Page 13 of Christmas Bubble

I laugh.

The locker room becomes a noisy hub of teenagers talking over each other, messing about, and joking.

I’ve never let the teams know, but I’ve often just stood behind the door listening to the chatter, wondering what it would be like if I’d had my own kid.

Would they be like these kids? Or maybe they’d be more the kind to be found in the library with their nose in a book. Maybe even both.

I head off to the coaches’ office. There’s no point thinking about something that will never happen. I’ve made my peace with it, and that’s that.

There are a couple of coaches and a gym teacher in the office. I nod to them as I come in.

“I see you have another box from Bubble,” one of them says. “How come you’re the only one that gets your own cake, and we have to share?”

“He must be special,” the other one says.

“Do you put out?” the gym teacher says, and I throw a pen at him.

“Want to take it? At this rate, I’m going to end up six feet under before I’m fifty and, trust me, I’m not far off.”

“Nah, Coach. I’ve seen you with the kids. You can still run circles around them,” the gym teacher says as he high-fives me and heads off. “Merry Christmas, everyone.”

“I’m grabbing a shower, so if you’re gone before I’m back, I guess, well, Merry Christmas from me too,” I say, picking up my gym bag.

“Wait,” one of the coaches calls.

I stop and turn around.

The other coach hits his arm and shakes his head, making a weird face. “Never mind. It was about some stuff for the new year, but we’ll deal in January.”

“Ookay…” That’s weird, but to each their own. I turn back and carry on to the locker room.

There’s a semi-dark hallway we have to go through before we get to the locker room, and I’ve never understood if it just needs a new light bulb or if it’s supposed to be like that. As soon as I open the door at the end, I’m met with billowing steam.

I can’t see a foot in front of me. Thankfully, I know the bench by the lockers is close, so I feel my way and drop my gym bag on top of it.

Whoever is in the shower might be confusing it with a sauna because, within a minute, my T-shirt and shorts are sticking to me.

“Hey, buddy, are you going to take long?” I ask whoever is in here.

Jeez, it’s even hard to breathe. I try looking for a window to let the steam out, but I can’t find one.

There’s no reply from the showers, so I sit on the bench waiting.

“Doo bee doo in a yellow submarine, yellow submarine…”

I can only vaguely hear, but it sounds like whoever is in there is singing. The misty steam subsides after a while, so hopefully, they’re ending their shower soon.

After a few minutes, the water finally stops.

“Thank Christ,” I mutter to myself. I don’t want to be rude to whoever is in here, but did they need to turn the locker room into the scene of a bad horror movie for a shower?

I open the zipper of my gym bag to get my towel as the voice comes singing from the shower cubicle.

“Would you still love me when I’m sixty-foo…fuck!”

The guy clearly isn’t expecting to see someone else in the room because he flails like he’s trying to escape an attacker.

I can only move a step forward and hold him by his arms to stop him from slipping on the wet, tiled floor and breaking a leg, or worse.