21

The bass vibrated through Sean’s feet, the strobe lights swept the room and lit up the boys huddled around the high tables at the edge of the club, some of them dancing terribly on the dance floor. He nursed a diet coke, leaned across the table to hear what Ben was saying.

“Jack says ya lookin’ so good ya might be back this season,” he yelled.

Sean snorted. He turned so he could yell back and Ben met him by turning his head, ear facing Sean. “Jack’s a fuckin’ cheerleader from another life, come back to haunt us.”

Ben laughed. He turned to grin at Sean as he shook his head, teeth white against his brown skin. They’d hit it off the first day they met when they’d both been selected for The Great Southern Twenty and the team met up in Perth the weekend before the games—Ben liked to talk and Sean didn’t mind listening, nodding his head in agreement in all the right places.

“You’re alright eh, cuz?” Ben had told him after their first training session together; it lilted up like a question, but it was a statement. “Goin’ places.”

“You too,” Sean replied, and that was that.

Their share house those first few years playing for Freo had been a renovated place in Coogee with ocean views if you climbed up on the roof. The trainers would’ve had their balls if they knew they regularly climbed an old ladder to sit on the roof and drink beers, talk about everything and nothing with whoever else was around. With the open-door policy it was rarely just the two of them—mob from back home visiting, other players, and after that first year, Ben’s girlfriend, Lara, became a regular fixture in his room, in the kitchen, using the shower. She was nice, easy going, a white girl from Geraldton, a physio student Ben met when she did an internship with the team; she smiled at Ben when he talked, like she was just happy listening to his voice, did it when Ben wasn’t looking at her. Sean thought that was probably a good thing since Ben rarely shut up. He thought about the smells of the place—burnt toast, piled up laundry, window cleaner when Ben went on a tear and cleaned all the rear facing windows that caught the full force of the setting sun. The sound of the floorboards creaking, of Ben telling him to hurry the fuck up before training, his joking bitching as Sean strolled out to meet him with his bag slung over his shoulder and a sharp retort that he’d been ready for hours. He missed it, missed knowing what he was supposed to be doing every day, knowing where he belonged.

Ben leaned over again and Sean gave him his ear. “Ya doin’ alright?”

With anyone else, Sean would give the platitude. But this was Ben.

Ben turned and Sean shouted. “Dunno.”

Because it was true. Physically, he was making a good recovery. His future was still uncertain because of his head injury, but he was physically fine—no headaches, no sickness, no blurred vision. If it wasn’t for the mood swings and the absence of two years, the scars on his scalp hidden by his hair now, you’d never know he’d been hurt. His leg wasn’t a hundred percent and the limp irritated the shit out of him, but he was tracking well. Jorge was convinced he’d be as good as new by next season.

Ben nodded. “Jack said.”

“Said what?” Sean pressed close to ask.

“Ya know,” Ben said, paused. “Ya’re good, ya’re always good, but ya have some bad days. Said you’ll be fine, but.”

Sean felt the old sting at the thought of Jack talking about him, but the heat wasn’t in it like it used to be. Jack was over by the bar, head tilted down to listen to something Lara was saying, his dopey smile fond, hand loose on his glass of beer, the strobe lights catching his blonde hair, the bulge of his biceps under yet another white shirt, the flat abs tapering down to his worn in jeans. There were girls, and guys, darting looks over at him, checking him out, no doubt wondering if they had a shot. Jack was one of the few single guys on the team aside from the younger blokes, but even most of them had a girlfriend, an “influencer”, Jack had explained to Sean and he’d stared blankly. He remembered people selling shit online, but he wasn’t aware it’d become such a thing, that most of the guys now hooked up with these women, did shit like, ‘Ambassador to the Races’ with them. But here they all were, in tiny dresses with big tits and perfect faces, the same kind of girls looking over at Jack now.

Had Jack ever been with a girl? He knew from the night they’d spent at the carnival that Jack was into boys, but that didn’t mean anything. Plenty of footy players probably love the cock and go for the pussy because no one wants to be that guy. And even if that wasn’t entirely true anymore, not many guys carried the exceptional status of George and Finn, not many guys would want to bring that world of shit on themselves. From what Sean had gathered, those two only came out because Finn was outed and George wasn’t going to let his boy go through that alone. It was romantic as shit, but Sean didn’t want that, didn’t think Jack did either. But did that mean Jack was looking to settle down with a woman?

A pretty brunette went up to him, touched his arm and leaned up to say something. She needed to do it to be heard over the music, and Jack bending down to hear her was for the same reason, but the picture they painted—curled into each other, the blue of the strobe lights catching glossy hair, Jack’s polite smile, her hand moving on his bicep, long painted nails almost caressing—it hit Sean like a fist in his chest, squeezing painfully.

“I gotta head out,” he leaned over to say to Ben.

“Yeah, ya better save Jack,” Ben cackled.

Sean didn’t know what that meant. He gave Ben a blackfella handshake, then turned for the stairs that’d take him back up to the street. He’d walk. The fresh air would do him good. He wanted to belt up the stairs at a run, but his leg wouldn’t allow for that yet, so he made do with a quick hobble. He grabbed his coat from the coat check, wriggled into it as he stepped onto the street.

Cool air hit his face like a balm for his reddening cheeks. He’d only had a diet coke, so he wasn’t ruddy from booze, yet as the fresh air washed over him, he realised he was hot. Anger, he’d normally think, but it wasn’t that and he knew it. The seagulls darted from the median strip over the road to the footpath, still active even though it was past midnight, but if people were around there was always the possibility for a feed, and they weren’t the most successful scavengers for no reason.

He moved towards the markets, ducked down the side lane, huddled under the shadows from the pub awning and the food court and headed for the road that’d take him past the old convict prison. He passed the long column of the staircase, the prison lit up with floodlights beneath it, the yellows and pinks and blues giving it an eerie yet weirdly cheerful vibe, as if this relic had always been a monument to tourism and not a place for enslaved men who could no longer fit inside the overburdened UK prison system two hundred years ago. As he darted around the dropped fruit from the Moreton Bay fig trees, squashed blood red on the bitumen, he heard Jack’s voice.

“Sean!”

His boots pounded on the pathway as he ran to catch up. Sean wanted to keep going, to run away, but that would be weird; he’d look like a panda bumping into another panda. He’d seen that on a nature documentary—pandas, because they ate bamboo, didn’t have the energy to get into fights, so if a panda happened upon another panda in their territory, instead of fighting, they’d bolt in opposite directions. Ben had howled with laughter at the sight of it. Sean had also thought it was funny, but he felt like it was serious too—conserving energy was important, so if you’re going to get in a fight, you better make sure it was worth it. He’d always thought the energy he’d used to fight Jack was a worthwhile deployment of that energy. But turning tail and bolting into the distance now, even not accounting for his leg and how running on bitumen in boots would fuck him up, it’d be a weird play at this turn in their not-relationship.

“Shoulda said you were leaving,” Jack panted when he caught up.

“Aren’t you supposed to be a professional athlete?” Sean asked and resumed walking.

Jack laughed, a huff of air as he caught his breath and fell into step with him. “Hey, fuck you, I just ran all the way here.”

He was an animated stretch of warmth at Sean’s side, his breathing loud above Sean’s head, his hand flying out as he talked. “Why didn’t you grab me? I was only sticking around ‘cos you were talking to Ben.”

They wound up the road on the other side of the prison, the space dark, empty and cold under the enormous wall that lined the hill stretching up towards Jack’s house.

“You seemed pretty busy,” Sean replied. He felt Jack’s eyes on the side of his head.

“Busy? In a club?”

“Yeah, with, ya know,” Sean sucked in a pissed off breath, “with that chick.”

He expected Jack to disagree, to laugh, or, worst of all, to fob it off with a ‘not feeling it’, but he didn’t expect Jack to stop walking so Sean got a few feet ahead before he was turning back to look at him.

Jack stared up at him, the incline giving Sean the height advantage. It was dark, but Sean could see Jack’s parted lips in the shadows, his wide eyes.

“I’m gay,” Jack said in a normal volume. It was night and there was no one around, but it was still a street with houses on one side of it, it was still possible someone could be sitting on a porch in the dark smoking bongs and listening to all of this.

“Like, gold star gay,” Jack said in the same voice.

“Jesus, take out a public announcement why don’t ya,” Sean hissed at him.

Jack jogged back beside him and grabbed Sean’s hand. “I didn’t think I’d have to spell it out for you. I guess I forgot…”

At least he was walking again, but Sean couldn’t let that just hang there.

“You forgot what?” he asked, taking his hand back as they approached the main road.

“We’ve talked about all of this,” Jack said, dropping his voice. “I’ve never been with a woman.” And he said it like a kid confiding a secret, and Sean wanted to laugh but then he caught up to what Jack was implying.

If Sean apparently knew this about Jack, then Jack knew about him. And Sean’s sexual history was not something he wanted anyone to know about, least of all Jack.

“Whaddya mean we’ve talked about this?” Sean asked, eyes fixed firmly on the traffic at the intersection, a lone pair of headlights idling slowly up the street.

“I mean, we’ve talked about what we’ve done before. And I’d never, Jesus, I’d never sleep with a woman,” he laughed, tipsy. “Can you imagine?”

Sean wanted to get back to what it meant that Jack knew about him, but he had to concede that unless Jack managed to pick up some dominatrix then yes, that would be hilarious. Poor girl would probably be scarred for life as Jack just laid there, dick soft, his big six-foot-three body splayed out and waiting for her to take him apart. He was the closest thing Sean had ever seen to a proper submissive outside of porn, and while Sean was so into it he was getting turned on just having this conversation on the street, he didn’t imagine it’d go over too well with that brunette back there, with many chicks.

But that didn’t answer the other question.

He huffed an obligatory laugh as they stepped off the curb and onto the empty road in tandem. “Yeah, that’d be pretty funny.”

“Right?” Jack laughed for real, his eyes on the side of Sean’s head. He was definitely drunk. Not smashed, but Jack-drunk.

“Whaddid you mean we talked about this?” he asked once they were back at the house. Once Lola had been greeted and patted and doted over for five minutes, Sean perched on the edge of the couch watching Jack chug a pint size glass of water.

“About what?” Jack asked, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand.

“About, ya know, bein’ gay,” he said.

“Oh, right, yeah,” Jack nodded, poured another glass of water. He popped two Panadol and two ibuprofen and took them in one go. He swallowed, gestured with the glass. “Just, we talked about who we’d fucked, that kinda thing.”

Sean ran his palms up and down his thighs, focused on his hands. He’d fucked a couple of guys other than Jack that he remembered. Been fucked by one too. None of them had been any good, the guy who fucked him the worst. The added layer of discretion had meant apps, no identifying names or features, just his black torso, but the first guy he’d ever had the balls to actually go and meet hadn’t recognised him as Sean Hiller, first year player for Freo, but had balked at him being an Aboriginal. He’d mumbled something about thinking he was Indian or American, made a joke about double bagging it. Sean had hidden the sting and bitten out that he wasn’t the one about to get fucked. The guy held up his hands and legitimately asked if he was sure he was clean, even though they were using a condom. Sean didn’t know why he stayed after that, eighteen-year-old insecurity mixed with a need to get it done now that he’d come this far. It’d sucked, his erection at half mast, the guy finishing himself off with his own hand in the room he shared with his uni buddies, the sound of the other guys loud in the living room just beyond the door. Sean hadn’t come, had pulled out, removed the condom and left with a “Thanks, see ya,” he still regretted.

The second guy acted like he was doing Sean a favour—he was older, a lawyer or accountant or something—and he topped from the bottom, which made Sean go soft and leave with a “Fuck this,” as he pulled his clothes back on while the guy got increasingly nasty about wasting his night.

But the third was the worst. He was big, one of those “straight” white tradie types who claimed he just liked to fuck dudes sometimes, but he wasn’t “fuckin’ gay.” He’d insisted on doing the fucking and while Sean didn’t want it that way, he didn’t know how to say no, crowded against a wall outside a toilet block he’d decided to cruise since he’d had enough of the apps. The surprised looks when those guys saw he wasn’t some other blackfella, but an Australian blackfella, hadn’t lost the sting even though he berated himself to not get so fucked up by it. And it wasn’t like he’d met any other Aboriginal men; he was kind of scared to—they’d end up talking and figuring out who their mobs were, what connections they might have.

The worst part was as the guy fucked him, he told Sean he’d bring some friends next time, said they’d tie him up and drive him out bush, take turns and teach a faggot like him a lesson. Sean wanted to shove the guy off, but he was nineteen and, to his shame, paralysed with fear. He’d had racist shirt hurled at him all his life, but never in close quarters like this. He’d always imagined himself fighting back, but he didn’t. He got the hell out of there as soon as the guy came, took the moment when his orgasm made him slump to shove him off, yanking his pants back up and running into the night of the park, hands working on doing up his zipper. He ran to his car, got in, and didn’t stop shaking until he was back in his room at Coogee.

Did Jack know all of that?

Before he could ask, Jack spoke. “I was eighteen,” he stated, eyes serious behind the booze. “Went on a training camp to Bali. Met up with a guy from an app, a real twink. He wanted me to, you know,” he waved his hand, “fuck him.” He laughed, humourless. “I sucked. I mean, I came and all that, but it wasn’t good.”

Sean nodded and Jack took a deep breath. “It went on like that. Always tourists, always dudes wantin’ me to do the fucking. And I thought that was what I was supposed to do too, ya know? Because I’m like, big or whatever. But like, that’s not what I wanted, I knew that too. But like, I couldn’t really ask for it like I wanted because I couldn’t…”

Sean nodded again. “You needed ‘em to get it.”

“Yeah,” Jack breathed out, his face smoothing in relief. “And then, well, then there was you. And I finally got, you know, what I wanted.” He shrugged like it was no big deal, but he said it in a way that meant it was a really big fucking deal.

“‘M glad,” Sean said, and meant it. He looked back down at his hands. “What about me?”

Jack shot an angry breath out his nose. “You told me.”

Sean looked up. Jack’s eyes were narrowed, face stony. Sean nodded and looked away again. “Musta told ya everythin’ then, eh?”

“Yeah, you did,” Jack agreed. “I went to that spot one night, you know. Tried to find the guy based on what you said.”

“You fuckin’ what?” Sean whipped his head back to look at him. Leaving aside the years that’d passed since it’d happened, even if Sean had told Jack in the last two years, what was Jack planning? To find the guy based on a description and beat the shit out of him? What if he had mates with him?

“Yeah,” Jack said again and came around the bench, cocked his hip on the side and crossed his arms. “I was gonna kick the shit out of him.”

Sean laughed; he couldn’t help it. Absurd as it was, he was touched. “Thanks, but uh, that’s kinda stupid for a lot of reasons.”

Jack shrugged. “I wouldn’t have even cared. If like, I ended up in a media shit storm for gay bashing at a beat? It still woulda been worth it ‘cos we’d both know the truth.”

Sean frowned. None of this felt like fuck buddies, not what Jack was saying and not the way Sean was feeling about it.

“Did you tell me this before?”

“Nah,” Jack smiled slightly. “You woulda kicked my ass.”

“So this is you telling me? Now?” Sean asked.

“Yeah,” Jack nodded, smirked. “I’m kinda pissed.”

Sean laughed. “I reckon you’ve probably been pissed and managed not to let it slip out before now.”

Jack looked away, ran a hand over his face. “Probably, I dunno. I knew you’d be mad.”

“When did this happen?” Sean asked, something occurring to him.

“When did what happen?” Jack asked, deliberately dumb.

“Jack,” Sean said, a warning.

Jack sighed, dropped his arms. “A month before you got hurt. You told me. I went lookin’ the next night. Said I was at Annie’s.”

Sean’s head was spinning. If it was a month before, then a month before they were close enough to have that conversation. Sean was comfortable enough with Jack to tell him shit he’d never told anyone and never planned to tell anyone. Jack said they weren’t together, but were they inching towards that? And if so, why wouldn’t Jack just say?

“I know I shouldn’t have done it, but I was just,” Jack sighed, his words filling a helpless silence, “so fuckin’ mad. And it was kinda my fault.”

“How in the fuck was it your fault?” Sean knew there was no way Jack knew the bloody guy, had set him up. That’d be insane and Jack wasn’t that guy.

“If I hadn’t fucked it all up at the start, then you wouldn’t of had to deal with any of that,” Jack said.

He was picking at his cuticle with his thumb nail, eyes down, voice drunk and sadder because of it.

“Whaddya mean?” Sean asked. He shuffled in his seat, willed Jack to look at him—he could read him better that way.

“That night, when we,” Jack started, darted his eyes up, checking in for how Sean would take talking about this. Sean jerked his chin, hoped he looked welcoming. He wondered if they’d ever discussed this.

Jack didn’t continue, he refocused on his nail and Sean was going to burst when he finally spoke. “I wasn’t pissed, it wasn’t a joke.”

“You were kinda pissed,” Sean replied more to fill the silence than address what Jack was saying.

Jack shook his head. “Nah, I mean, yeah, a little bit. But I only said that ‘cos I chickened out. I wanted to kiss you, I’ve always wanted…”

Sean stood and went over to him. “What’ve you always wanted?”

Jack met his eyes. “To kiss you.”

They were the same blue eyes looking back at him from under the fall of that shaggy blonde hair. Older now, tired. Not the bright, na?ve eyes of the boy he’d been back then. The boy who’d leaned forward and met him when Sean closed that gap, pressed his lips in a rush of daring against Sean’s, who’d been about to pull away just as quick when Sean gripped the back of his head and deepened the kiss, the oval pitch black around them, their asses cold on the cricket pitch, empty bottles of beer between them. Sean had pushed his tongue into Jack’s mouth, felt a thrill when Jack made a shocked sound, then met him, the kiss turning wetter, hungrier. He’d tightened his hold on Jack’s head, pushed closer for more.

“Shit,” Jack had said, pulling back suddenly and breaking the kiss. Sean’s hand gripped and released in his hair. He’d wanted to lean in and keep going, to do more, to touch him.

“Shit,” Jack said again, voice gone goofy. “I’m so drunk.”

Sean loosened his hand.

Jack glanced up, a smirk on his lips, but his eyes weren’t laughing. Sean could still see it, over ten years later; he’d looked scared. Of what, Sean didn’t know. Of him? Of kissing a boy?

Sean let him go and sat back.

“It’s just like a joke, right?” Jack had asked, a desperate edge to his voice.

Sean had forced a laugh. “Yeah, man, course.” He’d wanted to change the subject, get them back on safe ground, but a pit of despair had opened in his chest and he didn’t have the energy to do it.

“I’m so fuckin’ pissed,” Jack laughed, a fake laugh. “Just messin’ around. I’m not, I’m not like that.”

Jack had darted a glance at him as if to say, and you’re not either, right? But Sean hadn’t missed the fear in his eyes; it was like the frightened anger of a cornered animal ready to unleash if Sean said the wrong thing.

“Reckon we should head back,” he’d gotten up, snaked three empties between his fingers. “Gotta kick your ass tomorrow.”

“Oh, you’re gonna try,” Jack jumped onto the subject change and prattled on as they walked back, a good metre between them. Sean’s lips still buzzed with the feel of Jack’s lips on his, but he’d seen Jack wiping his mouth with the back of his hand in between shit-talking about their game, and it’d made something shameful twist in his stomach, in his chest.

“I kinda wanted to punch you,” Sean said now, and Jack slumped and nodded his head.