Chapter 44 - Chapter 44: Warm Whisky

"Six fouls and a red, Zee?" Sibisi throws his sweat-soaked shirt into the kit skip standing in the middle of the away dressing room.

"Ask me if I give a shit."

In case he couldn't tell from the blank look on my face or the dried blood on my lip from one of tonight's flashpoints, the answer is "I don't."

Any other day, Sibisi would give me the skipper's lecture about letting the side down by giving them a man for the last twenty minutes. He'd remind me that we've just thrown the Cup away in a semi-final we were favourites for, and that there's a second leg to come at FNB that decides whether we see an African final. He'd tell me to get my head out of my ass and straighten out my priorities.

But he doesn't say any of that, because he knows where my priorities lie. I'm not thinking about football. I'm not thinking about my contract. I'm just thinking about the girl who's missing from my life because I didn't want my reputation to hurt her any more.

Sibisi's eyes stay locked on my little finger as I push Vuyi's ring back onto it, the second the strapping and the boots and the kit are off me. It comes off for every match, same as everybody else's — Law 4, no jewellery, and the referee walks the line before kick-off and checks each of us like a schoolmaster. So for ninety minutes it sits in the bottom of my bag with my phone and my watch, and the moment I'm out of the tunnel it goes back on. Thin, cheap, the plating already wearing through on one side.