Page 49 of After the Siren
They both laughed, and Jake unearthed a tube of Pringles from the backpack. They deserved a snack. They’d worked hard.
They didn’t say much else, just lay on the beach until it was time to get in the water again, chased one another through the waves like they were kids, piled back into Jake’s ute, sandy and exhausted, and drove home. And if Jake thought a bit about Stavs’ lips wrapped around the mouth of a beer bottle, about his wet board shorts clinging to his strong thighs ...
Well. Nobody had to know.
Chapter Eleven
Theo was spotting for Drips when Dex came into the gym. Drips was on her last rep, straining to re-rack the bar, and Theo was focused on staying ready to grab it if he had to (but not grabbing it too soon, which would be almost as grievous an offence as leaving it too late). They’d started chatting between sets a few days earlier. He’d asked about the tattoos stamped down her arms, and she’d started asking him to spot if none of the AFLW players were around. She didn’t like encouragement, just a pair of hands and someone paying attention. He’d asked about her nickname, and she’d explained that that Yagmur meant ‘rain’ in Turkish. ‘It’s better than “YaYa”,’ she’d said.
He’d worked out, from their conversations – mainly conducted in intervals of one to three minutes – that her conservative Turkish father hadn’t been impressed by the tattoos, or footy, or the fact she had a girlfriend. It made Theo feel an odd blend of kinship and guilt. He understood chafing against parental expectations, but he had it much better than Drips. It felt petty to gripe about his parents when he’d neverreallyhad to worry. If anything, sometimes he wondered if he and his parents would be better off if they’d learned to shout at one another, let it all out, and then move on.
Dex walked purposefully towards them as the bar thudded into place and Drips sat up, breathing hard and grinning.
‘Nice job,’ Theo told her. Encouragement was prohibited, praise was not.
She blew out a breath and reached for her water. ‘Thanks for the spot.’
‘Any time.’
He hadn’t been dropped for the second pre-season game, and even his anxious brain had to concede that he’d played well. The wing suited him, and he’d banged in a goal from the fifty-metre arc. He knew he wasn’t going to be in the best 23 at the beginning of the season – he hadn’t needed themanaging expectationschat Kat had given him – but she’d also made it clear that if he maintained his form in the VFL, he’d get a run sooner or later.
Dex stopped beside them, hands on hips. ‘Good, two of you. Jaze is teaching me some of his tricky shit and we need more bodies. You done? Jaze said he specifically needs you, Stavs.’
‘Does he?’ The prospect was disconcerting.
‘We’re done,’ Drips said. It was clear that resistance would be futile.
He followed Drips and Dex down to the oval, and he felt his heart rate kick a little as they headed towards the group gathered in front of the goals. He still wasn’t enjoying anything involving goal-kicking. He could hit a target on the run, but as soon as he was kicking for goal he felt like a baby giraffe on uncertain legs.
Jake, Paddy, Xen and Gabby were gathered by one of the point posts, handballing a footy around while they chatted.
‘Good,’ Jake said when they arrived. He tossed the ball to Xen. ‘Xen’s gonna kick it to the two of you in a contest’ – he pointed at Gabby, then Theo – ‘and you’ll knock it down for us.’
‘Be gentle,’ Dex told Gabby. ‘Don’t break him.’
Gabby showed some teeth. ‘No promises.’
Theo wasn’t stupid enough to underestimate Gabby. She was only a couple of inches shorter than he was, and while he might have had a few kilos on her, he suspected she had about a tonne of raw determination on him. She’d also definitely deck him if he didn’t go as hard as he would with a dude.
He crushed his chivalrous urges as the ball came off Xen’s boot (Chivalry is just polite patriarchy, Priya said in his head) and went hard for the ball, the same way he would with any of the boys. He could tell Gabby was loving it, relishing the opportunity to use all her physicality. They knocked it down, again and again, as Jake showed Dex how he liked to run through defenders (Paddy and Drips) at stoppages, how he angled his body to the goal, how to knock the ball forward and run on to it. The kind of stuff he’d been practising since he was six years old.
Dex had played soccer before they’d switched to AFL, and Theo could see they were still trying to drill in the sort of skills you only learned through playing, hour after hour, until your body knew what to do before your brain caught up.
Theo enjoyed watching Jake when he wasn’t the one in charge of stopping him. He read the ball so well; he thrived on the chaos of a ground ball. Knew when to pick it up and when to tap it on.
He was a surprisingly good teacher as well. Theo knew a lot of people who couldn’t explain things they were good at. But Jake didn’t try to explain what hedidso much as what hesaw– what to look for, what cued each movement. He’d call ‘Stop!’ every now and again, and Drips and Paddy would freeze in place so Jake could show Dex what they needed to look for.
The drill devolved into chaos in the end. Dex started it with a solid tackle on Jake that Xen called as holding the ball, and then they were all playing an ad hoc game that was mostly keepings-off, switching teams and positions as they played.
‘Stavs!’ Gabby yelled, and then the ball was in Theo’s hands. He had his back to the goals, but he got it on his boot andsnapped it over his head without thinking. He justknewwhere the goal posts were, in a way he hadn’t for months. He didn’t have to look to know it had gone through.
Jake wolf-whistled and Gabby ran over for a fist bump.
After that, he couldn’t miss. It felt like for months he’d had to tell himself to take every breath, and now he was doing everything on autopilot again. Something inside him that had been knocked awry had clicked back into place. It was easy, the way it had been when he was seventeen, the coach working with him on his set-up, on his ball drop, on his follow-through, until one day it justhappened.
They took shots from weird angles, and Theo argued with Jake for a solid five minutes about how far was too far to kick round the corner (Theo was declared the winner after Jake missed two in a row).
Gabby called time and they all flopped down to stretch. Or, in Jake’s case, to roll on the grass.
