Chapter 8: Xavier

Chapter 8: Xavier

My body loves this day. My brain hates it. After a long season, we’re done. There’s no practice on the schedule. No game to play. Nothing to do with my time.

Downtime is my brain’s archnemesis.

I’m bruised and sore, the season taking its toll on my body. That hamstring injury still nags, right up in the middle of my buttock, and I know it’s only going to finally heal with some rest and relaxation.

I do neither well.

Normally, I’d fly back to England to visit my folks for a few weeks. But with COVID and travel restrictions, I’d be nervous that I’d spend my entire visit in quarantine. Or worse, that I’d take something home to my mum, who already struggles with chronic asthma. I keep asking my parents to move here, but since I’m gone so much, it hardly seems worth it.

Not to mention, they don’t want to leave their flock behind.

So here I am, no schedule, no routine, no nothing for at least a week while I let my injury heal. I’ll probably head up to Boston to catch the Buzzards in the playoffs. If I can’t be on the field, I can at least support Coach Janssen. Bjorn took a risk on me when I was blackballed in Europe. If he asked me for a kidney, I wouldn’t think twice before heading to the hospital.

To say I was livid when the Terrors gave him the ax would be an understatement. I wanted to walk myself, but with my international status, finagling a trade requires more work. There aren’t a lot of teams who will invest in a player with a history like mine.

I pull out my phone and make travel arrangements to fly to Boston. I should probably let my agent know where I’m off to since he’s the only one who has an interest in me off the field, but this trip is totally for pleasure.

After my reservations are made, I open ClikClak. I’d be fibbing if I said I didn’t take some kind of pleasure in the embarrassment it caused to Trent. I’ve half a mind to tag him in the video, just so everyone knows who the wanker is.

It pops up several times in my feed of suggested videos. I like each one if only to help with the traction of the video. Though I do feel bad for the girl. Lovely Lia. But wait, that’s not what Trent called her. He said her name … Ophelia Finnegan.

I wonder why that’s not in her ClikClak profile.

I open Instagram. I take a quick selfie, lying on the couch and caption it, "What exactly does one do on a Monday?" After posting, I scroll through my followers until I find Trent’s name. His latest post makes me stop.

It’s a graphic of the quote, "Karma is a bitch, and so are you. No one will ever touch you again."

It’s crude enough to make me pause. But my blood begins to boil when I see he’s tagged @OpheliaXOXO in it.

That poor girl.

I think back to how excited she was to be seeing her boyfriend. To be surprising him with such a gesture.

I click on her name and her profile comes up. It’s mostly pictures of her cat, a big, fat yellow tabby. She’s not very active on this site. I switch back to ClikClak and search for LovelyLia. I find her easily and then follow her.

Don’t ask me what is possessing this behavior, other than boredom.

And then a new video pops up. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was on her way to being thoroughly pissed. There’s a slight sway to her movement that I don’t recall seeing when she was at Trent’s on Friday night. She doesn’t speak, but graphics and words pop up, timed to the music and her dancing.

Basically, she wants ClikClak to find her the perfect guy. Requirements: not too tall, not too far away, and not too much of a dick.

Her words, not mine.

She also wants someone who’s romantic and loves big, grand gestures, and who doesn’t mind that she’s an accountant.

Poor lass. She’s going to get her heart stomped on. Again.

I switch back to Instagram and before I can analyze what I’m doing, I click on Ophelia’s profile, and then "Messages."

Me: Hi there. I’m the bloke who recorded your romantic surprise video. I’m sorry you didn’t realize what a wanker Trent was before, but he was and will always be a wanker. Don’t take down the video. It’s much too amusing to watch his face go all shades of scarlet every time someone mentions it. Hang in there.

I don’t know why I do it. I don’t know why I say those things, other than this poor girl wants someone to come riding in like a knight on a white steed and save her. She’s going to die alone, probably with about ten more cats. The last thing she needs is a tosser like Trent.

Next, I message Claude Kenley, strength and conditioning coach for the Buzzards to tell him I’m coming to Boston and see if he has time to grab a pint. We shared more than our fair share of them the year after I moved to the States when I roomed with him. It wasn’t usual for players to be staying with staff, but my situation was anything but usual.

I don’t think Coach Janssen wanted me by myself all the time. Though he said he believed me, and in me, I think there was part of him that wondered what really happened. He never asked, and I never volunteered the information.

That night has absolutely nothing to do with my ability to play defender and absolutely everyone knows it. I was a scapegoat, and I refuse to give any more attention to the situation.

The shadow hung over me when I came to the Terrors, but Coach Janssen never mentioned it. He treated me like every other player. I conducted myself with honor, both on and off the field, and he never had any complaints. I started every game as if proof of his faith in me.

And then the bloody coronavirus shut down the world. Sports have long acted as the great equalizer for the world and without them, everyone seemed off-kilter. I was no exception. But I used the time to train harder than ever, turning my apartment into a gym, since the one in my complex was shuttered, like the rest of the world. I ran every day and emerged from the pandemic in better shape than I’d ever been.

Which made it hard to understand why I no longer started. Sure, I played every game, but I was no longer a starting defender. It’s not uncommon for me not to see playing time until the second half. The writing’s on the wall, but I still have a year left on my contract with the Terrors. Two if they extend it out to make up for 2020.

I don’t think I can do this for another two years.

It’s time to call my agent. "Tony, mate, I need you to work on a trade for me. I can’t stay with the Terrors another season."

"I hear you, Xavier, but you’re stuck. You’re not eligible for a trade until March twentieth."

That’s a week after next season starts, which means I’ll have to do all my pre-season training with the Terrors.

"I know. I wish I could go sooner. They’re going to bench me again and for no reason. I’ve played better this season than I ever have." I don’t mention the nagging hamstring. No one wants a player with a liability.

"That’s weird, and I can’t get an answer as to why. Camacho isn’t talking, at least not about that."

"It can’t be the thing. I started for two years before COVID, so if he were going to hold it against me, I never would have been his starter. You’ve got to get to the bottom of it, so we can fix it. Either that or you’ve got to find a way to get me traded."

I don’t love having an agent who acts as my manager, but football is a business, and I don’t have the time or the finesse to make the necessary arrangements. Basically, I’m good at being a footballer and not much else.

Except for handling birds.

If I wasn’t playing football, there’s no doubt I’d be in the family business of wild bird rescue and rehabilitation, hence my nickname. I’m sure Mum would love it if I called right now and said I was hanging up my cleats and flying home. I’m not so sure my older brother, Philip, would feel the same, but I doubt he’d turn away the help.

Things have been very rough since the pandemic, and if it weren’t for my salary, Mum and Dad would have had to close up shop. They survive, normally, on tours, birthday parties, and photography sessions. Obviously, all of those have taken a massive hit in the last eighteen months since the pandemic began.

No one cares much about a starving barn owl or a hawk with a broken wing when you can’t put food on your own table.

While I’m by no means the highest-paid player in the league, my salary is more than enough to keep me comfortable while helping out the family. It’s one of the main reasons why I keep my agent. Tony negotiates a much higher rate than I’m capable of, as well as endorsement deals. I had the one back home before the … incident. I’ve had one or two small ones here in the States. He’s hoping to book more this winter while I have some free time.

I’m going to find a rescue organization here in Baltimore to volunteer at during the off-season. I mean, I’ll still be doing training sessions. The schedule is simply more flexible. Most people think the off-season is a time for rest and relaxation. I look at it as a time to get into full fitness to go into the pre-season strong.

Except for today. A cursory search of flights has me getting the best price to Boston this evening.

Fine. It’ll get me to town in plenty of time for the game tomorrow night. I won’t mind kicking around a different city for a bit either. Doesn’t hurt to do some recon, especially if I’m going to put Tony up to making a deal with the Buzzards.