“Maaaaaaaaagssss,” he whines, drawing her name out into many syllables.
“Lay it on me,” she says promptly.
“Do you think I’m, like, fundamentally a bad person who deserves cosmic punishment?”
“Yes. I’ve been saying that for years.”
He snorts and slides partway off the couch, contorting his back in a way that only an extremely fit professional athlete could ever really manage and which almost definitely won’t help his recovery.
“Willem wants me to teach this guy—some academy burnout, a no-name—how to be Camden’s new favorite midfielder,” he says, realizing as he speaks just how much that hurts to hear. “He’s more interested in me showing it to someone else than he is in the fact that I’m still here.”
Maggie hums thoughtfully, but not unsympathetically.
“Don’t you think, maybe, that him asking you means he knows what he’s got with you?”
“If I trusted him, I might think that.” Oliver had suspected this reasoning from her and he rejects it. “But I don’t trust him. I think he’s punishing me for losing my cool last month and then getting injured right after. And catching up with this guy didn’t give me a lot of confidence in his judgment.”
“Okay, oof,” she says. “What’s his deal? Do you know him?”
“Hardly. He’s been on loan in Spain, so he’s never played in the Prem, he clearly thinks he should have been called up sooner, he hassomuch energy, and he was extremely upset that I do not want to be his best friend.”
Oliver counts the reasons on his fingers as he lists them off to be sure he doesn’t miss anything.
“Name?”
“Leo Davies-Villanueva,” he says, adopting a Spanish lisp to say the name as dramatically as possible. Almost as soon as he gets the words out, Maggie lets out a soft “Oh.” From the background, Millie shrieks and wolf-whistles.
“Ollie, he’s sohandsome,” Maggie says. “We can’t hate him!”
“Wait, how did you even do that? Did you have Instagram open this whole time? And yes, we can hate him! We do hate him!”
“Maybe I hate you! The cutest boy in London is vying to hang out with you, and you loathe him. This is criminal. What a waste,” she sniffs. She’s joking, but Oliver winces. Recently, everything has been sitting so close to the surface, liable to pop up and knock the wind out of him with no warning.
Maggie was his first girlfriend—his first real best friend too. They’d met in primary school and been inseparable until the night of his eighteenth birthday. They still are now, but differently so. By eighteen, Maggie was an absolute knockout, all thrifted blazers and silky hair, as well as an art history student and budding sculptor, while he was just getting used to keeping all his things in the first team changing room. And Oliver couldn’t keep lying to her. He wanted to keep her close, to hold on to the Camden of his childhood and to her wonderful company, and he loved her, of course, he loves her still, loves her loud laugh and her calloused small hands, but he knows now he wasn’t ever reallyin lovewith her. He was in love with football, and maybe with the famous names who transformed from his idols to his co-workers before his eyes.
There were no gay men in the Premier League when Oliver’s career began, nor in any other top flight in any country, andtechnicallythere aren’t any now either, because he’s not telling. Someone tried once, in the nineties, but he never made a team sheet again. One guy in America came out and the day the news broke Oliver cried in the shower until he felt woozy from the steam, partially because it was a huge deal, but mostly because it still felt like it hardly counted—not when it happened somewhere where they call itsoccer.
It’s a different kind of serious in England. The stakes arehigher—too high—for him. Oliver wants to believe he can’t be the only one, that he’s not totally alone in the life he chose, but he is.There’s no one like him,Camden fans like to say,no one like Harris.And it sure feels like there isn’t. All his life he’s taken the pitch with ten other teammates and thousands of screaming people in the stadium, but he’s always been alone.
Even when he hasn’t wanted to be, or hasn’t wanted to believe he is, something—someone—always reminds him. In December, it was a midfielder from Southampton, who Oliver had snapped at, told him to stop tugging his shirt.Yeah, all right,he’d said back to Oliver, almost conspiratorially.Don’t get yourself in such a fucking strop. Acting like a faggot, you are.The way he’d said it, so casual, like they might have a laugh about it together after the match was over, tore Oliver in two. He’d gotten himself into a bigger strop, and he’d shoved him down, hard, right to the pitch, unprovoked in the eyes of anyone standing more than a foot away from them. He couldn’t defend himself, to the referee or his teammates, nor to Willem later. To admit why he’d done it would reveal why it bothered him so much—so Oliver accepted his suspension, watched Camden lose the match and then the two he was forbidden to play in, and read all the headlines, all of them right but none of them knowing why:Harris Loses His Cool. Camden’s Rose Has Its Thorns. Is Oliver Harris What He Used to Be?
“Ground control to Major Harris,” Maggie says, drawing him back from the memories. “Sorry, shouldn’t have said that. I’m only teasing.”
“I know you are, Mags. But it’s not…that’s not why,” Oliver says vaguely, afraid of what Millie might hear.
“I believe you. But I also believe this kind of thing will solve itself. Try not to resent him too much.”
Maggie’s right, but Oliver will allow himself the dignity of not admitting that to her.
“You’re running late to the studio, aren’t you?” he asks, pleased when it comes out airily, as if it just occurred to him.
“Someone called in a crisis and kept me,” she replies. “Goodbye, Ollie. I love you,” she reminds him as they hang up.
• • •
Oliver dreams about the World Cup. It’s in England and the final is at Wembley, a misty night with stars somehow visible overhead. There are the three lions on his chest and it’s the seventy-fifth minute, but his uniform is starchy white. His hair isn’t sweaty at all, still neatly sweeping across his brow. He’s not tired, either, tracking the whole massive length of the pitch faster than he’s ever run before, the ball fairly glued to his left foot. The team scores again and again and again. When he finds the stands, he sees his parents and Maggie all together, dancing and shouting with face paint on their cheeks. His own face aches from smiling—he’s so happy, so incredibly happy, he’s going to be a world champion. He scoresagain,a chip from outside the box, such a sexy little thing. He wants to run to the nearest teammate, wants to jump into their arms. Then he spins around toward his left and standing there laughing brightly, curls askew under a headband, hands reaching for him, is Leo.
Oliver sits bolt upright in bed, chest heaving. His bedroom is meant to be calming, with crisp white sheets and a smattering of tapered candles lining a deep-set window. Somehow his whole body is thrumming anyway, gasping for each breath. When was the last time he dreamt of his parents like that? Why on earth would he be celebrating the World Cup with Leo Davies-Sodding-Villanueva, even subconsciously? How is 2017 already so weird and cursed and awful, just four days in?
