by Chloe Walsh
"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 th
e 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.
In fact, I was desperately trying to ignore the electric current of heat pulsing through my veins.
"Yeah, I was really looking forward to going to Royce with my buddies and the lads from the club," he explained. "Christ, I was fuming with my folks when they pulled me out and enrolled me at Tommen." He let out a small laugh, then said, "Six years later and I'm still pissed about it."
"Well, you seem to be doing okay for yourself here," I offered, unsure of what to say. "You have lots of friends, and you're still playing rugby and stuff."
"And stuff," Johnny chuckled, highly amused by my words. He studied my face for a long beat before asking, "Do you dance?"
"No, why would you ask that?"
"I don’t know." Johnny shrugged. "Some girls dance instead of playing sports." His eyes trailed over me for a brief moment before returning to my face. "You look like you could be one of those–" he waved a hand around, obviously searching for a word, before finishing with, "You know, one of those tutu dancers."
My eyes widened. "You think I look like a ballerina?"
He nodded and a laugh tore from my lips.
"What?" He grinned sheepishly. "You're small," he motioned to my body with his hand before adding, "it's not that far of a stretch of the imagination."
"Well, I'm not a ballerina," I laughed. "Or any other dancer, for that matter. I'm just stunted."
Johnny cocked an amused brow. "Stunted?"
"Have you seen me?" I gestured to myself. "I'm fifteen, barely five feet, and I weigh like 85 pounds."
"You're six stone?" he breathed, eyes widening in disbelief.
Meanwhile, my eyes widened in disbelief at how fast he was able to convert pounds to stones.
Whoa.
"Jaysus, I bench twice what you weigh in the gym." Johnny looked me over before asking, "Are you seriously only five feet?"
"If I stand really straight, I am."
"Christ, I'm 6'3." He shook his head. "You're so small."
"Exactly." I pulled a face. "Stunted."
"Jaysus, no wonder you folded like a lawn chair when the ball hit you," Johnny muttered, rubbing his jaw again as his eyes traveled over me. "I could have broken you in half."
"That's one way to put it," I replied, scrunching my nose up at the analogy.
"Is your mother still raging with me?"
"My mother?"
"Yeah." He nodded. "She looked like she was two seconds away from ripping my head off that day."
"My mother just got a fright," I mumbled. "She saw that I was hurt and jumped to the first conclusion."
"And the first conclusion was that I battered you?"
I shrugged uncomfortably but gave nothing away. "It happens."
"Not from me, it doesn’t," he pointed out, tone a little thicker now, eyes locked on mine. "Never from me."
"Hey now, don’t be so quick to deny." I attempted humor. "I just witnessed you threaten to cut off Ronan's penis."
"That little eejit doesn’t count," was his grunted response. "I can't fucking stand that kid, but his uncle's the school trainer so I have no choice than to tolerate him. He's always pushing my buttons and acting out on the pitch, pulling reckless stunts, and causing unnecessary drama. It's like babysitting a fucking toddler during matches. I swear, it's a daily test to my self-restraint not to throttle the little bollox."
I smirked. "So, you're not friends then?"
Johnny scoffed at the notion. "Definitely not friends."
"Well, he's still young," I offered optimistically. "So maybe he'll mature with time."
"Like you?"
"Huh?"
"I mean you're in the same year as him," he hurried to explain. "But you don’t act like you're fifteen."
"I don’t?"
He shook his head. "You come across as a lot older."
"That's because I'm a ninety-year-old woman disguised as a teenager," I quipped.
"That's…" Johnny scrunched his nose up. "A disturbing concept."
"Yep," I mumbled, embarrassed at my crappy banter. "It is."
"So, what do you do?" he surprised me by asking.
"What do I do?" I'd been half-expecting him to end the conversation there.
"Yeah." He nodded encouragingly. "In your free time."
I paused and thought about his question. "I don’t really do anything," I finally said. "I guess I watch television and listen to music in my free time – oh, and I read a lot." Shrugging, I added, "As you can tell, I'm not very interesting."
Johnny tilted his head to one side, studying me with intense, blue eyes. "What types of books?"
"Autobiographies. Fiction. Crime. Thrillers. Romance." I sighed, thinking of the pile of books in my room. "I'm not picky about genres. I just have to like the blurb. If the back of the book can suck me in, then I'm sold."
Johnny watched me while I spoke, his gaze intense and searching.
"You're a reader," he finally said.
It wasn’t a question, it sounded more like he was banking that piece of information away in his mind.
"That's really good."
"Do you read?" I asked him.
He grimaced. "Not as much as I should."
"So, not at all?" I teased.
"Honestly, no," he admitted with a lopsided grin. Shifting closer, he said, "The last book I read that wasn’t school ordered was about Chicken Licken and the sky falling down on all the little talking animals – do you know the one?"
"Yeah," I snickered, thinking about Johnny reading children's fairy-tale stories. "I've read that one a couple of times to Sean."
"Sean?"
"My youngest brother," I explained. "The three-year-old."
"You shouldn’t, " Johnny warned, suppressing a shudder. "That book scared the bejesus out of me. I haven't read for fun since."
My mouth fell open. "Are you being serious right now?"
"Hell fucking yes, I'm being serious," Johnny shot back, looking comically wounded. "I was only small. It was one of those read it yourself books with the pictures in place for words and all that shite. They should have rated it PG because I swear to god, I genuinely believed the whole fucking sky was going to cave in on me." He shook his head at the memory. "I slept under – rather than on – my bed for three fucking weeks until my Da finally caved and moved me into one of the bedrooms downstairs."
"Why?" I laughed loudly. "What good was moving downstairs going to do if the sky was falling?"
Johnny grinned and his dimples deepened in his cheeks.
"Ah, see," he chuckled, tapping his head with his forefinger. "In my naïve, six-year-old mind, I was thinking that if the sky did in fact fall, it might break the roof, but it couldn’t possibly break the downstairs ceiling too. I'd have a better chance of surviving on the ground level."
"You were a clever, little fella, weren't you?"
"I was something alright," Johnny replied, laughing along with me. "A bleeding eejit."
"Wow," I snickered between fits of laughter. "That's survival at its finest."
He gave me a wolfish grin. "Original boy scout right here."
"Were you in the boy scouts?"
"Like fuck I was," Johnny shot back, laughing harder now. "I was messing." His eyes danced with amusement. "Why? Were you in the Brownies?"
"Ah, definitely not." I shook my head, stifling a giggle. "My survival skills are terrible."
Johnny's voice was a little deeper when he said, "I don’t know about that."
His expression shifted then, growing more intense.
Unable to take the heat, I turned my face away and glanced at the clock on the dashboard.
It read 8:25.
God, how long had we been sitting here talking?
"Tell me something," Johnny distracted me by saying. He was still smiling, and his eyes were warm, his tone soft, when he asked, "Why'd you transfer to Tommen?"
His question caught me off guard.
"I, uh –" clasping my hands together, I cracked my knuckles and exhaled a heavy sigh, "I needed a change."
"A change?" He arched a disbelieving brow. "Halfway through your junior cert?"
"It's complicated and sort of private…" my voice trailed off, and I turned my face to look out my window, though all I could see was darkness outside.
I wasn’t comfortable with the direction this conversation had taken.
Every time I thought about my old school, a fresh batch of terror enveloped me.
My reasons for being here weren't something I was willing to talk about with anyone.
"Hey." I felt his fingers brush against the back of my hand, his voice closer now, soft and probing. "Where'd you go?"
Startled by the contact, my head snapped back, my gaze flickering from his face to where his thumb was still grazing my hand, smoothing soft circles over my knuckles.
It was only a harmless touch meant to capture my attention but what surprised me most was that I didn’t immediately pull away.
The awareness that I liked his touch was unsettling, but not nearly as unsettling as the urge I had to flip my hand over and entwine my fingers with his.
"Shite." Yanking his hand away, Johnny shifted back to lean against the door, grimacing in what looked like discomfort at the move.
His hand automatically shot to his thigh again.
"Sorry," he grunted and it was a noticeably pained sound. Clearing his throat, he added, "I shouldn’t have done that."
"It's okay," I whispered, chewing nervously on my bottom lip. "I don’t mind."
He exhaled a hard breath and then ran a hand through his hair with his free hand.
"No, it's not okay." His gaze drifted to my mouth and he expelled another hard breath. "It's not fucking okay at all."