• • •
Monday training sounds exuberant, from what Oliver can hear on the hard plastic of the physio table. Everyone, even Willem, is well pleased with the weekend’s triumph. Their next two matches are against Burnley and Watford at home—winnable, easily winnable, even. They could be in fifth by the end of the month, close to where Finch is insisting on.
In the changing room, it sounded like the boys had been resoundingly triumphant with the Welsh girls in Swansea on Saturday night as well. The one advantage of not traveling for matches is the reprieve from that aspect of his social life, where Oliver either gallantly offers to be the drunken-teammate minder or otherwise slips out the second nobody is looking, like a thief in the night. The lads tease him for being unlucky (or, sometimes, a cowardly little melt) and accuse him of still being hung up on Maggie, which is convenient enough to be getting on with. It’s brain-dead easy to whistle and nod appreciatively when Georgie shows everyone photos of the lingerie models he’s seduced, to keep his head down and coast on the inherent straightness a professional footballer projects to the world. Oliver’s never getting any to brag about anyway, or at least nothing he’d go telling the team about. What would he even say?Hey, boyos, don’t you like when a guy holds you down by the back of your neck? Like you’re a cat being held by its scruff? Isn’t that kind of surrender the hottest feeling?He’ll keep that to himself, thanks.
Oliver is pondering that particular routine in the gym, toward the tail end of the session, trying his best to focus on form rather than extension, to feel the way his muscles respond to each movement, something more real than going through the motions, when someone raps the edge of the doorframe behind him to gethis attention. Oliver cranes his head to get a good look without ending the pose, then scrambles to his feet when he sees that it’s Willem, who’s even more imposing when he’s upside down.
“Gaffer,” Oliver says, half a hello and half a question.
“Don’t stop on my account,” Willem replies. “I’m only making the rounds.”
“Nothing too exciting here. Stretching for now, I was in with Anna earlier.”
“Dr. Zhang said you’ve been an exemplary patient,” the manager says. Oliver’s mouth pulls into a pleased smile at the mention of Anna’s praise and Willem matches it. “Keep on as you are. We’re missing you out there.”
“Thank you, sir. You lot got on pretty well without me, it looked like,” Oliver says, generous from the topical pain medication Anna administered.
“That we did.” Willem looks satisfied, close to proud, in a way Oliver can only recognize from de Boer’s playing days, the rowdy pleasure from scoring a goal or drawing a penalty. It’s infectious. “Sebastian is having them practice spot kicks. Why don’t you come up and watch? We’ll do a group meeting and then call it a day.”
Oliver follows him out up to the pitch, a spring in his step, or rather, limp—two weeks ago, he doubts Willem even knew his way down to this dank corner of the gym, much less would want to come and fetch him from it. Up in the fresh air, the grass is mist-soaked and emerald; the whole squad is bundled in long sleeves and beanies, hopping and jogging to and fro to keep the chill out. They’re each taking turns staring Joe down from the penalty spot, trying to beat him with one single, perfectly placed kick. It requires a great amount of physical control and mental stamina, especially with the keeper looking back at you with murder in his eyes.
At the touchline, Oliver and Willem join Sebastian, who givesOliver a cautious, friendly nudge with his elbow without taking his eyes off the field. They watch in silence as Finn steps forward but kisses the outside post when he shoots. Leo is up next. Oliver feels an unexpected, queasy knot of nerves as he waits for Joe to set himself so Leo can go, like however their new teammate does will reflect on Oliver, like Oliver really wants him to do well, like he wonders if Leo knows that he’s watching, like he can’t help noticing the triangle of Leo’s shoulders down to his waistline are perfectly proportioned.
Oliver stops worrying the second Leo lines up. His posture stays open and relaxed, like there’s no pressure at all, before he unleashes a rocket from his left foot across the goal: the shot is a bull’s-eye, too far right for Joe to reach, crisply lodging itself in the back of the netting. Whoever thought he should play defensively was a fucking bellend; Leo was born to score.
“I think we’ve solved the problem of taking penalties while you’re injured, Harris,” de Boer says, nodding in approval while the lads whoop appreciatively.
Leo trots back to the end of the line, looking over toward the three of them. Oliver raises one eyebrow.You know it was good,he thinks.You don’t need me to tell you.Leo hears this somehow, at least part of it. His ruddy-brown face pinks up ever so slightly and he shrugs, cheeky.Can’t blame a guy for asking,Oliver imagines Leo’s shoulders replying.
• • •
That evening, at Maggie’s—a tiny, chic box in Bermondsey, where he’s spent multiple days a week since the moment she signed the lease even though he has to stoop to get through the door—Oliver gets an Instagram notification from LeoDaVi. Maggie is distracted over the stove, deglazing a saucepan of vodka sauce, so he lets himself tap the icon immediately. Leo has tagged him in a photo.
The picture isn’t at all what he expected, not a shot from training, nor a snap he doesn’t remember from their trip to the pub last weekend. It’s an underlit mural on a brick wall, and the swirl of colors reveals a portrait of Oliver himself. It’s blocky, somewhat cartoonish, but it takes his breath away. The man in the portrait is standing tall, one foot on a ball, pointing out onto the horizon before a free kick: a cartographer reaching for unmapped land. Somehow the artist has captured the green of his eyes and the determined set of his mouth, the way his hair curls up at the ends over the nape of his neck when it needs a trim. Instead of a pitch, they’ve painted roses all around Oliver’s feet. His body is drawn long-limbed and strong; he looks immovable, maybe even noble. And there, in typewriter black script next to his head, they’ve tagged the pieceWe’ll always have Harris,like he’s Humphrey fucking Bogart.
Leo’s caption readsloving life back in london. camden street art > national gallery. Already, Trevor’s commentedwe dem BOYZand Anthony’s left a stream of arm-flexing emojis. Something inexplicable is happening in Oliver’s heart; it’s being squeezed in a vice, in danger of bursting open. He wants to know who sees him in that golden light, enough to paint it, larger than life on the side of a building. For a split second of insanity he considers that Leo could have done it himself, like the sun he drew on his shoe—but that’s impossible. Oliver does wonder how on earth Leo found it, if he sees Oliver the same way the artist did. Some amount of this is visible in his real-life face; Maggie is over his shoulder and stealing a glance at his phone before he can lock the screen.
“Oh!” she gasps. “Where is this?” Oliver hands her the phone so she can see for herself, and she immediately twists into a smile of wicked delight.
“Would you look at that,” she says, pinching at the screen tozoom in on the photo. “You’ve got an admirer. And Idon’tmean the artist.” He shrugs and snatches his phone back, embarrassed and gratified and certainly not interested in discussing it. Maggie lets it go and returns to her sauce, but he knows her silence means the discussion is merely postponed, not avoided. Oliver goes back through the last ten, fifteen conversations he’s had with her in his mind to try to tabulate how many times he’s mentioned Leo and what the ratio of complaints to compliments nets out as.
Maggie waits until he’s shoved about twenty tubes of rigatoni into his mouth to pounce on him.
“You should thank him for finding it. And you should try to find out who the painter is so you can buy them a drink. But really, you should thank Leo. That was very sweet of him.” The brilliance of Maggie is that she never tells Oliver what to do, only what heoughtto do, and she always lays it out in such a way that if he doesn’t listen it’ll reflect poorly on him: the most elegant of traps. Even if he wanted to try to worm his way out of it, his mouth is full and the moment for rebellion will pass before he can swallow.
He really should thank Leo—he gives her a resigned thumbs-up. Oliver doesn’t go so far as permitting her to read the text that he crafts over fifteen minutes and a glass of wine, but he does send it before he leaves her place and doesn’t wait until right before bed.
Leo writes back just as Oliver is messily unfolding himself from a cab, right leg first to take the weight off his injury.
Too good not to post! I love that kind of thing, Leo says, then:Willem told me after training I’m not in the squad for Saturday, was feeling grim. Went out for a walk to clear my head and ran into you. Nice omen!
Be patient,Oliver tells him, typing one-handed while hebraces himself on the fence post to get up the front stairs.It’s coming. If you want, we can train on Saturday instead. Have the crossing to ourselves?
Instantaneously, Leo sends back a praying-hands emoji. When Oliver checks his phone again as he unlocks his front door, there’s another reply:That’s aces. You’re on
• • •
The remainder of the week feels every inch of midseason monotony, and not just from the constant, dull pain in his left thigh. Oliver wakes up, he pounds down a coffee and something caloric, he goes to Camden Crossing, he works himself as close to the bone as he’s allowed, finding the midpoint between exertion and agony, then he comes home, he eats again, he crashes into a dreamless sleep. These parts of the winter are always like this. Without a midweek fixture or upcoming travel to break things up, he sinks beneath the waterline of his routine and will only resurface the next time he toes the line at Regent Road.
