It was serendipity that Robby saw the flyer. Gloria’s 10 a.m. meeting ran over, so Robby went into the twelfth-floor break room to get a coffee. Bulk-buy instant coffee was fine for the peons in the Pitt, but not for the senior admins, and while Robby waited for the Keurig to do its thing he scanned the message board and spotted a notice for ADAPTIVE AND AMPUTEE SOCCER — Ages 12 and up — Brookline Rec Center. He pulled out his phone, snapped a picture of it, and sent it to Jack.
Since he’d quit the TEMS unit, Jack had been making noises about needing another hobby (“Would we call that a hobby?” Robby had said) and not liking being without something to do (“You’re making the jokes too easy”, Robby had said). Soccer was a hobby. Not that Robby knew much about it, and he didn’t think that he’d ever seen Jack watch a game, but it was worth a shot.
He didn’t get a reply to his message, but a few days later Jack started adding some new entries to the dry erase calendar that lived on the front of their fridge. Every Saturday now said 9 A.M. — SOCCER in the red marker that meant it was one of Jack’s items.
Robby very carefully said nothing about it until after the first training session, and then over dinner just said, “It go okay?”
Jack seemed to think about it for a moment and then shrugged and said, without looking up from his pasta, “Yeah, okay, I think.”
But when Jack invited Robby to attend his first game (“Match, Robby, not game”, Jack said as if he’d known was the offside rule was four weeks ago), it was so clear that it was okay. Clear that Jack had, in fact, found what he’d been looking for: exertion, challenge, brotherhood, and not a firearm in sight. That ratcheted down some little bit of tension that Robby hadn't even known he'd been carrying inside him.
Robby cheered on from the sidelines as Jack chased down the ball with a look of focused exhilaration on his face. The huffs and shouts of the players as they called out to their teammates mingled with the clang and crash of crutches as they jostled for position and vied to be the first to get a goal. He applauded Jack’s goal, and even though Jack’s team drew, when he swung over to Robby on the sidelines afterwards, panting and sweaty, he was grinning just as hard as if they’d won in a landslide.
“Please go shower,” Robby said, wrinkling his nose as Jack slung one arm around him and kissed him hard. “I love you but God almighty.”
“That is the smell of victory,” Jack said.
“Victory,” Jack said, and his voice was as firm as his kiss.
theartofmadeline
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
stormborns
gamechangershow
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