"Yeah, I've noticed," he chuckled. "I meant that I think you'd enjoy watching rugby. If you enjoy GAA so much, you'd love the physicality of rugby."
"I do enjoy it," I reminded him. "When Ireland are playing." Not that I have a bull's clue of what's going on, I skipped adding.
"What about local teams? School rugby? Provincial sides? Ever been to any games before last week?"
He was firing off questions quicker than I could respond.
I attempted to answer him as best I could. "No, I don’t follow any team aside from the international squad, and I've never been to any other games."
Johnny nodded again, taking in everything I was saying like it was important.
"I play," he finally said.
"For Tommen. Yeah, I know," I quipped. "I saw you, and I still have an egg on the back to my head to prove it."
Johnny grimaced. "No," he pressed, tone oddly serious. "I mean I play."
I stared blankly back at him. "That's…good?"
He released an impatient laugh. "You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?"
"Nope." I shook my head. "I honestly don’t."
He considered this for a long moment before nodding. "I like that."
"You like what?"
"That you don’t know what I'm talking about," he replied without hesitation. "It's a little insulting and a lot refreshing."
"Uh, well, you're welcome?" I offered, not knowing what to say to that. "So, rugby's your thing, huh?"
Johnny smirked. "You could say that."
I felt like I was missing something here.
"And you're good?"
I thought he was good.
I thought he was the best out there last Friday, but I didn’t have a clue about the sport.
His smile widened, eyes crinkling slightly, as he repeated his earlier words, "You could say that."
Okay, I was definitely missing something.
"Am I going to be embarrassed by this?" I asked, racking my brain for information that might help me.
I didn’t have any.
Sure, I knew he was the captain of the school team, and those photographers and reporters were snapping at his heels, but I figured that had to do with him being captain and the best player on the field that day.
However, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was missing something.
"If I do an internet search on you, am I going to find out you're some sort of rugby god?"
Johnny threw his head back and laughed. "No," he mused. "I'm no god."
"Then what?" I pressed.
With a rueful smile, Johnny steered the topic back to me once more by saying, "So, GAA's your thing, huh?"
"Well, I really don’t have much of a choice in the matter," I responded, going along with his diversion. "I have five brothers and a GAA-fanatic father so..." I let my words trail off with a small shrug.
"No sisters?"
"Nope," I replied. "It's just me and the boys."
"How's that for you?"
His question threw me and it took me several moments to form a response. "Okay, I guess."
No one had ever asked me that before.
Not even my parents.
"It makes for a busy home life," I added, feeling the need to elaborate. "It gets kind of crazy sometimes."
"I bet."
Shifting his hand from the steering wheel to the leg he had planted on the floor, Johnny began to smooth his large hand over the front of his sweatpants, stopping to knead his thigh with his knuckles.
I would have been super creeped out by the move if it weren't for the fact that he seemed to be doing this subconsciously, like he was soothing an ache.
"Are you close?" he asked, distracting me from my staring.
"Close?" I blinked rapidly. "To who – my brothers?"
He nodded.
I thought about it for a moment before responding. "I'm close to Joey – that's the one on the phone earlier. He turned eighteen at Christmas, so he's the closest in age to me. Darren doesn’t live in Cork, and the three younger ones are only eleven, nine, and three, so we're not very close."
"He's good to you?"
"Who – Joey?"
He nodded.
"Yeah." I smiled. "He's a great brother."
"Protective?"
I shrugged. "Sometimes."
Johnny nodded thoughtfully before saying, "So, you're the middle child?"
"Yeah, I'm the third."
"That's a lot of kids."
"What about you?" I turned the tables on him. "Any sisters or brothers?"
"Nope," he replied with a shrug. "I'm an only child."
Wow. "What's that like?"
"Quiet," he quipped before shifting the limelight back onto me once again. "You've lived here all your life?"
"Yep. Born and raised in Ballylaggin," I confirmed. "You're from Dublin, right? You moved down here when you were eleven?"
His eyes brightened. "You remember me telling you that?"
I nodded.
"Christ, you were so out of it that day, I didn’t think you'd remember any of it," he replied thoughtfully, scratching his chin.
"Even if I hadn't, your accent is a dead giveaway."
"Yeah?"
Nodding, I put on my poshest southside accent and said, "I'm from Blackrock darling."
Johnny laughed at my attempt. "Not even close.”
"Let me guess, you enjoy dipping your toes in Sandycove before heading for a spot of lunch in D4?" I added with a snicker and another forced accent.
My cheeks burned.
God, I was so awkward.
"There's nothing posh about me, Shannon," Johnny countered, smile fading. "I might come from a decent area, but my parents work hard for everything they have. They came from nothing and built themselves up."
"You're right."
He didn’t sound posh at all.
My attempt at impersonating him was an epic fail.
What an idiot…
Embarrassed by my rare and poorly executed joke, I fiddled with my braid and mumbled, "I'm sorry."
"Don’t be sorry," he replied dismissively, smiling again. "Now, my Ma, on the other hand, has a really thick northside accent."
My eyes lit up. "Like in Fair City?"
Johnny scrunched his nose up. "You watch soaps?"
"I love them," I admitted with a smile. "Fair City's my favorite."
"Well, if you heard my Ma, you'd be in your element," he chuckled, oblivious to his weird hand-to-thigh movements. "My Da was born and raised in Ballylaggin. So, he's a Cork native like yourself." Shrugging, he added, "I suppose I sound like a fucked-up mixture of both."
He wasn’t.
He didn’t have an ounce of Cork accent in him, he was one hundred percent Dub, but I decided to skip telling him that and ask, "Why did your family move here?" instead.
"My Da's mother was sick," he explained. "She wanted to come home to, ah, you know, so we moved down to take care of her." Dropping his hands in his lap, he fiddled with his thumbs. "It was supposed to be a temporary thing – I was enrolled in Royce College for the following September. We were supposed to go home after the funeral."
"But you didn’t go back to Dublin?"
He shook his head. "Nah, the ‘rents decided they liked the quiet way of life down here, so they put the house in Dublin on the market and made the move a permanent one."
"How was it – moving at that age?"
I had no idea why I was asking these questions.
I couldn’t remember ever talking to a random person for this long before.
But this was nice and Johnny was interesting.
He was different.
I was stunned at how easy it was to actually talk to him.
"It must have been hard."
"It was a pain in the hole," Johnny muttered, clearly thinking back at the memory. "Coming into a new school halfway through the school year. Changing clubs and finding my feet in a new squad. Taking some other fella's spot on the team and then dealing with the fall out. " He shook his head and ran his hand through his hair. "I had to repeat sixth class over the move – some shit about policy or something."
"Where?"
"Scoil Eoin," he offered with a grimace. "The all-boys, Catholic primary school."
My brows shot up. "Same as Hughie Biggs?"
He nodded, smiling. "Yeah, that's where I met Hughie, Gibs, and Feely."
"Those guys are your friends?"
He nodded, grinning now. "Unfortunately."
"Did you mind?" I asked then. "Having to repeat sixth class at Scoil Eoin?"
"I was raging, Shannon."
"You were?" I asked, ignoring the way my insides shivered when he said my name.