It’s always so baffling to me how such a tiny country like England can have so many ways of saying the same thing.
“You know that one hundred pesos is only about three or four Australian dollars?” I say.
“What’s that in pounds?”
I shrug. “Probably about two pounds.”
“Ahh, bollocks!” He looks down at his exposed flesh, then bursts out laughing. “McGinty’s such a shit.”
“I’m Aiden, by the way,” I say, even though it says as much on my name tag.
“My name’s Eggs or Eggo or Eggy, whatever you fancy. What do they really call you?”
“Huh?” Oh, he means like a nickname. “Just Aiden. I only joined the team about two weeks ago, so I’ve had hardly any training time with them.” Nobody’s bothered to give me a nickname yet.
“Where d’you normally play?” he asks.
“Perth, Australia. I just got signed to the academy squad.”
“Nice.” Finn looks me up and down again, his gaze resting slightly too long on my eyes. It’s both disconcerting and oddly comforting.
“Ohhh,” he says, like he’s found the missing piece of the puzzle. “You’rethatguy. Shit, oh my god, you’re fast. Like, really fucking fast?” He says it like a question.
I answer even if he didn’t mean it that way. “I’m pretty fast.”
“So . . . what d’you play? Winger?”
“Usually. You play lock?”
Finn barks out a huge laugh. “Was it my nine feet of height that gave that away?”
“That might’ve had something to do with it.”
He continues dumping food onto my plate, occasionally asking me if I’m allergic to shellfish or nuts, then sampling it himself beforehand. We take our grub, including the two plates Finn now has to himself, out of the banqueting hall, down past the rank of WCs, into a staff only area—Aviso, Unicamente Empleados—and into a darkened carpeted corridor. Fluorescent bulbs flick on overhead as we walk down. Finn sizes up a scuffed blue door, then sits in front of it.
“Why are we here?” I ask, but I sit beside him regardless.
He chews and swallows, but he still has food in his mouth when he talks again. “Thought you might appreciate a bit of . . . quiet.”
I do, actually. But I’d never have assumed I’d find it here. At an international tournament with hundreds of eighteen- and nineteen-year-old guys. If anything, being away from my family is the peace. This itself is my respite.
“Thanks.” I take a bite of empanada. Finn was right, these are fucking ’ansum, whatever that means. “How old are you?”
“Eighteen. It was my birthday last month.”
“Fuck off are you eighteen! With that beard?”
He strokes his facial hair as though he’s a theatre villain. “What, this old thing?” He laughs so hard that a chicken bone falls from his plate. Honestly, if I could grow a beard as lustrous as that one at his age, I’d be fucking proud of it too. “I’ve literally had it since I was thirteen.”
“No way.”
“My teachers would try to make me shave it off, but it would come back so quick. So you’re seventeen?”
“Yeah, hence the reason I’m the only sober bro here. I can’t believe you’re only eighteen. What part of England are you from?” I ask as though I know any UK geography beyond London.
We continue to eat our buffet food as Finn tells me all about his seaside-ish Cornwall home, his life there, and his rugby team. Every time I call him Finn, he corrects me.
“Eggo’s fine,” he says, even though it feels weird.
