“Marcos is, uh, not friendly,” Leo says matter-of-factly, cutting through the strange tension and making all three of them laugh.
“Do go on,” Woodsy snickers, spinning the top of his stool around. Oliver’s never met a footballer who wasn’t as big a gossip as a schoolgirl, childishly delighted by any exchange of secrets or shit-talking.
“Trevor has the most goals on the team, but Emmanuel has the second-most assists in the entire Prem,” Leo continues.
“Black excellence.” Woodsy nods sagely, to which Conor offers him a fist bump.
“Then there’s Georgie and Finn and that’s it. Do I pass?” Leo asks.
“We’ll keep you,” Oliver says carefully.
In Swansea and on the screen over their heads, Camden is assuming position, a smattering of small green soldiers on a big green expanse. Conor shouts that he’s opening the doors, and with their hands full of pint glasses, the three of them slip into the back room for some privacy from the rest of the pub crowd, the revelry and beer drinking settling to a focused quiet as they turn their full attention to the match.
Oliver feels the keen ache of the sidelines—he wishes he could run the length of the pitch a hundred times over, even if he could never have the ball. Maybe the last week of playing around and finding themselves actually worked, because the starting elevenlooks fearsome and famished for goals. They’re running circles around the hapless Swansea midfield. Emmanuel is moving so quickly he keeps straying offside unexpectedly, slipping past defenders without realizing it.
Camden keeps up a sustained, hard press for twenty-five minutes, chipping away until there’s nothing left to do but break through. Alberto Garcia, the best-looking holding midfielder in all of Europe and perhaps the slowest runner on any continent, steps around his opponent almost nonchalantly, just inside the penalty box, and delicately lobs the ball over the keeper and safely into the back of the net.
In the moment of chaotic, flooding giddiness, Oliver casts a fleeting glance at Leo, who’s tipsy and looking maybe a touch overwhelmed.
“All right?” he asks, under the pretense of nudging their glasses together before play resumes.
Leo nods and shakes his hair out of his face.
“I’m good, I’m good! God, it’s nice to be home. It’s so normal, actually. I didn’t expect we’d get to go out in public like this.”
Oliver takes a deep, satisfying gulp of his drink, letting the carbonation wash all down his body in place of the celebration on the pitch that he’s missing.
“Not every week, and not in places where we can’t get a room to ourselves, or we’d all get beer guts and be stalked by the fans,” Oliver says wistfully. “But when there’s something to celebrate or something to need perking up over…” Sitting next to each other here, crammed into one booth even though most of the room is empty, Oliver can smell the floral notes of whatever product Leo uses in his hair and can see how fine the gold hoop in his nose is.
“Which are we doing?” Leo asks, startling Oliver out of his observational trance. “Celebrating or perking up?”
“Why not both? Celebrating your arrival and letting it perk us up,” Oliver says magnanimously, going for yet another, gratuitous cheers.
Leo’s smile crinkles at his eyes, and the two of them spend a long stretch of breaths looking at each other, maybe for the first time, really. For the life of him, Oliver now can’t remember why he hated Leo so much, why his arrival announcement sounded like an alarm bell or a death knell. Only the peal of the starting whistle snaps them out of it, drawing their eyes away and up to the screen again. The rest of the match passes joyously, Finn scoring his first goal since his transfer from Eindhoven and Emmanuel closing the door completely even after Swansea pulled one back in the second half. When the ninety minutes are up and the squad is jogging happily offscreen, Oliver is full and warmed, a bit drunk and a lot happy. Woodsy has a Camden scarf tied around his head and Leo has given up his chair to stand behind them both with his arms flung over their shoulders.
“Increíble,” Leo pronounces. “Espectacular.”
“Olé,” Oliver agrees, slumping forward onto the bar. “Now it’s bedtime.”
“You’re wasted, man!” Woodsy hoots. “You can’t go out like this.”
Oliver waves him off irritably, burrowing deeper into the pillow of his elbow. Of course he’s not going out anywhere, he’s going tosleep.
“I’ll walk him home,” Leo says. “Let the wind wake him up.” That promise is good enough for an annoyingly sober Woodsy, who promptly pays the whole tab and leaves them to it. “Come on, Harris, on your feet.”
Oliver cracks open one eye for the sole purpose of being able to glare.
“I’ll call a cab. Lemme sleep,” he grumbles. There are worse things than being left alone with Conor Bishop.
“My job isn’t secure enough to leave you here, Ollie.” Leo hauls him up by his collar until he’s reluctantly vertical. “Let’s go, champ.”
Oliver becomes lucid again somewhere along Prince Albert Road, skirting the perimeter of the park, the blurry world revealing some familiar green landscape. He’s still on his feet and an investigation of his pockets reveals his phone is on him too. Leo holds up Oliver’s keys, jangling them and shaking his head reprovingly.
“Oof,” Oliver mutters to the cloudy sky, deciding not to mention his house has a keyless entry. “I think I’m already hungover. We didn’t even say goodbye to Con.”
“I did,” Leo says. “Just wait for tomorrow, Harris, and you’ll wish you felt as good as you do now.” They keep walking, heading up the path of the water toward Oliver’s place, in between the noise of the city and the quiet between them.
Oliver has lived here, somewhere around these blocks, for so long—every building means something to him: a devoted fan’s house, or a cranky neighbor, or a restaurant that he loves, the corner store where he used to buy shampoo before he started paying someone to do that for him, the newsstand that bears his picture on the papers every week. He wants to tell Leo what they’re passing, to show him around, but the last grip of the alcohol and something like shyness makes his tongue thick. He means to say at least that he can walk himself now, Leo can go, but that hedoesn’twant to do. When they reach the canal bridge, Oliver pauses, scuffing the toe of his shoe into the ground just to have something to do with his limbs. Leo stops too, head turning toward him with a seeking look. Oliver manages a smile and reaches for the keys. For a brief moment they hold the lanyard between them, second-degree touching, and Oliver’s heart hammers at the tenuous connection, then Leo lets go and Oliver starts for his door clumsily. When he limps up his landing, helooks back, and Leo is still standing on the bridge, flanked by water on all sides and watching Oliver with the wind in his hair.
