He’s about to strip down to his swimming gear, preparing for the ceaseless pattern of laps back and forth in the water instead of around the pitch, when Willem and Sebastian enter the fray, descending the stairs from the main building. The room silences and pivots all attention to the two of them, but rather than speaking, Sebastian begins drawing an intricate, many-colored diagram on the whiteboard. Standing beside him, pale and cryptic under the fluorescent lights, Willem surveys the team placidly. After a beat, he speaks—Oliver isn’t sure if his tone is ominous or if it’s just what he’s saying that’s so unsettling:
“Harris, a word?”
Joe shoots him a panicked look. Henri visibly winces. Oliver doesn’t respond, just rises from beside his locker and follows Willem into the small meeting room next door with the feel of a man walking the plank. He shuts the door behind him, conscious that the upper half of the room is windowed and that Gavin is a strangely talented lip-reader. Willem, predictably, only sits across from him in one of the scattered plastic office chairs and says nothing at all.
“Something up, coach?” Oliver asks grimly, resentful to be made to initiate his own punishment.
“I’ve heard your meeting with our young Leo was a disaster.”
Oliver blanches, lightning fast, before schooling his expression to blankness and forcing out a questioning hum.
“Spare me the particulars,” Willem sighs, before turning his full focus on him with something more forceful in his face than Oliver’s ever seen. “What did I miss, Oliver? Everything I’ve read about you, everything I heard before I took this job, led me to believe that anything I might wish to accomplish in Camden led back to you. I thought you were the beating heart of this club.”
Willem sounds almost plaintive, but his eyes are angry. Oliver waits for his own anger to come, defensiveness even, but only fear and a deep well of sadness rise up to meet him. Hewantsto be those things. He thinks he can be. If he isn’t—who is he at all, then? That’s what all this has been for, the whole sum of his life.
“Come on, sir. You might have thought that, but you didn’t ask anything of me, until you wanted me to train someone else,” he says desperately, before it occurs to him to attempt guardedness. “Why didn’t you tell me to play harder? Train me to score more? Appeal the match ban?”
Willem, somewhat distressingly, leans forward and rests a heavy hand on his shoulder. Oliver starts to move, intending to shove him off, but in the nick of time he thinks better of it and stays in place, right fist clenched in his lap.
“Oliver, I fully expect you will always score often and train hard. You are a remarkable footballer. And last month you were clearly in over your head. I could see why. I wanted you to take a beat, and I didn’t want to start my tenure here by provoking the officials,” de Boer tells him, sincerely, looking him right in the eye. “What I want to know now is if you’ll be our next captain. If someday you’ll be on this side of the room talking to someone sitting where you are now.” Oliver feels his heart drop into his stomach in a churning mixture of relief and the gnawing sensation he can’t seem to shake lately, whatever he does. He nods jerkily, but Willem is already continuing on. “We’re on the same side, Harris, but you need to understand something. No matterhow he talks to the media, James Finch does not understand the delicate balance of power a new manager has. He lacks the patience or the vision to wait out a careful rebuild.”
That Finch is behind this approach is news to Oliver, who only ever suspected Willem to have such an agenda, eager to begin razing and reconstruction. As an institution, Camden Football Club has always been resigned to mediocrity, regardless of the flashes of brilliance. Clearly something has shifted without him noticing.
“What does that mean for you, then?” Oliver asks, while he’s on the streak of earnest questions.
“Forus,Harris. If we don’t finish at least fourth, if we don’t qualify for the Champions League, I’ll be sacked. Likely they’ll try to get as much money as they can for you, then they’ll give it a go with someone else.”
“Jesus fucking Christ—ah, sorry, sir.” Even in his darkest fantasies about what this change in management might mean, he didn’t realize it was his head so specifically on the platter, or what he’d have to do to keep it off of it. All those big contracts he’s said no to, for all these years—none of it will matter if Finch decides to sell him.
“I don’t disagree. It was not an ideal set of terms for a job, I admit. But to coach in the Premier League…” Willem says, smiling wryly. Oliver gets it. He’d take that kind of risk too. He has taken it, over and over. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think it was more than possible, and if we can do it—” He falters slightly, then regains course and composure. “I’m keen to manage this team for longer than a few months. To manage you.”
Against his will, Oliver feels himself resigning to a truce. He can’t—no, hewon’tleave Camden. He doesn’t care how much money Finch could wring out of selling Harris to the highest bidder, he’ll stay here and play for pennies if he has to. And if heneeds Willem, of all people, to help him stay, then so be it. Apparently, they both need all the help they can get. He forces his body to unclench, and exhales forcefully.
“I’m warning you, we’ll never be as good as you were. But I’ll give it my best shot, as soon as I can. We all will,” Oliver says vehemently. Then, less enthusiastically, “And I’ll talk to Leo.”
“That’s all I ask, Harris. I think you, at least, might have given me a run for my money.” Willem claps him on the shoulder again, then once more for good measure. Oliver bravely doesn’t roll his eyes at the comparison, assuming his best imitation of a loose, cheery demeanor when he returns to the main room. Casually, as if it just occurred to him, he saunters over to lean against Leo’s newly acquired locker. The younger man looks up from a concentrated stare at Sebastian’s whiteboard. Oliver beams, which unfortunately but hilariously seems to frighten him.
“Come on, time to meet everyone properly,” he says briskly. Leo doesn’t move.
“I’ve met some of them,” Leo replies, like he thinks it’s a trap.
“What, you think Ahmed is better company than I am? No offense, mate,” Oliver assures Ahmed, who is a good sport and merely throws a sock at him. “Come on, Davies. Ugh, no. Davies-Villanueva? What do they call you, with fewer syllables?”
“Davito,” Ahmed supplies. “Little Davies.” Leo looks betrayed and murderous, but he doesn’t protest.
“Davito,” Oliver says definitively, and tosses the offending sock back. “With me, then.” He ushers him over toward the center of the room, to his own locker, and plops him down. Ignoring the painful twang of resistance from his hamstring, he crouches next to Leo. “Brace yourself,” he warns. “There are, as you can see, rather a lot of us.”
“You really don’t have to do this,” Leo replies. “I got the message. I know you’re not, like, volunteering to be my tour guide.”
Oliver is tempted to take the out, offered up so easily, but it’s too late—he’s gotten it into his head that this is what he needs to do, so there will be no stopping him now. Willem won’t question who the beating heart of this operation is when he’s through. He can be winsome, and charming, and all the other things too.
“We got off on the wrong foot,” Oliver says, understatement of the century. “If you’ll let me help, I’d like to.”
Now Leo is the one seeming tempted.
“Go on, then, mate,” Leo confirms, only a bit of a challenge in his voice. “Let’s have it.”
“Cracking right on. First up: there’s Joe and there’s Nick—” Oliver points to the corner of the room where the keepers hold court, both of them lanky and big-handed and currently silent. “You know how they can be—they have to get to an entirely different headspace than the rest of us. Let them keep their headphones in and don’t bother them now, and then try to make them smile when you get on the pitch. Joe is all laughs, but Nick can be a nervous wreck.” Leo nods in time with each sentence, giving the distinct impression he wishes he could take notes. On some level, Oliver respects the attentiveness, but a larger part of him wants to watch him squirm. He’s a footballer, not a saint. “Could I get the back line to join us for a moment?” he calls, and a swarm of defensemen materialize in front of Oliver’s locker. Leo doesn’t waver, but some of the color leaves his cheeks. They’re each about twice his size. “Captain, tell us about these fine young men,” Oliver continues. Anthony grins.
