Rooster: A Secret Baby Sports Romance (6 page)

“You know I’ve got to-”, I begin. “He’ll need feeding.”

“Sure”, Martin says.

“Nice to see you”, I lie.

“Yeah, likewise. Good luck with the, you know. Everything.”

I watch Martin disappear down the hill for long enough to answer my own question. No, not even if I were desperate, he would never be the right man for me.

The trudge home is harder than it usually is and I wonder if today I’m feeling particularly susceptible.

No sleep nights aren’t unusual right now, so I can’t blame my tiredness for getting me down. The truth is, it could be any of a number of other things too. Brad romantically linked with a stripper from Atlantic City he didn’t think important to tell me about, the cold weather with prospects of more on the way, the fucking unending grind of job interviews, the lack of any kind of light at the end of the tunnel. If I didn’t have Oscar I might give up completely, but then if I didn’t have Oscar, I might not be in this mess at all.

At home, April and Cory are getting ready to go out. It had completely slipped my mind that today was Friday. The day that traditionally every twenty-three year old goes out to party. Everyone but me and Oscar.

“What’s up?” April asks.

Even April’s
you’re my best friend and I’ll do anything for you
eyes aren’t enough to pull me out of my funk.

“Bad day”, I say.

“Every day’s a bad day when it’s fucking freezing”, Cory says.

“Amen to that”, April adds.

“Where are you going?” I ask.

“Haven’t decided. Monika’s having a house party so we might head over there.”

“Monika from work?” I ask.

April nods. I slump down into the coach, Oscar thankfully still out of it enough to have survived the journey back to the apartment, and now April’s awful music selection while we’re in it. I can’t escape.

“I thought you said she lived in a brothel”, I add.

“It’s technically a halfway house, but it’s definitely not a brothel”, April confirms.

“I wish I could come”, I say.

“I wish you could come to. We could always try and get a sitter”, April offers.

Twenty dollars an hour and at last minute’s notice, no chance. I don’t even need to say that either for April to understand. She reaches out takes my hand and squeezes it.

“Next time”, she says.

“Next time”, I echo.

She’s a good friend. I can’t think of many people who’d put up with a baby in their apartment for so long, and even though, all up, we’re pretty different people, she understands me perfectly.

“Don’t be sad, Iz. That super-fit, alpha male sports star is just around the corner, I can feel it”, she says.

“One that likes babies?” I ask.

“Just because Brad is a douchebag, that doesn’t mean every other man is. There are plenty of good ones. It took me a while to find one, and you are way more picky than I am.”

“Thanks, April”, Cory says sarcastically.

“I’m not exactly an Atlantic City stripper”, I say.

“And you’re much better for it.” April smiles, her arms out, her hair and makeup done. “How do I look?” she says.

“Gorgeous”, I confirm.

“Drop dead or totally fucking?” she asks.

I look at Cory and then back to April. They look good together - a normal, understanding, supportive couple. He’s not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he’s honest, doesn’t fuck her around and is clearly into her. He also stuck around when April was busy trying to make her mind up about him. I have to respect that because it’s way more than I’ve got with Brad. Fuck him, that doucheball.

“Drop dead”, I say, and April beams at me.

“Don’t stay up.”

At the door, I call to her. “April?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you for being there for me”, I say.

“Don’t even think about it, Izzy. Just repay the favor when Cory knocks me up.”

“No fucking way”, is Cory’s systematic response, before both of them are out in the corridor outside the apartment, and I can hear April continue to wind him up.

I have less than three minutes of absolute silence, during which I swear I’m about to fall asleep for a thousand years before Oscar’s wails wake me up. How something so small can make such a big noise, I have absolutely no idea. He must get that from his dad.

I feed him, change his diaper, spend forty minutes waiting for him to fall asleep again and then collapse back onto the sofa.

It’s the end of the week and I’ve achieved absolutely nothing. In fact, I’ve achieved less than nothing because right now I’m in a worse place than I was a week ago. At the start of this week, I had three interviews and a hat-trick of potential job opportunities. Right now, I have an empty schedule, a rapidly evaporating bank account and a stack of mail that can be nothing other than a pile of bills I’ve been putting off opening since the start of the month.

Oscar will need new clothes soon, more diapers and more medication. The buggy’s falling apart, and sooner or later, no matter what April says to the contrary a time will come when we’ll have to move out. I don’t want to bring it up because I don’t want to think about it, but it’s in the mail and I’m going to have to deal with it soon. Not just for her but for me too. When Oscar gets even just a little bit older he’s going to need his own room.

It’s a huge shit sandwich and I not only have to take a bit, I have to swallow the whole thing and enjoy it too.

Underneath the stack of mail is a newspaper, and even though I want to do everything but look at vacancies, I figure now, while Oscar is asleep, is as good a time as any.

I can feel my eyes shutting as I run them rapidly down the columns, an expert now in sorting through the ones that are likely to be worth applying for and the ones that definitely aren’t. When the words begin to get blurry and I decide enough is finally enough, I have several potential opportunities circled in preparation for ringing tomorrow.

I close the newspaper on the back page, and I’m about to rest my head on the cushion behind me when I see the headline jump out at me.

RANGERS DEFY LOGIC TO BRING IN SHAMED IRISH SPORTS STAR.

Any weariness I previously had is immediately evaporated when my eyes move from the attention-grabbing headline to the mugshot below it, his name appearing in huge letters, just in case there was any doubt.

RORY O’CONNOR.

My Rory. The father of my child. The itinerant Irish sportsman who took me down a back alleyway and left me full of his seed.

The best fuck of my life, here again, playing for my ex-employers.

I have to read the paper several times to make sure I’m not imagining it. I have to check the internet, the official web page, the gossip columns and they all say the same.

Rangers have gone mad. Rory is an ex-con brute who can’t even skate. This is either an act of madness from an owner long past his sell by date, or a piece of creative genius only Francisco Callaghan could have conceived of.

I can’t believe it. Here he is as clear as day, my one-time snapshot from a year ago playing for my one time team of the year. Banned from his sport, fresh out of prison, even sexier than I remember him.

That’s not all either.

Flown in from across the pond, allowed a work visa on a technicality and worth a cool million dollars for his efforts.

Let me repeat that.

One season, one million dollars.

My eyes go six coffees wide.

I happen to be New York Rangers most dedicated season ticket holder, which means Oscar might finally get to meet his daddy after all.

Three.

Rory

I feel like the fucking Michelin man.

I guess if it takes more time to get ready than it does to play the fucking sport itself, you know you’re in America. This is ridiculous. Pads, protectors, helmets, knee guards, gloves, I might as well be playing a videogame.

I still can’t believe I’m here at all, and nor can the rest of this team. We’ve done all the bullshit publicity, I’ve been given a basic rundown of the rules, and now, after only a week of skating lessons, I’m making my fucking debut.

Let me just break that down again for you. One week of skating lessons and Francis is putting me in his starting line-up.

Not on the bench, not in the audience, out on the fucking ice with the rest of these professionals.

I’m a hurling player, not an ice hockey player, and even though I know my way around a similar sport, I’ve had less than a week on the ice to get up to speed. And fuck me do these players blitz around this rink.

I guess he’s satisfied with my progress. Either that or he’s having a nervous fucking breakdown.

I can skate, that much is clear. I’m not an Olympic champion by any means, but I certainly don’t fall over easily. I’m working on my speed with the puck, but Francis says that’s not even that important. As long as I can stop them scoring - stop them moving at all actually - the native players can look after the rest.

It’s absolutely fine with me. If he’s going to pay me a million dollars to fight, I’ll carry on until he tells me to stop.

We’re up against the Boston Bruins, who are apparently even bigger cunts than we are, which in my estimation so far, is saying something. I’ve seen the way we play, and there is absolutely nothing sporting about it at all. I saw more honesty in the card games inside.

I haven’t met a single person here I’d want to go for a pint with either, with the exception of Francis and some of the female staff members.

Seriously. I’ve had even more of a negative reception than I did going back to my hurling side, more hostility than I got coming through border control. I get that these twats are all worried about me stealing their places in the starting line-up, but I’m not here to break records and eclipse my own players, I’m here to break noses and work hard so we can win as a team, which is something these lot seem to have forgotten how to do.

If I’m asked to play, it’s because someone isn’t doing their job properly, which is hardly my fault at all. If it wasn’t me, it’d be some other two metre tall, two hundred pound fighting machine, so it’s not exactly personal.

Besides which, even though I can’t navigate the ice like a fucking penguin yet, I’m probably better than most of these players. This is supposed to be a professional sport, and either this team is a poor representation of that, or the level in general just isn’t very high.

There’s a whole bunch of complicated rules I’m supposed to have learned this week, which Francis thankfully distils for me before we head into the cage.

“Put the puck in the goal more times than the other team and we win. Besides that, just make sure you announce yourself properly”, he says.

Other team members have other pieces of advice, ranging from threats to simple aggression, but all it does is make me laugh at how serious this whole thing is for them.

For me, it’s nothing but another fucking game. I don’t like losing, but I’m not going to let that happen anyway, so I’m not going to stress myself out about it. Plus, this isn’t my sport after all. It’s similar - we fight, we hold sticks, we put something in a net - the fact we do it on ice instead of grass is nothing but a detail, so I’m going to enjoy myself, get messy and see if I can show everyone how to fight like men, if not play this sport like it should be played to ensure we win.

I’m glad I’m not epileptic because trapped inside this cage the lights and noises around the ground are even more amplified than they are on the other side. I thought hurling audiences were bad too, these lot look like the prison set I left behind in Ireland. I’m glad we’ve got this fence up because some of the crowd look even uglier than the players we’ve got to face.

I’m told this is a grudge match. It’s not a city derby but it’s almost as important. The Bruins, by all accounts, are a Boston side made up of ex-cons and wife beaters, who will try to win the game as dishonestly as possible. I can’t see how that’s any different to our team, but there we go.

I haven’t been here long enough to find out the history of every single one of our players, but I do know that more emphasis has been put on bringing down the opposition as often as possible, rather than learning the rules. A win is a win after all, no matter what you have to do to get there.

The crowd whoop and cheer and it gets my blood going. Before every hurling match I felt like I was going into battle, and even though I’m covered in enough protection to fill a queen sized mattress, the cage around me, the lights, and the passion of the fans is beginning to make me feel the same.

Hurling was what I was born to do, but if that’s no longer an option this feels more and more like a viable second choice. I might have to make some adjustments on the equipment for the coming games, but right now I definitely feel excited. I have no idea what the fuck is going on, but that doesn’t matter to me.

I’m going to do my job to the best of my ability, and Francis has been very clear about what that job is. Chase them down and fuck them up. I can do that in hurling, I can do it here and I’d be able to do it if the sport was rugby, football or judo.