Why yes, I did just post a ClikClak video asking my 75,000 followers to find me the man of my dreams.
Chapter 8: Xavier
My body loves this day. My brain hates it. After a long season, we're done. There's no practice on the schedule. No game to play. Nothing to do with my time.
Downtime is my brain's archnemesis.
I'm bruised and sore, the season taking its toll on my body. That hamstring injury still nags, right up in the middle of my buttock, and I know it's only going to finally heal with some rest and relaxation.
I do neither well.
Normally, I'd fly back to England to visit my folks for a few weeks. But with COVID and travel restrictions, I'd be nervous that I'd spend my entire visit in quarantine. Or worse, that I'd take something home to my mum, who already struggles with chronic asthma. I keep asking my parents to move here, but since I'm gone so much, it hardly seems worth it.
Not to mention, they don't want to leave their flock behind.
So here I am, no schedule, no routine, no nothing for at least a week while I let my injury heal. I'll probably head up to Boston to catch the Buzzards in the playoffs. If I can't be on the field, I can at least support Coach Janssen. Bjorn took a risk on me when I was blackballed in Europe. If he asked me for a kidney, I wouldn't think twice before heading to the hospital.
To say I was livid when the Terrors gave him the ax would be an understatement. I wanted to walk myself, but with my international status, finagling a trade requires more work. There aren't a lot of teams who will invest in a player with a history like mine.
I pull out my phone and make travel arrangements to fly to Boston. I should probably let my agent know where I'm off to since he's the only one who has an interest in me off the field, but this trip is totally for pleasure.
After my reservations are made, I open ClikClak. I'd be fibbing if I said I didn't take some kind of pleasure in the embarrassment it caused to Trent. I've half a mind to tag him in the video, just so everyone knows who the wanker is.
It pops up several times in my feed of suggested videos. I like each one if only to help with the traction of the video. Though I do feel bad for the girl. Lovely Lia. But wait, that's not what Trent called her. He said her name … Ophelia Finnegan.
I wonder why that's not in her ClikClak profile.
I open Instagram. I take a quick selfie, lying on the couch and caption it, "What exactly does one do on a Monday?" After posting, I scroll through my followers until I find Trent's name. His latest post makes me stop.
It's a graphic of the quote, "Karma is a bitch, and so are you. No one will ever touch you again."
It's crude enough to make me pause. But my blood begins to boil when I see he's tagged @OpheliaXOXO in it.
That poor girl.
I think back to how excited she was to be seeing her boyfriend. To be surprising him with such a gesture.
I click on her name and her profile comes up. It's mostly pictures of her cat, a big, fat yellow tabby. She's not very active on this site. I switch back to ClikClak and search for LovelyLia. I find her easily and then follow her.
Don't ask me what is possessing this behavior, other than boredom.
And then a new video pops up. If I didn't know better, I'd think she was on her way to being thoroughly pissed. There's a slight sway to her movement that I don't recall seeing when she was at Trent's on Friday night. She doesn't speak, but graphics and words pop up, timed to the music and her dancing.
Basically, she wants ClikClak to find her the perfect guy. Requirements: not too tall, not too far away, and not too much of a dick.
Her words, not mine.
She also wants someone who's romantic and loves big, grand gestures, and who doesn't mind that she's an accountant.
Poor lass. She's going to get her heart stomped on. Again.
I switch back to Instagram and before I can analyze what I'm doing, I click on Ophelia's profile, and then "Messages."
Me: Hi there. I'm the bloke who recorded your romantic surprise video. I'm sorry you didn't realize what a wanker Trent was before, but he was and will always be a wanker. Don't take down the video. It's much too amusing to watch his face go all shades of scarlet every time someone mentions it. Hang in there.
I don't know why I do it. I don't know why I say those things, other than this poor girl wants someone to come riding in like a knight on a white steed and save her. She's going to die alone, probably with about ten more cats. The last thing she needs is a tosser like Trent.
Next, I message Claude Kenley, strength and conditioning coach for the Buzzards to tell him I'm coming to Boston and see if he has time to grab a pint. We shared more than our fair share of them the year after I moved to the States when I roomed with him. It wasn't usual for players to be staying with staff, but my situation was anything but usual.
