“I love it here,” Leo whispers, jaw splayed open to catch a mouthful. “I’ve just been trying to make it home.”
“Did you miss it?” Oliver can’t imagine not being here. He’s been all around the world to kick a football and he always dreams of the return flight, the one that will bring him back down toearth, to this exact spot. Camden keeps changing, but he doesn’t. He still belongs in the memory of it.
“Of course I did,” Leo answers. “It’s the only place that’s ever beenmine. Like, Camden, the football of it all, I mean. I don’t fit anywhere else. Half-English, half-Colombian, not Spanish, kind of Spanish, never really Colombian, not quite British yet. I just wantsomewhereto keep me. You know? To belong somewhere?”
Oliver does know—it hits him like a truck, how much he knows it. He wants to tell Leo that, but before he can, Leo turns away from him and takes off running, ungainly drunken loping that carries him out of sight almost immediately. Oliver follows more slowly, favoring his left leg along the sodden path, only catching up once they’re halfway to the boathouse, sidestepping fresh patches of ice and clutching at his thigh, wincing. Leo stops above the edge of the wetland lagoon, bent over his knees, taking long gulps of air.
“I’ll tell you what,” Oliver says when he finally reaches him. “You run like that after a football match and God knows how many drinks? I think where you might belong is the starting eleven.”
“Don’t make fun,” Leo warns, a bittersweet look on his face.
“I’m being serious. You’re grand, you’re doing great.”
“Maybe it looks that way,” Leo mutters. “But I can’t make it stick, man. I never thought I’d be back here, in London, wearing this kit, having it be for real. I wanted it so much. Now I just don’t want to ruin it, do you know what I mean? I’ve had this…this wholejourneyalready and it wasn’t right, I was never right for it, the only people who wanted me in Spain were my parents, and they spent the whole time trying to convince me to go back to school. They wanted me to quit, my coaches didn’t want to play me more than a few minutes a month, my teammates thought I was bad luck. Eleven men on the pitch, but I was…Iwas all alone.” Oliver knows that feeling too, but he can’t imagine anyone ever not wanting Leo to play or watch him with the ball. “I don’t know why I’m unloading all this on you. I’m blitzed,” Leo goes on, like he’s waking up and everything he said before was a dream. “Is this how you felt after that time at the pub?”
“I was much more dignified, thanks,” Oliver says quietly. “But I don’t mind. I find you very interesting.” He hazards a step forward, placing them in parallel, and kicks gently at the side of Leo’s sunburst-doodled shoe. “You can tell me this stuff.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Leo says with a wan smile. “So you can do reconnaissance. Assess my threat level.”
“You’re no threat to me, Davito. Besides, we don’t have to be against each other, remember?”
“Yeah, I suppose we don’t,” he whispers, looking at Oliver curiously, face shining with melted snow. “Two academy lads. Quite a pair.”
The wanting in his chest inflates itself and spreads, taking over every limb like a puppet on strings. Oliver could lick the snowflakes off Leo’s whole body, trying to tongue up whatever ails him, any loneliness he carries around; he’d be happy to take it and add on to his own, if it meant Leo might look at him like this every once in a while.
“Two roses,” Oliver replies, pointing to the faraway edges of Queen Mary’s Gardens. When he drops his arm, they’re suddenly standing closer, close enough that their fingers brush and their heads jerk away, shrinking from the eye contact but not, somehow, the physical one. Somewhere in the shrubs a round of robins break free from the twigs, awoken by their intrusion, and flit overhead, trilling at the snow. “Come on, then,” he murmurs. “I said I’d get you a cab.”
Leo trails after him, one pace behind all the way to Ulster Terrace, silent until he’s slid into the back of a black cab. Oliverstops to watch him go, but Leo sticks his head out of the window, eyes roving over his face.
“You can start the meter,” Oliver tells the cabbie, who does so happily.
“Ollie,” Leo says, and it sounds like,Wait.
“Yeah?”
“You still owe me dinner,” he replies slowly and like he might still be drunk. “A salad. You promised.”
“Okay, rabbit,” Oliver tells him. “You’ll get one. We have Thursday free, before you play Hull City.”
Leo nods and closes his eyes, retreating back into the warmth of the car.
“It’s a date,” he calls back sleepily as the cab pulls away.
It’s not, it’s absolutely not,Oliver demands himself to think, stamping off back up the street and leaving black holes in the dusting of snow while his heart beats a tattoo. But he thinks that’s maybe how dates are supposed to feel: the sensation he’s had all night long of looking right at someone’s face and seeing their soul instead, like Leo was lit from within, glowing more than he does after running one of Sebastian’s dreaded sprint circuits.
• • •
It’s barely light out, just one trickling ray of sun slicing the foggy morning open, when Oliver arrives for Wednesday’s practice session. He can’t sleep when his leg feels this leaden, a rock where his hamstring ought to be, so he lets himself in early and stretches, trying to unravel the strength he knows is somewhere in his muscles.
It isn’t pretty—Beckett used to always say that football is as much being at war with your own body as it is with the opponents. Sweat pools at his upper lip and drips into his eyes as hepresses deeper into a lunge, quivering with effort. He releases the position, going limply down to the mat. His groan of exertion turns to surprise when he sees Leo halfway through the doorway, gear on.
“Sneak!” Oliver gasps. “Where did you learn to be so quiet?”
Leo lets himself the rest of the way in and perches on the end of the bench press.
“Not from you,” he replies. “I could hear your huffing and puffing from my locker. Had to come make sure no one was having a heart attack.”
“Fuck off,” Oliver tells him.
