Free Rooster: A Secret Baby Sports Romance by Abbey Foxx

I say.
    I shower, I get changed, and then I try and find the cheerleaders before I leave, but I can’t. There’s a special door that the players use to avoid all of the waiting fans, but it takes you round the back of the stadium and too far away from the bars for my liking, so I decide to head out the normal way.
    I may be a big deal for this team, but that doesn’t mean I need to separate myself from the crowd because of it. I’m a sports fan as much as I am a player, I started off that way and I’m going to finish up that way too, so it doesn’t bother me in the slightest.
    How many fans can there be anyway? I mean, I’m hardly a seasoned pro in this sport, and nobody knows a single thing about mine. If anyone wants an autograph, I can’t imagine there being much of a line to get one. With any luck there’ll be a couple of girls who’ll be keen enough to join me for a pint and real enough they like my often too direct for most attitude.
    I could do with that, especially as all of the rest of the players have fucked off and Francis says he’s busy with the post match admin work.
    I don’t mind drinking on my own, but it’s way more interesting with someone to banter with.
    I push open the doors to the square in the same way I would stepping out of the gates at an airport when I know nobody is there to meet me, but look just in case anyway.
    I expect to walk away from the ground as quietly as I entered it, but as soon as my face is out in the open I’m absolutely fucking swarmed. I’ve never seen anything like it. Hurling’s a popular sport in Ireland, and back there I’m like fucking royalty, but even so, it’s nothing at all like this.
    I’m barely a meter out of the ground when a crowd of at least a hundred people run towards me, match brochures in hand, smiles the size of slices of melon.
    One game in and I already feel like The Beatles. What’s going to happen if I make it to the end of the season?
    It takes me about an hour to get through everybody and obviously nobody’s obliging me to do it, but there’s no way I’m going to turn around and say no, because I’m not a dick like Kowalski.
    I don’t mind either. I remember doing the same when I was a kid and even back then the access was much easier. We’ve still got a similar thing in hurling, but when I look at soccer and some of the other big sports, rugby, and field hockey included, some of those players don’t think they have any responsibility to be part of it.
    Whatever. A selfie is a selfie at the end of the day and an autograph means nothing to me but it’s like fucking gold dust and leprechaun's tears to an eight-year-old with nothing else on their mind but their favorite game.
    When the crowd finally parts, everyone has got the autograph or the photo or the handshake they came for, and I’ve waited long enough to make sure there is nobody left, I finally make my way out of there.
    Before I’ve even made it halfway across the square a voice from behind me stops me dead in my tracks.
    “Hey, you forgot to do mine.”
    I know it’s her even before I’ve turned around. A voice like that, you don’t forget easily.
    “Holy fuck, my back alley angel”, I say.
    “Hello, Rory”, Izzy says, and smiles.
    This is fucking bizarre. I mean, I knew there was always a chance of us bumping into each other, but here? Hunted down outside my place of work only a week after I’m back in the country? I know I’m good, but I didn’t expect this. Not in a million years.
    “Real girl”, I confirm.
    “The very same.”
    She’s even better looking than I remember, and it feels even better than I thought it might to see her. Until now, I’d known this girl for less time than this whole conversation, yet I’ve thought about her almost every night since. That’s fucking weird, especially because she’s now standing right in front of me, as real as a hurling stick.
    “How long’s it been?” I ask.
    Izzy shrugs. “A year I’d guess, maybe