Page 8

Zach has never trained as well as he has in the past ten minutes. He hit harder, ran faster, dodged quicker, and he’s fucking knackered. Why did Frankie bring Mali out here? He spotted her the moment the doors opened, and his heart started racing like he’d been doing anything other than getting the bags ready. She’s the only one who has ever defended him, and quickly, for no reason other than to defend him. Sometimes, Ezra tells people to shut up, but it’s usually so Frankie can talk. It’s weird, feeling like he might have someone on his side.

Not for long, because now, he has to sit opposite her and answer questions about his life when he can barely breathe, and it’s all her fault. He blinks the sweat out of his eyes as he walks towards her. He needs to walk straight past, because there’s no way he can take his mouthguard out without her seeing, and he wants her to have one random fantasy about him, at least. He wonders if it’s obvious on his face how he thought about her for the entirety of his drive home last night. He wonders if she can tell how her pretty fucking face was the only thing he thought of when he jerked off in the shower this morning. He wonders if she knows how badly he wants her to be impressed by him.

“Hey,” she says, turning to walk with him when he tries to stride past her. Then she spins back around. “Later, Frank.”

Zach pulls his mouthguard out while she’s spun to wave at Frankie. How is she already on a nickname basis with the coach? That means he has no chance of ever being friends with her. Not that he wants that—he doesn’t make friends well, and it’s even harder to keep them. Especially when the team will be head over heels for her in minutes, and they’ll trash-talk him even faster.

Mali walks backwards for a few moments, and it’s the most stressful time of his life. He faces teams of the biggest men he’s ever seen every week in front of thousands of angry, desperate to be racist towards him fans, and he’s not as stressed then as he is now, over the fact a woman he barely knows might trip over her own ankles.

“Frankie said you wanted to see me.” He’s not sure why he told her that when she was right there when Frankie said Mali wanted to see him.

“Yeah,” she replies, sounding chipper. Does she know it’s ten a.m. and, reasonably, people aren’t allowed to be happy until at least midday? “Do you like the orange?” she asks, twirling a lock of hair around her finger.

Yes. He does like it. He takes her question as an excuse to look at her again. Her side profile is something he’s sure people would study at university, if that’s a thing people do when they try and draw. She’d be the perfect model.

“Sure.”

Mali laughs, but it’s not as fond as when she did it with Frankie. “Okay, smooth talker.”

He frowns at the floor, but she’s not looking at him, so she wouldn’t know. Zach isn’t used to talking to attractive girls that he wants to keep talking to. He’s used to saying hi, and their tongue usually finds its way into his mouth by the time he’s asked what their favourite colour is. He’s not sure he’d be able to function if Mali wanted to put her tongue in his mouth. Would he die on the spot? Perhaps. He clears his throat as he tries not to think about it.

Mali swings her hands in front of her. Awkward. As she was yesterday, when he showed up to her house like a poor, desperate loser. “How are you?”

“Fine.”

Mali hums. Did she ask him how he was and he didn’t ask her back? How long has it been? If he follows up now, will it seem weird? He swallows, counting to three, and then he’ll ask her how she is back.

“Did you find a place yet?” she asks, as they get to her desk. She offers him a chair, and he sits without thinking, watching her hips sway as she walks around to her side of the desk. Her trousers are high-waisted and almost tight, like the material is skimming over her hips and thighs. He wonders if he’d be able to move his hands freely, or if he’d get trapped in them. He wonders if she’d like it if he touched her. The end of her white top hits the waistband of her trousers, and he wants to know which way she needs to bend for him to see a sliver of skin.

Zach sighs and sinks further into his chair. “I don’t wanna talk about it.” If he tells her about his housing issue, then he has to tell her about his mum and his brother.

“Okay,” she replies, chewing on her bottom lip. “Do you have any thoughts on sponsorships?”

“I don’t want any.” That’s an easy question. He’s still signed to a contract where his agent dictates his moves and takes a thirty-percent cut. When he realised how bad the contract was, he started saving to buy himself out. Then his mum got sick, and it makes more sense to be trapped than not have the funds to support her when she needs it.

“Right,” she says, her voice clipped. “Okay. Well, these are some of the companies who are super interested. Like, replied to my email overnight interested.” She spins a piece of paper and pushes it towards him. Her hand slides close to his side of the table, and he wonders how he can make his fingers touch hers and make it look like an accident. In the end, he chickens out and all but snatches the paper from her.

Zach’s eyes widen at the names on the list. He never thought he’d be profitable to a team. Sure, he scores the most points, but he never thought companies would be after him to wear their stuff. There are companies here that don’t have anything to do with rugby at all. What’s he doing with a toothpaste brand? As much as Zach could do with the extra income, he’s been stung by a contract before. Mali seems nice, but she’s too attractive to actually be kind. He’s not signing nothin’.

“Anything that takes your fancy?” she asks, and he’s about to answer her. Truly and honestly, he’s about to tell her he thinks she’s nice and all but they’ll never be friends and he’s not signing onto anything just because she waved at him earlier. Then he looks at her, and she’s putting glasses on—large, circular gold frames that sit perfectly on her face. When she’s placed them, she squeezes her eyes closed a few times, like it’s a relief to have them on. Fuck. He wonders what she can see now. If the sweat on his forehead is brighter now. If she can see past his frown and knows she only needs to tilt her head and he’ll say yes.

She looks right at him, smiling like she wasn’t expecting him to be looking at her. Her shoulders rise to her ears, and her bouncy hair settles near her cheekbones. She’s ethereal. And it’s her. Everything he fancies is her, but she’s not on the list. He taps his knee, looking down, and the spell breaks for a moment.

“Not for me,” he replies, pushing the paper back to her. That’s not untrue. He doesn’t want to go with Meti’s, specifically, because they wrote a gross article about him a few months ago. He could tell her about it, but then he’d have to tell her everything, and there’s a permanent panic at the back of his throat whenever he thinks about it. Mali would care, he thinks. Or she won’t, and he’s not sure which is worse.

“No sponsorships at all? What about ones that centre around the team and not you individually?”

Zach wonders if he’d even want to keep the money if he could. If he’d want to help set up a junior team, or perhaps he’d sponsor something local. He’s always liked the thought, but he’s never in one place long enough to make concrete plans.

“No, thanks.”

She hums, frowning at the table. He wonders if that will make her job harder. He wonders how long it will be until she says he has no choice.

“Okay,” she replies, rolling her lips together. “Alright, no worries. Can you let me know if you change your mind, or if there’s anything you’d be up for teamwise?”

“Sure.”

“Cool,” she says, dragging her keyboard closer to her. “Is there anything you want to tell me to get ahead of?”

“Like what?”

Mali shrugs. “You have eight kids you want to keep out the public eye; you have a secret girlfriend and the girls you take home don’t know about her.”

“I don’t take that many girls home,” he replies. It’s a handful at best. He doesn’t want her to think he’s a slut, but he supposes she probably thinks worse of him already.

“That’s not what the papers say.”

Zach frowns at a stack of post-it notes on her desk. “Just because it’s in the papers doesn’t mean it’s true.”

“Of course not,” she replies, leaning forwards on her forearms. “But if there’s a photo, it doesn’t matter what’s true. People will believe what they see. Not that it makes it your fault, obviously. It’s an annoying part of being known. But, if you let me know of anything you don’t want out in advance, I can help it stay that way.”

He wonders if she’s telling the truth. If she wants him to tell her something scandalous so she can sell it to the highest bidder.

“Beyond work, I would like to know you. So if you want to tell me something the papers don’t care about,” she says, with a shrug, “you can. It doesn’t have to be anything related to work—you can tell me your favourite colour or something.”

Zach swallows. “There’s nothing.” Apart from his brother, his mum, his dad, the fact he’s three seconds from living in the carpark, and the way he sometimes likes to kiss guys. “Is that everything?”

Mali taps her fingers against her desk. “Yep.”

“No other questions?”

Mali frowns. “Questions that you’re going to give me one-word answers to?”

He swallows. “No.”

“Zach,” Mali says with a sigh, and he sits up straighter. “I asked Frankie to get you first because I thought you’d help me chill out. This job is already terrifying. Did you not see me two minutes ago, introducing myself in front of twenty guys I don’t know?”

He did see that, and he didn’t stop to think she might be nervous. Nothing about her seems like anything other than the confident woman he knows she should be.

“It’s not your fault I placed some expectation on you because we had a thirty-second conversation yesterday where you didn’t look like you were thinking about running me over with your car. It’s fine. You can go. I’ll let the companies know you aren’t interested. Okay?”

“I don’t want to hit you with my car.”

Mali rolls her eyes. “Sure. Can you send someone over when you go back, please? Not Toby.”

“Mali,” he says, leaning slightly forwards. He’s never said her name out loud before, and it settles somewhere in his chest. He watches the moment she stops clenching her jaw, like she’s finally stopped being frustrated with his existence. He wants her to look at him again. She can be angry at him if she likes, as long as she looks at him. There hasn’t been a time where she’s looked at him because she wants to. He seems to only be able to get her attention by being a prick.

“Mali,” he repeats. It sounds desperate, even to himself.

“Yes?” she replies, but she’s still not looking at him. She sighs, stops typing on her keyboard. He knows there’s nothing on her screen. She looks up at him, finally. “What’s up?”

“I don’t want to hit you with my car.”

“I know, Zach. I was joking.”

“Oh.”

“But not being able to talk to me beyond three words is basically the same thing.”

“Is it, though?” he asks. What he means to say is that he does want to talk to her. He thought about it this morning on his way to work. He’d figured out an entire conversation for them in his head. Hushed conversations in private corridors. Then she waved at him in a crowded room. As if she didn’t care if people knew they were friends, and everything about her became terrifying. She waved at him knowing what the papers say. She waved at him knowing he was rude before. She waved at him, and if she stopped, it would be his fault this time. So he turned away, and now he has nothing at all.

She shrugs. “You can’t be friends with everyone,” she mutters. “But, here.” He watches her scribble something onto a piece of paper, and he doesn’t care what it is, because he’s trying to think of a way to make them friends when he can’t even be a reasonable enough person when he’s talking directly to her. Again, she slides something over to him.

“What’s this?” he asks, instead of looking at the post-it. It’s purple. He wonders if that’s her favourite colour.

“A house I saw this morning,” she says, pushing her glasses back up her nose. “I think it’s available pretty soon. Looks a lot like mine.”

“Oh,” he says, taking his phone out and typing in the address. “Cheers.”

“No problem.”

He doesn’t leave. He just scrolls on his phone opposite her. He wants her to ask him something else so he can figure out what she wants to know, but she doesn’t. She sits behind her computer, typing something. Probably telling all the sponsors he’s a difficult prick. Zach did see her move her mouse, so it’s possible a document is open right now.

“Your place isn’t on here anymore,” he says, his voice low. “Did you find someone?”

“Nah. I only had it up because my dad was getting on at me about it and I thought I was unemployed.”

“You own it?” he asks.

“Yeah,” she replies. She looks around, sheepish, like he’s about to ask her if he can move in again. “It’s a bit of a fixer-upper.”

Zach nods. He wonders how weird it would be to tell her he’s an electrician. She might ask him to work on her house. Then he’d get to see her outside the confines of work, and maybe he’d figure out how to say more than three words to her. Instead, he puts in a request to view the other house and then pretends to be on his phone, because he’s doesn’t know what else to say but he doesn’t want to leave.

“Why don’t you talk to anyone?” Mali asks. “It can’t just be because you don’t want to.”

Zach swallows. “Why not?”

Mali shrugs. “Isn’t that boring? Don’t you spend all conversations waiting for Lightman to say something about you?”

“I don’t care about Lightman,” he replies, though he supposes the rest is true. “I used to be nice to everyone, and it got me nowhere. So, I’m not doing it now.”

Mali frowns like she didn’t like his answer. He wants to know how to change it to make her happier. “You’re not a teenager, Zach. That’s no excuse. I’m nice to you. Use that, otherwise you’re going to hate every second on this team. Is that what you want?”

Zach’s not used to this kind of talking. He’s not sure he likes it. She isn’t wrong; it was what stopped him being outwardly kind as a teenager. He wonders what else she doesn’t like about him.

“Or are you not planning on staying?” she asks.

“Are you asking me as a friend or as PR bro?”

Mali giggles and looks down at the desk like she’s trying not to show him she likes something about him, then looks up again. She looks at him like she’s trying to figure out if he’s worth her time. She looks at him like she’s trying to figure out if it’s a grass stain on his forehead or mud. She looks at him, and Zach will wait until she figures it out, as long as it takes. Then she moves forwards, leaning her forearms on her desk. Her top bags a little. He sees a gold chain and wonders what it looks like against her skin.

“We’re not friends,” she replies. “You won’t even tell me your favourite colour.” Then she starts typing, and he should leave. The sweat has dried on his forehead, and he’s taking up her time and not being useful at all. He wonders if he should tell her he does want to stay, but it’s not his choice.

“I’ll send Kai,” he says, standing. She watches him move, and he feels hotter than he usually does when people check him out. Is she checking him out, or is she staring at a grass stain? He looks at her, watching the moment her eyes rake up his body until she meets his gaze. She blinks, swallowing as a deep blush hits her cheeks. Zach barely contains a smile.

“Thanks…” she says, pushing her glasses back up. She’s nervous. “Bro.”

Zach rolls his eyes. “Orange.”

Mali leans her head in her hand with a small frown. Fuck, she’s beautiful. “What?”

“My favourite colour is orange.”

She smiles a little, scrunching her nose up like she’s happy he told her, and he realises he’ll tell her whatever she wants to know for the rest of time.