Binding 13

Joh

Instead, he surprised me by saying, "What about you?"

"What about me?" I replied, feeling a little u

"Are you a skilled camogie player?" He shot me a grin. "Since it clearly runs in your family."

"Ah, no," I replied, flushing bright red. "Definitely not. I was never any good at it. But I love watching. I love the physicality of the game."

Joh

My brows rose up at the odd statement.

"I think what you meant to say is I might die playing rugby," I corrected, gesturing to my body. "If you haven't noticed, I'm kind of on the small side."

A huge smile spread across his face, dimples emerging.

"Yeah, I've noticed," he chuckled. "I meant that I think you'd enjoy watching rugby. If you enjoy GAA so much, you'd love the physicality of rugby."

"I do enjoy it," I reminded him. "When Ireland are playing." Not that I have a bull's clue of what's going on, I skipped adding.

"What about local teams? School rugby? Provincial sides? Ever been to any games before last week?"

He was firing off questions quicker than I could respond.

I attempted to answer him as best I could. "No, I don’t follow any team aside from the international squad, and I've never been to any other games."

Joh

"I play," he finally said.

"For Tommen. Yeah, I know," I quipped. "I saw you, and I still have an egg on the back to my head to prove it."

Joh

I stared blankly back at him. "That's…good?"

He released an impatient laugh. "You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?"

"Nope." I shook my head. "I honestly don’t."

He considered this for a long moment before nodding. "I like that."

"You like what?"

"That you don’t know what I'm talking about," he replied without hesitation. "It's a little insulting and a lot refreshing."

"Uh, well, you're welcome?" I offered, not knowing what to say to that. "So, rugby's your thing, huh?"

Joh

I felt like I was missing something here.

"And you're good?"

I thought he was good.

I thought he was the best out there last Friday, but I didn’t have a clue about the sport.

His smile widened, eyes crinkling slightly, as he repeated his earlier words, "You could say that."

Okay, I was definitely missing something.

"Am I going to be embarrassed by this?" I asked, racking my brain for information that might help me.

I didn’t have any.

Sure, I knew he was the captain of the school team, and those photographers and reporters were snapping at his heels, but I figured that had to do with him being captain and the best player on the field that day.

However, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was missing something.

"If I do an internet search on you, am I going to find out you're some sort of rugby god?"

Joh

"Then what?" I pressed.

With a rueful smile, Joh

"Well, I really don’t have much of a choice in the matter," I responded, going along with his diversion. "I have five brothers and a GAA-fanatic father so..." I let my words trail off with a small shrug.

"No sisters?"

"Nope," I replied. "It's just me and the boys."

"How's that for you?"

His question threw me and it took me several moments to form a response. "Okay, I guess."

No one had ever asked me that before.

Not even my parents.

"It makes for a busy home life," I added, feeling the need to elaborate. "It gets kind of crazy sometimes."

"I bet."

Shifting his hand from the steering wheel to the leg he had planted on the floor, Joh

I would have been super creeped out by the move if it weren't for the fact that he seemed to be doing this subconsciously, like he was soothing an ache.

"Are you close?" he asked, distracting me from my staring.

"Close?" I blinked rapidly. "To who – my brothers?"

He nodded.

I thought about it for a moment before responding. "I'm close to Joey – that's the one on the phone earlier. He turned eighteen at Christmas, so he's the closest in age to me. Darren doesn’t live in Cork, and the three younger ones are only eleven, nine, and three, so we're not very close."

"He's good to you?"

"Who – Joey?"

He nodded.

"Yeah." I smiled. "He's a great brother."

"Protective?"

I shrugged. "Sometimes."

Joh

"Yeah, I'm the third."

"That's a lot of kids."

"What about you?" I turned the tables on him. "Any sisters or brothers?"

"Nope," he replied with a shrug. "I'm an only child."

Wow. "What's that like?"

"Quiet," he quipped before shifting the limelight back onto me once again. "You've lived here all your life?"

"Yep. Born and raised in Ballylaggin," I confirmed. "You're from Dublin, right? You moved down here when you were eleven?"

His eyes brightened. "You remember me telling you that?"

I nodded.

"Christ, you were so out of it that day, I didn’t think you'd remember any of it," he replied thoughtfully, scratching his chin.

"Even if I hadn't, your accent is a dead giveaway."

"Yeah?"

Nodding, I put on my poshest southside accent and said, "I'm from Blackrock darling."

Joh

"Let me guess, you enjoy dipping your toes in Sandycove before heading for a spot of lunch in D4?" I added with a snicker and another forced accent.

My cheeks burned.

God, I was so awkward.

"There's nothing posh about me, Sha

"You're right."

He didn’t sound posh at all.

My attempt at impersonating him was an epic fail.

What an idiot…

Embarrassed by my rare and poorly executed joke, I fiddled with my braid and mumbled, "I'm sorry."

"Don’t be sorry," he replied dismissively, smiling again. "Now, my Ma, on the other hand, has a really thick northside accent."

My eyes lit up. "Like in Fair City?"

Joh

"I love them," I admitted with a smile. "Fair City's my favorite."

"Well, if you heard my Ma, you'd be in your element," he chuckled, oblivious to his weird hand-to-thigh movements. "My Da was born and raised in Ballylaggin. So, he's a Cork native like yourself." Shrugging, he added, "I suppose I sound like a fucked-up mixture of both."

He wasn’t.

He didn’t have an ounce of Cork accent in him, he was one hundred percent Dub, but I decided to skip telling him that and ask, "Why did your family move here?" instead.

"My Da's mother was sick," he explained. "She wanted to come home to, ah, you know, so we moved down to take care of her." Dropping his hands in his lap, he fiddled with his thumbs. "It was supposed to be a temporary thing – I was enrolled in Royce College for the following September. We were supposed to go home after the funeral."