International Player

by Louise Bay

  “That was fucking fantastic,” I said.

  “Nothing like it.”

  “I enjoyed the tandem jump I did last year but this . . .”

  “A much bigger adrenaline rush.”

  “Right.” Did he still feel it? He’d confessed on the plane ride up that he’d jumped over three thousand times. I’d wanted to ask him if he ever got bored. I’d loved it, but surely the rush faded after so many jumps.

  “Next week we start with a jump before the lesson so long as this weather holds,” he said.

  “Sounds good.” I gave Dave a high five, then raked my fingers through my hair and headed out to the car park.

  “Hey,” I waved at Rob who was leaning against his car door as he waited for me.

  “You’re crazy.” Rob shook his head as I approached. “I watched you come down. Isn’t it easier—even safer—to develop a heroin habit rather than this?”

  I chuckled as I slid into the passenger seat. “Nah, this is far more fun.” The natural high from skydiving wasn’t why I did it. I could see how that might be the driver for some people, but for me it was more that I didn’t want to miss out on anything. Unless I didn’t want to do something, everything was on the table. We were on this planet such a short amount of time—I wanted to fit in everything I could.

  “Tell me honestly, did you nearly shit yourself?” Rob started the engine and backed out of the parking space.

  “I wasn’t scared at all.” Before my accident, I would have been terrified, but not anymore. It probably should have been the other way around, but I wanted to make the most of what I had. Experience as many things as possible. “By the end of the summer, I’ll come down on my own, without the instructors jumping by my side. Maybe that will be more frightening.”

  “I thought you were taking flying lessons, not falling lessons.”

  “You’re funny,” I replied sarcastically. “I’m doing the flying thing as well. The skydiving is less of a commitment. I thought I’d slot it in while I’m not working.”

  “I was going to ask if you ever just sit on the sofa and eat kettle chips, but I know you’ve never been a kettle-chips-and-chill kinda guy.”

  kettle chips had been Truly’s thing. How had I forgotten that? I’d forgotten a lot of things about Truly, but that lunch on Sunday had brought it all whooshing back. I’d forgotten how much I liked being around her. How funny she was—sometimes intentionally and sometimes not. How it always felt like I might crush her if I wasn’t careful when I wrapped my arms around her. The way she smelled of the coconut shampoo she said she used to tame her frizzy hair. Except, I’d never seen her hair frizzy, even when she’d run out of that shampoo. It was just soft. Wavy. Pretty.

  “Thanks for helping me with this stuff. I could have hired someone, but I figured you’d appreciate a beer and a night out even it if did involve moving furniture,” I said.

  “I’m always up for a boys’ night,” Rob replied, fiddling with the radio and wincing when Britney Spears came on. “And we have a lot of them in the bank. Four years’ worth. Anyway, I want to see your new place. I can’t believe you ended up in Marylebone, you lucky fucker.”

  “Yeah, it’s nice and central but has an easy path out of the city when I want to do stuff like this.”

  “A bachelor pad. Is Barry White playing on a constant loop?”

  Married people were always far more interested in my sex life than anyone else. “Barry White? How old are you?”

  Rob shut the radio off and shrugged. “Maybe that’s what I did wrong when I was dating.”

  “Hey, you married Abigail. I don’t see how that’s getting it wrong.” They were as close to the perfect couple as it was possible to be. Their bickering added to their charm. I knew Rob secretly enjoyed the attention. Witnessing that their dynamic hadn’t changed over the last four years had been comforting.

  “Yeah, she’s a good girl. Maybe you should get yourself a wife.”

  I chuckled. “That’s not really my thing.”

  “Are you still on a strict three-month cycle?”

  “Fuck you. I don’t have a cycle.”

  “You totally have a cycle. When’s the last time you were with a girl for more than three months?”

  I knew without having to think about it that there hadn’t been anyone. Truly used to give me shit about it. Ironically, my friendship with her was the longest relationship I’d had with a woman, even though it hadn’t been sexual. I’d done my best to seduce her the first time we met, and it had been the first time since school that a woman had knocked me back. “It’s not like I plan it. It just works out that way.”

  “You don’t think it would be nice to take a breath? Be still with a woman for a minute?”

  “There was a time when I didn’t think I’d be able to do anything but be still. So now I have a choice, I like to keep moving,” I replied. I totally understood that some people, Rob included, would never get why I had the need to keep striving for more—to get faster, stronger, more successful.

  “So, did you just finish your cycle or are you in the middle of one?”

  “Are we talking about periods or women?” I didn’t set a watch to my relationships. And I didn’t cheat. I just didn’t see myself in a long-term relationship or married, and I gravitated toward partners who were looking for the same. There were too many women that I hadn’t met. I liked learning how a new body worked.

  “Well if you’re having a period, you definitely need to talk about it, but to a qualified medical professional and not me.”

  I grinned. I’d missed Rob. I’d seen him periodically since I’d moved to New York and kept in touch over email, but it hadn’t been the same. Friendships made as teenagers were different from the relationships I’d formed once I’d started work. People I met now seemed to be more about networking than anything else. “No women. No one in particular anyway.”

  “No one in New York?”

  “Turn right here,” I said, indicating the turn off the Marylebone Road. I’d forgotten how bad the traffic was in London. “And then it’s second on the left.” I turned up the air conditioning a notch. “No one special.” I’d been there four years and going by Rob’s estimates that meant there should have been sixteen women . . . which sounded about right. Although not all of them had lasted three months—some of them I hadn’t known for more than a few hours.

  “Well, I’m sure you’ll find someone soon enough.”

  “I’m not looking.” I had a thousand things to focus on and a long list of things to do. Women weren’t a priority. They never were.

  “You’re never looking but somehow the women always find you.”

  “Are you peanut butter and jealous?” I said with a grin.

  “Have you seen my wife? I’m just saying maybe you should look rather than be found. You might discover someone who’ll last longer than three months.”

  “I’m pretty happy focusing on the stuff that matters to me.”

  “Your problem is you want breadth not depth when it comes to relationships.”

  I chuckled. “Really? I don’t see that as a problem.”

  “I’m just saying you don’t know how good it can be with someone who knows you better than you know yourself. You never let anyone in long enough.”

  “Well I’ll let you worry about that. And while you ponder, I’ll keep having fun and enjoying a breadth of women in London.”

  The car fell silent as Rob navigated crossing the traffic without running over the tourists who were filing out of Madame Tussauds.

  “It was good to see Truly on Sunday,” I said, wanting to change the subject from my love life. “She looked well. Happy,” I stated, though I really wanted it to be a question.

  Was she happy? She’d barely said anything about herself at lunch, and I hadn’t wanted to ask in case it was . . . out of line. But she seemed just the same, looked just the same. Still beautiful in the same unassuming way. Still sheltering in the shadow of her older sister, who she�
�d always seen as more accomplished, more attractive. That was the thing that I liked best and least about Truly—she always underestimated herself.

  “I guess,” Rob said as he navigated the right turn. “What are all these things you’ve got planned? Are you going to spend all your time skydiving and taking flying lessons?”

  “I’ve got a few things lined up. Meetings, introductions, that kind of thing. I want the next challenge to be as fulfilling as Concordance Tech was. But different.” I pulled out a key fob and pointed it at the door. “The garage is just here on your right.”

  “Oh, you have parking. Nice.” Rob said.

  I was grateful he was easily distracted. It was the first time in my life I wasn’t completely focused on a goal—learning to walk again, school, university, my business—and it made me uncomfortable. Untethered. So the goal for me was to find a goal, then the rest of life in London would fall into place.

  “You don’t have to work though, do you?” Rob asked. “You could just roll around in cash for the next decade?”

  I pushed open my door. “I guess I don’t have to work if I don’t want to.” The float of Concordance Tech had made me rich, and money brought freedom, but the thought of sitting on a yacht all day filled me with terror. Plus that was the playground of billionaires, not someone with a measly fifteen mil in the bank. It wasn’t until I’d made money that I realized how much more everyone else had. “But I want to be constructive. I’m not sure about building another business.” I gripped my keys and pressed the fob against the security pad by the door to the lifts. “You know that I don’t like to do the same thing twice.”

  “Maybe a different kind of business?” Rob asked.

  “Yeah. Maybe.” I wasn’t convinced. I had plenty to keep me busy. A list of things to do. But I wanted a purpose. An overarching challenge to consume me like building Concordance Tech had. I’d seen something on social media about an emergency fundraising the hospital that had looked after me after the accident were doing. I’d donated, but it didn’t feel like enough. Maybe I could do something more. “I might do something entirely different. I’m not Bill Gates, but there are plenty of issues in the world that need time and attention.”

  “Don’t joke about shit like that around Abi. She’ll have you doing extreme sports to raise money for charity before you finish your sentence.”

  I paused before pressing my thumbprint into the ID panel in the lift and hitting P. “I might not mind that. What kind of extreme sports? I mean, I get that you might not want to learn to fly, but what about abseiling down one of London’s iconic buildings—Tower Bridge, the Shard, or the Gherkin, or somewhere? Wouldn’t require much training, and it’s for charity, no less. Why don’t we both do it?”

  Rob groaned. “I wish I’d never mentioned it. I can’t wait for you to get a job so you’ll stop this extreme-sport shit.”

  “It’s not about the sport or having too much time on my hands. I just want to make sure I’m living life—squeezing out every last drop.”

  “I’m happy living my life on the ground.”

  “Yeah. I prefer the penthouse,” I said, grinning as the lift doors slid open directly into my brand-new home. But in that way, I envied Rob. He was content with what he had. He wasn’t always grasping for more, better, different.

  I was used to having a thousand goals and going at them full throttle before moving on to the next one. It didn’t matter if it was walking, exams, floating a business on the stock market—what drove me was a clear vision of what I wanted and a determination to succeed. But I was out of big ideas. I’d achieved the career goals I’d set for myself. Done everything I’d set out to do. But I wasn’t content to sit back and enjoy the fruits of my labor. The view from the penthouse was nice, but it wasn’t enough. I just wasn’t sure what was next.

  FIVE

  Noah

  I couldn’t believe I was back here. If I’d known Abigail wanted to meet at the hospital where I’d formed so many unhappy memories, I wouldn’t have come. I’d not been back since the day I was discharged. By then I’d been an outpatient for months, but it still dominated my life. I’d been so relieved when I’d left for the very last time.

  I took a deep breath and opened the car door.

  “I’m only going to say it once,” Abigail said as she leaned against her car parked next to mine. “So this is your only chance to back out—just because we’re friends, you shouldn’t feel obligated to do this.” Her hands on her hips, Abigail pinned me with her icy stare.

  “I know. I don’t feel obligated. I want to do the abseil.”

  When I’d called Abigail about doing an abseil—rappelling down a building—to help raise funds, she’d suggested I meet her at one of the causes they were supporting this year. She’d said she’d text me the details, which she’d only done last minute, giving me no chance to back out. What were the odds of her bringing me face-to-face with my past?

  “I’m not trying to pressure you by bringing you to the hospital.”

  “I offered, Abi. Now are we going in or what?” It wasn’t pressure I felt. It was dread. But I wasn’t about to run and hide from anything. It wasn’t who I was.

  The automatic doors slid open and Truly walked out. Oblivious to everything around her, she had her head down and plowed straight into Abi and me.

  “Shit,” Truly said as she stepped back, swaying on her nonexistent heels, her amber eyes widening as she took us both in.

  “How are you not dead?” Abigail asked. “What if you had walked into oncoming traffic?”

  “How? There’s no road here,” Truly replied, pushing the sleeves of her oversized navy jumper back so they weren’t hanging over the ends of her fingers.

  Truly wasn’t irrationally oblivious. She just blocked out stuff that didn’t matter and was single-minded about things that did.

  “What are you doing here, anyway?” Abigail asked.

  “Just looking over their fundraising plan.” She shook her head. “It’s daunting. And heartbreaking. Why? What are you doing here?” Truly glanced between me and her sister.

  “You better not have committed any solid figures,” Abigail said.

  “How could you suggest that?” Truly tilted her head as if genuinely hurt at the suggestion. “I’d never want to get these guys’ hopes up. They have such a huge mountain to climb.”

  “I just don’t want to let them down,” Abi said, her tone flattening.

  “Neither do I. But, honestly, I didn’t even see Betty. I got some figures from Alistair and poked my head into the activity room. That’s it.”

  “Sorry. I’m just on edge. Hormones, I guess.” Abigail patted Truly’s arm in apology. “You know you have a pencil holding your hair up, right?”

  Truly glanced at me, then shrugged. “It’s useful. Anyway, I need to get back to the office.” She pulled out a huge set of keys from her pocket and moved past us toward the car park.

  Abi and I stepped through the sliding doors and the familiar smell of the rehab room hit me as if I’d last been down this corridor last week, not nearly fourteen years ago. Nausea churned in my stomach. I turned right, following Abigail but knowing the way as we walked beneath a sign for the Children’s Spinal Injuries Unit. I’d vowed never to come back. And I wasn’t prepared now. I’d worked hard while I was here to walk again and even harder when I’d left to forget this place. The memories I made here I didn’t want to relive.

  “We won’t go into the ward, but the activity room is what I want to show you anyway. You immediately see where the need is.” Abigail led the way through two sets of double doors.

  As we walked into the cavernous room, I glanced up to see the ceiling stained with chunks of plaster missing. “Wow.” A thousand memories hit me like a sucker punch, and I found myself unable to speak. A dull ache coursed through my body like a scar deep within me was reminding me the pain was still there.

  “I know. The place is a mess,” Abi said from beside me. “The roof needs replacing
—who am I kidding, the entire place needs replacing. They have a target of twenty-five million.”

  “They’re trying to raise twenty-five-million pounds?” I asked, not sure if I’d heard her right. I knew they were trying to raise money but that was a tremendous amount.

  “Yep. We’re doing what we can but . . .” Abi shook her head. “It’s a lot. And I know the building’s a mess, but that’s only the start of it.”

  I might have money but that was more than I was worth. I was a dick for thinking my check of five thousand would make a difference.

  “The equipment is broken and there’s just not enough of it to cope with the number of patients,” Abi continued as we made our way further into the activity room, and as if to prove her point, we passed a broken set of parallel bars that looked like they’d not been replaced since I was using them.

  The floor was divided into distinct areas centered around pieces of equipment, just like it had been when I’d been there. Physiotherapists, doctors, and other adults were interspersed between the children, some working with kids one on one and others in groups. It even looked like some kind of martial arts class was being taught at the far end of the room.

  The place was noisy, which was how I remembered it, but it was gloomy and dull and lacked the energy and laughter I’d enjoyed while I was here. It hadn’t all been pain and suffering during my stay. Underneath there’d been hope, an undercurrent of determination, and finally success.

  To our left was a boy of about fifteen walking tentatively on a treadmill that was on the lowest speed. He could have been me—lanky and stumbling but with the tightness of his jaw suggesting a steel that I recognized.

  “That’s the only treadmill they have now. These two are broken,” Abi said as she caught me watching the boy gain confidence with the aid of the physio who was helping him.