Ghosts that Watch Us

14

The locker room had become too stifling and rank for Sean’s tastes, so he’d stepped out onto the field early, sometimes liking the quiet and the great expanse of it to think and formulate plays. When he heard the cry of alarm, he thought it was his boys coming out from the locker room, and only spared the briefest glance at the hilltop. But then he jumped to his feet, clipboard falling to the ground. He stood in open shock as the person toppled down, all legs and jutting elbows, sliding and tumbling, grunting in pain until finally collapsing in a muddy bundle by the sideline.

Doubling over, Sean gaped, a burst of laughter bubbling out of his mouth, unable to get the image out of his head, legs and arms spinning over and over. What had the person been doing up on the hill? How had they lost their footing?

Stomach hurting, he wheezed and straightened, finally moving his feet to help the poor lad. But as he neared the man, who rose up on shaking arms, his laughter died away and he froze.

“s**t,” he whispered, and then hurried to him.

Ellory’s hair was matted down and caked with mud, but there were still a few curls that sprang loose, and Sean would have recognized them anywhere. Trembling, Ellory groaned and winced, looking down at his knee, which was bleeding, the pants leg torn on some rock along the way.

“Hey,” Sean said, dropping down beside him. He took his arms, about to pull him up. “Are you okay, mate?”

But Ellory yanked himself away, crumpling onto his side with a small, broken sob.

“Leave me alone, you son of a bitch.”

Sean blanched, kneeling in the dirt beside him. “What—Listen, I’m only trying to help.”

“By laughing? By being the jackass you always are and laughing at me? I’m surprised you didn’t wait until you had an audience.” His voice was rough with pain, and he swallowed down bile.

Hurt sliced through Sean, and he blinked rapidly. “

No. Ellory, wait a minute. I didn’t know it was you. I only just recognized you.”

“I’m so sure,” Ellory growled, dragging himself onto his good knee and pushing to his feet with another stifled moan, strumming something to life deep inside Sean’s chest. His face was beet red, and blood dripped down his leg. Mud splotched over his clothing, smeared over the pale skin of his neck. He was absolutely livid. And completely mortified. He started limping away and Sean scrambled to his feet.

“Let me help you—,” he started, trying to take Ellory’s elbow, hold gently the small of his back, but Ellory ripped himself away again, turning on him in fury.

“Don’t touch me!” he shrieked, tears spilling from his eyes. Sean took an unconscious step back, the vision of Ellory, like some weather beaten survivor of an epic flood, soaked and shivering and distraught, something he would never forget for all his life. A pang of need, of care, burst over him and he faltered at the feeling.

“I’m not weak,” Ellory murmured, turning away, limping a single step. But then he whirled around and crashed both his palms against Sean’s chest, pushing him so that he stumbled and slipped. “I’m not weak!”

Sean, aggravated and confused, almost told him otherwise. False, entirely false, because as Ellory scrambled back up the hill, falling forward on one arm every few moments, digging and scratching to put as much space between them as possible, Sean saw that he was anything but weak.

And then he was gone over the lip of the hill, the only evidence of his being there the disturbed patch of ground where he’d landed and struggled to rise again. Sean looked around in a bit of a daze, wondering if what had just transpired had even been real. But then he glanced down at his own chest, at the half-prints of Ellory’s long hands outlined in mud on his T-shirt. He placed his own hands over them, bigger and wider than Ellory’s, and imagined he could still feel the hot stamp of his anger simmering there.

No, he wasn’t weak. But he was hurt, not just from the fall, and Sean knew it had something to do with the letter he’d found in his apartment. The one he hadn’t finished reading, the one where Ellory was beautiful.

“Ah, s**t,” he muttered, shaking loose mud from his own knees, trying to quell the rush of something distinctive and warm in his chest. “f*****g hell.”

Something fluttered against his leg, blown there by the passing winds. It was Ellory’s checkered scarf, stained and torn, a mosaic of blue and red and white. Sean snatched it up, and crumpled it into a ball in his fists, turning narrowed eyes on the edge of the hill where Ellory had vanished.