Like their silent drive to the lake, they didn’t speak as they kicked the ball back and forth. Sweeney knew that wasn’t the point. It was more a meditative thing. Like white noise where a person didn’t have to think.
Still, she made him work for it because she figured tonight of all nights he needed it. Pushing her sleeves up to her elbows, she kicked the ball slightly to his left. Fin stretched, throwing his leg out to stop the ball from flying past before sending it back and landing it at her feet.
They were both wearing jeans as the evenings were really starting to cool off now. Fin had teamed his with an old Banshees jersey with short sleeves but she’d chosen to wear a long-sleeved t-shirt with a v-neck. She’d worn a hoodie, too, but that had been abandoned now she was warmed up from the exercise.
She kicked the ball again and he blocked it with his feet. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said as he booted it back. ‘About the bawling like a baby thing.’
Sweeney glanced up from her feet, where the ball had once again landed. Her brow furrowed as she examined him for a beat. Is that what he’d been quietly contemplating as they’d played? She’d seen him cry before, of course. A few times. As a kid. And vice versa. Not as an adult, though, so perhaps he was feeling a little embarrassed now he’d recovered.
She placed her foot on top of the ball. ‘Don’t do that.’
‘What?’
‘Apologise for grieving your father.’
‘I don’t mean that, I mean for being so loud and it taking so long.’
Sweeney’s mouth flattened. Now she was cranky. ‘Don’t diminish it either. Your dad died. I’ve been there, it’s hard.’ She booted the ball his way, putting it straight at his feet this time becausethat’show pissed off she was that he felt the need to apologise for being human.
‘Maybe that’s why Icoulddo it? Let go like that? Because you’ve been through it too.’
‘Also, probably because—’ She bugged her eyes. ‘I’m just guessing here, you haven’t done that yet, have you? Cried. Properly. Because you’ve been feeling guilty over the argument.’
He rolled his eyes. ‘You’re such a smarty pants.’
‘Fin, Fin, Fin.’ Sweeney tutted as she shook her head, a smile lifting the corners of her mouth. ‘You keep that shit in, you know what happens?’
‘Nope. But it’s bad, right?’
‘Duh.’ She rolled her eyes this time. ‘You bust a foo-foo valve.’
He whistled. ‘That sounds painful.’
‘And messy.’
‘And where is this foo-foo valve exactly?’
Sweeney shook her head. ‘Nobody knows. Until it goeskaboom!’
‘The only thing that went kaboom today,’ he said as he picked up the ball and absently shunted it between his hands, ‘was my dignity.’
‘Fin …’ Sweeney frowned, turning serious. ‘You think I think less of you because you cried?’
‘I think the gym bros and the crypto dudes would.’
‘Oh,puh-lease.’ She waved a dismissive hand. ‘One protein powder shortage or a market crash and it’ll be raining tears on TikTok.’
Fin barked out a laugh. ‘True.’
‘How many times did I cry on your shoulder when my dad died? Did you think less of me?’
‘You weretwelve. I’m thirty-two.’
‘Newsflash, Fin, grief doesn’t give a shit how old you are. You cried. I saw you. Build a freaking bridge already.’ She huffed out an impatient breath. ‘Now, are you just going to keep caressing that ball like it’s your girlfriend or are you actually going to kick it?’
He laughed again at her juvenile smack talk, and Sweeney was relieved when he dropped the ball to the sand and kicked it along the ground. They passed it back and forth in silence until the sun had almost dipped below the horizon and Fin called an end to the game.
‘Last kick,’ he said, tipping his chin at the ball that he’d just, once again, put at her feet. ‘It’ll be night soon.’
