“Sounds all right when you put it like that,” Leo admits, scrunching his face and wincing when the movement reaches his nose. “Okay, okay. See you.”
When the door swings shut behind him and he’s alone in Leo’s flat, allowed past the threshold for the first time, Oliver is overtaken by the urge to snoop, but finds it far less gratifying than what they were supposed to be doing. He’s been in flats likethis before, the starter place of a young man with cash to burn and a schedule that precludes hanging out at home. It’s more charming on Leo than on anyone else.
Oliver follows his curiosity from the kitchen into the bedroom and finds the aftermath of a hasty cleanup. It’s silly and slightly endearing to him, that the bed is half-made and there’s been a clear effort to stuff some of the strewn-about clothes back into the wardrobe. On the nearly empty spare nightstand there’s a waiting glass of water set out like an offering. Oliver can see the two of them together in this room, the way he’s starting to picture Leo popping up in every nook and cranny of his own house, making himself comfortable. He likes the impossible image of it, despite knowing better. Wherever they end up after this season, in Oliver’s imagination they might still be right here, in a flat in Marylebone.
When he turns back toward the main room, Oliver’s eye catches on the top of the low wooden dresser. Sitting next to a clump of cologne bottles and sketchbooks and headbands, a pool ball is nestled among the chaos. It could only have come from the pub, could only have come from tonight—when he brings a hand to it, it’s still warm to the touch like it was recently in a coat pocket. It’s a solid: number 6, painted almost–Camden green. He can also picture Leo lifting this, quietly ruining one of the lads’ games of pool, to take a token of the night, one bearing Oliver’s number. His heartbeat reaches up past his throat, quickening on the back of his tongue. He’s not sure if he was meant to see this, or if it was never meant for him to find.
Leo sends him a picture not long after—Oliver is still sitting on the edge of the bed, thumbing through drawings of skylines and football pitches and handsome faceless figures—he clearly jumped the queue to see a doctor so fast, and in a private room, no less. Leo’s got on a bloody grin and some gauze stuffed up one nostril. He looks tired but relieved.
ok, dr. harris, you were right. no break. gotta tell anna for monitoring purposes but not “injured.” be back soon
So there won’t be any face masks or squad list announcements; Leo can play the next match. Oliver gets to keep him, here in this bed and later on the pitch. How Leo will explain this to Anna is another matter entirely, one Oliver is too exhausted to unpack or even worry about, going right in the box with the abandoned plan to call Nicola.
• • •
Leo and his intact nose are of great use later, when Camden wins again, firmly lodged in fourth place and with another assist for Harris in the referee’s book. Even after all the running, Oliver feels alight with the spring air. It isn’t until he’s half back into his clothes that he remembers his plans for the evening and the associated, somewhat morbid occasion for them. It brings the mood down slightly.
No one is going out: the schedule has reached the end of season, the warm-weather fever pitch where they can’t drink beer and can only just catch their breath before it’s time to play again. They’re driving to Stoke-on-Trent tomorrow evening to face Stoke City on Wednesday—Oliver can only keep track because he updates his Google calendar obsessively and because Sebastian and Willem spend every spare minute hammering tactical updates at them, sending scouting videos practically faster than they can be produced.
“I’m having dinner with my mum,” Oliver says out of one side of his mouth to Leo, loitering above his locker casually. “I’ll see you in Stoke?”
Leo nods and replies even more quietly, a tiny whispered “Miss you.” Oliver doesn’t say anything back, because if he does, he won’t be able to stop himself from admitting he’ll miss him too. Only once he pulls up in front of the flat on his bike,muscles finally relaxing, does he fish out his phone to send a single text:save me a seat on the coach.
Nicola is waiting at the front steps, waving and grinning. Dad’s birthday is usually a somber affair, quiet but for the scraping of cutlery on the dishes. But a good football result could always hold back the well of grief for himself; it’s a welcome relief to see it might work on Mum as well, under the right circumstances.
She pulls the roast out of the oven before Oliver’s even out of his coat, fussing over the trimmings and refusing any help. She wipes her hands on the tea towel sticking out of her pocket and turns him by the shoulders to face her.
“Come on, then,” she says, cupping one cheek in each palm. “Let’s have a look at you, triumphant one.”
“Same as ever, Mum,” he replies, stooping slightly to kiss her forehead.
“Hmm,” she hums. “You look right as rain. Very healthy. Some nice color on you.”
He feels the warm glow of pride at her assessment. They move toward the dining nook; he offers her a wineglass and proffers his own pint of water to clink.
“To Dad?” Oliver asks and she smiles in a sort of faraway manner as they touch the glass rims together. Nicola seats herself at the head of the table in an elegant unfolding of limbs, taking a swallow of wine and beginning to serve them both. Oliver watches her carefully, taking in the pepper of gray in her plush fringe, the wedding band on a gold chain kissing the stitched edge of her collar. She looks nice in her civvies, hair down and scrubs off. “Mum?” he asks around a mouthful of peas, before he can lose his courage.
“Ollie?”
“When did you know—like, when were you sure that it wasn’t just a crush, with Dad? That it was real?”
The words spill out in a jumble and he immediately feels guilty for raising it now. But it’s Dad’s birthday, and he is his namesake, and he walks around with his face on his own every day, and he misses him, and he never knew him at all. He wants to know when they chose each other, the other Oliver and Nicola. He knows the basics, the movie-premise version of events: Nicola Baird sat next to Oliver Harris in the library during a rainy primary school lunch break and they started a conversation that never stopped. They lived in each other’s pockets, friends, then family, then lovers. Nicola waited for Oliver when he left London to go to Oxford, and he came back to her, working the family bookstall while she finished nursing college, staying on even longer to account for the newly arrived Oliver, longer still when he was too sick to work anywhere else, right up until he stopped working at all.
When Dad was admitted to the hospital, Nicola was almost done with a specialized nursing license in the next building over, and she wasn’t working in the cancer ward, but she reviewed all of his treatment plans anyway, discussed every avenue with his doctors. Oliver spent most of that time with his grandparents, haunting the bookstall, or underfoot at the hospital, learning medical terms he was too young for. The end of the story doesn’t feel right to Oliver, and it never will, but it stays the same: Dad gone. The bookstall out of business within two years, caught between a recession and the first wave of gentrification in Camden. His grandparents, ill and frail and aging rapidly, one after the other, then gone too, before Oliver made his debut. Oliver alone in the academy, but not too alone, clinging to his football and to Maggie. Nicola working, always working.
It takes her a long time to answer—like she’s thinking about all those things too.
“What makes you ask, darling?” Her eyes are shining, hervoice is low. He feels guilty, prone with sorrow, but not any less curious.
“I met someone, I think,” he starts, courage not stretching quite far enough to saywhoorwhere. “But it’s not…not like I expected.” That much is certainly true.
She gives him another watery smile, looking not a little shocked to hear it.
“That’s wonderful, wonderful news—for God’s sake,” she says, suddenly dabbing at her eyes with the old cloth napkin on her lap. “Leaky as an old roof, the state of me.” Oliver laughs, half-crying himself. He wants her to ask for more details. He wishes he’d never brought it up. “I wouldn’t trade that feeling for anything, those early days, when every choice is laden with love,” she sighs. “Your dad was such a romantic, he could make sharing the water bill feel like Austen wrote it.”
“He was?” Oliver asks tentatively, thinking of readingPride and Prejudicewith Leo on their way to the Midlands.
“Oh, terribly so. He wanted such a courtship. It moved so slow I wasn’t even convinced he really liked me until he told me how much he missed me at Oxford.”
