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There's nothing sentimental about the drawer itself.

Pens.

A charger.

Two protein bars I should probably throw away.

An old pair of reading glasses I don't need anymore.

But beneath all that?

A single photograph. The edges are soft from age.

Granddad and me.

I'm maybe nine. Skinny kid. Big ears. Terrible haircut.

He's sitting beside me wearing his old rugby jersey while I'm holding a ball almost as big as my torso.

I remember that day.

Of course I do.

I remember everything. Sometimes that's a gift. Most of the time it's a fucking curse.

But I remember that day clearly. We'd watched rugby that morning. Some match he swore I'd remember for the rest of my life.

I do.

Not the particulars of the match anyway. But I remember him. The way he shouted at the television when the referee made what he called the worst bloody call in the history of organized sport.

The bowl of popcorn between us. I still love popcorn.

His hand smacking my knee whenever somebody broke through the defense. The way he laughed when I started yelling right along with him, even though I barely understood what the hell was happening.

I learned. Quickly.

Because Granddad loved rugby. And I loved Granddad.

It was that simple.

Rugby became ours.

Other kids had baseball with their fathers. Fishing trips. Camping. Whatever the fuck normal families did.

But my father wasn’t in the picture. And I always hated baseball and fishing.

What I had was Granddad. And we had rugby.

We watched it. Studied it. Argued about it.

He taught me the rules before I understood long division. By twelve, I could tell him exactly why a team was losing before the commentators figured it out.

By fourteen, I was keeping statistics. By sixteen, I was playing.

Not professionally.

That was never going to happen.