“You found someone then?” Bailey asked, shooting me an encouraging smile from his seat next to Hunter. They were just behind Danny and Charlie, and I saw Hunter lean over the back of the chair to whisper something to Danny. Hopefully telling him to think before he spoke.
“Yeah, and he’s really good with Jack. And Jack loves him.”
“That’s good then,” Frankie said. “How’s his rugby knowledge?”
I waved my hand and chuckled. “Not great.”
“Neither is Rory’s,” West said. “I’m not sure if he’s actively trying not to learn or—”
“He’s not going to retain anything if he’s watching you,” Mason said with a chuckle, patting West’s thigh loudly. “I’m pretty sure your shorts are smaller than everyone else’s.”
“Not as small as Danny’s,” Bailey said as he put his hand over the seat to ruffle the top of the winger’s mullet.
“Hey!” Danny batted his hand away with outrage and everyone laughed. “You’re just jealous cos you couldn’t pull them off.”
“Nobody could pull them off, Daniel. They’re so small they’re usually lodged halfway up your butt,” Bailey said, blowing him a kiss.
“Fuck off.”
The three of them began bickering playfully, with Charlie quickly joining in to defend Danny’s fashion choices. I shouldn’t have been surprised how easily they’d been distracted, but Iwas. If it meant my home life wasn’t in the spotlight, though, I’d happily listen to hours of Danny talking about why shorter, smaller shorts were a necessity. Something about ease of mobility, which sounded like bollocks to me but I wasn’t getting involved.
“That was easy,” Mason said, walking up the coach to flop into the empty seat next to me. He glanced behind him, his mouth pulling down in the corner as he winced. “Oops, didn’t mean to throw Danny under the bus.”
“Thanks. I appreciate the rescue.”
“Yeah, well, I figured you didn’t fancy being interrogated about your nanny.” He patted my knee. “I’m glad Harper’s working out, though. Sounds like being a bossy, overbearing bastard hasn’t scared him off.”
“For once.”
“By the way,” Mason said as he looked around and lowered his voice. “We weren’t planning anything to do with you. It’s Jaden’s birthday tomorrow, so we were thinking about putting him in the sea and were wondering how much you’d object.”
“I don’t care who you put in the sea as long as it’s not me, not deep, not dangerous, and you stop if you’re told to.”
“Done.”
“You do know Jaden’s just going to drag you down with him?” Jaden was on a par with Mason’s weight and maybe an inch shorter, so they’d be evenly matched. And he wasn’t going to let Mason get away with staying warm and dry.
He grinned. “Yeah, but as long as he goes in, I don’t mind getting wet.”
I snorted. I’d figured as much.
The whole bus was going to smell like wet dog coming back, but if they had fun, I wasn’t going to object.
The coach released us at one end of the beach, not far from the aquarium and the lifeboat station. As we walked down to the sand, I looked at the pier in the distance, the Ferris wheel, and the wooden rollercoaster, vague memories of trips to Blackpool with my family resurfacing.
I hadn’t spoken to them at length for years, not since everything that’d happened after we’d found out Hannah was pregnant with Jack. My parents’ reaction hadn’t been positive—neither of them had ever liked Hannah—and it had forced me to confront some uncomfortable truths about my upbringing and what I wanted for my own kids.
Their treatment of Hannah during her postpartum struggles had been the final straw, and these days we only communicated via text at Christmas and on the occasional birthday. It was about as much as I could manage given their behaviour.
Sometimes I wished things were different because I wanted Jack to have the experience of loving grandparents, big family parties, and cousins to play with. But it wasn’t meant to be, and I’d rather Jack miss out than spend his entire childhood being ignored, criticised, or made to feel like an inconvenience.
“Okay, gather round,” Tommy, the assistant head coach, called as he and a couple of the other coaches dumped a load of rugby balls onto the soft, deep gold sand. “The aim of today is to do some training, have some fun, and relax a bit. And if you’re good, we’ll set you loose on the pier and you can eat your weight in candy floss.”
There was some cheering and a few claps. The team mood was buoyant and I realised I needed to get the fuck out of my head and enjoy myself. I’d been so busy focusing on things I wasn’t looking forward to, I hadn’t thought about how nice it would be to actually relax with everyone.
And if they thought I was being a mardy bastard, they’d all rip the shit out of me anyway.
Tommy divided us up into small groups and gave us some games to play. Technically they were drills, but on the sand with the sea behind us, seagulls wheeling overhead, and a distinct lack of astroturf and pitch markings, it just felt like we were dicking around. Within twenty minutes all of us were covered in sand, the wet grains sticking to our exposed skin and getting into our clothes, and I was pretty sure my hair was full of the stuff. My shower would be gritty for days.
