I wait for her to wrinkle her nose or grimace or sip from her mug to hide her reaction at the idea of me potentially asking to be underfoot rather than home alone for the better part of a month, but instead, all I get is a sympathetic softening of her golden-brown eyes.
“I’m sorry, Holt. I know how frustrating that is.”
She knows better than I do.
I got to play pro rugby.
She, meanwhile, saw her professional soccer dreams go up in smoke when she broke her hip in college.
I shouldn’t be whining to her.
Sweet Pea, their miniature dachshund, barks. Goldie pulls her onto the couch too, and then Zinger, their other dog, a mutt, leaps up to join them.
Thesedogs like me.
It’s just my own damn dog who hates me.
No, notmydog.
Ziggy’s dog.
Jessica is Ziggy’s dog. I need to think about her that way so it’s less of an adjustment when they leave.
Maybe I’ll get my own dog. Or a cat. I could get a cat. I like cats.
And I’ll be here for the rest of my career—probably, if I still have a career—so I might as well get settled.
“Oh my god,Fletcher,” Goldie says on a sigh while Sweet Pea whines.
I glance up. My teammate strides to the center of the room in nothing but a black Speedo with a giant waffle printed over his dick.
“My new budgie smugglers came in,” he says. “It’s between these and the next pair. What do you think?”
He turns in a circle, showing off the wordPOUNDERSprinted over the ass of the tight briefs he opts to wear under his kit shorts.
Most of the rest of us have gone to the longer compression shorts under our shorts, a basic requirement since it’s not unusual for shorts to get pulled down during a match and we’d like rugby to make network TV in America eventually.
Nudity laws on the airwaves and all that.
But Fletcher will likely pick out special budgie smugglers to be buried in.
He’s that type.
“What’s with the waffle?” I ask.
“Don’t you want to know?” He smirks, making his mustache twitch. Some guys can pull off a mustache. Fletcher isn’t one of them, but when he grows it and posts to his socials, the Pounders sell more tickets.
I don’t understand it, but I can’t argue with more ticket sales.
“His favorite idea of a contender for a mascot,” Goldie supplies.
I heard management was contemplating finally adding a mascot, but I hadn’t paid much attention because I wasn’t going to be here. “A waffle? What do waffles have to do with Pounders or pounding?”
Fletcher turns again, modeling. “If you can’t see the connection, you don’t deserve to know.”
Goldie’s laughing at him. “It was one of his ideas while we were hungover on Liege waffles in Belgium last month.”
“And it’s bloody brilliant,” Fletcher says. “Waffles areversatile. You can eat them plain. You can eat them with Nutella or ice cream or syrup. You can call someone a twatwaffle. Or a shitwaffle. Or a fuckwaffle. Or a wankwaffle. Bloody. Fucking. Brilliant.”
