2. 2

2

B etween the tests and visitors, Sean slept. In the days since it’d been revealed he’d lost his memories, Jack didn’t reappear during the day, but he was there every night, curled up in the uncomfortable chair, sleeping or reading something on his phone. Sean would wake, disorientated, mutter, roll his head to the side, and there Jack would be, breathing softly as he slept or meeting Sean’s eyes tentatively, his smile careful, his face lit up by the glow of his phone. Sean would frown because he wasn’t sure what else to do with him.

He’d had bloods, a CT scan, been run through multiple questionnaires, become increasingly agitated and, though he’d never admit it, fearful as more information came in that he didn’t understand and people told him things he didn’t know.

‘Trauma induced amnesia,’ was the diagnosis. ‘Memories should come back in a few days.’

Sean held onto that. But when he woke, groggy and thirsty in the early hours of the morning, the world still pitch-black beyond the hospital walls, and saw Jack smiling carefully yet hopefully over at him, Sean felt nothing but irritation.

Jack’s face shuttered and Sean recognised the polite mask, the neutral tone in his voice when he whispered, “Something to drink?”

Sean closed his eyes; if he went back to sleep, he’d either wake up back in his world where everything made sense or in this future where nothing did, but at least he’d know how he’d ended up here.

He was out of the ICU and on a ward a week later, and the shifty expressions Harris, the consultant and the registrars, Ben and all the nursing staff were giving him let him know the temporary state of his amnesia was becoming a bigger question mark. The bigger question for this meeting around his hospital bed was where he was going to go now that he was ready to be discharged. With proper care at home, there was no need to stay.

Jack had deigned to regale everyone with his presence in the daylight for this discussion.

“You’ll go with Jack,” Ben was saying again, but at least he’d stopped saying it like this was the most obvious solution in the world to saying it like he wasn’t sure either.

Sean decided to finally rip off the Band-Aid. It’d made no sense she wasn’t here, that she hadn’t called and his brother hadn’t mentioned anything—but why would he if he thought Sean already knew? She’d had a cough; the last thing Sean remembered was her promising to get it checked out, telling him it was probably nothing, the fear he couldn’t shake that she was wrong.

“Why can’t I go home and—”

“Sean, you’ve got to have someone take care of you…” the doctors, nurses, Ben, but not Jack, chimed in. Sean noticed Jack waited for him to finish his sentence—he was watching him like he always waited for Sean to finish his sentence, like if Sean was talking then that meant something important was being said. Sean flushed a little.

“My mum,” he said and it wasn’t the silence that told him what happened; it was Jack’s face.

“No,” Sean said and even though he’d been prepared, he clearly hadn’t been because the heart shattering on Jack’s face was actually breaking in his chest. “No.”

“I’m so sorry, Sean,” Jack said softly.

“Fuck you, no,” Sean snapped.

Jack winced, but miraculously, unlike everyone else in the room, proceeded to calmly tell him what happened. “Nine months ago, lung cancer, stage four by the time she got it checked out. She died three months later. You—” Jack broke off and looked at his feet.

“I what? I fuckin’ what?” Sean said, through tears brimming in his eyes.

“You took care of her,” Jack finished. “Brought her down to live with you. It was—” Jack flicked his eyes up and swallowed, “it was good, in the end. You took her home for sorry business, after. You were good.”

The tears fell silently down his cheeks as he stared at Jack. What did that mean? What did Jack know about him being good? About sorry business? He was about to snap something awful about Jack having no idea about anything when he remembered Jack’s parents had died too. It’d been all over the news—the catamaran lost in a tropical cyclone, his parents pronounced missing then dead in absentia when the remains of the boat washed up on Komodo Island. Sean had seen the photos of Jack outside the cemetery in the news, disbelief and pain etched on his nineteen-year-old face. Sean had wanted to call him, to text, but he hadn’t.

“Alright,” the consultant said, professional but careful. “Your memories are going to come back, any day now, but in the meantime, it’s best not to have such big life events dropped on you, okay, Sean?”

“He shouldn’t know about his mum?” Jack asked, as incredulous as Sean felt and he never thought he’d be wanting to thank Jack for something, but he wanted to thank him for that—like, what the fuck?

“No, I agree, it’s come up and he needs to know. What I mean is, not everything all at once. It’s also better if things can come back to you on your own, Sean. Which they will,” she said reassuringly. “Any day now.”

“Right,” said Harris smoothly, clapping his big hands together. “In the meantime, I’m happy to discharge you into Jack’s care.”

Sean still couldn’t believe it, but they’d been saying it since they’d been talking about discharging him: “Into Jack’s care.”

He looked at Jack. Jack was looking at Harris, but Sean knew he could feel his gaze on the side of his head. This wasn’t unusual—in the year they’d been playing together, he knew Jack could feel his gaze on him; Jack reacted to it like a kangaroo who’d just become aware she was being hunted and was debating whether to remain still or flee. This reaction had always given Sean a weird thrill. It gave him that weird thrill now.

“Of course,” Jack said evenly as the consultant and Harris talked, his hand reaching up to rub the back of his neck.

“So, what? You’re gonna stay with me at my place?” Sean asked. He wondered if he had a guest room set up. As far as he knew, he rented a place with Ben and they had an open-door policy with all the other blackfellas on the team. It was a good set-up, aside from the wistful feeling Sean sometimes got when he saw Ben and his girlfriend, Lara, curled up together on the couch. But apparently Ben and Lara had gotten married—Sean had been his best man—and Sean had bought a place by himself in North Fremantle, which didn’t sound like him at all, but then he was friends with Jack so who knew what brain damage he’d endured in the years he was missing.

“If you like,” Jack said calmly, his expression impossible to interpret.

“Well, I don’t know what I like,” he replied, exasperated. He was getting a headache. That wasn’t true—he’d had a headache since he woke up the first time and that headache was now pulsing, making his eyes hurt. He knew they’d give him more pain meds soon and he’d drift, the noon sunshine turning to afternoon, and his room and the wide, concrete corridors beyond his room would be crossed in golden shards of light. And he’d fade in and out of sleep and once it was dark enough, Jack would appear beside him. A confusing conjugation from Sean’s twisted mind that hated Jack and loved being around him for that very reason; he loved sinking into that feeling, bathing in it, watching Jack track him like he was pretending he wasn’t, waiting for Sean to snap at him and trying to be prepared.

“Alright, well, if you’re happy to go with Jack…” Harris was saying and arrangements were made as Sean closed his eyes. Jack was coming to stay with him. Would he move in or just drop in and out like the nurses? He knew his needs were high—he needed help using the bathroom, showering, even getting in and out of bed took two orderlies with the mammoth cast on his thigh. Even if his mum had been here, she’d have needed help. She was a little wiry thing, a kindy teacher, hardly built for lifting full grown men in and out of bed. Sean’s eyes heated and welled with tears under the lids. He was small for a footballer, five foot ten inches, seventy-eight kilos, perfect for his position as a winger, but Sean was still a full-grown adult male, not someone his mum could help with avoiding a fall in the shower. Jack, at six foot three inches and around ninety kilos, could probably handle lifting him around without too much trouble.

“Sean?” Jack asked quietly. “We can hire a nurse, carers, you don’t have to do anything that makes you uncomfortable.”

Sean blinked, scrubbed at his eyes quickly and tried to make it look like he was trying to wake up. “If you don’t wanna do it, just say so,” he snapped, but it came out wet.

“That’s not what I said,” Jack replied, expression calm but he was getting annoyed, Sean could tell—his voice went breathy.

“We’ll certainly be organising some care staff to support Jack,” Harris said smoothly, oblivious to the tension. “But it is best for you to live with someone at least until the concussion symptoms ease up. You could probably do with a hand with those broken ribs and the fractured femur as well,” he chuckled.

Sean didn’t know if he liked Harris before or not, but Harris talked to him with a familiarity that suggested he did, suggested he agreed and went along with him. That wasn’t unusual—Sean wasn’t known as being a difficult patient, a difficult player. He got the job done, kept to himself, hung out with the team, liked the team, had never had a single outburst in the locker room until they got Jack.

“Yeah,” he replied to Harris because the old man seemed to be waiting for it and everything was settled.

Jack would pick him up tomorrow morning and then come and live with him. Because Sean now lived in a parallel universe.

“I just don’t get why you can’t come down,” Sean said to his brother on the phone that afternoon.

Jayden laughed. “I’m not comin’ down to look afta ya sick ass. I got two kids of my own.”

Sean took a deep breath to calm down. Jayden had one kid. A daughter. He wasn’t going to ask who this other kid was because it would come back, it would all come back.

“Do ya reckon you can come down at all, but? Just for a visit,” Sean said and looked out the window. It was another glorious sunset—the golden rays reflecting off the glass as they hit the buildings, the last brush from a sun that’d already dropped below the line of the ocean ten kilometres from where Sean sat propped up in his hospital bed with a stack of pillows graciously prepared by one of the patient, yet awe-struck nurses.

Jayden was quiet for a moment. “Ya doin’ alright?”

“Dunno,” he slipped his eyes closed. “Not like, I’m not like mentally fucked or whatever. I’m just, I dunno. Injured. Proper koonyi.”

“Yeah, don’t I know it. Sucks so bad,” Jayden replied wistfully. Sean was aware Jayden was back in their hometown permanently, a couple of hours east of Perth, and not in Melbourne, playing in the league; it’d come up when they talked about where Sean would go. Jayden was as good if not better than him, so he knew it wasn’t form that’d forced an early retirement. He didn’t want to ask.

“I’ll see if Jules is cool with it, I’ll come down this weekend,” Jayden said. “Bub’s only six weeks old, but. So gonna have to come down and back in one day.”

Sean had the sudden urge to tell him he didn’t have to, but actually, he did, he needed to see someone who made sense, who always made sense.

“Thanks,” he said quietly.

“Alright, no need to crack out the beers,” Jayden chuckled and they talked about other stuff until Jayden had to go because his kid wanted him and Jules was busy with the newborn Sean had never met.

They’d parked him in a wheelchair in front of the pick-up zone the following morning after Jack had come in and grabbed all his stuff, explained he’d bring the car around before disappearing downstairs after the orderly said he’d bring Sean down.

Sean was dressed in his oldest, softest, most favourite hoodie, the top up over his head, and some new tracksuit pants several sizes too big to fit over the cast that was sticking out at a parallel angle, elevating his leg off the ground. His entire outfit had come courtesy of Jack. Sean supposed it wasn’t that much of a stretch he’d know this was Sean’s favourite hoodie—he wore it all winter when he wasn’t in the team gear—and the nurses would’ve told Jack to get the tracksuit pants. It was still odd.

A black Range Rover drove up, Jack behind the wheel, the tyres quiet on the concrete. Sean snorted under his breath—of course Jack drove an even more pretentious car now than the Mercedes sedan he’d started out with when he joined the team. Except Sean had secretly always wanted this exact model and colour Range Rover and it grated that Jack had it because now he sure as shit couldn’t buy one. And no doubt he was going to need another car since his was probably in the scrap yard. Sean was frugal with his cash, but a fancy car was the one thing he’d always planned to splash out on.

Jack parked, got out, came around, eyes surreptitiously checking Sean over. “What?” he asked when he saw Sean’s smirk.

“Nice car,” Sean replied.

Jack said, “It’s,” then snapped his mouth shut, shook his head and went to wheel Sean over to the car.

“I got it,” Sean said. He reached down for the wheel and hissed as a sharp pain shot through his side.

“You don’t got it,” Jack said, surprisingly quiet.

Sean was busy sucking in air around the pain—his ribs, his broken fucking ribs—to argue or ask why Jack sounded so hurt over Sean trying to have some autonomy over his life.

Jack wheeled him over to the door, slid his arm around Sean’s back and his other arm under his ass and lifted him like it was nothing as he sat him down on the seat. Sean saw the nervous flutter in his hands as he stretched the belt over Sean’s chest, so careful of his ribs, giving him plenty of room around his leg, the seat already pushed back to accommodate it. He was so close, Sean could see the pulse of his carotid under his tanned skin, could smell the shower he’d just taken; the hint of fruit and chemicals in the shampoo and conditioner smelled exactly like the stuff Sean used.

Sean didn’t say anything and kept his breaths shallow; he did his best to hold himself still, to not lash out. His last memory was also this close and it was not a happy one—the two of them pushed so close and an inch away from punching each other for real, finally.

“All set,” Jack said with way too much effort and closed the door softly.

The radio filled the car as they got going and Sean narrowed his eyes at the side of Jack’s head. Jack tightened his hands on the steering wheel and glided onto the road. Jack hated indie music, hated anything and everything that wasn’t chill or top 40 or ‘classic’, which was another word for awful pub rock. And while Sean could admit he liked some of that old stuff too, he’d taken to disliking it since discovering Jack preferred it. But here was not only indie, but the indie radio station.

The indicator flicked on and Sean looked away, his eyes hurting against the unfiltered morning sunshine as he watched the streets lined with people in black suits and white shirts walking into the city from the train station. He thought it was Monday. Definitely a week day, the throngs of people looking at their phones as they walked briskly towards the city centre.

Jack took the turnoff to the freeway and they slid between the concrete walls before emerging onto the four lanes, Jack smoothly moving them over to the far lane and onto the Narrows Bridge over the Swan River, the sounds of hip hop defiantly punctuating the space between them.

“I’ll bring Lola over once you’re settled,” Jack said, shooting Sean a reassuring smile.

Sean glared at the side of his head. In what universe did Jack think Sean wanted to meet his fucking girlfriend? The fact Jack had a girlfriend was pretty fucking rich—sure, dude might be straight, maybe even bi, but Sean didn’t think so; what’d happened between them in high school didn’t feel like a straight boy experimenting as much as Sean was convinced Jack had convinced himself that’s what it was.

“She’s gonna be so stoked to see you, man,” Jack went on. Sean decided to leave aside the clumsily tagged on ‘man’ and go for the kill.

“I don’t wanna meet your fuckin’ girlfriend, Jackie,” he said.

Jack looked at him, scandalised. “Lola’s my dog,” he said, his voice stumbling over the ‘my’.

Sean felt himself relax and hated himself anew for being tense at the prospect of Jack having a missus. “Good,” he muttered, “I like dogs,” he tacked on the end lest Jack think he was praising him for something.

Jack nodded readily, though his face was pinched. “I know you do. You love her.”

After Sean grunted at that, they lapsed into silence. He couldn’t bring himself to address the word love coming out of Jack’s mouth, so silence was the best option. The river was flat and calm beside them, so flat it was like a mirror. The whitefellas that first came here called it the Swan River after the black swans that lived on it, but the blackfella mob from this Country—the Whadjuk Noongars—called it Derbarl Yerrigan because it mixed the fresh and salt water, coming from the ocean in Fremantle and stretching all the way up Country past the hills. Sean was a Wiilman Noongar, but he’d been coming down to Perth since he was seventeen to play footy, briefly played for the South Fremantle Colts before he got drafted, and knew plenty of Whadjuks. He looked at the black swans now, gracefully dunking their heads under the water to feed, and reckoned they must’ve been a real sight for those first whitefellas who’d only ever seen them in white.

Once they arrived in North Fremantle, Jack turned down a lane and wound into a development with tower blocks filled with fancy apartments. Sean couldn’t believe he lived here. This was not something he’d like—new, pretentious, so clean it bordered on a prison feel—but Jack was pulling into a spot reserved for one of the apartments, carefully not making eye contact as he got Sean out and into his chair, hoisted Sean’s duffel onto one shoulder, wheeled Sean over and got him into the building with a code he knew, another code for the lift, and finally a key hanging with his own car keys to enter the apartment.

He pushed Sean inside. It was a top floor apartment so spacious you could ride a motorbike around in it. The river reflected the sun below them, the Freo port clearly visible off to the right. Everything was as neat as a showroom—the white couch, white chairs, white curtains, set off against mint green walls. Sean was no designer, but this was awful.

“I got you something to eat,” Jack said as he parked Sean near his couch. “So you can take your pain medication. And I’ve got the spare room made up for me, I’ve just got to head home for a bit to check on Lola, but Ben’s gonna pop in later, so she’ll be alright while I’m here with—”

“I don’t live here,” Sean said. He was sure of it.

He looked up at Jack.

Jack sighed. “This is your place, but kinda, like. I dunno...”

Sean stared at him. Jack was twitchy again, rubbing the back of his neck, hiding his face in his hair. It was longer. The shots of white from his surfing even more bleached, like he’d been surfing more in the years since he’d come back from Melbourne, in the years Sean couldn’t remember.

Then it hit Sean.

“Do I have a …”

He hoped he didn’t have to say it. If him and Jack were such good mates now, surely he’d know if Sean was living with a boyfriend. But if Sean had a boyfriend, why hadn’t he come to see him in the hospital? As bizarre as the thought was—Sean was never going to have a boyfriend while he was playing, never mind after; the thought of coming out to his mob and Elders was terrifying—but what else would explain buying a place this hideous? This private?

“Where’s my phone?” he asked before Jack could do more than make a few aborted noises, mouth open but nothing coherent coming out.

“Oh, yeah,” he said and crouched down to rummage through Sean’s bag. He got up, stretching out to hand it over. He took his hand back. “Hang on.”

Then he was opening it, doing a bunch of stuff before handing it over.

“Just deleting our messages,” Jack said. “I don’t wanna, you know. Like the doctor said. That might be a bit much.”

“What might?” Sean asked.

“Us,” Jack said, “we’re really good mates.”

Sean narrowed his eyes at him. It remained unfathomable even though everybody said it—Jayden, Ben, Doctor Harris, his other teammates who were still in Perth. Because it turned out while his brain had gone and fucked off the last two years, it’d decided to drop him in the same time, almost to the day; September, the start of the offseason for them since he’d had his accident on the Monday morning after they’d been eliminated from the finals, the semi this time. And all these people, none of them came out and outright said, Jack is your best mate , but it was there in the way the first thing they said when they came into his hospital room was, “Where’s Jack?” smiling as if Jack had just popped to the cafeteria or into the city for proper coffee. “Course he’s gone to get you better coffee,” they’d grin and take a seat, not waiting for an answer, certain this was the case. Sean was bewildered, but those comments, those knowing smiles, told him they really were friends. Why then didn’t Jack want him to know that?

“Yeah, so why can’t I see the evidence of it?” he asked and opened his phone with a passcode. Jack knew his passcode. Jack was giving him his back, crouched down in front of Sean’s bag again, his black tracksuit pants tight over his ass, his white shirt stretched nice and tight over his muscular back, each knob of his spine visible. Jack was, like all of them (they were athletes), nice to look at—built, fit, firm. Jack stood out in the bicep department, the thick, rounded muscles swelled up to strong shoulders, and his chest was muscular, stomach flat and firm, thighs impressively chorded but built for efficiency, not show—and Sean might hate the guy, but he could appreciate looking at him, would’ve liked it better if he did more with that body than play mediocre games and get injured.

Jack turned back to him, a chicken and salad roll, a packet of medication and an orange Gatorade in hand. “‘Cos, it’s like, a lot, like the doctor said,” Jack shrugged, handed him the haul before stepping back, giving Sean a polite amount of space and looking out the window. “I’m just gonna go check on Lola, then I’ll be back. Eat that, take those, and yeah. Thirty minutes tops, I promise. Are you gonna be okay?”

Sean’s eyes roved over Jack, who was pretending to focus on the port. Something was off. This wasn’t where he lived, he was absolutely sure of it. Jack was more uncomfortable than usual—Sean was used to the nervousness, but this was deeper, this was uncertainty. Sean liked to see Jack suffer, but he liked to come at him as a worthy opponent, not like this.

“But,” he started, he felt stupid saying it again— I don’t live here .

Jack, to Sean’s surprise, sat down beside him on the couch. He reached out and Sean tensed thinking he was about to touch him, but Jack just gripped the armrest of his wheelchair and ignored the tension in Sean’s body.

“What do you need? Tell me and I’ll make it happen,” Jack said. His earnestness was unnerving. Not because Sean didn’t know he was an earnest guy—he did and Jack was, he was like that with the team, with the coaches, taking on what they asked of him and immediately agreeing to do it, and then, sometimes amazingly, doing it without question. But it was unnerving to be the subject of it—the intense stare, his eyes wide in his face. Even more unnerving was the eye contact. Jack rarely met and held his eyes, as if he feared it. And that was here now, on the edge of his gaze, ready to dart away at any moment, but he was in it too, Sean could see that—he was really braving it for Sean’s sake.

“Sean,” Jack said gently when Sean just stared at him, his hands gripping the roll, the meds, the drink in his hands. “What were you gonna say? What’s the ‘but’?”

Sean took a deep breath and looked out the window, the river a golden shimmer that hurt his eyes. “But I don’t live here.”

Jack tightened his grip on the wheelchair. He exhaled audibly and finally agreed. “No, not really. No.”

“Where do I live?” he asked, scared of the answer.

Jack exhaled. “With me.”

Sean felt like he’d been struck—he lived with Jack? Him? In what fucking universe could he live with Jack? And yet, the way Jack said it—heavy and honest with a hint of defiance—Sean knew it was true.

“So what is this place?” he asked because it seemed like the safest question on his ever growing list.

“This is your place,” Jack said, “but it’s more of an investment property. When Ben moved in with Lara, you moved in with me and bought this place. You list it on home share apps, make a bit of income out of it.”

“So I’ve never lived here, lived here?” He felt like a moron. Who needs to ask where they live? But he needed to know what he was feeling was true. He needed to know he could trust something.

“No, never,” Jack smiled, Sean could hear it in his voice. “We’ve had a few blues over the years, but you always kick me out, not the other way round.”

“And you just go?” Sean asked, even though he wanted, weirdly, to ask where Jack went.

“Yeah, course,” Jack said. “I go stay with Annie,” he finished like he knew Sean would want to know that.

Sean looked at him, trying and failing not to scowl, but who the fuck was Annie? And what was Jack telling her about Sean?

Something flickered in Jack’s eyes, but he was careful to bury it as he replied evenly. “Annie’s my sister,” he stated. “I have four older sisters. Annie’s in East Freo with her husband and two kids, my nieces, Sophie and Clara.”

“And you stay there?” Sean asked even though he felt like this was an absolutely bizarre conversation. What kind of friends have a blue so bad they kick the other one out? Well, the kind of ‘friends’ him and Jack would be, which is not really friends at all.

Jack quirked his lips and ducked his head. “Nah, you always call and tell me to come home.” He stood suddenly. “Eat and take your meds and I’ll take you home.” He disappeared down the hall into one of the bedrooms before Sean could say anything else.