After the Final

The final whistle went, and for a long thirty seconds nobody moved.

Sean was on one knee at the edge of the square, helmet off, black hair plastered flat to his forehead. A point, they'd lost by. One point. He had a hand pressed into the turf like the pitch owed him money.

Eoghan stood ten yards away with his hands on his hips, looking at a spot somewhere above the stand where nothing in particular was happening. When he finally moved, he walked past Sean and kept walking — across the sideline, past the dugout, past the lad with the water bottles whose name he couldn't remember on a good day.

"Eoghan." Sean's voice behind him. Quieter than he expected.

He didn't stop until he was under the big ash tree at the car-park end, the one the club photographer always stood under. Then he leaned on it with both hands and made himself breathe.

Sean caught up. Didn't say anything for a bit. Took off his gloves and shoved them in his shorts pocket.

"You alright?" Sean said at last.

"No." Eoghan laughed once, without sound. "I'm grand. Just — no."

"Yeah."

The lights over the pitch flicked to half-power. Someone was collapsing the nets. The sun was low and the air smelt of cut grass and vaporised deep heat.

"We were better than them," Eoghan said.

"We were better than them in the second half."

"We were better than them, full stop."

"I agree." Sean nudged him with his shoulder. "Doesn't matter now though."

Eoghan closed his eyes. His shin was throbbing where he'd taken a block in the fourty-eighth minute. There would be a bruise tomorrow the colour of a ripe plum.

Sean said, carefully, "You coming for the feed after?"

"Probably."

"You don't have to."

"I know."

They stood for a bit. Two lads in muck-caked county-semi jerseys under an ash tree that had seen their father play.

"Eoghan."

"Yeah."

"I'm going to say the thing."

"Oh, Christ."

"I know. I know. I'm going to say it anyway."

Eoghan opened his eyes. Sean had turned so he was facing him, arms folded across his chest, looking very serious and very scared and still, somehow, like Sean from under-eights who used to steal chicken nuggets off his plate on the bus to blitzes.

"If you don't want to hear it," Sean said, "say so and I won't say it. But I've been trying to say it since Christmas and tonight we lost a match we deserved to win and I'm tired of trying."

There was a long pause.

"Alright," Eoghan said.

"Alright, say it, or alright don't say it?"

"Alright say it. Quick, before anyone comes out."

Sean took a breath. "I like you. I know that isn't a news bulletin. I've liked you since the wedding in Westport when you got very drunk and slept on my couch and told me I was your best friend and also, exact words, 'weirdly handsome.' I like you and I've been waiting for it to go away and it hasn't, so."

Another breath.

"So I'm just saying it." Sean shrugged. "Didn't want to die without saying it. Figuratively. Probably not going to die."

Eoghan started laughing. Not a big laugh. A small one, mostly in his shoulders.

"You absolute lunatic," he said.

"I know."

"After a county semi. Like, tactically — after a loss. You waited for us to lose."

"Look. I had a speech worked out for if we won. I had a speech worked out for if we lost. The winning one was better. Do you want to hear it?"

"Jesus, no."

"Fair."

There was another pause, and in it Eoghan noticed, for the first time in a while, that his breathing had slowed.

He said, "You know I'm — "

"Yeah."

"And you're — "

"Yeah."

"And we live in a parish with one road in and one road out."

"I'm aware," Sean said. "I did drive here."

"The lads will kill us."

"The lads will have one pint about it and then want to hear how we figured it out."

Eoghan blew air out through his nose. "You know my brother is going to ask questions."

"Your brother asks questions about why the tea is the colour it is. That isn't a Gay Thing."

"Fair."

Another silence, slightly warmer.

"If I said yes," Eoghan said, "the answer to whatever it is you're asking, we'd have to not — at the feed, later, we'd have to just be us. Tonight we lost a semi. Tomorrow we deal with the rest of it."

"Absolutely."

"And I want to ice my shin first."

"Fine. I'll drive. You ice."

"Okay." Eoghan pushed off the tree. "Okay."

"Okay?"

"Okay as in — yes. I suppose. To the question you haven't actually asked."

"I have a follow-up," Sean said.

"Of course you do."

"Will you come for breakfast tomorrow. In Athlone. In the café across from the train station. I've picked it out. The chef is new."

Eoghan looked at him. Sean of under-eights, Sean of first senior team, Sean of the car park after the county semi.

"Yeah," he said. "Go on."

They walked back towards the changing rooms together, slow, because Eoghan's shin was starting to lock up and because the conversation was going to have to continue at some point in a place that wasn't the only ash tree on the walk home. Behind them the pitch was going dark, one floodlight at a time. The wind picked up from the north and carried the last of the goalmouth chalk away over the wall.

At the door of the changing room Sean stopped. "Listen," he said. "Tomorrow. It's fine to — whatever. I'm not expecting — "

"Sean. I said yes. Shut up and lose gracefully."

Sean grinned, briefly. Then they went in together, and the rest of the team, in their disappointment, were paying too little attention to notice anything at all.

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