SWOLLEN: A Secret Baby Sports Romance

by Stephanie Brother

  Her comment is directed at me, even though she’s not looking at me directly.

  “Mom.”

  “A dead bird, I know. Maybe there are foxes.”

  “Foxes live in cities”, Dad says without looking up from one of his brochures.

  “Not the bird, the bed”, Tilly says, repeating herself. “The room is full of Landon’s exercise equipment.”

  Rachel looks from her daughter, to me. I put my hands up passively. In this T-shirt, I know I look ripped, and I’m not letting the irony get lost.

  “I thought you were sleeping in here.”

  “I still need the mattress, Landon.”

  She really is uptight.

  “I’ll move the stuff before you need it, don’t worry.”

  “I can’t even sit down.”

  “Sit down in here”, I tell her. “I thought this was meant to be a family holiday anyway. We can get to know each other.”

  “Exactly”, Rachel adds.

  Tilly looks infuriated and very uncomfortable. It makes her look cute.

  “Sit here if you want”, I offer, the size of the space to my side clearly just big enough for her to wedge herself into.

  “I’ll sit on the decking”, Tilly says. “We don’t even fit in here.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  “One hundred and sixty nine kilometres of tracks around here”, Dad says, finally looking up from his stack of leaflets. “There are owls too. I think we should take a walk tomorrow.”

  “You do what you like tomorrow, I’m going to sit here and watch movies all day.”

  “You can sit inside in the city all you like, you shouldn’t waste the opportunity while you’ve got it. A walk might do you good, a bit of country air.”

  Country air is not what I need to get me through the summer. Landon Maddox is not the kind of guy to pull on gumboots and track animals through the trees. Hunting girls? Yes. Hunting animals? No.

  “I’ve done alright without it so far, city air is just as good.”

  “You’ll be the one missing out.”

  I can’t be bothered to argue. Family holiday to please the coach, the owners, Rachel and Dad. I can cope with that. I owe them that for not making the wedding. I can stay out of trouble here, even if it bores me senseless. Seven days putting up with Dad’s idiosyncrasies, Rachel’s relentless enthusiasm and Tilly’s teenage mood swings. In agreeing to come, it buys me brownie points with the club, which are likely to come in useful if anything happens next year. It gives me the opportunity to demonstrate to my new mother-in-law that I’m not the Landon Maddox of the magazines and the vast newspaper column inches and it gives me the opportunity to finally find out what it’s like to have a girl in my life I’m not allowed to sleep with, although with this fix I’m in, I guess that every single girl in the world falls into that category.

  This is more than that though, this is can’t sleep with even if coach called me up tomorrow and said I was released from my obligations. This has don’t touch written all over it, from now until the end of my football playing career. This may be only a week for all of us here, but Tilly and I are going to be step-siblings until the end of time. I never thought Dad and Mom were going to split up until it was obvious that they were. Looking at Dad and Rachel now, I don’t think I can remember seeing anyone else so smitten, content, and sickeningly in love as those two. Tilly and I are in for the long haul, that’s for sure. I better make sure we go to know each other then.

  “Beautiful.”

  Tilly is sunning herself on the deck with her dress rucked high up to her waist. Her long slender legs stick out and fold into one another, balanced carefully on a tilted stool in front of her. When she sees me, she quickly pulls her dress back down to cover, at the very least, the sumptuous smoothness of her thighs. She may be nineteen, but I doubt she’s had the experience of many other girls her age. It’s not that she doesn’t look like she wants it, more like she’s never had the opportunity before.

  “What do you want?”

  I qualify my statement. “The view, it’s beautiful.”

  Tilly looks up at me over her sunglasses to see if I’m joking. When she can’t tell whether I am or not, she nods and goes back to her book.

  “What are you reading?”

  I can see what she’s reading, I just want to annoy her. She holds up the cover to make sure I’ve got my answer. When she’s likely to be half way through the next sentence, I engage her again.

  “Is it good?”

  When she looks over, book folded flat underneath an ample and firm chest, I make sure I’m smiling innocently.

  “If you’re bored already, why did you come?”

  “I’m not bored.”

  “What are you doing bothering me then? Why don’t you throw one of the twelve footballs you’ve brought with you or do some weights or something?”

  “Would you spot for me if I did?”

  “No.”

  I pull up one of the seats to join her.

  “Why did you come?”

  “Landon! I’m trying to concentrate.”

  Bingo! This is already much better than flicking through yellow edged pamphlets about how to identify animals by the color and size of their droppings, cooking rack after rack of muffins, or even throwing a football a hundred yards into the neighbors turf.

  “Hey, sorry, just trying to make conversation. I thought we should try and get to know each other a bit better, you know, we are here for a week.”

  I get an eye roll, a kind of weird sound of desperation and then finally she puts the book down. Maybe she thinks that if she gets this out of the way now, I won’t have to bother her for the rest of our time here.

  “Mom made me come. I didn’t exactly ask to get thrown into a tiny house in the middle of nowhere without a cell phone signal, and this isn’t my idea of fun either.”

  “You get to meet me.”

  Another eye roll.

  “Yeah, well, the less said about that the better.”

  “Come on, you must know who I am. I imagine there are hundred of thousands of girls all over the states who would change places with you in a second. A week with The Donkey? That’s like a wet dream come true for millions of horny women.”

  “You think so, huh?”

  “I know so. I reckon you do too. Don’t tell me you buy those magazines for the articles. It’s funny that they don’t flop open at the several pages of investigative journalism.”

  That might have just got her.

  “Find me one of those girls and I’ll change places with her immediately. I’m only here for your dad, who happens to be nothing like you, and my mom. For some reason it makes them happy to think we are some kind of happy family. And you are right, I do know you, just not in the way you think I do. I know exactly the kind of person you are, and you haven’t done anything so far to make me change that position. If you really want to know, I’m dreading the next seven days. If I get through this nightmare to the very end without losing my mind completely it’ll be an absolute miracle. As far as I know, Landon Maddox is a donkey alright, but not in the way you think you are.”

  I wait a moment for her comments to hang in the air like a bad smell.

  “See, I knew you liked me really.”

  “Gah! Did you hear anything I said?”

  “I heard you, I just don’t believe it’s the truth, that’s all.”

  I get up, place the chair back where I found it, and head for the door. Without even looking, I know she’s watching my every movement. She may be pretending to read, but if she is, she’s read the same sentence ten times. Just before I go back inside, I turn to her.

  “You’ve got a streak of sunscreen on your forehead by the way, it makes you look cute.”

  Tilly

  I have never met anyone else in my life as arrogant as Landon Maddox. Seriously. He’s so full of himself, if you cut him in half, another Landon Maddox would pop out smiling, just as annoyingly confident.

  Firs
t he invaded my life from a distance, and now he’s doing it for real. Everywhere I look, he’s there. If it’s not a giant billboard photo, it’s a TV or magazine advert, a newspaper column, or a radio show. Now he’s literally sat opposite me, chewing down his food look the earth is running out of it.

  Normal people don’t eat this much. I know he’s feeding his ego as well, but this is ridiculous.

  Mom has made what I thought would be enough food for an army, which I now know will be just about enough for one Landon Maddox. I don’t know where he puts it either. As far as I can tell, and not that I’ve been studying it with as much intensity as one might dedicate to a PHD dissertation, he has a flat stomach. A flat, athletic, well defined and perfectly proportioned stomach. Maybe it doesn’t go to his stomach at all, maybe it goes just that little bit further south into his disproportionately large member. He must get back ache just carrying it around.

  “So, Tilly, how is the job hunt going?”

  Marvin knows how my job hunt is going and I don’t appreciate him leveraging my situation to fill a gap in the conversation. If it’s this awkward this early on, maybe we should all just give up and go back to our separate homes. That would make this whole situation a hell of a lot easier to deal with. I could get Landon Maddox out of my mind completely. Millions of other girls would be jealous of me? What an arrogant ass.

  “Can we talk about something else?”

  “What kind of work are you looking for?”

  When I fail to answer Landon’s question, Mom fills in for me. Never mind my request to change the subject, I have just become the subject. Great.

  “Matilda has always wanted to be an artist. Actually, that’s not strictly true, at one point she wanted to be a Disney princess, but that ambition soon faded as she got old enough to realize that position didn’t actually exist in the real world.”

  “That doesn’t stop some people from achieving it.”

  I wait for Landon to qualify the statement but he doesn’t. It isn’t clear if he’s talking about Disney princesses or the fact that just wanting to be an artist is some kind of automatic qualification to achieving it, but I give him the benefit of the doubt. Once again, I feel like I’m going to have to defend my career choice. Mom has never wanted me to be an artist and she hasn’t exactly been tightlipped about it either. She’s one of these people that doesn’t believe art should even exist as a career. She would have been happy if I’d followed her footsteps and become a day in day out, nine to five secretary, and saved thousands of dollars on my student loan.

  “I sculpt”, I say, pre-empting the question. “I draw too. Actually, I do a little bit of everything, but sculpting is my favorite.”

  Marvin, Mom and Landon are all looking at me like I’ve confessed to a crime. Short of Mom putting her hand on my arm and telling me it will all be alright, this feels like some sort of therapy session.

  “What’s the best thing you’ve ever made?”

  It’s a question I don’t expect to come from Landon. In fact, it’s a question I don’t expect to come at all. I can’t work out if he’s teasing me or not.

  “The best thing?”

  “Yeah, you know, like the thing you’re most proud of or whatever, your ninety-nine yard pass.”

  “I made a lifesize sculpture of an eagle at high school that got put forward for a prize. I didn’t end up winning it, but I was really proud of that piece when I’d finished it. It took me about three months just to get the proportions of the wings right. Come to think of it, I don’t know where that piece is now.”

  My eyes find their way to Mom’s, whose fall on mine in turn. She knows exactly what happened to it and she’s about to confess it to me.

  “It was an ugly sculpture really”, I add, not taking my eyes off my mother. “Technically pretty complex, especially for a fourteen year old, but ugly. It fell apart after a while as well.”

  Mom’s still not saying anything.

  “Mom. You threw it away, didn’t you?”

  “It’s in the basement, darling. All six or seven pieces of it. I wouldn’t throw it away.”

  Judging by the look she’s giving me, she’s thought about it though.

  “I was never bothered by art.”

  How come that doesn’t surprise me about you, Landon?

  “I was competent, I might have even been able to make an eagle if I put my mind to it, but I was far too busy chasing girls and throwing footballs around. I knew from a young age what I wanted to be, and I wasn’t going to let anything get in the way of it. What was the last thing you made?”

  “It’s not as simple as that.”

  “Sure it is. You can’t expect opportunities to just come along out of nowhere. You’ve got to make your own luck.”

  That’s more like it, the real Landon is back again.

  “I don’t need a lecture on how to market myself, thank you.”

  “Sure you don’t, that’s why you’re so good at it.”

  “It’s a different world entirely, Landon. There aren’t the same job opportunities.”

  I think Marvin meant to defend me there.

  “It’s exactly the same world with exactly the same opportunities. I had to work hard to get where I’ve got to, and it wasn’t anything to do with luck. I have to work hard to keep my place too.”

  “It doesn’t look like you’ve been working hard enough recently then does it?”

  Landon laughs off my comment. “I bet there are just as many football jocks and athletes that don’t make it as there are artists like you waiting for somebody to come along and give them the golden ticket.”

  “I work hard.”

  “Then maybe the art world isn’t meant for you. Maybe you don’t want it enough.”

  “Oh, she wants it”, Mom intervenes. “There’s no question about that. She just doesn’t seem to be able to get it.”

  “Then maybe you aren’t talented enough.”

  “Can we talk about something else, please?”

  I’ve had enough of this already. Business and life coaching from The Donkey? Please. “It doesn’t take a genius to throw a football a hundred yards.”

  “Or to color inside the lines.”

  Asshole.

  “Any artistic field is going to be difficult to get into. That’s why your mother and my generation took jobs in more academic fields. There were only a few artists back then and they were bohemians really. Nobody doing that ever really made any money, and if they did, they were talented, hard working and had a bit of luck. You needed one of those things if not all three.”

  “I never had any luck.”

  Arrogant asshole.

  “You were lucky I let you play at all. Every weekend down the park? Who do you think your practise partner was until you were old enough to get accepted to a team?”

  “Yeah, whatever. My point is, if you want it badly enough, and you’re good enough at it, you’ll be able to get it.”

  “That’s your expert advice? Want it, and it will happen?”

  Landon holds my gaze. “You want something bad enough, princess, there isn’t anything that can stop it happening.”

  Yeah, right. I don’t believe that kind of philosophy for a second. The ‘I’m not working hard enough to achieve my goals’ philosophy. Gee, thanks, Landon. Mr. Never had to worry about things because I play a stupid ball game and make millions of dollars a year running around a park in a silly costume pretending to be important Maddox. Artists are a different breed entirely. Artists are educated, talented, flawed. They are geniuses, and produce work that reflects the human condition. Nurtures it. Football players, and by extension underwear models, are valueless saps, contributing nothing worthwhile in a cultural or creative sense. I’m nineteen years old, I’ve just finished my first year of University, and I haven’t even begun looking for work properly yet. No doubt I’ll get a grant, or a fellowship, or a position on an important project. I haven’t even decided on my discipline, so it’s a little rich he’s talki
ng to me about not showing enough eagerness. Landon may have known for his whole life he wanted to be a footballer, well I’m the same about my art. I wonder if he also knew whether he wanted to be an arrogant alpha-male asshole too.

  “Dessert, anyone?”

  Tilly

  Well that was incredibly awkward. I wonder if the day will ever arrive when I don’t have to justify my career choice to anyone.

  My assessment of the day so far: Landon Maddox is an absolute douchebag. Not content with having to be the centre of attention at all times, he also happens to be infuriatingly, intoxicatingly handsome. I mean, why exactly does that always happen? Why can’t they let the meek, humble, chivalrous men be the ones with biceps I can’t even get my two hands around, perfect eyes and washboard abs? You know, the all around better human beings.

  At least he’s not overly polite and incredibly sycophantic. I don’t think I could cope with it at all if he were actually a perfect human being as well as a perfect specimen of one. I didn’t actually expect him to clear the table, do the washing up, sweep the floor and put a load of laundry on, and I’m glad he hasn’t. The more I think about it, the fact that he’s obviously completely flawed - inflated sense of self worth, delusions of grandeur, seemingly impenetrable emotional shield - actually makes him seem much more human. It’s contrary I know, but it’s true.

  Yes, he may be built like a Roman God, but it’s refreshing to see he isn’t constantly seeking approval or desperately wants to be liked despite clearly needing to be centre of attention. It seems like the complete opposite of that actually. He seems like he’s doing everything he can in his power to make people dislike him. Or he’s just being himself, which is probably more accurate, and the result of that is the same.

  After dinner, Landon treats us all to a kind of showreel highlights package of his best moments from the previous season, complete with theatrical interpretations and unnecessary audience involvement, when we find out the TV doesn’t work and we are stuck for things to do.

  He is clearly excited to be sharing his memories, but it’s all a bit one sided if you ask me. Landon threw this pass that won the game, Landon broke this record, Landon got this trophy. Yada yada yada. What he doesn’t tell us about are the controversies away from the field that had just as much impact over the year as the stats on it. Landon screws this girl, Landon crashes this car, Landon puts his huge dick where it isn’t wanted.