Page 89 of Fever Dream
“You’ll see when we get there,” Sonny huffs.
“Is Izak coming?”
Sonny pins his lips, looking at me before sighing. “Don’t get mad but when I got Harrison’s text earlier we decided to divide and conquer. He’s over at Harrison’s making sure he’s not spiralling.”
My heart thuds low in my chest as tears prick at the backs of my eyes again.
“Thank you,” I say, landing on Sonny and pulling him into a desperate hug. Damn I have great friends. Part of the main reason for my spiralling headspace was worrying about Harrison being all alone out here without close friends or family to lean on. Sonny and Izak just made things a million percent better for me.
“I really love you guys. You know that, right?”
“I know, bro,” Sonny says, patting me on the back. “Just don’t go confusing me with Harrison. I love you but I don’t want you to get handsy with me.”
I laugh, the feeling foreign after this horrible day. “Don’t worry, Sonny boy. You’re not my type,” I grin back. At least the paparazzi have cleared from my driveway as I follow Sonny out to his Beemer. He drives us to the local squash court, and we hire some racquets and go to town thrashing the squash ball for the next couple of hours.
I feel only marginally better after the slog fest. But I don’t feel worse, so I take that for the win it is.
***
For the rest of the week I go through the motions. I rock up for training at the expected time, go through my drills and treatment program and then I go home to my empty house. Where I defrost meal kits for dinner and eat them alone.
The paps have popped up every now and then, but they must have gotten pretty bored when it became clear nothing is happening from my end.
Harrison stays clear of the club. I don’t know what he’s doing with his time but Sonny assures me he and Izak are checking in on him so at least I don’t have to worry about that. Too much at least.
He’s a constant in my thoughts and my overactive mind is at its finest this week. I hardly sleep, my mind so active and restless and just feeding into my worst doubts and fears.
Coach goes easy on me this week and I kind of wish he didn’t. At least Dean Hampton treats me just the same and I relish the burn when he gets me on the training circuit. I need it, need to feel something even if it is just mindless pain. It’s better than the alternative.
The Fever’s phone rings off the hook all week with requests for comment on my relationship status. It’s every bit the distraction Harrison said it would be. I do my best to shut it all out. Coach closes all our training sessions this week, the buzz around our club almost as intense as the week we faced the Dragons.
It’s just, that was all sports media attention before. Now it’s pay-per-shot paps with zoom cameras and loose morals and zero concern for the club’s privacy or access rules. Security found a guy hiding between the bleachers on our main training run who was promptly marched from the ground with a police escort.
James is a solid presence at my side all week, almost smothering me with support. Just like Sonny and Izak who try their hardest to keep things light. None of the other guys have approached me or asked me for comment on the true story and I appreciate that. I consider them all friends but none of them are close like I am with Sonny and Izak. Even James has always kept a professional distance, but I really appreciate his support this week.
I place myself on a media ban for the sake of my mental health, but Riley assures me the club has been a vault with not a word or comment spoken by anyone associated with the Fever. It gives me more comfort than almost any other news this week.
But I am heartbroken, lost and incomplete without Harrison. Nothing gives me comfort, nothing gives me rest. My entire house smells like him, my bed sheets infused with our combined scents. I just want him back and I don’t want to ever let him go.
But I respect his space. Even though I feel myself slowly dying with each passing day.
***
On Friday we fly out to Adelaide. And that’s where something unexpected happens. We’re the away team for Saturday afternoon’s game against the Adelaide Firetails so the boos I hear whenever I touch the ball are completely standard and somewhat routine. It’s what happens wherever I go and I try to take it for the compliment it is.
But amongst the boos, a little less prominent than usual if I had to hazard a guess, are a smattering of cheers. And they get louder up a certain end where the local cheer squad unfurl an enormous rainbow flag and wave it every time I go near the ball.
I’m so shocked by the gesture I fumble the easiest of chest marks from Vadra. I have never thought to associate myself withthe rainbow community before. I’ve always liked and admired them but I never considered myself as belonging to them. Well. I guess recent events put that admittedly oblivious view quite to shame.
Maybe Icanrepresent a community that has never had a voice in this league. I mean, the support in the AFL women’s league for the queer community is far more overt but that is sadly more to do with the fact women run the world over in that space.
I mark the ball in our forward fifty metre arc in the middle of the second quarter. I step back to take a set kick on goal, the expected boos interspersed with the occasional homophobic slur from the crowd.
But the negativity is completely silenced by the cheers from the rainbow waving crew, all of them wearing Firetail gear but they’re cheering forme. For every slur I hear from the crowd there’s another person calling outI love you, Casey.
And I know,I knowthat if Harrison and I ever have a future that this will become my life. Equal parts hate and love mixed in together in a swirl of opinions people never seem afraid to share.
I have no doubt the broadcasters are going crazy in the telecast box by the strangest home crowd reaction, bringing to light my recent week for anyone who has been living under a rock. I nearly choke up on national television as I move off my line to slot the goal neatly through the goal posts.
