Eventually Harry gives me a wobbly, wholly unconvincing thumbs-up.
I side-eye him, turn my attention to Dan, then Eksteen, and point to myself. “Me?”
They both nod enthusiastically.
Huh. How bizarre.
“Bloody ripper,” I say. Everyone’s still looking at me, but my mind has emptied itself of any thoughts whatsoever.
Beside me, Abs deflates. I am the world’s shittiest friend.
Dan continues to speak over the electrical humming in my brain. “But we were thinking maybe you don’t have to do it all on your own, Aiden. A lot of teams these days are opting for co-captaincy.”
Co-captaincy. My mind’s still blank, but it’s like it’s being slowly turned on again. Warming up like one of the fluorescent bulbs overhead.
Co-captaincy.
But with whom?
I can’t imagine it’d be Abs. Two bumbling backs leading the entire squad? But I feel him buzzing beside me. Can sense him crossing his fingers, toes, and eyes in desperation. Fuck, I’m not sure I even want it to be Abs. Don’t get me wrong, I love him, it’s just that . . . he’d be fucking awful at this.
If anything, I want them to choose—
“Finn, you fancy being Aiden’s partner in crime?” Dan says.
My backstabbing relief is drowned out by the whooping and cheering from some of the other guys. Beside me, Abs is silent and statuesque, though his face is flaming its trademark cherry red.
Eggo squeezes my thigh three times in quick succession, stands, and salutes Dan. “I won’t let you down, boss!” he says, and then starts a jerky butt dance.
“This is either going to be brilliant,” Eggo says, crowding right into my space after sitting back down, his lips almost brushing my ear. “Or awkward as fuck.”
I nod. “If those are the only two options, I’m willing to bet cold hard cash on the latter.”
He laughs, threads his fingers into the back of my mullet, and butts his forehead against mine. “It’s you and me, pard. Are you ready?”
Eksteen checks his watch and glances up at the clouds. It’s dry today, but the sky is lavender grey and the air has that heavy warmth that promises rain.
“So, this is the plan for this morning. You two are going to test the waters with your new skipper roles. We’re gonna do some attacking and passing drills and then some scrums, and if we’ve got time, we’ll play a little practice game. It’s your job to make sure all your boys are where they should be, and that they’re all doing exactly what they’re supposed to be doing. Don’t worry too much about scoring at the moment. We’re concentrating on form and tightness only. So, let’s see what you’ve got, what we’re working with already, and then we can look at areas that need improvement.”
Eggo and I nod.
“I’m talking about your managerial abilities and how we might fine-tune them. You’re gonna get sick of me saying this, but none of this was my idea. It’s all Chelford’s doing. If I had my way, we wouldn’t have taken Jones’s no for an answer. But here we are.”
“That’s okay, Coach, don’t hold back on our account,” Eggo says. “No need to spare our feelings.”
“Just make it work. Whatever this thing is you’ve got going on between you two . . .” He pauses, and I shoot Eggo a glance. He fucking winks at me. “Sort it out. We need you on the same page. Right, dish out the bibs and get your boys ready.”
“He thinks we have beef with each other,” Eggo says as we run out onto the pitch.
“D’you reckon?”
Eggo slaps me on the shoulder. “He thinks there’s something between us that we have to ‘sort out.’”
Well, Coach wouldn’t be wrong there.
He has us line up. Team Bibs are the attackers, and Team No Bibs are the defenders. We pass the ball to the try line, starting off by practicing switch passes, the aim being to open up a gap in their defensive wall, slip through, and score a try.
Then we move to decoy runners, and everything is going . . . well, not exactly swimmingly, but it’s okay, which is a relief. I’d had visions of this being much,muchworse.
