I take a sip of my piña colada and continue my thoughts.
“My phone does this thing where it’ll only charge itself up to eighty per cent. Apparently, it’s to preserve battery life over an extended period, but that’s what this feels like. That I’m only ever at eighty per cent happy, but there’s room for another twenty per cent of happiness. I don’t fucking want to preserve my battery life, I want to live.”
Eggo pushes his half-drunk cocktail into my empty left hand, pulls his mask off, and shakes his head like a dog stepping out of a lake. Beads of sweat fly off in every direction.
“Fuck, it’s warm under that thing,” he says, setting the helmet down on the planter I had used as a table earlier. He takes his drink back from me, pushes the straw to the side, and downs the rest in one swig.
Suddenly it dawns on me that this guy is more than a hairy-chested sounding board. He’s my teammate and friend, and I have to see him every day at training. I have to play rugby with him, and travel around the country with him, dopress conferences with him, and share hotel breakfasts and posh, post-match restaurant meals, all whilst quietly sitting on the knowledge that I’d just used a phone-charging analogy to describe my weird, sad little life.
I’m cringing. I can’t help it, but it’s like someone switched the club lights on at the end of the night and I’m only now realising how sweaty and disgusting I must look.
“Is this about Gadget?” Eggo says.
My stomach flips. Has he noticed me staring? He probably thinks I’m such a fucking perv. I guess he wouldn’t be wrong. “What?”
“You’re gonna pour your heart out to me about how you’re not living your life to the fullest and that you’re watching everyone else live their lives, and then pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about?”
I’m lost for words. I open my mouth to form a response, but nothing comes. Not even a squeak.
Eggo raises his brow, challenging me to refute his claim, but I can’t.
“You’re having an existential crisis about your sexuality, no?”
“Jesus!” I say, leaping off the wall. “That’s not it at all.” But I might as well be holding my hand over his mouth. It’s as good as a confession. “It’s not entirely that. How did you . . .”
“I saw the way you were looking at him. I saw where your eyes went,” he says, and my stomach drops further into my guts. “And even though it’s pretty dark out here, I can see where your eyes land on me too.”
It could be the middle of July for how flaming hot my face grows; however, Eggo doesn’t seem to care that I’ve been staring at his belly, and sometimes lower.
“God, am I really that obvious? Does everybody know?” I’m gonna have to move back to London. Actually, that’s too close.Scotland? Or maybe France, but there’s still a remote chance I might bump into people I know there. Fuck it, Fiji it is.
“I don’t think anyone else has noticed. To be honest, I’m a lot more observant than most people give me credit for,” he says, which makes me feel a little better. I still have to move away, though. “Listen, Gadget is everyone’s type.Everyone’s, okay? You could tell me until you’re blue in the face that you don’t look at him and start to chub up, but you’d be a liar. It doesn’t change who you are.”
“Do you?” I ask him. Despite everything I’d said to him when he was wearing his helmet, this might be crossing the line of acceptability.
“Do I what?”
“Do you chub up when you look at him?”
Eggo laughs and takes a step closer to me. My nostrils are flooded with the scent of fresh sweat and his spicy perfume. “I mean, I’ll be the first to admit we’ve all had a cheeky tug thinking about Gadget’s physique.”
A noise escapes my throat, somewhere between a foghorn and a seagull's squawk.
“You can’t tell anyone that, okay? Pretty sure that’s grounds for club dismissal right there.”
“I won’t say anything,” I reassure him. I will, however, overthink it in every way imaginable. “So, does that mean . . . Are you . . .”
Eggo shrugs. He understands what I’m trying to say without me having to finish my sentences. “Fuck knows, pard. I hate labels, remember. I’m living my life based on the whims of the winds.” He’s smirking now. “I’m not gay, and I’m definitely not straight even though I have a girlfriend. I just don’t need to define myself with a label. I’m joy-maxxing, that’s what I am, a joy-maxxer.”
“Is that why you dressed as a Pokémon tonight instead of the other half of our intended couple’s costume?”
“Logan wanted to FaceTime a Pokémon. What could I say?”
“That’s fair. If I had a kid, I’d do anything they asked me to. Even if it meant leaving my mate in full drag with literally zero heads up.”
Eggo makes an “eek” face. I discard my now soggy paper straw into Eggo’s empty glass and sip my piña colada from the side. It’s good.
“I think . . .” I say a few moments later. “It’s cool that you don’t need labels, but I do. I just think . . .” Urgh, I can’t seem to articulate my thoughts the way I’m experiencing them. “I just want to know that I’m not the only one who feels the way I feel.”
