And wasn’t that exactly what he’d feared when this whole debacle had begun?
But theyhadto make it work. Because if they couldn’t be friends, and they definitely couldn’t be lovers, then that left them in a very strange limbo that would have wider repercussions for their mothers.
They had to pick one—and he was choosing friends.
No more going months and months without any communication. They’d already made a pact to catch up face-to-face at least once a year but they could do more. Like monthly Zoom sessions. A WhatsApp group where they could chat in between sessions. Hewouldmake up for not being there for her when she’d been twelve.
Mind made up, he yanked open the door to the diner and greeted a smiling Dolly.
*
Several hours later, Fin and Sweeney were standing on the sidelines with a bunch of other parents, watching the Banshees play in the quarter finals. He wasn’t sure how it had happened but, while the older team had bombed out, his team had just scraped into the top four. The kids had been ecstatic, the parents had been over the moon, and Donny had morphed into some kind of bard, waxing poetically about the mighty game and the romance of the old country.
William Butler Yeats he was not.
Unfortunately, even if they scored in these dying minutes of the game—which was highly unlikely—the other team, hopped up on trashy Easter chocolate at half-time instead of healthy orange segments, were killing them. Not that Fin cared. The team had come much further than he’d thought they would and all the kids had enjoyed themselves, which was the way it should be at their age.
Donny, on the other hand, was growing so morose he was going to have to switch from poetry to country music lyrics.
But then, with only one minute left, something happened. ‘Oh my god,’ Sweeney murmured, suddenly raising the camera with the zoom lens to her eye. ‘I think she’s going to score.’
Fin, who was crouched doing up yet another shoelace, looked across the pitch to find Winnie, dribbling the ball at pace. Despite being one of the more coordinated players on the team, Winnie hadn’t ever scored a goal, but she was way out ahead of the pack at the moment in what appeared to be full control of the ball.
Tori and Nellie were the closest, but she was still several metres in front of them as they yelled,‘Goooo, Winnie! Go!’
Then every parent on their side of the field took up the refrain. Winnie’s grandparents were screaming the loudest, followed closely by Donny, but the little girl was so utterly focused on her target that Fin doubted she was hearing anything. His heart leaped into his mouth as he tracked her progress, also calling out encouragement. ‘Please tell me you’re getting this,’ he yelled to Sweeney above the din.
‘Every moment,’ she yelled back, the rapid clicking of her camera barely audible over the spectator noise.
Suddenly the goalie from the opposite team ran out to meet her, his eye on the ball, his chin jutted in determination. Fin’s pulse picked up. But Winnie, it seemed, was not going to be intimidated by a boy a foot taller and a significant amount of kilos heavier, who was going in for some fancy, skilful slide tackle.
He may have been bigger but she was more nimble, something she demonstrated when she sprang over him like a freakinggazelleas he careened along the ground towards her, aiming to take out her legs. And she just kept running, pushing the ball forward with her toes until, with one final punch, she kicked it into the centre of the net.
Every parent on the team, every random person watching the match—of which there were now many as the knocked-out teams became spectators—and even supporters from the other side went wild at what was, without any bias, the goal of the match.
Possibly of the entire meet.
Every kid on the team started running in her direction, yahooing like a pack of real banshees as Winnie just stood there, staring at the ball now sitting square in the goal, as if she couldn’t quite believe what she’d done. Then she turned to face her team, threw both hands in the air as if she’d just kicked the winning goal of a grand final game at Croke Park, and bellowed,‘Yaaaaasssss!!!’
Every Banshee stopped in their tracks. Every team parent on the sidelines fell into startled silence. Her grandparents stared agape. Sweeney’s camera stopped clicking. Hell, Fin swore his heart stopped beating. For one second. Two. Three.
‘Did you getthat?’ he murmured to Sweeney.
‘Yup.’
Tori and Nellie recovered first, eating up the remaining distance in seconds, crushing Winnie into a three-way embrace. The sideline cheering started again, Sweeney started clicking again and, before Fin’s pulse could fully recover, Gordon and Hilde were running onto the pitch as the entire team threw themselves into one giant team hug. The huddle quickly collapsed, toppling into a cheering, screaming, giggling heap on the ground.
Donny slung an exuberant arm around Fin’s neck. ‘Did you see that?’ he yelled excitedly. ‘Winnie spoke!’ Then he was off again, to high five and hug more people.
And that was the reason why Fin loved his charmingly idiotic cousin so damn much—Donny had wanted to win this gamebadbecause defeat meant they left the comp and he’d wanted to win for Michael, but his jubilation now was not about the goal, it was about Winnie speaking.
His cousin was a dad first and foremost. And a footy fan second.
‘You did good, Sharky,’ Sweeney whispered, nudging him with her arm as they watched Winnie’s grandparents pull her from the wriggling bodies and hug her tight.
Fin smiled as their gazes met, his heart brimming with happy, his soul bursting with an overwhelming sense of accomplishment he doubted he’d ever got from a spreadsheet of figures, no matter how many zeros they involved. And the fact he got to share this experience with Sweeney? That was probably the best part of all.
‘Wedid good.’ Every person on the team had accepted Winnie with open arms and wrapped her up in acceptance and security. And every person had pulled together to help get the team to this event.
