Rooster: A Secret Baby Sports Romance (38 page)

The first two downs only get them an advance of a couple of yards, but it runs the clock down by almost a minute. On the third, Duggins breaks before the call and the play is repeated with a five-yard penalty. They are third and two with a minute and a half on the clock, thirty-five yards from the goal and my heart is in my mouth.

Again they change the play at the last minute and again our defensive line hustle to get organized into something they think might be the best way to defend it. I have no idea what’s coming, and when the ball is snapped and gathered sweetly, my heart stops beating.

There is a faked throw, before Bayer turns, ignores his running back and runs himself, ball tight under his arm and a whole wall of our players closing in to sack him. Everyone is on their feet, watching him as he goes, the yards disappearing under his quick feet, that first down line closing in fast.

At what looks like only inches from securing a first down, Metzler finally gets it together enough to get across and Bayer gets hit hard, not once but twice, as Cole joins him and our two tackles drop him fiercely to the ground.

After the call gets referred to video replay, and it’s discussed, re-discussed and played out to a crowd of millions, and every single Giants fan all over the world holds their breath, they finally make a decision.

The Jets are less than the width of my dick from a first down, but fractions count and this one, a world away from home, miraculously goes our way. I can visibly see their mood sink and even though they kick a field goal on the fourth and go into the last minute of the game three points to the good, they are downtrodden and psychologically beaten.

I take to the field so pumped with adrenaline I’m basically floating. I have a vision so clear of how the next sixty seconds will play out it’s almost as if I’m sat alongside the spectators watching from afar. It’s almost as perfect a play as you’ll ever see. I’ve never thrown better in my life, never connected so well with the players around me, never felt so in harmony with my environment, and that’s a lot to say coming from a three time Superbowl winner and four-time MVP.

The first down sees a dart ball travel forty yards through the air and whizz into Kaepernick's hands like a laser. The second gains us a first down at their twenty-yard line, from a rushed play that the Jets never look able to stop.

We are first down and twenty-two and this game has never seemed easier. The Jets are poor imitations of their former selves, wandering around the field like lost ghosts waiting for someone new to haunt.

They’ve fucking lost, even before the game is up. Even before, with fifteen seconds on the clock, I stand tall, take the snap, and throw an unstoppable ball-on-a-string pass that’s so accurate it’s impossible to do anything else with it but win the game. My wheelchair bound grandmother could have caught it, even if Reggie White were covering her. Not even Luke could have thrown a better ball.

The Jets look stunned, the crowd falls silent and with less than ten seconds to go we are 31-27 up and everyone knows the game is definitely over.

The last few seconds are a beaten team going through the motions. We kick, they catch, run ten yards into a defensive line they’ve not been able to get the better of all game, and the visiting crowd erupts, while the home crowd quietly escape, tails between their legs, pride battered and bruised.

Half of me can’t believe we’ve finally won, the other half can’t believe I ever doubted myself.

We do a courtesy victory lap, just enough to please the visiting fans, not too much to upset those home fans who still remain, glued in disbelief to their seats, and for the first time all season I feel fired up enough to want to go out hard and celebrate our win.

Every player does after every game, whether we win or lose, and so far this season I haven’t joined them. Tonight feels like the right kind of night to change all that.

In the locker room champagne gets passed around and I get a buzz on that feels so good I can’t believe I’ve been holding back for so long.

Everyone is complimentary, and even though I’m the focus of our team, I’m proud of everyone who’s had a part in our victory. I’m the original lone wolf, but today, the Giants came together and proved beyond any doubt that as a team, we are the ones everyone else needs to beat to prove they are worthy, and right now, that feels impossible. Right now, I feel unstoppable, and if there wasn’t something niggling at the back of my mind, something I know is missing to make this whole thing complete, one word going round and round, one scene getting played back over and over again, I’d feel like nothing could make this day any better.

I’m deeper in than I want when I head into the press conference, but it doesn’t stop me smiling. These penholders and article writers don’t bother me so much anymore, they’re going to say what they want anyway, whether it’s true or not, so what else can I do but smile, answer politely and wait until it’s all over for another week. I want to go out and celebrate the best game of my life, but this new me gets it as much as the old me hated it with a passion. I play their game and the chances are they’ll appreciate it enough to leave me alone. That’s the plan anyway, and as the star fucking quarterback, I don’t get to walk straight out to my car like the tight ends and the safeties get to do, but that’s why they pay me more, and that’s why I’m the face of a fucking soap bar, while Crosby’s the face that scares children.

It’s only half an hour anyway. Give them a bit of time and I’ll get it all back and some in return.

I can’t help but scan the crowd for her, not that I’ve ever seen her at one of these things anyway, but I do it out of habit and I can’t help but hope. Naturally, she’s not anywhere to be seen. There are familiar faces from a  number of different national newspapers, press agency and magazines, and there might even be someone here from Endzone, but Lucy Parker is definitely not in the house.

“That was one of the best team performances I’ve seen in a long time, arguably even better than anything last year, can you tell us how you feel?”

It’s a dumb-assed question but I answer anyway. “Ecstatic. Beating the Jets at their own ground is like a dream come true. That was what was missing from last season and now we’ve proved we are capable. I’m proud of everyone and personally, I feel like I’ve never played better football.”

“Do you put that down to your new attitude? I mean, I think a lot of us are still getting used to having you here after the game, hearing the sound of your voice even.”

Another dumb question that gets nods of agreement from the other reports.

“Yes”, I say, purposely keeping the answer short, and smile.

“There has been much in the news at the moment about a possible secret admirer, potential love interest. Is there any truth in that story”, someone in the back row asks.

“Absolutely none whatsoever.”

“So you are definitely single?”

“Exactly.”

“Unattached?”

The sexy reporter smiles a gorgeous smile at me and holds my gaze for long enough to tell me exactly what she’s thinking, while almost everyone else in the room looks at her with grins of subtle cynicism, perhaps unable to believe she’s asking me so directly, perhaps used to her doing it with others.

“Thank you”, she says finally, jotting what is probably her phone number on her notepad, before looking back up to me. “That’s good to know.”

The rest is pretty straightforward, with lots of questions about the coming games, the rest of the season, my changing attitude and whether I think we’ve got a chance to win it again.

It’s over in less than thirty minutes and I’m finally allowed to escape. I’m the last of the players in the locker room after I shower, get dressed and work out exactly how to spend the next forty-eight hours before I have to head back to our ground for training.

I can feel that mischievous, troublesome side of me niggling to get out, and at the moment, I’m not entirely sure if I’ve got enough energy after today to stop it.

On the way back to my car, which for once isn’t blocked by paparazzi, I hear a voice coming from behind me that chills my blood and stops me in my tracks more effectively than a three hundred pound approaching linebacker. I freeze, while my heart grinds to a halt, my skin bobbles up and my stomach does a twist, pike and full on three sixty. I’ve never felt fear like it, which for a man of my size and experience, really is saying something.

“Hello stranger”, the voice says.

I spin so quickly I almost buckle my ankle, and there she is, just standing there in front of me, as calm and as composed as a sonnet, even more beautiful than I remember her.

“Lucy.”

Lucy

Ok, so this isn’t awkward at all. I mean, I always knew it was going to be, but now I’m here, I can’t stop my hands shaking. Alex looks genuinely surprised to see me, genuinely appreciative too.

“Where have you been?” he asks me.

I stumble over the answer I’ve spent months rehearsing to the question I always knew would eventually come.

“I, you know-. Kind of-. Around”, I finally settle on.

“Around.”

I nod, hoping it’s enough, but I know it won’t be. I have a mountain of text in my head ready to spill out, it’s just the first word is always so difficult.

“Two months. I still have your bag.”

I hesitate. I stifle a laugh and I don’t even know why. I look away and then back to him my eyes wet with tears. I don’t know how to do this. It’s part of the reason that it’s taken me so long to come and find him. I just don’t know how to begin, but I do anyway.

“My dad died”, I say.

“Fuck.”

That ridiculous little laugh again, just to mask the pain.

“In fact, he died twice.”

“That’s impossible.”

“I know, right? Once wasn’t good enough for him, that’s typical
Dad
.”

I pause to wipe the tears away from my eyes with the heel of my hand, but it doesn’t stop them from coming anyway. “So, you know, there was that. How are you anyway? You look good. I saw the game.”

“Lucy.”

I nod. “I know.”

I pause to compose myself, and a smile breaks out across my face, the only thing that’s keeping me from falling apart completely, even though my lips are still trembling.

Alex sighs, this can’t be easy for him. “I don’t know what to say. It’s so good to see you.”

“Can we get a drink, you know, go somewhere?”

A beat between us in the space of time.

“Sure.”

“Alex?”

“Yes?”

“Can you hug me, please?”

There is a slap of sound as his bag hits the ground and even before the echo has faded, I’m wrapped up in the safety of his arms.

***

Life has a way of shitting on you sometimes, just to remind you who’s really in control. One moment you’re having the time of your life, and the next you’re fighting against everything, just to get to hospital in time to watch your father die. He wasn’t even fifty. I know that’s more than some, and more than Alex got with his own twin brother, but it was nowhere near enough for me.

He was healthy too. Right up until he decided to park his brand new bike under a lorry, at seventy-five miles an hour.

“You should have come to me, I would have helped”, Alex says.

“I didn’t know what to say.”

“And you do now?”

I shake my head. “I just knew I wanted to see you.”

It’s been two months for everyone else, a mish-mash of eternity and nothing for me. How time can pass so quickly sometimes and so slowly at others is a mystery I don’t think I’ll ever be able to comprehend. I don’t even know what I’ve been doing. I mean, I know roughly what’s happened around me, but what I’ve been doing is another thing entirely.

I’ve never experienced death so close to me before. Both of my grandfathers died before I was old enough to truly understand what it was like to lose them, the closest thing I’ve ever experienced to grief, what followed me around for two weeks after the death of my childhood bunny rabbit.

Losing Dad is a whole different ball game.

There was nothing they could do to save him. Like I said, technically he died twice. Once in the hospital room, I passed out watching, and then again as they tried to operate on him to get his heart beating in something more akin to a stable rhythm. In Mom’s words,
he was fucked from the moment they scraped his stupid ass of the ground.

She’s as bad as I am. We all are. My sister, my older brother, my two nephews, one of whom who is old enough to understand the concept of
never coming back.

We cremated him and then buried the ashes in a small plot in the grounds of a church he never visited once in his life, and the ground still hasn’t hardened sufficiently to put in the headstone, nor have I to fully accept it.

I can’t even begin to describe how I feel because numb goes nowhere near close to the reality of having a hole now where something so strong used to burn. Imagine the sky without the sun in it, just a dark void of nothing you know will never look back and you might get close to an approximation of what I’m carrying around with me. Now I know how Alex feels. Now I know how everyone feels who loses anyone close to them.