“Close the door, would you?” Willem asks, answering the silent question. Oliver slides into the old chair across from the desk, a perfect mirror of nearly every conversation he and his coach have ever shared. “They’re touring Cambridge and Oxford,” he says, pointing his chin out toward the hall his daughters are walking down. “And Ilse wants to buy a house. We’re all hoping to be based in England next year.” It’s weighted, the understanding of the cost it took to get the de Boer family to this point, together, and the chance that it might not come to fruition after everything. Six months ago, it would’ve been unthinkableto him, but now he’s sure that what Camden needs is for Willem to return next season. “But those are just an old man’s wishes. What’s on your mind, Oliver?”
“I honestly can’t remember,” Oliver laughs, mostly at the idea of Willem thinking he’s old. “Just checking in, really.” Willem smiles, leaning his cheek into one hand, propped up on the desk by his elbow. Irresistibly, Oliver pictures his father, the blurry, nine-year-old memory he has of him. The mention of Oxford and the look on Willem’s face when he talks about the twins lead him right to it. Willem is a father the same way he’s a manager: strictness and indulgence mixed, high expectations you cherish instead of resent. It’s nice, nicer than Oliver ever thought it would be, to look at someone and think of his own father. He was just a sprog when he started thinking, with his whole heart, that his team was his family, but this is another dimension entirely.
“Well, meeting you will have made their day,” Willem replies, blue eyes darkening gray. “Soph has got quite a crush on you, and I don’t think it’s just about your football.”
“Ah, gaffer,” Oliver says, mortified. “You don’t have to worry about that with me.” Willem gives Oliver a sharp, strange look, protracted and contemplative; he has the sickening sense his protestations might say more than he meant them to. Before Willem can reply, Oliver stands, scratching at the back of his neck. “I’ll let you get to your email, sir.”
“Very good work today, Harris,” Willem replies evenly.
• • •
The house is not unoccupied when Oliver arrives, which would worry him, except there’s only one burglar who would stop to turn on Frank Sinatra while he’s ransacking the place.
“You’re doing that wrong,” Oliver tells Leo, who is in trackies and putting plates in the dishwasher backward. He sets hisphone and his keys down and starts to help. “Did I know you were coming over? Please tell me you didn’t break a window.”
“Power of observation,” Leo replies distractedly. “Your passkey is not secure.”
Oliver gives up on the dishes, sighing and crowding Leo front-first into the counter so he can slip his arms around him, pressing them back to chest and nuzzling into the soft skin where neck meets shoulder, but Leo is still and unmoved beneath him.
“Not feeling it?” Oliver asks. There’s a first time for everything, he supposes.
“I need to tell you something,” Leo says. He’s holding on to a plate like he might break it.
“Yeah?” Oliver prods. “Go on, then.”
“He was right,” Leo says. “Number 25 was. I am amaricón.De mierda,too. A real piece of shit. And we almost lost today—I really thought for a second we might.”
“Davito,” Oliver says. Leo had played it so cool out on the pitch, so much better than Oliver did when it happened to him, but it was an act, he can see that now. Of course it was. “That guy was out of order, you know he was. And we won because of you.”
“That’s not what I mean.” Leo wriggles free and turns to face Oliver, then changes his mind and moves across the kitchen island. “Please, just let me say this.”
“Okay,” Oliver says cautiously. “I’m listening.”
“I am actually in love with you.” Leo’s cheeks are red and his eyes are dark. He’s looking at Oliver like no one ever has. He’s saying beautiful, insane things. “I wasn’t chatting shit when I said it before. You are…Oliver, I love you, I can’t help it. I’ve been—since I got back here, since the moment I saw you again—I’ve been falling in love with you. Even when you were beingsuchan arsehole to me. I wanted you anyway. I thought I wanted to be you, when we were younger, in the academy, but now I know, Ijust want to play with you, to be with you, be by your side. You drive me absolutely mad. I keep waiting for it all to be a dream. And I—I can’t wait anymore. It’s not casual for me, and it never has been. I want to win tomorrow, and I want to stay here, because Camden is my home, and you’re more Camden than anything. But even if we don’t finish fourth, I’ll still want you. I had to tell you that before the derby. While I still have a chance.” Oliver can feel the weight of the words like a pressure around his windpipe, just as breathtaking. He wants to say,Don’t, stopor maybeDon’t stop,but he can’t speak. “Say something,” Leo says.
He was stoic before, but he’s begging now. Oliver wants to give Leo what he needs, he wants to give Leo everything, but he doesn’t know how. And suddenly on the tabletop next to them Oliver’s phone is buzzing and displaying a picture of Anthony. He fumbles for the screen despite himself, trying not to look at Leo’s face, which is now looking resolutely downward.
“Just give us a second,” he pleads before answering the call. “Captain?”
“Ollie boy,” Anthony greets him tiredly, sounding about a century old.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, anxiety spiking. Leo’s head perks up slightly, like a dog smelling danger. Leo starts to step away, toward the door, until Oliver catches his sleeve in his hand.Please,he mouths. Leo doesn’t respond, but he stops moving, looking downward, away from Oliver, and screwing his eyes shut.
“My bum knee.” Anthony doesn’t need to say anything else—Oliver knows immediately. It’s bad news and it’s not likely to be fixable. Anthony wouldn’t call him like this, after a match, right before another, more important one, unless he needed help. “Anna says I won’t play next year if I don’t stop now. I might not anyway.” There’s resignation in his tone; he knew this wascoming as well as the medical staff. “Our season’s not done, but mine is.”
“Hell” is all Oliver can manage at first. “Anthony, I’m so sorry.”
“I don’t need you to be sorry, you prick. I need you to be captain. Can you do that for me?”
It’s in the job description of vice captain to fill in when the armband needs somewhere to rest, but this is heavier than a usual substitution. It’s the last match, their last chance, it’s a derby, it’s fuckingKilburn. Everything is on the line now and the Rovers are across it. He remembers, again, the Manchester City draw, his first game of the year, the match where he played with Leo for the first time and ruined everything by pretending he didn’t feel what he felt, when Willem listed all those names to frighten the team, but instead it woke them right the fuck up, which was probably his plan all along. Oliver has to do this. The rest of it has to wait. He can’t be whoever Leo was just talking to; he has to be the captain, has to belong to Camden alone, not to Leo, not even to himself. He has to answer Anthony now; he doesn’t have the right words for anyone else.
“Of course I’ll do it,” Oliver says into the phone, but he’s looking at Leo’s stricken face while he says it.
“You don’t really have a choice,” Anthony says, half-joking. “But I’m glad you see it that way.”
“How do you figure this shakes out?”
Maybe he’s captain for now; he still needs Anthony, steady back-line Anthony Moss, to help him make sense of the world around him.
