“We’re supposed to be friends. You keep doing this to me, and I can’t—Friends don’t lie, Ollie.”
“I’m not lying to you,” Oliver murmurs, retreating a pace backward, stunned by the acid in Leo’s tone.
“You fucking are,” he replies, voice cracking. “I should’ve taken you at your word on that first day and spared myself the trouble.”
Oliver is rent in two, panic and pain mingling. In all his worst anxieties about how Leo would react to this, it hadn’t felt quite so terrible. If he walks out the door, before Oliver knows what else he heard, before he’s had a chance to explain, he’ll never recover.
“Leo, please. It’s not—I’m not trying to deceive you. This is something, it’s so personal. No one knows, no one on the team.”
“I don’t even know what you’retalkingabout,” Leo fairly shouts. “Can you actually just give me a straight answer?”
Oliver laughs, a stunned gut-punch noise, not an ounce of humor in it. There’s nostraightanswer to be had.
“I never wanted you to be in this position,” Oliver whispers bitterly. “I’ve always been so careful, I promise you. You can trust me. I won’t…I won’t do anything stupid.”
Their eyes meet and Oliver’s breath comes in shallow waves when he sees it click on Leo’s face, epiphany writ in the O of his mouth.
“So youaregay?” Leo asks, so quietly it’s almost to himself. But Oliver hears it and now it’s in the room with them, impossible to put off or ignore.
“Mate, listen—” he says, good as a confession.
“Is there something wrong with me?” Leo asks, like he didn’t hear him at all. He’s turned himself away, but the anger is gone in his voice. Oliver risks a step forward and reaches for his elbow, completely bewildered by this reaction. Leo resists for a split second, arm tense in his grasp. When Oliver pulls, so they’re facing each other again, he’s agonized, eyes shiny with tears.
“Hey, hey,” Oliver tries, but Leo pushes him away: palm to his chest, the same way he’d defend himself after a tackle, the same way Oliver had when they’d played that horrible, fateful scrimmage at Camden Crossing.
“Is it?” Leo accuses. “You like blokes, just not me? You’d rather I was Conor Bishop?”
Oh.Maggie, damn her, was right. It wasn’t hero worship, or Willem, that kept drawing them to each other; it was this all along.
“Leo,” Oliver says, calculating his words. He’d never even bothered to fantasize about getting the chance to say them. “Please. I’ve been killing myself trying not to cross every line I’ve ever drawn for myself. It’s not other blokes that I want, okay?” He’s getting the next sentence ready, the chance to reiterate that he won’t ruin this, that the conversation they’re having right now will go to their graves. The words don’t make it out, because he’s suddenly been walked backward right into the wall, and Leo has the collar of Oliver’s sweater balled up in each hand.
And then they’re kissing. Oliver is being kissed.
The first go-round, their teeth clack together, then their noses slot into place and it’s sublime. Oliver’s not a monk, he’s a grown man and an occasional underwear model, but he didn’t know it could feel like this. He finds Leo’s hip bones with his fingertips, sliding beneath his belt loops and pulling with intent. Someone is making gasping sounds with each breath, maybe both of them. Leo goes up to his tiptoes and grabs for the soft curl of hair at the back of Oliver’s neck. He’s panting into Oliver’s open mouth, and he tastes sweet, even though they never got to the chocolate after all. The tentative brush of Leo’s tongue and the velvet of his skin, muscled but soft to the touch under Oliver’s hands, root him to the spot; he couldn’t move even if he wanted to, which he doesn’t—he only wants to do this for the rest of his life.
It occurs to Oliver to open his eyes, to remember every second of this. He’s about to, when Leo’s phone begins to blare a shrill series of beeps and vibrations.Packing alarm,Oliver realizes, stricken.He’s going away to play for England tomorrow.The force of the noise wrenches them apart: Oliver boneless against the wall and Leo a few steps away.
“Oh,” Leo whispers, and Oliver’s eyes snap to his. “I have to go.” That’s all he says, out the door before his next blink, the doorframe rattling with the force of his exit. Oliver is left knock-kneed, buffeted by the remnants of the best first kiss he wasn’t supposed to have and the keenness of its absence.
Wednesday, March 15, 2017
International Break
Sometimes you just have to settle in and make yourself comfortable at rock bottom. Nothing to be done for it.
When Oliver was eighteen, when it was futile to pretend, at least to himself, any longer, he came up with a paradoxical set of rules.Don’t tell anyone, except you have to tell Maggie. Don’t look at anyone, but if you do, don’t look at footballers. Don’t think about it, unless you have to.All he’s done since January is think. And now he’s done a damn sight more than tell or look: he’s confessed and he’s acted on it, with another Rose. He has to look at Leo across the pitch every day until Willem or Finch says otherwise, for work, for Camden, for a shitload of cash, and now whenever he does it, he won’t be thinking about midfield formations or shots on goal, he’ll only be remembering the hottest thing that’s ever happened to him. It would be simpler if kissing Leo had been stumbling or awkward, easy to classify as a mistake. Instead, it was incredible and thrilling. It’s going to linger in Oliver’s bones and haunt him forever.
Somehow, at some point, he convinced himself that there was no guilt in hiding, only practicality.But why would you need to confess something you aren’t ashamed of?he wonders, full tothe brim with self-loathing. He doesn’t want to feel shame. There’s no embarrassment in him, no thought of being weaker for it, only the nauseating sensation of keeping up a lie. When Oliver thinks about people finding out that he’s gay, that he likes men, his fight-or-flight kicks in. It doesn’t feel safe. He has to keep the disparate pieces where they belong, or his life is going to come crashing down around him—like it is right now. When he lost his father, football was the only thing that felt right. But with every passing day, Camden—the home and the football club—looks less recognizable to him. The one thing he knows how to keep is who he is, who Oliver Harris ismeantto be. And he’s meant to be a footballer, staid and straight. He was supposed to support Leo and teach him, not antagonize him and fantasize about him and spoil things between the two of them before they’d ever shared a pitch. He’s still injured and for sale, Willem is still on the brink of getting fired, and all Oliver has done in months is pick fights he can’t win.
• • •
No matter how depressed you might be and no matter how justified said depression is,Thou shalt not be late to practice.Show up on time or suffer the consequences. Anthony has a particularly harsh rule in place: three grand if you’re tardy, with interest accruing every fifteen minutes until you show up. It’s not even about the cash (though the money will be donated to charitable causes at the end of the season)—the public shaming is the worst of it.
All told, sleeping through five alarms and waking up at half past nine on Friday will probably cost Oliver nearly ten thousand pounds. He takes the stairs two at a time, half-dressed and wholly stressed, landing gingerly on his injured leg. He heaves himself through the entry doors eight minutes later, but he wasnot expecting Willem to be prowling the front hall, holding a porcelain cup and saucer. Oliver actually doesn’t even clock his presence until he’s a few steps beyond him.
“Training begins at nine o’clock, Mr. Harris,” Willem says reproachfully, over the rim of his mug.
“Jesus H,” Oliver swears, wrenching his head behind him. “Er, I—sorry, sir, didn’t see you.”
