"I have a confession to make," Gibsie announced during training on Wednesday.
We were on our twenty-ninth out of thirty ordered laps of the pitch and he was starting to wilt.
Actually, I was on my twenty-ninth lap.
The rest of the team were on their fourteenth.
Gibsie was on his eighth, and the wilting began at lap four.
Now, he resembled a lad falling out of a nightclub at three in the morning with a belly full of Jager bombs.
He, along with the rest of them, needed to get it together because we had the School Boys Shield to play for next week and I had no intention of running myself into the ground if the rest of the team weren't committed to the cause either.
These gobshites had ten days to get their shite together.
"Are you listening?" Gibsie growled in a breathless tone, grabbing onto my shoulder in the hopes that I would pull his lazy ass around. "Because this is serious."
"I'm listening," I told him, dragging in gulp of air and expelling it slowly. "Confess away."
"I have an insane urge to kick you in the balls –" Gibsie puffed out a ragged breath before he finished with, "And break what's left down there."
"The fuck?" Shaking his beefy hand off my shoulder for the hundredth time, I switched positions, jogging backwards so I could glare at the bastard. "Why?"
"Because you are a freak of nature, Kav," he panted, dragging himself along after me. "There is no goddamn way any fella in your position –" he pointed a finger at me and then sagged forward, pressing his hands to the back of his head, "with a broken dick should be able to run for this long without dropping dead." Groaning he added, "My cock's in perfect working order and it's fucking crying from exertion, Johnny! Crying! And my balls have hibernated back to their pre-puberty position."
"My dick's not broken, asshole," I growled, looking around to see if anyone heard us.
Thankfully, the rest of the team were at the other side of the pitch.
"I want a picture of it," he wheezed. "So I can show coach and pretend it's mine. He'll never make me run again."
"Keep talking about it and you won't need a picture to show coach," I bit out. "I'll cut your cock off and you can hand it to him instead."
Gibsie grimaced. "Still too soon to make jokes?"
I nodded stiffly and then spun around, recapturing my earlier pace, as I loomed closer to the finish line.
"Sorry lad," he panted, falling back into a hobbling run alongside me. "It's just unnatural to move with that kind of speed when you're injured."
"Do you honestly think this is easy for me?" I bit out.
If he did, then he was fucking crazy.
I had 'speed' because I spent most of my childhood and all of my teenage years working on my body.
While Gibsie and the lads were playing knock and run and spin the fucking bottle, I was on a pitch.
When they were chasing girls, I was chasing gains.
Rugby was my life.
This was all I had.
But the laborious pace I was keeping today was so far off my usual standard that it was pathetic.
I was sluggish and the only reason it wasn’t noticeable was because this was school level.
If I dragged my ass like this at The Academy, where I played alongside the best players in the country, then I'd be instantly called out on it.
My body was on fire and I was moving on sheer will.
Everything hurt to the point where I had to breathe through my nose to stop myself from vomiting. I would pay for the exertion with a sleepless night of writhing in agony, half a dozen painkillers, and a scalding hot bath in Epsom salts.
But I couldn’t stop.
I fucking refused to give in.
If I gave Coach Mulcahy a single inkling that I wasn’t up to par, he would call the heads at The Academy.
And if he called The Academy, I was screwed.
I slowed my pace when I reached the end zone, walking it out, keeping my muscles loose and moving.
If I stopped short, I was going to seize up, and I intended on doing just that in the privacy of my own car.
Swiping a bottle of water off the ground, I paced the sideline like a mad-man for several minutes, desperately trying to walk off the pain.
I didn’t dare perform a post run stretch-out.
I wasn’t that much of a masochist.
When my heartrate returned to normal, I waited for coach to give me the nod for early dismissal, then headed back to the changing rooms, my job for the day completed.
I hadn't realized Gibsie had followed me up the path until I heard him let out an earsplitting wolf whistle. "You're looking well, Claire-Bear!"
Curious, I followed his train of vision only to find two familiar looking blondes huddled under the awning outside the science building.
One of said girls was scowling back at us with her middle finger directed towards my best friend.
"Watching me train again?" Gibsie called across the courtyard. "You know I love when you do that."
It took me a few seconds to recognize the leggy blonde as Hughie Biggs's baby sister.
"What was that?" Claire called back, cupping her ear with her hand. "I can't hear you."
"Go out with me!"
"Get stuffed, Gerard!"
"You know you want to," Gibsie laughed, twiddling his fingers at her in salute. "My little brown-eyed girl."
"Don’t do it, Gerard!" Claire's face turned bright red. "Don’t you dare sing that –"
Gibs cut her off with a verse of Van Morrison.
"I hate you, Gerard Gibson!" Claire hissed when he was done serenading her like a demented crow.
"And I love you, too," he laughed, before turning his attention to me and stifling a groan. "Jesus Christ," he groaned so that only I could hear him. "I swear to god, lad, that girl drives me crazy."
"You're already crazy," I reminded him. "You don’t need anyone's help with that."
"Look at her, Johnny," he groaned, ignoring my jab. "Look at how beautiful that girl is. Christ, it might be that sunshine hair, but I swear she glows."
"Don’t even think about it," were the words that came out of my mouth.
"I won't –for now," Gibs replied, eyes alight with mischief. "But I've a feeling that I'm going to marry her."
His comment stopped me in my tracks. "What?"
It was too weird.
Even for him.
"Providing we both make it out of our youth without any accidental babies," he added thoughtfully. "And her brother doesn’t cut my dick off first, of course."
"Claire's in third year," I deadpanned. "And she's your teammate's little sister. The fuck's wrong with you, Gibs?"
"Did I say I was going to marry her today?" Gibsie countered. "No, fucker, I did not, so clean your ears out. I meant when I'm old as fuck and I'm done sowing my wild oats."
"Old as fuck?" I gaped at him. "Sowing your wild oats?"
"Yeah." He shrugged. "You know, like thirty or something."
I rolled my eyes. "Yeah, well, word to the wise, Gibs: bag those wild oats while you're sowing them. And keep them far away from girls like that one."
"Hey – don’t give me those judgy eyes," Gibsie scoffed. "I always bag my shit. And there's nothing wrong with liking her. You're the one with the phobia to girls your own age, lad, not me."
Aware that we were having this extremely messed up conversation in the middle of the courtyard, I searched around to see if anyone was eavesdropping.
Gibsie wasn’t the brightest crayon in the box, but I'd feel pretty fucking bereft if Hughie was to hear him talking about his baby sister like this and murder him.
It was at that exact moment my gaze landed on the tiny brunette, laden down with an armful of books, skip down the steps of the science building and hurry over to the blondes.
A sudden swell of something filled my chest when I recognized the brunette as Shannon.
Goddammit, why did she have to look like that?
Why did every single thing about that tiny fucking girl scream out to me?
It wasn’t fair.
Actually, fuck fair, it was downright cruel.
It didn’t make any sense for me to find her attractive.
She was nothing like the girls I usually fucked around with.
I liked curves.
I loved tits.
And I was a sucker for a big ass.
She had none of the above.
But she had legs.
And hair.