JUST AS he got back to his parents’, his mobile buzzed.
Home again. So good to see Melbourne. Kyle’s overuse of emoticons was hilarious, and on a par with a twelve year-old’s.
I had that feeling too when I got off the plane.
Like you don’t want to go back?
Micah sighed to himself. You know it.
Sometimes I wish I could just go back to last year, when everything was good and nothing had changed.
Micah’s heart began beating way too fast. Was Kyle hinting at more? Micah could list a thousand reasons why they couldn’t, and he didn’t even know how they could make it work, but he would be lying to himself if he denied he wouldn’t get back with Kyle in a shot. I wish that too.
Maybe he had pushed it too far. Kyle didn’t respond again that night.
MICAH BARELY got any sleep, stressing about the text he had sent and had obviously not been received very well, but as he was eating breakfast the next morning he got a response.
Sorry. After seeing the olds and having dinner I crashed like the dead. Good luck today. Speak soon.
As it was obviously Kyle’s preferred choice of communication, Micah sent him the dancing girl emoticon. He knew it made no sense, but let out a loud guffaw as Kyle texted back the face that was crying with laughter.
His mum gave him a strange look across the table, but didn’t ask for information. He was starting to think she knew. Or at least knew something was happening. To escape any upcoming interrogation he bolted down the rest of his Weet-Bix and ran out the door.
HE MET up with the rest of the boys at their hotel, and partook in a second breakfast as Weet-Bix alone just wasn’t cutting it anymore. The amount of training and calories he burnt meant he was eating more and craving more. Under the watchful eyes of their coaches and nutritionists, however, the boys were sensible and stuck to wholegrain toast and eggs rather than the drool-inducing Belgian waffles that were being spooned onto the grill by the chef right near their table. Micah fantasised about a plate of them, heaped with strawberries and Devon cream. The cream was beginning to melt and spill over the sides of the waffles, creating a scrumptious pool for them to drown in….
“You okay?” Daril asked, poking aside the mountain of scrambled eggs that were obscuring his toast.
“What?” Micah snapped out of his reverie. Was he actually becoming horny for food?
“You looked like you were far away. Fantasising about a crush, obviously.”
“Piss off.”
“Come on, who is it?”
“It’s not.”
“Is it one of us?” Daril looked devilish with glee. “It is!”
“No!”
“It’s the Cap, right? I mean, if I was to turn, I’d probably go for the Cap too.”
Micah wanted to crawl under the table. He hoped nobody else had heard over the hubbub of the dining room. “Not every gay guy is obsessed with sex, you know!” (Did his Grindr account beg to differ? He didn’t know.) Daril wrinkled his nose. “Who said anything about gay guys? I was talking about guys in general.”
“So who are you crushing on?”
“We were talking about you,” Daril fired back.
Micah sighed. “Look, if you must know….”
Daril leaned in.
“I was thinking about waffles.”
Daril leaned back.
“You don’t believe me,” Micah said.
Daril shook his head. “Oh, I can see by the look on your face that you’re telling the truth.”
“Just look at them, man. They’re over there, waiting to be covered in strawberries and that cream. When was the last time you had cream?”
Daril didn’t answer. He was staring at the waffles in a trance, the tip of his tongue poking out the side of his mouth in some Pavlovian dog’s response.
“Now you see why I’m in love.”
His teammate finally snapped out of his daze and stared dejectedly at his eggs. “I want a waffle.”
“Welcome to my world,” Micah said.
BUT WAFFLES were nothing compared to the feeling of running out onto the sacred grass of the MCG for his very first AFL game. Looking back, he could really only remember impressions rather than actual moments. Mainly because it was all over so quickly, but also because he felt overwhelmed. Following the team through the players’ race, which led from the change rooms onto the field, Micah felt like he was moving through treacle. He was drowning in it—even the sound of the crowd was muffled, and when Sam said something to him just before the light of day hit them, he couldn’t make it out.
Then his eyes adjusted, and he felt the concrete beneath his feet turn into grass. The roar of the crowd became clear, and Micah was so confused by it he almost ran in the opposite direction to the rest of the Dockers. Feeling foolish, he got back on track and ran under the team banner, catching up with everybody else on the other side.
“How are you feeling?” one of the guys asked him.
Micah couldn’t even tell who it was. “Yeah. Cool.”
That produced a snort. “Yeah. You look it.”
“You’ll be fine, rookie,” another voice said. “Just don’t puke.”
Micah wished he could make out who was saying what. He knew he had to focus. He was losing it. And he couldn’t do that—not on his very first game, especially if he didn’t want it to be his last game too.
The two teams lined up in the centre of the oval, and the national anthem started playing. Micah mouthed the words, not trusting himself to be capable of sound. Someone near him was raucously off-key, and their voice cracked on the words “girt by sea.” Instead he focused on the opposition, standing directly in front of him. And the guy directly across from him was huge—as if Hagrid from Harry Potter and the 50 Foot Woman from the fifties horror film had produced a love child whose sole desire was to play Australian football.