“My friend. He seems to be struggling.”
“That’s an awfully familiar endearment for someone who’s only met him once,” I chuckle. Ever since I bought the team, Dad’s fancied himself an honorary player.
“Well, when you talk to someoneat leastonce a week, you tend to think of them as such.”
He says it so casually, I almost didn’t catch it. What does he mean, he talks to himat leastonce a week? That can’t be right…can it? Maybe Dad hit his head when he took his fall earlier.
“What do you mean?” I ask, stomach flipping over itself while I wait for him to stop grumbling at the television to clarify what the fuck he meant, praying he won’t confirm what I think he means. I wouldn’t survive it.
“The boy calls me every week, sometimes more.”
Here lies Jade McKallen. Cause of death: being bashed over the head with a sickeningly sweet rugby player.
Why does he keep saying these things as if they aren’t a big deal? I’m over here with a head that’s about to explode, and he’s acting like he just told me it’s going to rain later.
“Why would he do that?” I whisper.
“Because we’re friends. Keep up, pumpkin.”
Dad is completely unaware of the mental gymnastics racing through my mind. Tieran calls my dad weekly? Why? Is it some ploy to get to me? No, that can’t beright, because if that was the case, why hasn’t he mentioned it?
“How did he get your number?”
Dad shouts at a bad call against the Legends happening on screen, and Tieran’s angry, beautiful face fills the screen. His eyes are a blazing inferno of frustration as he shakes his head and spits onto the pitch before stalking away.
“He asked me for it when he came by that first day,” he says around a mouth full of cod.
“What do you talk about?”
“Little of this, little of that.”
My eye twitches, and I’m verging on a scream. Must men always be so vague?
Dad sees the mini meltdown I’m about to succumb to, and he sighs. “He always starts off by asking how I’m doing and if I’ve gone out for fresh air yet. Then, we usually chat about rugby, and we debrief on a show we’re both watching that’s new to the BBC.”
I’m at a total loss for words. Tieran’s asked me about my dad casually since that day he came over to check on him, but he never let on that they were in communication themselves.
“He usually asks about you at some point.”
My head snaps up. “What?”
He harrumphs. “Silly stuff, like your favorite color, but every now and then, he’ll ask something more specific, get curious about what you were like as a kid.”
Well that explains why he knows my favorite color is blue.
My lungs are seizing, my mind is spinning, and the tips of my fingers are starting to tingle. Who is this man?
“He’s a good one, Jadey. You should find someone like him. Please, for the love of Christ, don’t stick yourself with another Thad.”
Dad’s attempt at humor eases the tension in my chest a little. “His name was Brendan.”
“Potato, tomato. He was a twit.”
He’s not wrong, so I don’t bother correcting him. Instead, I spend the next hour watching this enigma of a man fight for his life on the pitch, only to come up empty handed, disappointment written over the planes of his body, pasting on a smile I know isn’t real.
I hate it. I hate that he can’t see how utterly brilliant he is, how talented and kind and funny he is. He can’t see how much everyone respects and trusts him—myself included—and it infuriates me. He should know, and that mask he puts on for the cameras and his team shouldn’t be there. I want to kiss it off his face until he never has a reason to put it back on.
For weeks, I’ve been torturing myself, trying not to think of him, but in this moment, all I can think about is how I’m going to replace that artificial smile with a real one.
