Page 52 of Just for Me
Hayden wasn’t thinkingabout Christmas anymore. He wasn’t thinking about chocolate croissants or shopping or Picasso paintings with weird eyeballs.
He was just watching. Hands clenched together, breath coming hard.
His brother-in-law had been an elite rugby player, and his new brother-in-law was an elite rugby coach. It wasn’t that he’d never watched the game. It was just that he’d only watched the exciting parts: the lithe, nimble backs, passing and kicking and running, shifting direction on a dime, looking so athletic.
The forwards were a different story, and Luke was a whole differentbook.Impossibly strong, because they were doing a scrum again, on defense this time, and Racing was pushing Pau backward, then driving them off the ball. One person as the fulcrum of that lever. The one who’d taken two weeks off, had flown for twenty-four hours a couple of days ago, and had sat on the bench tonight for almost seventy minutes.
The backs must have picked up that new resolve, too, because after a game of dropped passes and missed opportunities, they were firing. Passing and catching and running, being tackled and getting up to pass and catch and run again. Meter by meter, down to the 10. To the 22. And getting nowhere.
None of that passing and catching now. Too risky, as the hooter sounded for 80 minutes. As soon as Racing lost possession, that would be the game. Instead, the forwards held on. One of them carrying the ball, getting tackled, and another picking it up and trying his hand, probing the line for a break that wasn’t there.
One minute. Two minutes. Three. Still nearly ten meters out, still doggedly trying. The crowd on its feet, roaring, and Hayden’s clasped hands at his mouth.
Yet another Racing forward running with the ball now, straight at the opposition, trying to run them over. Two of them grasping him, shoving him back.
Held up. That was the word. Held up. Any second now, it would be over.
Wait. Luke, his hands clutching the jersey of the ball carrier, shoving, reversing the opposition’s momentum. Two more Racing players joining him, bodies bent nearly double. Another maul, and Luke leading the charge.
It was flipping the truck tire down the field. It was raw power.
Shoving. Shoving. Shoving. Bodies straining, muscles standing out on forearms and thighs and calves. You could see it. You couldfeelit.
Five meters out. Four. Three. Two.
Over the line.
Hayden only knew he was crying when he tasted the tears. Stupid. Ridiculously emotional, over a rugby game, but it wasn’t the game. It wasn’t even the win.
It was the man.
21
EASY COME, EASY GO
Luke had thoughtit would have happened already. He’d been back from New Zealand for ten weeks, and he’d told about half of the All Blacks while he was down there. Some of those boys were playing in France now, going for the money at the end of their careers, so why hadn’t they talked?
He knew why. Mateship. Loyalty. He appreciated it, but if it wasn’t going to come out naturally, so he could confirm it and take the heat … what was he meant to do here? Hold a press conference? Talking at a press conference was his least favorite thing. He had to do it as England’s skipper, but he was rubbish at it. The thought of using it to say he was gay …
Yeh. No.
He could have told his team, but he wasn’t playing for Racing at the moment. He was in the midst of the Six Nations international competition, which meant hewasplaying for England. He was the captain, he was responsible, and this would be nothing but a distraction. A huge one, when they least needed it.
All this rationalization. He felt like a coward, and he’d never been a coward. What was the right thing? Only one more test match to play after this week’s match in Rome, and it was against Scotland. Not England’s toughest competition, you’d think, based on the record, but the rivalry was there all the same, fierce and deep. They’d be playing for the Calcutta Cup, the oldest trophy in rugby, and Scotland lifted for it every time. The score would be low, the battles brutal, and there would be a fight or two afterward. Not amongst the players. Amongst the supporters.
This time, they were playing the match in Edinburgh. How much more of a fight would there be if he’d come out by then? If his coming out meant England lost? He could take anything for himself, or he hoped he could. He couldn’t put that on his team.
Do it after the end of the Racing season,he told himself. It was only three more months.
He sat on an anonymous bed in a Rome Marriott, which looked exactly like all the other hotel beds and all the other hotels in his life, focused on the exercise book in his hands, ran through his points for tomorrow’s Captain’s Run, and tried not to feel lonely.
He didn’t get lonely. He was used to being alone. He’d been alone ever since he could remember, or at least since he’d been sent away to school. Ever since Hayden had gone home two months ago, though, there’d been an emptiness in his flat, in his life, that he hadn’t known since that first day at school. Nine years old, walking away from his brother and into the cold.
The tears on Kane’s face, not understanding.
Hayden’s face at the airport, saying goodbye. Hayden trying to be funny and clever, smiling and smiling and smiling. Not touching and not kissing, because Luke couldn’t. It was too public. He’d just stood there, arms at his sides, until Hayden had walked away. He’d kept standing there until Hayden was lost from view in the security queue.
Hayden hadn’t looked back.
