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“Jamie, you don’t have to watch.”
He made a noise of annoyance but took Roy’s offering of food. The Champions League final was in its final minutes, and Manchester City was about to win the fucking Treble. Jamie Tartt sat on Roy Kent’s couch, newly surgically repaired ankle secured in a splint and propped on an orthopaedic pillow, frowning at the television.
Jamie had limped his way through the season, making the England roster for the World Cup in Qatar, but spent the second half of the season in and out of the treatment room managing ankle ligaments that never quite healed right after Manchester City. The surgery would fix that, and Jamie would be back on the pitch in the fall, but struggling through the pain of recovery and watching his former team complete the Treble while he couldn’t workout or even walk without the aid of crutches was too much insult added to injury.
“I want to watch,” Jamie sulked, and Roy thought the lad might simply enjoy torturing himself. “Be rude not to.”
Roy stifled rolling his eyes. He wanted to correct him that no, it wouldn’t be, but Jamie had friends on City, and if he was doing his best to be a supportive friend, Roy wasn’t about to discourage that, no matter how much he wanted to save Jamie from the pain of watching his former teammates win without him. Roy knew how it felt, watching Chelsea win the Champions League two years earlier while he nursed a bruised ego alone in Marbella, and while there were more players he hadn’t played with than he had, it still stung as someone who once wore the captain’s armband for the team.
“It wouldn’t,” Roy said, trying to strike the right balance of caring and supportive. “Especially after you just got out of hospital. But you’re a good lad to watch.”
Jamie shifted on the settee, pain marring his features, and Roy resisted his urge to elevate his friend’s surgically repaired ankle higher or offer more pain medication. Instead, he pulled another ice pack from the freezer, adjusting it on Jamie’s splint before turning back to the kitchen to concentrate on his breathing.
He hated watching any of his team in pain, but it was significantly worse when it was Jamie.
But if Roy was forced to watch his friend through every agonising phase of recovery, from stitches removal, to cast application, to rehab and relearning to walk, and strengthening and eventually the slow return to play, Roy would do everything in his power as both manager and best friend to make it as easy on Jamie as possible. And if that started with changing the channel after Man City began to celebrate their Champions League victory and Jamie’s mind drifted to an alternate reality where he would have been on that same pitch, Roy would do that.
And then he would do everything in his power to make sure Jamie lifted that trophy himself one day.