his proposal in for a junior league, but now he might not get to see it either way. She wonders if Zach will try to pull away from her when he moves. If he thinks it’ll be better for her.She wonders how long he’ll reply to her messages and answer her calls—if she’ll be doomed to watch him see the junior league come to fruition through Instagram stories he likes and refuses to comment on. She wants to believe they’ll get through it. She wants them to get through it. She’s not sure Zach trusts her like that.

“It’s going. I’m really hoping it comes through at the end of the week,” she says, for no specific reason at all. “Did you allocate the funding yet?” She’s about as subtle as she can be, but no one looks at her in a weird way, so she thinks she got away with it.

“Yep,” Frankie says. “But it’s not here yet.” She looks at Ezra again, and Mali’s heart sinks. So they can’t buy Zach out right now, and by the time it’s here, he’ll be locked into a contract with Dougals, but that’s okay. It’s just a few years, and she’ll still get to hold his hand when they’re seventy-five. She’ll still be able to see their children run along the river. He will still be hers in three years.

Mali smiles, and she lets her foot rest against Zach’s shin. He moves, and she can’t tell if he was already moving and she didn’t realise, or if he’s moving because that’s not casual. He looks at her, and she can’t tell at all.

“Frank,” Zach starts. “If we can get it in before I leave, you wanna do a magazine cover with me?”

Mali smiles, and Frankie frowns. “What for?”

He shrugs. “I’m bisexual. We think it’d be good to get it out… but I’m not the first queer person on the team.”

“Everyone knows I’m gay,” she replies, but her face lights up all the same.

“Yeah,” Ez says, stabbing another piece of chicken. “But imagine how pissed off Aunt Linda would be if you put it on a magazine cover.”

She laughs, her head thrown back with the force of it. “You think we could get Gayle’s?” Gayle’s is the oldest Black-ownedmagazine around. It’s basically a historical archive. They’ve done a few sports pieces before, but Mali thinks they’d be interested.

Mali nods. “I’ll send an email.” She wonders if she should say the rest out loud, but there’s already so much sadness in the room, and she wants to say something good. “You know, Glory Park want you for their new women’s collection.”

Frankie’s eyes bulge out. “They what?!”

CHAPTER THIRTY

Zach walks onto therugby pitch with a heaviness in his chest he’s never experienced before. He’s left multiple clubs. Most of the time, he barely has a chance to say bye before he’s packed his stuff and moved to the next place. He never had people he wanted to say goodbye too. Now, he knows he’s leaving, and he has to play the last games with his friends anyway. He hasn’t told the entire team yet. Frankie thought it would be better to keep it quiet for a while, and he’s not the coach, so he didn’t argue. Ezra knows, and Kai figured it out when he looked down in the locker room. Perhaps that’s why they flank him now, as they walk onto the pitch.

He wonders how easy it will be to restart. He wonders if he’ll even give Scotland a good go, as Mali keeps asking him to do. Sure, if she didn’t exist, Scotland would be a big deal. It’s the premiership. His mum wouldn’t mind the move, though it wouldn’t be best for her. Mali is right. She’s doing so well here. Not well enough for her to not have consistent help, and he’d never ask Mali to do that.

A few months ago, he had no stronghold here. He grew up in Toulshire, but nothing about the streets ever felt like home.

Now, as he walks onto the pitch, he sees his entire life in front of him. The pitch he wants to retire on. His friends. The love of his life, in his T-shirt. She waves at him, and she’s looked so fucking sad all week that he barely stays standing. Still, he waves back. He wants to tell her he can’t take this anymore. That he’s moving out early because he can’t deal with the idea that she’s looking at him like she wants to keep him and he has to leave. It’s killing him, and he’s not sure how he’s supposed to survive it. Maybe he doesn’t. Maybe falling in love is as tragic as the world warned him it would be, and he did it anyway, with one vague look across a carpark.

Every night, he’s fallen asleep without her—some vile rule he thought up about not hurting each other more—and he wonders if he’ll regret anything more than not spending every moment he had with her while he had the chance. Mali is so sure they’ll get through these years. He’ll play for the Dougals, in Scotland, and he’ll visit when he can, and they’ll still be friends after. She’s so sure, but he’s not.

Mali deserves to be as happy as she can be. She wants a family. She wants children. She wants a relationship with someone that’s not so stupid they sign up with the devil. Zach’s never been good at maintaining a good thing, and he’s terrified he’s going to let her slip away because he can’t get out of his own head. When he’s sleeping alone, hundreds of miles away, will he remember how he makes her laugh? Will he remember how she so clearly cares about him? Will he remember how he makes her happy?

Then, the whistle blows, and Zach runs. It’s what he’s been taught. It’s what he’s good at. He tunes out the roar of the crowd, the screams of his teammates, and Zach runs. He barely gives the opposing team a second to try and take him down, and then he does what Frankie’s taught him to do. He plays as part of ateam. He strikes the opposing members in the stomach with his shoulder, he ploughs men to the ground as Kai runs with the ball, he defends his friends.

When it’s Zach’s turn with the ball, he knows he just has to duck and weave. The rest of the team have his back. A thought flies through his mind. What would happen if he got injured? Dougals wouldn’t want him. Titans would let him go. How are his agents going to force him to move if he can’t walk, let alone run? They’dhaveto release him from his contract.

Zach pictures the scene. It’s a rainy Thursday in December. It’s late, dark, and cold, and he’s sitting outside, trying to fix someone’s porch light. His fingers are cold to the bone, and he should be miserable, but all he can see is Mali at home. Maybe the kettle is on. Maybe she’s waiting with their children in front of the fire and Buffy scratching his slippers.

He slows just a pace, and the opposing team knock him to the ground. He screws up his face as he hits the floor. He took a knee to the jaw, but it was his fault. He put himself in the way. The whistle blows, but it does nothing to stop the ringing in his ears. He’s ushered off the pitch, and he sits on the bench, his nose dripping blood between his legs.

“Zach,” Mali says, her voice panicked as she sits next to him. Nothings broken; he’s just bruised, and he had to shove his jaw back into place. “What happened?”

“They’re a good team.”

“Liar,” she replies, her voice low. She tilts his face up to her, her hand light against his jaw. “I know you’re scared, honey, but getting injured is not going to help.”

He scowls. “It might.” The blood from his nose runs down his chin and onto her hand. She looks at it, takes a deep breath, and closes her eyes. He’s hurting her just because he can’t cope with the consequences of his own actions. She fumbles around, looking for gauze while her eyes are closed. Zach passes it to her.

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