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“Anyway,” George cleared his throat and schooled his expression. “It’s been good to finally meet in person, see what I’m dealing with.”
Joq saw Finn’s arm move again as they looked at each other and smiled.
The questions moved on to how George was planning to use Finn in the mid-field. Joq was gripping his phone. He loosened it. George never told him that. Joq had noticed he’d been on his phone more, but he figured it’d been the team in general, the new job. Surely all those calls in his home office, those texts at dinner, and yeah, those late night calls, surely they weren’t all Finn?
Joq watched until it rolled into an advertisement, his mind drifting. Even if they were, so what? Joq knew George had been anxious about what Finn was facing, argued it was different now with social media. “Especially since these damn rookies insist on broadcasting their whole lives with that shit,” he’d said.
Joq googled Finn. The first image that came up before the accounts was… well. It was an eyeful. Finn was standing on the beach laughing at someone off camera, his boardshorts loose on his hips, his abs the star of the shot. Joq swallowed. Washboard abs, lean yet cut. Joq clicked through more photos, then scrolled through various accounts, noticed the thousands of comments, and wondered what in the hell Finn’s messages must be like.
There was a young woman in a lot of the pictures. Similar age, very similar looks—messy blonde hair, stoner blue eyes, straight white teeth; she was barely covered in a series of bikinis, tiny tops and shorts next to Finn’s numerous shirtless pics, barely there singlets, their bodies comparatively perfect. Joq realised it was his sister when he saw their beaming faces alongside an older woman, another clone, looking up at the camera over a birthday cake. Finn’s mum. Joq read the post and deduced she was a single mum, raised her two kids running her own, Joq groaned, naturopath and homeopath clinic in Byron. The rest of it was more of the same—beaches, lots of skin, bonfires, smiling faces, lots of guys around but no one in particular, so just a big friendship group and then the usual training, football highlight stuff. The follower numbers were staggering.
He checked out a few articles and pieced together what he already knew in a vague way. Finn was drafted two years ago. Then he got injured—developed osteitis pubis, a degenerative groin injury, and stayed in Byron to work with the best specialist for it, who happened to live there. Joq thought about the pictures with the sister, the mum, and wondered how true that was. Regardless, he’d worked his way back in playing in the local Byron league. Joq’s suspicions about him being a mama’s boy seemed confirmed when he read Finn played a year in reserves for match fitness in the NEAFL. Sydney and Brisbane turf. Why would a Victorian rookie play for the Sharks on the Gold Coast? Sure, he got experience against AFL listed players and wouldn’t play against his team mates in that league, but it’d make more sense to come down to their reserve team.
What had George said in that press conference? ‘Reached out after the draft, then again when he got the call up.’ The call up was three months ago. So, George had known the kid, in a friendly way, for over two years? And George had initially reached out when he was still a player. Then ‘kept in touch’ for the last three months as his coach.
Joq got up and went downstairs. He clicked on the espresso machine and looked out at the pool. The lights were on, the whole tropical scene with the cabana and palms lit up against the dark. Joq shook his head, it was rookie-coach shit, nothing more.
Not much in the press conference to tease George about either, and it’s not like Joq could ask him about the budding friendship that’d clearly been going on for months, years, without sounding like he was asking something about it. Which was ludicrous, George wasn’t going to fuck the kid. Finn hadn’t even turned twenty-one yet. A decade between them was like a lifetime to someone like George—he was way too far in the closet for that. Not to mention, George was nothing if not a total professional—he’d never risk team dynamics for a fuck. Never.
Joq shook his head and made his coffee. He watched the palms sway in the breeze, listened to the filter bubbling in the pool and decided to do some laps before he went into work.
But as he swam, he couldn’t shake the thought of George talking to Finn, knowing Finn, for over two years and never mentioning it. It’s not like he and George lived in each other’s pockets, but something about this felt deliberate.
He sank back under the water, pushed his feet against the wall and swam to the other end. Maybe George didn’t say anything because it wasn’t worth mentioning. It was nothing. Joq came up and sucked in a pull of air. That was actually the more likely scenario—George said nothing because there was nothing to say. Finn was just another player, and now another rookie.
5
Joq leaned back in his chair, rocked from side to side, drank his third cup of coffee for the morning. It was just him in the surveillance room this early; he’d get the team on a more punishing schedule once the season started, let them sleep in when all that was happening was training.
He leaned back and watched the security monitors in front of him. The wall of individual black and white screens captured the familiar tunnels and corridors, locker rooms, treatment rooms, the gym—the bowels of the stadium that’d been his daily view for almost twelve years.
George appeared on the top corner monitor. It still gave Joq a thrill. Not in the way it did in the early years of their relationship; there were no more butterflies or bolts of desire. It was fondness now. A comfortable knowing there was his man. It always made him smile.
George was walking down the tunnel with his assistant coach, his dark hair so long it brushed the top of his collar. Joq reminded himself to tell George he needed a haircut before the season started. The assistant coach was speaking, his hands waving, and George frowned as he listened. But then he looked up, his gaze landing on someone coming from the other end of the tunnel and his expression softened.
Joq glanced at the screen below and saw the back of Finn.
George said something to the assistant and walked on ahead alone, his face transforming into a smile like it was out of his control, a lightness in it Joq had never seen.
He glanced at the middle monitor as the two met in the corridor. Finn must’ve said something because George laughed, surprised and pleased. Finn looked down, his footy boot kicking at nothing on the concrete.
George said something and bumped Finn’s shoulder. Finn glanced up and Joq took in the scene they made together—same height, but that’s where the similarities ended. George was a man whose career as a player had come and gone and at almost thirty-one, he was the youngest coach to take the mantle. It showed. He had gravitas, but he had the nerves of a first day at the office too. It made him seem younger.
Next to Finn though, he was indisputably a man. George filled out his open collar white button-up, his dress pants, and suit jacket with the impressive physique of a man who’d used that body and used it well. He had laugh lines around his eyes. They crinkled while he looked at Finn now. Finn—every inch the super star on the cusp of twenty-one in his shorts and practice jersey against his unblemished tan skin. The way his head dropped down in a desire to please, in an attempt to hide his shy smile; it was nothing like the confident kid in those social media posts.
Joq had watched George live his life on these monitors with players and coaches and trainers for years. He’d never seen anything like this. He was sure he was imagining it, layering his own filthy fantasies over the scene. He couldn’t help it—he knew George wouldn’t go for it, but he’d had a few idle daydreams. Few men wouldn’t in the face of Finn. And George crushing on Finn. He imagined being asked to join them. A frivolous thought: George was not a man to do threesomes. It was still amazing he was with Joq at all. But watching them now, those fantasies spoiled in the way only a previously unwavering infatuation with someone can spoil when they do one innocuous thing—the wrong cologne, a rude remark to a waiter, an uncensored look.
He watched as George reached out, casually brushed Finn’s wrist, his thumb stroking the skin in a few quick sweeps as he spoke. Finn’s expression smoothed to serious. He nodded his head in a sharp jerk before his face broke into a smile. George dropped his hand, said something close to Finn’s ear and then moved on. Joq watched as Finn turned, laughing, his eyes fixed on George’s back.
Joq flicked his eyes back to the top monitor and watched as George shoved his hands in his pockets, smiled to himself and walked down the corridor. It was nothing, banter, team stuff—
And then George looked back over his shoulder and Joq couldn’t see his face, but he glanced back at the centre monitor and saw the way Finn blushed, his smile shrinking to self-conscious.
Joq leaned back in his chair, clasped his hands over his abs. Surely George wasn’t going to finally take advantage of being in an open relationship by hooking up with the rookie… was he?
6
The thing was, there’d been a rumour. Joq didn’t hear it until after he’d met George, after they’d slept together in Joq’s cramped room in Brunswick. He’d only just started at the stadium, and as the newest guy on the roster he got the odd weekend off. Sitting in a bar around the corner from his place, he’d been drinking a beer, watching the game, watching George and feeling flushed and tingly seeing him up there on the screen when he heard it.
