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We have a chaotic morning that I capture with my stylus. Hayden’s mum rocks a pink boa on my phone screen. Feathers fly as we share breakfast around a crowded table. His sisters are a trio of preteen whirlwinds. I draw them spinning with excitement once they’ve finished eating. It’s cute how much of that excitement is aimed at Hayden—how they take it in turns to snuggle close—and I don’t blame them. I’d cuddle him too if he didn’t look so shellshocked—not because of my arrival. If anything, his feet locking around mine under the table suggest I’m an anchor.
Kirsty clues me into why. “Give your brother a chance to breathe, girls! He’s hardly had any sleep.” This is sympathetic. “I couldn’t sleep either. Which is how I heard you go out early, love.” I can guess the reason for his sleeplessness after she says, “Girls, your brother and I have phone calls to make, so go make yourselves busy by unpacking your suitcases.”
Hayden pays more attention. “Suitcases?” Kirsty gestures at the hallway, but all three of her girls speak before she can answer.
First is Emma, I think. She’s feisty. “Because we couldn’t have a birthday without you.”
Isla spins in a circle, her own boa losing fuchsia feathers. “We were going to come to Cornwall with your tent after the concert!”
Ava is the smallest. She shows no sign of moving from Hayden’s lap, her eyes as soft as his. Both sets look across the table at me as Ava asks, “Do you know how to pitch Hayden’s tent? It’s a really big one.”
It’s the wrong moment to laugh.
I can’t help it, and Kirsty joins in. Hayden makes the save by rumbling, “Rae was a quick learner.”
I learn fast again this morning. This time I get a crash course in genetic markers. In a family’s grief and their different coping strategies. Kirsty’s meant fighting for her family. “I made the academy cover the cost of rehab.” She guesses that Hayden’s coping strategy was providing. “Which was my responsibility, not yours,” she insists, but she says so with such familiar compassion that I’m a little bit amazed they aren’t blood relations. “I’ve always been able to take care of the girls, love.”
That seems to act as a reminder.
Hayden isn’t wearing his tool belt. He still finds a tape measure. He also sets Ava onto her feet. “How about I go measure your room for a new wardrobe? I could build it while I’m here.”
Ava skips away. “We already got one. James built it for us.” She holds out a hand to me. “Want to see?”
I don’t, but I see Kirsty nod, so I follow Ava to the foot of the staircase while her mum starts a conversation in the kitchen that she’s waited to have face-to-face with Hayden.
“James is a coach at the football camp, and so good with the kids. He wants to meet you, when you’re ready. To get to know the whole family.” This is quieter. “It isn’t anything serious. Notyet. But it could be. He isn’t a replacement, Hayden. He couldn’t ever be. It’s just?—”
“Time?” Hayden sighs, and if he says more, I don’t hear him.
Three little Swifties are waiting upstairs for me, and I want to get to know this whole family as well, so I climb the stairs to get that party started.
We escape later.
Hayden and I walk so closely that our shoulders brush. He’s quiet until we approach the practice grounds where shouts echo. A game is in progress behind walls too high for me to see over. “There’s nothing wrong with being competitive,” he says. “Nothing terrible about wanting to be the best that you can be.” He stops, and I do too. We stand on the other side of the street as kids hurry inside, the studs on their boots clattering. “There’s everything wrong with not noticing when one of your top prospects is drowning.”
I watch him stand up straighter instead of folding as he admits this. “Tramadol was legal in competition when they prescribed it. It isn’t now. Back then, testing positive wouldn’t have mattered.” He wets his lips, his gaze fixed on the academy doorway. “Only I needed so much that what they gave me stopped touching the sides.”
“Of your pain?”
He snorts. “Here’s the stupid thing. I was healed when I tested positive for whatever it was I took that day. I was fully recovered. Had been for months. Tell that to my body. Everything hurt, Rae. I couldn’t move without wanting to puke.”
He describes a skin-crawling craving I’ve witnessed firsthand, and I hate it for him.
“But I couldn’t risk not being able to play, so I asked an older player, and they hooked me up with someone. I took what they gave me, too fucking desperate to care what it was. Ket, I think. Not sure. Second worst day of my life.”
I can guess the first.
Our shoulders brush again. We’re close enough that I feel him flinch when someone blows a whistle. He doesn’t shy away from this. “I was about to suggest medication for you. Googled ADHD, and found a whole list of things to help with focus.”
“When?”
“Before I heard your talk. Don’t know what I was thinking.” He chuffs out a choked sound. “Suggest stimulants to you after your mum?—”
“Sent me out to score some for her? Mate, she didn’t take the prescription version. And I haven’t ruled it out. Almost started a course of treatment once, but I just couldn’t shake off this...” I don’t know how to phrase this without sounding irrational. “It isn’t that I thought I’d end up like her. I know stimulants don’t work that way on people like me. And there are several different options. I just…”
“Couldn’t help worrying you were wired the same way. Like I can’t help being shit scared that I’m wired the same way as Dad, even though it’s unlikely?”
I bet he’s picturing all the results and medical letters Kirsty dug out before we came on the walk together. “You feeling any better about that?”
