The Scoreboard Light

The scoreboard had been showing HOME 88, AWAY 88 since Easter.

“Optimistic,” Sinéad said from the bottom of the ladder.

Orla leaned into the metal box and touched two wires together. Half the numbers vanished. “Progress.”

“You have made it forty-four points worse.”

They had volunteered because the club's first night Camogie match was due to start in an hour and because Orla had once changed a plug. This had become, through committee logic, electrical expertise.

Below them, the pitch filled slowly. A coach rolled out footballs. Somebody unlocked the tea room. Cars began to line the road, their headlights sweeping over the wet grass.

Sinéad held the ladder with one hand and read instructions from a photograph on her phone. “Blue wire into terminal three.”

“There are four blue wires.”

“Then choose the one with leadership qualities.”

Orla laughed and nearly dropped the screwdriver. She had been laughing more since Sinéad joined the panel in March. Too much, according to her sister, who had watched them after a match and announced, with no supporting evidence required, that Orla was doomed.

“Are you bringing anyone tonight?” Sinéad asked.

“My mother. She'll spend the match telling strangers I should be centre-back.”

“Should you?”

“Obviously.”

“Anyone else?”

The question was light, but Orla could feel the weight beneath it. They had gone for coffee twice and chips once. Sinéad had held her hand in a cinema where nobody from the club could see. Neither had named what happened next.

Orla connected the third blue wire. The home score lit up: 00.

“That one has leadership qualities,” she said.

Sinéad looked up. “Avoiding the question is not the same as answering it.”

“I know.”

“We don't have to do this here.”

“Where else would we do it? The clubhouse has ears.”

“The scoreboard apparently has feelings.”

Orla climbed down. The floodlights hummed awake over them. She had spent years arranging her life into separate rooms—team, family, work, the people she dated—then wondering why every doorway felt crowded.

“I want to ask you to the social on Saturday,” she said. “As my date. I also want to be able to change my mind if the idea terrifies me tomorrow.”

Sinéad considered this. “A provisional invitation, subject to pitch inspection.”

“Exactly.”

“Accepted provisionally.”

A cheer rose from the stand. Behind them, the scoreboard now displayed HOME 00, AWAY 00 and a clock counting steadily backwards from thirty.

“You fixed it,” Sinéad said.

“We fixed it.”

“Very romantic. We still have thirty seconds until it switches off.”

They climbed together this time, Orla on the ladder and Sinéad one step below, passing up the screwdriver. When the clock reset to sixty, the first players ran onto the pitch.

Orla's mother waved from the rail and pointed towards centre-back. Sinéad waved back.

“Your date likes me,” she said.

“Provisional date.”

“Of course.”

The scoreboard held at zero, waiting for the match to begin. For once, Orla did not need it to show the ending.

They ran towards the changing room as the warm-up whistle sounded. At the door, Sinéad reached for Orla's hand, squeezed once and let go before anybody had to decide what the gesture meant. Inside, a spare jersey waited on the bench and the manager was calling names. Orla answered hers. Above the pitch, sixty bright minutes were ready to count down one ordinary second at a time.

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