I heard Coach Carter’s whistle blow, signalling the end of the game, and looked up from my History textbook. I made out the tall figure of my best friend, Mitchell Coburn, stood in the middle of the team huddle, listening intently to the Coach’s instructions.
Knowing they’d be another fifteen minutes or so talking tactics before the team was allowed to shower and change, I settled back against the uncomfortable plastic stadium chair and continued reading my textbook.
It was starting to grow dark, and a bitterly cold January wind was picking up. I pulled the hood of my sweatshirt up around my ears and leant back into my chair. The thick concrete wall of a stairway shielded my right side, but the wind was blowing over the wall and down my neck.
“Doran!”
I was startled from my reading when my name was called.
Mitchell was stood at the bottom of the column of seats I was sat on, shouting up to me.
I quickly gathered my textbooks and rucksack together and ran down to meet him.
“We’re going to be another twenty minutes or so,” he told me, thrusting his car keys into my hand. “Go and wait in the car. You’ll freeze out here.”
I gratefully took his keys and watched him jog off to the changing rooms, before turning towards the car park.
Mitchell’s huge American-style truck stood out from the other cars by a country mile; it was about a foot taller, and almost three feet longer, than the other cars. A typical rugby player, built like a tank with massive shoulders and strong legs, Mitchell insisted he needed a large truck that he could comfortably fit in.
For me, almost a foot smaller than Mitchell’s six and a half feet, getting into the truck was like climbing up a mountain. I clambered into the car and settled back in the passenger seat. Leaning across and putting the keys in the ignition, I half-turned the key and switched the heaters on.
The car was Mitchell’s birthday present from his parents, the year he passed his driving test. Although they were rich, and gave Mitchell almost anything he wanted, because they had worked hard to earn their fortune in their twenties, his parents had always instilled hard work into Mitchell; he worked at his dad’s shipping and delivery company during the holidays to earn the majority of his pocket money.
My parents weren’t exactly poor, but we had nowhere near as much money as Mitchell's family. I’d had driving lessons and passed my test a few months ago, but I couldn’t afford the costs of running a car, or the insurance. Mitchell, since we went almost everywhere together anyway, drove me around.
I was immersed in my book again when Mitchell finally returned, shivering a little.
His dark hair was damp from his shower, clinging wetly to his head. I watched a droplet roll slowly down his temple.
The wind was whistling loudly around the car now, bitingly cold.
As Mitchell clambered into the driver’s seat, I caught a faint whiff of his shower gel and inhaled deeply, still amused that tall, masculine Mitchell always used papaya and mango scented shower gel.
I noticed as he fastened his seatbelt that he was wearing a new leather jacket.
Mitchell saw me looking and grinned. “The sportswear company finally delivered our jackets,” he said unnecessarily. “There was a mix up with the stock, apparently. They put the wrong school logo on the first set.” He twisted in his seat to show me ‘Coburn’ and the number ‘8’ emblazoned on the back of the jacket in thick white letters. On the front of the jacket our school logo was stitched in cotton. Embossed beneath the logo, the word ‘Captain’.
When we joined the school together in Year Seven, we were both short, bespectacled ‘nerds’, preferring to read and study together than socialise with our classmates. Although I’d had my growth spurts before Mitch, I grew only about five inches, stopping somewhere around five feet seven inches tall. Mitchell kept on growing to six and a half feet, and started filling out properly when he was sixteen. It was around then that he started playing sports, particularly rugby, like a fiend. He worked out whenever he could, watched his weight and diet carefully, and steadily developed the hard, muscular body he proudly displayed today.
He swapped his black-rimmed glasses for contact lenses, grew his short-back-and-sides hairstyle out, and developed a ‘bad-boy’ persona that had the girls falling at his feet in droves.
Despite pressure from his team, and growing peer pressure from the rest of the school, he had steadfastly remained my friend, remembering how we had both been bullied by the ‘jock’ types in our earlier school years. He was incredibly protective of me, which was a little annoying at times, but rather endearing.
Although he no longer spent hour after hour studying, as I did, he tried to keep his schoolwork to a fairly high standard.
“Our last game is on the 19th of June. Coach just told us,” Mitchell told me as he started the car’s engine. “Can you… Are you coming to watch?”
“I always do,” I told him, surprised that he would even need to ask.
“I know. But your last exam is on the 20th, and I know it’s your History exam, so you have to do well in it if you want to get onto your university course…” He hesitated. “You don’t have to come. If you have to do revision and need a good night’s sleep…” He trailed off, unable to stop the soft pleading tone that entered his voice.
“You know I’ll come, Mitch,” I said, putting my textbook back into my bag.
He nodded slowly, a happy smile spreading over his lips. Mitchell thought of me as his lucky mascot. I’d missed only two of his games since he’d joined the team, and they’d lost abysmally both times. Mitchell considered himself cursed if I wasn’t in the stadium watching him play.
“Are you… coming over tonight?” Mitchell asked suddenly, his voice dropping low and husky.
I swallowed hard, trying to ignore the pleasurable tingle that was spreading through my body at Mitch’s insinuation. “I can’t,” I mumbled. “I’ve got that extra essay to write for Mrs DeVaan.”
“Oh… Alright.”
I glanced across and saw an embarrassed flush on his cheeks. He wasn’t used to being rejected. Indeed, it was the first time I’d said ‘no’ to him for several years.
Mitchell pulled the car onto my street and stopped outside my house. He lived about nine streets away, on one of the larger suburbs of the town.
I glanced over at the untidy, overgrown lawn in front of my small, terraced, ex-council house and felt embarrassed when I remembered Mitch’s well-manicured, professionally landscaped garden. “I’ll see you tomorrow, I guess,” I mumbled, avoiding his eyes.
“Yeah.” He waited for me to scramble out of the car before speeding off down the street. The tyres squealed in protest as he rounded the corner at an almost dangerous speed.
Sighing to myself, knowing I’d have to deal with the brunt of his temper tomorrow, I went inside my house. After making myself a toasted cheese and ham sandwich and a mug of tea, I went up to my bedroom and started on my homework.
*
By ten thirty, I’d finished two essays, read four more chapters of my History textbook and started a research project for my Geography class.
Lifting my glasses up and rubbing my eyes tiredly, I glanced at the clock.
I tidied away my textbooks and shutdown my laptop, before having a quick shower and pulling on a clean t-shirt. I packed my schoolbag ready for tomorrow and hoisted it onto my shoulder before going down to my dad’s office. He was still working, his eyes squinting tiredly at the flickering computer monitor.
“I’m going over to Mitchell’s, dad. He needs my help with some coursework.”
“It’s late, Doran,” he said, glancing at his watch and frowning at me.
“I know. I don’t have any lessons until ten o’clock tomorrow, though. I’ll stay at Mitchell's tonight, and he can take me to school in the morning.”
Dad frowned, before sighing and nodding. “Make sure you sleep, alright? Don’t stay up watching films all night,” he said sternly.
“I won’t.” I went out to the garage, fetched my old red bike, and set off towards Mitchell's house. The wind had dropped a little, thankfully, and by the time I got to Mitchell's house I wasn’t too exhausted; I’m extremely unfit, compared to Mitch.
I slipped through the gate, hid my bike behind a large rhododendron bush in the front garden and pulled my phone from my pocket.
Come and open the front door.
I didn’t like ringing the doorbell when I came to Mitchell's house. His mum was a surgeon, and she worked long, changeable hours. I didn’t want to wake her up accidentally.
It took Mitchell a little longer than usual to open the door, but he finally did.
I smirked to see he was wearing just a pair of blue pyjama bottoms embroidered with teddy bears.
“What?” He asked moodily, seeing my smirk.
“I finished my homework,” I told him. “I wondered if your offer to come over was still open.”
“You are over.” He pointed out.
“Are you letting me in, or am I going home?” I asked impatiently.
“Fine,” he grunted sourly, stepping aside to let me into the house.
I followed him up to his bedroom and put my rucksack down beside his wardrobe. I kicked off my trainers and jumped up onto his massive queen-size bed, settling myself comfortably in the middle of the mattress.
I patted the sheets for him to join me, and was surprised when he did, albeit looking reluctant. “What’s the matter?” I asked him gently.
He shrugged, looking mutinous.
“Am I going to have to drag it out of you? We both know I’d win in a fight,” I teased him lightly.
He half-scowled, half-smiled.
“Is it because I said I wasn’t coming over?” I asked with a sigh.
He looked away from me, knowing that I already knew the answer. “You’ve not said no before,” he muttered.
“I know. It wasn’t easy, believe it or not,” I sighed. “I had schoolwork to do. I have to keep up with my classes.”
“I know, Doran. I just…” He sighed.
“It’s not fair, you getting mad because I’m studying. Just like me getting mad at you because you’re always working out wouldn’t be fair.”
“Does it bother you?” He asked, looking confused. “Me working out all the time?”
“No, Mitch. That’s not the point. The point was that you can’t expect me to feel guilty for not spending time with you, when I’d never try to make you feel guilty for not spending time with me.”
Mitchell awkwardly scrubbed the back of his head with his knuckles. “I know I was a jerk,” he muttered. “I just… I like you, Doran. You know I do. It’s just… my insecurities.”
“You don’t have anything to be insecure about,” I told him gently. “For now at least, we’re together. Why are you worrying that I’d be looking at anyone else? If anything, I should be the one feeling insecure.”
Mitchell stared at me for a moment, before he frowned. “What do you mean, ‘for now at least’?” He asked, sounding angry.
“Well… Think about it,” I said, feeling a little uncomfortable at Mitchell's hard gaze. “I’m going to university after school. You might be going to university, or you might be signed to a rugby club. We could end up at other ends of the country.”
Mitchell looked at me for a moment longer, before he got up and started pacing in front of the window. “I don’t see why… why you’re bringing this up now. The end of school is ages away, and we don’t even know where we’ll be going. You just said so.”
“I know, Mitch,” I told him pacifyingly. “But… It’s no good us developing… deep feelings for each other, if we’re just going to be moving apart in a few months.”
“So, you can control the way you feel, can you?” He asked me coolly. “Who you fall in love with? You can control that?”
“Mitchell…” I said wearily, before sighing in frustration. “We’re not in love, are we? We’re just fooling around.”
“When we started doing this, yeah,” Mitch said. “But now, don’t you feel… different? Don’t you have feelings for me?”
“You know how I feel about you, Mitch. But if I admit it to myself, it’ll hurt all the more when we have to say goodbye.” I got up from the bed and went over to him, laying my hand on his back to end his restless pacing. “Besides, you can’t love me.”
“Why not?” Mitchell demanded, spinning around to face me.
“Because you haven’t accepted us. Not really.”
“According to you, there is no ‘us’,” he said churlishly.
“Okay, fine,” I said impatiently. “We’re an item. We’re in love. We’ll be together until we die. Lovey-dovey-gooeyness. Now, can you walk up to your teammates and tell them that we’re together?”
Mitchell’s eyes darkened. “You know why I can’t tell them,” he growled angrily. “If they kick me off the team, I’ll have nothing, Doran. You know that. I’ve worked so hard to get on the team, and do well with the team. I need a scholarship to play rugby at university, if I’m not signed to a club. My school grades aren’t high enough for the course that I want to study.”
“Even if you lost the team, you’d still have me,” I told him quietly. “But I suppose this-” I motioned my hand between him and me. “-isn’t enough for you, is it? I’m not good enough for you, am I?”
I looked at my watch and sighed. I probably had enough time to cycle back home before dad locked the house up and went to bed. I went over and grabbed my schoolbag.
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”