As vice, I should probably reprimand him for a comment like that. It’s my job, and Pi’s job, to keep our players in check, but all I say is, “Okay, but at least wait until the after party to do it. We don’t need another game lost on fucking conceded penalties.”
He salutes me. “Yes, sir. Of course, sir. I’ll wait till later, then I’ll tear him a new one. Literally.”
“Other than that,” Pi says, and anything else Darby spews about Rex Anton vanishes into the ether as I tune him out torefocus my attention on the screen. “We’ve had a bit of a shake up with players and positions, and we’ve been working hard to fill in the gaps of our weaknesses, but I can’t say much more yet, you’ll just have to watch. Whatever happens today, we’re all very excited to be back. I have a bunch of guys who are all buzzing and raring to get stuck in.”
“Well, I’ll let you finish getting ready.” Lydia turns towards the camera. “Ladies and gentlemen, your new captain, Aiden Campbell.”
The crowd erupt into cheers. They’re so loud that not only can they be heard through the TV, but the vibrations of their applause reach me through the stadium walls and the floor.
A few moments later Pi runs into the locker room as the screen switches to a DJ playing bassy tunes to energise the fans. He’s welcomed with his own mini fanfare from the Cents lads.
“How was I? How did I come across?” he says to me once everybody’s finished slapping his back.
“Shit, mate. Fucking awful. I can’t believe they picked you as captain,” I reply.
“Fuck off, you picked me.” He play punches my arm, then leans in, and while the rest of the locker room is consumed by noise and laughter and general pre-match chaos, he whispers, “I love you.”
Cool down 2
Aiden
Friday 23rd July 2032
“It’s not even that far. A two-and-a-half-hour drive at most,” I say to Eggo, looking out over the house’s quarter acre rear garden.
There’s an enormous lawn, and at the end, a little vegetable plot, a greenhouse, and a shed. A blank canvas, not that I have green fingers, and I’ve heard coastal properties can be a bitch to grow plants in, but I’d be game for another future special interest.
“The journey’s three hours minimum,” he replies with heavy emphasis on the wordminimum. “You’re breaking the law, princess.”
“Whatever gets me to you faster,” I say. I plant a gentle kiss on his mouth, and he melts into my touch.
“How long do you think it’ll take us to christen every single room in this house?” he asks, trailing his lips down my throat.
My brain instantly wants to go the literal route and calculate the actual answer. Three bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms, two reception rooms, a kitchen, a utility . . . Do the downstairs and upstairs halls count as one or two rooms? And is he including the boot closet, and the porch, and the gardens? And if so, we’ll need to consider an average nut time of approximately ten minutes, faster without any edging, and a refractory period of about half an hour to an hour—so long as Eggs doesn’t fall asleep—with a maximum of three nuts per day to avoid overexertion . . .
“About four days if we go flat out like a lizard drinking,” I say.
He laughs and tugs on the waistband of my shorts. “Then maybe we should start now.”
Behind us, something scrapes across the kitchen tiles. We whirl around. Chelsea, our estate agent, is standing beside the dining table. She has no intention of sitting in the chair she just pulled out, only of alerting us to her presence.
“Pardon the interruption,” she says, smiling. “I thought you’d like to know that your offer’s been accepted.”
It takes a few seconds for the meaning of those words to sink in. Over the past few months, Eggo and I have been travellingback and forth between Bath and Cornwall, looking at what must be close to fifty properties. It had started to feel like the perfect place didn’t exist. Like we were asking for too much—Eggo even began referring to it as his “Pi in the sky fantasy.”—when in fact all we wanted was a minimum of two bedrooms, one for us, one for Logan, a decent-sized garden for my now veteran doggo, and for the property to be within walking distance from the pub.
“Offer’s been accepted,” Eggo repeats in a whisper, as though saying it any louder would undo its magic. He stares at me for a few seconds longer, the comprehension dawning on his face. Then he lets go of me, high fives Chelsea, then hugs me again. “Hell yeah! Fuck yeah! Oh Jesus, I might cry.”
The past four and a half, almost five years of sharing my—our—little two-bedroom house in Bath, has been nothing short of a dream.
We’d wake up together, go to training together, play matches with each other, hang out at home and at Owen’s pub and in the park with Trekkie. We’d been on so many holidays. Exploring new cities, lazing around on new beaches, weekends away in caravans across the country with an excruciatingly quick-growing Logan.
But during the last two years on the pitch, Eggo’s suffered from injury after injury. Rotator cuff, ACL tear, concussion, rotator cuff again. It got to a point where the mishaps were stacking up faster than the recovery time, and we—because he wouldn’t make the call without me—decided retirement was the only sensible choice.
The 2031/2032 season would be his last. We started looking for houses near Newquay so Logan would only be a twenty-minute bike ride away from his father.
I still have another year or two, maybe even three in me before I retire and join him, so we’ll be doing the long distance thing for a while.
I’ll visit Cornwall between games. Eggs and Logan will come to Bath and watch me play, and the couple of months of the off season will be completely ours. When I finally give up rugby, whenever that transpires, I’ll sell my house and move in with him, and we’ll live happily ever after.
