“You really have a poster of me?” he asked his little brother.
“Don’t get too big-headed,” Alex grumbled.
“Too late for that,” Rick said, all smiles.
“You took the words right out of my mouth,” Micah agreed. “Can we go home now?”
AT LEAST his room looked basically the same. Micah hadn’t taken a lot of stuff with him to Perth, so there was enough left behind to be familiar and comforting. He could almost believe he had just come home from a holiday, except his shelves were a little empty as he had taken his favourite books and DVDs with him to Perth.
He flung himself onto his bed and sighed with contentment as his body moulded into its familiar pattern. His bed in Perth still felt like one in a hotel, as Micah hadn’t been in it long enough to break it in. He briefly wondered how much it would cost to ship his bed across the country, and if doing so would make him feel any better.
He doubted it. It was a bed, not a magic pill.
There was a knock at the door, and Micah rolled over to see Alex standing in the doorway.
“What’s up?”
“Can you come here for a second?”
“Where?”
Alex cocked his head to indicate his bedroom across the hall.
“But I’m comfy,” Micah protested.
“Suck it up, princess,” Alex said. He grinned. “Did I sound like your coach?”
“I think he would be too scared to say ‘princess’ in case it was taken as a homophobic slur,” Micah told him.
“So what does he call you, then? Maggot?”
“Rhymes too much with the F-word. He doesn’t really tend to insult us.”
“Really?”
“Funnily enough, insults don’t lead you to push yourself. It probably leads to mutiny.” With a strangled and exaggerated moan, Micah staggered to his feet and followed Alex into his bedroom.
And there it was, in pride of place, catching your eye as soon as you entered.
Micah Johnson, Fremantle Dockers rookie, stared down at him from the wall with a self-conscious grin Micah couldn’t remember flashing the day his portrait was taken. His two-dimensional self didn’t look that comfortable in his guernsey, as if he was wearing a tuxedo for the first time and knew he was just playing dress-up.
“Wow,” he said, trying to sound like he wasn’t close to tears. “At least I know some of these things got sold.” He should really get onto their PR person to send his number one fan, Carter, a copy.
“Even Emma has one.” Alex was looking up at him with unmistakable pride. “But she says she drew a Hitler moustache on it.”
That would be right. Micah laughed, and it helped the tears that were threatening to fall to evaporate instead.
Alex handed him a sharpie.
“What’s that for? To draw a Hitler moustache? Or do you want me to add glasses and some pimples?”
“No, I want you to sign it, dummy.”
It was so dusty in here. Micah sniffed, uncapped the pen, and scrawled his signature across his guernsey. He stood back to inspect his handiwork.
Alex was unimpressed. “If people want your autograph, you should at least try to make it look like your name.”
He was right. Was Micah going to have to practice signing things? It looked more like “Meerah Jacksam” than Micah Johnson.
“I guess it will have to do,” Alex sighed.
“It’s very hard to sign a poster that’s hanging on a wall,” Micah said in his defence.
“Wait until you get some girl wanting her boobs signed.”
“Alex!” It wasn’t very often his little brother got to shock him, and he was now dissolving into a mess of giggles. “I doubt girls would want their boobs signed by the gay guy.”
“Okay, then, it will be hard to write on men’s hairy chests. Or their hairy butts.”
Alex was obviously on a roll.
“Can I go back to bed now?” Micah asked.
“Sure.” Alex took his pen back and stared at the poster. “Misha Jamsock.”
He was giggling again as Micah shut the door behind him.
Chapter 6
MICAH COULDN’T help but stare, openmouthed, as he took in the expanse of the MCG from what was practically a worms’ eye view. Even in all the times he had been a spectator, he had never been close to the ground. Now he was out in the middle of the field, and all he wanted to do was lie on his back, his arms spread out, feeling the grass between his fingers.
“So how does it feel to be home?” Sam asked, biting back a smile at Micah’s awe-struck appearance.
“Like the prodigal son.”
“Heads up!” Daril kicked a ball towards him, and Micah had to dive to catch it. “Pay attention, Johnson!”
“Give him a break,” Sam said. “He’s happy.”
“I want to eat my weight in pineapple donuts,” Micah said, punting the football towards him.
“They are pretty good,” Sam admitted, “but it would seriously hamper your career if you did that.”
“They’re so good I might just risk it.”
Sam laughed. “I feel that way about Tim Tams. That’s why I can only have them in the house occasionally. And if Maia needs a fix she goes out and buys the individual packs and eats them in the car. I can smell them on her breath when she gets home, though. It drives me crazy.”
Micah had a vision of Sam ravenously attacking Maia and sucking her breath out of her mouth to try and get any remnants of Tim Tams left there. It was a disturbing thought.
“Can we stop talking about food?” Daril moaned. “I just want some barbecue Samboys now.”
Talking about off-limit foods always did this to them, and they would start acting like they were stranded on a desert island and dreaming about foods they could eat again when they returned to civilisation (or, in their world, on the off season when they could indulge a little more).
“I’ll make a deal with you, Micah,” Sam said.
“Yeah, what?”
“If we win this weekend, I will buy you, and let you eat, a pineapple donut.”
“You’re on.”
“And if you kick a goal, I’ll give you two.”
“What if he kicks two goals?” Daril asked.
“I’ll find him a boyfriend.”
“I’d rather have the donut,” Micah said, in the face of their gentle laughter.
He wasn’t going to tell them he was already trying to remedy the boyfriend situation.