Page 84 of Attractive Forces

Fuck. When Coach tells you to chill out right before a make-or-break game, you know you’ve got issues.

“Okay.” I somehow manage to get the word past the ball of resentment and anger in my throat.

But focusing on rugby keeps me distracted from the hollowness inside me.

How can you miss someone when they’re still around? When they are still sitting a few rows in front of you in English, when they meet your gaze in the cafeteria and then flick their eyes away like looking at you is a form of punishment.

I don’t know what I expected. Maybe that Jake and I could go back to what we were before we kissed. Be friends, at least.

I pick up my phone a million times to message him but then put it back down without writing anything. Because I don’t think Jake and I can hang out together without it turning into more. I can’t imagine being close to him and not getting to kiss him, touch him.

Jake doesn’t want to be in a secret relationship. And I can’t be out.

So, there’s actually nothing to say.

* * *

On Friday,the team bus heads to Dunedin to play Mayfair.

I feel weirdly detached from it all.

Detached from our warm-up drills, from Coach’s pregame speech to hype us up, from the good-luck backslaps everyone gives each other in the locker room.

When we run onto the field, I scan the stands. There’s a large number of supporters from Heath Valley who’ve trekked their way here to cheer for us, including my parents.

But there is no familiar dark head in the crowd.

What, did I really think my ex-boyfriend would travel for over an hour just to watch me play?

I haven’t played a game without Jake watching for a while now.

I miss having that point in the crowd where I could look and get a warm flush knowing he was watching me, knowing there was one person who didn’t actually care how many points I scored, who was just there for me.

We’re playing the game at one of the university fields in Dunedin, and the floodlights light up the field, turning the grass an artificial bright green. Playing under lights in front of a large crowd makes it feel like a big deal. Mayfair has the advantage because they play here regularly, whereas we’re just the small-town hicks blinking under the bright lights.

I don’t know if it’s because we’re overawed by the atmosphere, but we start off sloppy. Sloppy passes, sloppy kicks, sloppy tackles. And Mayfair capitalizes on our mistakes, running in two easy tries before we manage to get on the scoreboard with a penalty.

At halftime, Coach yells at us about our focus. We start the second half better, but our early try is quickly undone when one of the Mayfield’s wingers does an amazing dummy pass that fools our defense, and he runs in an easy try under the goalposts.

Luckily, we get two penalties, and our forwards do some awesome work from a set-piece scrum for us to score a try.

We’re down thirty-two to twenty-six with only five minutes to go.

Shit.

Unless something changes soon, we’re going to lose.

Anger sweeps through me. No, it’s more than anger. It’s fury. I sacrificed Jake for this. Losing is not an option.

The problem is they are on attack, using their biggest forwards to rumble the ball up the field until they are only ten yards from the try line. If they score now, it's all over.

I'm hanging back, marking my opposing player, feeling helpless. It's like a slow-motion train wreck that you can't stop from happening.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see the fullback sprinting toward my side of that angle of players in the ruck.

Fuck.

They’re creating an overlap. It's going to be two against one.