Page 6 of Just Say (Hell) No
“I didn’t blame you at the start,” he went on, sounding as if twenty press-ups were nothing but a warmup. Which they probably were. He started them over again, then said, “I ran up behind you. Startled you. Fair enough. But afterwards? Did you thank me for my generous offer? Did you give me a dignified way out? You did not. You ran away and left me with a bona fide footy expert. I’m not even going to comment on the fact that if you’d let me turn off your headlights, you’d have been up here ten minutes faster.” He eyed her more closely. “Maybe fifteen.”
The sun was too hot, and her face was still dripping with sweat and probably flushed to beetroot state. Still, she felt a bit better. “Your new mate had something to say about your performance last night, did he? Could be you just lost to a better side.”
He hovered for a long moment at the top of a press-up, then leaped to his feet in one smooth movement. “Now, I call that cruel. And if you knew who I was, why did I get all that talk about Macing me? I was sweating.”
“You were not sweating. It takes more than that to make you sweat.”
He grinned at her, lifted the collar of his singlet, and wiped his face, exposing a flash of taut, ridged midriff in a quite possibly delicious shade of golden brown. And a thin line of dark hair leading south from his navel, straight into the top of those black shorts. “Could be you’re making me do it,” he said. “But I’m happy you’ve noticed.”
She tore her gaze away and back up to his face fast, but not before he’d caught her looking.
At fourteen, she’d thought he was her knight on a white horse. At seventeen, she’d learned better. Ten more years had done him some favors in the body department, but she wasn’t sure they’d improved his character.
She smiled back at him, saw the answering smile get cockier, and said, as sweetly as she could manage, “I’m so impressed by that, I’ve come over a bit faint. Time for me to go.”
“If you’re faint,” he said, “I reckon I’d better buy you lunch.” So confident, like he had only to offer himself up, and the world and all its women would be his. She wasn’t fourteen anymore, though, and she didn’t have any illusions about the romantic intentions of rugby players. Even All Blacks weren’t necessarily all they were cracked up to be.
“Cheers,” she said, “but no. I need to go. Thanks for telling me about my headlights. Goodbye.”
Sometimes, if you were very lucky, you got a second chance. You might still be able to fit your fist into your mouth, but at least the braces were gone, you hadn’t dropped any food, and you definitely didn’t feel like slinking away and dying.
Not anymore.
At three-thirty the next afternoon, Marko tugged his T-shirt over his chest, picked up his bag, and tried to make an inconspicuous exit.
He failed. “Off to learn your fate?” Koti James asked with a grin.
It would be easy to hate Koti. At this moment, in fact, Marko would swear the fluorescent lights of the changing room were gleaming off Koti’s too-perfect teeth and too-perfect abs like they’d been specially aimed there. As if his whole life were a movie starring Koti James.
It was easy to discount the man’s workrate if all you saw were the flash body and the oh-so-casually-flash skills. When you were in the gym with him, though, you saw how much grunt it took to keep both body and skills at that exalted level, especially once your odometer rolled over at thirty. Marko should know. It had taken him a full year to grind his way back from injury this time.
When he’d lain on the damp grass in New Plymouth last February, barely twenty minutes into a preseason match that wasn’t even meant to matter, he’d known too much was torn. There was no mistaking that pain. Worse than he’d ever felt, like his leg had been ripped straight off. He’d lain there, forcing himself not to scream, had thought,Months,and had fought the black despair.
The difference between a champion and everybody else, though, was that a champion didn’t give up. So when the doctor told him he’d ripped three ligaments in his knee, torn his right quadriceps straight off the bone, and, at thirty-one, would likely never play again? He’d set out to prove him wrong.
And he had. He’d fought his way back through every white-knuckled treatment session and every agonizing hour of training, and had impressed Fizzo enough along the way that the coach had taken him on at the Blues, a team sorely missing its own departed champion at Number 6, a team where he could make his mark. He was starting every match, and he intended to keep on doing it. Straight through the Rugby World Cup next year.
He knew that as things stood now, he was the number three choice in the 6 jersey when the All Blacks took the field in June, and he also knew the selectors would leave Number Three at home. If he were going to be standing on the field in the black jersey when the first ball was kicked off, he was going to have to do something special to get there.
Those other fellas wouldn’t step aside, so Marko was going to have to win that black jersey the same way Koti kept winning his, the same way every player did, up to and including the captain. One gym session, one match, and one disciplined day at a time. The knitting bag hadn’t been a misstep. It had been necessary for the team, and so was whatever he had to do next.
Focus on here. Focus on now.The casual banter, as always, lay atop that other, unspoken thing. The competitive drive that burned in every man who made it to this level, and that pushed him on toward the next. But the casual banter was necessary, too, the mortar between the bricks that built a team.
“Yeh,” he told Koti. “Off to see the PR. Any tips? Who is this woman? Should I be scared?”
Koti said, not one bit helpfully, “Definitely. You may think you’re the player and Brenda’s the PR, but nobody sent her the memo. You’re nothing but grist for her mill.”
Hugh had one massive foot on the bench, tying his laces. “Nah,” he said, apparently prepared to be lenient now that he’d shared his opinion on Saturday’s loss with the squad. “If she’s dreamt up something awful, I’ll do it with you.” He raised his voice enough to be heard over on the other side of the room, where the younger fellas were changing. “Seeing as it could’ve been me with the knitting bag, though I’m not sure I’d have been that inventive. Probably just have clocked you, Kors, which you well and truly deserved, you silly bugger.”
Tom Koru-Mansworth was still coming up with an answer to that—and failing—when Hugh asked Marko, “What’s your Tarot card of the day, mate?”
“Death,” Marko said.
“Ouch,” Hugh said.
“My mum,” Marko explained to Koti. “Hard to ask your mum not to send you her helpful, loving message every morning, but did I need to see Death on a white horse today?”
Koti was laughing, as well he might. “At least it wasn’t a match day. What’s Death, then? Other than, you know, Death.”
