Daisy must see the smile creeping across my face. I can’t seem to stop it. That’s actually exactly what I’m looking for.
“I’m just telling you this because you’re Mathias’s teammate and, you know, I’m not sure how awkward that’ll make things.”
“Thank you,” I say because I’m polite as fuck. “But don’t threaten me with a good time.”
“Boys,” she sighs. “That’s eleven twenty, please. For the beers.”
I tap my card against the payment machine. “Did you say his name is Lan?”
She’s smiling now, and I feel the shift the moment she switches to wingman mode. “Short for Lando, which is actually short for Orlando. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, okay?”
“Cross my heart, hope to die,” I reply. “Does he do this with a lot of guys?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you how many,” she says.
My heart flutters in my chest, and I can’t decide if it’s a good thing Lando has slept with half the UK. On the one hand it’s going to be screamingly obvious I don’t have a clue what I’m doing, but on the other, it’s highly likely he won’t remember me or my fuck-ups in a week’s time.
After Eggo finishes his set, Dan has a spin on the mic. Dan favours a good shower sing-song and will often serenade us post training or on game day. It’s bad when that happens, not gonna lie, but nothing, absolutely nothing could have prepared me for the massacre that takes place as he warbles “Teenage Dirtbag.” He doesn’t even know the words and rarely bothers to look at the screen. People are putting their fingers in their ears, or else getting up and excusing themselves to the bathroom or to go outside for “fresh air.”
Pi doesn’t want to give up his spot in the karaoke queue—he’s desperate to inflict Sheryl Crow on the other patrons—so we loiter in the corner chatting with the Cents lads and a few locals. Every time I glance over at Lando, he’s looking at me, and my adrenaline spikes when we make eye contact.
He’s not shy about his attraction, and everyone else sees him staring at me. Me, Harry Ellis, of all people. It’s such an intense high to be the chosen one. I couldn’t wipe the smile from my face even if I wanted to.
We neck a couple more pints each. Some folk—not me, though—try to convince Mathias to do a karaoke song, but he waves them away, and I decide to have another go. It doesn’t make me better than Mathias that I’ll sing and he won’t, but yeah, actually . . . it does.
No doubt I’m slurring my words, but I give everything I’ve got to Bon Jovi’s “It’s My Life,” and at the end of the song, Lando is waiting beside the stage for me. I hand the mic to an older guy wearing a Bristol City football shirt.
“How much more obvious do I need to make this?” Lando says. Wow, he’s so posh. Eton or Marlborough College level posh. I hadn’t really expected him to sound like that, but I guess I’d not given a lot of thought to it.
I want to say something cool, want to be the suave and sophisticated stranger with the fire one-liners, but my mind has gone blank.
“I’m Harry,” I say instead. And then, horrifyingly, I offer him my hand to shake. I want to crawl to the side of the road and curl up into a ball and die. Thankfully, it’s too dark inside the pub for him to see the beetroot shade of my face.
He doesn’t take my hand, probably because he’s not a twat. “I was hoping we might skip the formalities and head straight to the good part.”
“Um . . . what’s the good part?”
Fuck off, Harry! Shut your stupid mouth. You’re going to blow this with your ineptitude.
Lando doesn’t answer with words. He doesn’t even move any part of his body except for his eyes, which he rakes down my body and back up again, and I now understand the true definition of the term “eye-fuck.”
Damn, he’s very good at this.
Instead of answering his look with one of my own, I take a sip from my pint and knock the rim of my glass against my teeth. I hear the sound ricochet through my skull at seven hundred times the original volume.
Amazingly, when I open my eyes, Lando’s still there, still smirking at me.
“What do you reckon, then?” he says. “I live about ten minutes’ walk from here.”
“You mean . . . go to your house with you? For . . . to . . . now?”
He shrugs and laughs that haughty posh-boy laugh, then leans in close, placing his mouth next to my ear. His lips brush my lobe, and his breath tickles my cheek. Goosebumps erupt over my bare arms. “You seem like you don’t do this very often, so I’ll make it easy for you. I want you to walk with me backto my house, nail me to my mattress, and then maybe we could get a takeaway pizza and watch a movie. I promise to take really good care of you.”
Oh my god, oh my god. It’s actually happening. I glance over at Pi, who’s making a subtle shooing gesture with his hands.
“Go. Go have sex,” he mouths, or at least that’s what I think he mouths. My heart is racing, mind swirling.
Lando doesn’t move his head away from mine, and when I pull back a little to look at him, our mouths are only inches apart.
