He grins wide, suddenly so like Freddie in his chaotic cheerfulness that it makes it hard to swallow. “No risk, no fun!”
Well, shit. It might be a very Freddie thing to say, a very Freddie grin to throw my way, but they are not the same person. Only one of them wants me. And I’m going to focus on him.
CHAPTER 12
Freddie
Julian has just scored a much tooeasy goal against me on FIFA and is howling in victory like he just won us the actual EUROs. I groan and punch his side. “Oh my god, shut up, you absolute prick.”
He laughs, then he turns his head my way. “You miss him like crazy, huh?”
I freeze. My heart races. Cold sweat beads on my forehead and I struggle to breathe normally. “What?” I aim for nonchalant but land on choked-up.
And, yeah. Julian snorts. “Don’t kid me. You miss Marlon.” Where the fuck is this coming from? Which part of the game we just played prompted him to say something? And why on earth would he ask about Marlon? Does he know something?
I try not to panic.
I fail.
“Mar—ooooh, right! You mean our Marlon!” Like I know so many of them. “What about him?”
Julian smacks me up the head, just hard enough to not be gentle anymore. I deserve that for my terrible acting. “I said, don’t kid me. Which part of that makes you think I’m joking?”
I laugh and look away so he can’t see my eyes. The meeting room in the hotel that the team has turned into a team common room is almost empty, it’s just the two of us and, at the other end of the room, our goalies bent over what looks like a very competitive game ofScrabble. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Julian is a great guy and I’ve looked up to him for almost as long as I can remember. He was a couple years ahead of Marlon and I in the youth teams, went pro, then became captain. Looking at him makes me believe I can do it all, too.
So it’s all the more reason to keep my mouth shut and not ruin all my career prospects by saying the wrong thing.
I feel Julian’s gaze on me, but he doesn’t prod me any further. Instead, he sighs and gulps audibly. “I know you miss him,” he says quietly. There’s something in his voice I haven’t heard before, a kind of sadness I’d never associate with him. I turn my head back to him, but he’s looking at his lap now, twisting his fingers around and through the thin leather bracelet he always wears. “And you’re telling yourself that you can’t, because…well, because youcan’t. But—” He swallows once more. “But sometimes you wake in the middle of the night and all your dreams were about him. Again. You know you can’t look at him in the shower but you also can’t stop yourself, so you pray nobody notices. You can picture his face, as clearly as if he were right beside you, every time you close your eyes. No matter how long it’s been.”
He almost whispers the last couple words and goosebumps spread all along my arms and down my spine. My mouth has fallen open, I realise, and I hastily close it. Still, I’m so stunned I forget I’m supposed to deny everything. “How do you know?” I whisper too, but I know he heard me.
Julian makes a tiny noise, but still doesn’t look up. I’ve never seen my captain, usually so confident, self-assured, almost arrogant at times, look so lost. So…small. “I know what it’s like.”
And just like that, my worldview shatters. Things I’ve believed to be true for as long as I’ve played the sport suddenly aren’t anymore. The feeling of loneliness that’s been part of me ever since I figured out I liked guys doesn’t sting as bad as it once did.
But I need to be sure. I need to know I’m not getting things twisted in my mind. “You?”, I finally say and it sounds exactly as stunned as I feel. I blink twice, three times, trying to power my brain back up after that shock and figure out who he could be talking about. It only takes me a second to understand and I can’t believe I’ve never realised before. Now that I think about it, it’s so obvious. “Jake?”
Jake plays for another club but we’re all on the national team together. Julian and Jake are widely known to be best friends, to have clicked at their first meeting at, like, 19 or something. Maybe they’re not just friends. Maybe it’s all hidden in plain sight. Maybe they’re…whatever Marlon and I are. Were.
Another tiny, pathetic sound, and the saddest smile I’ve ever seen. “Yes. Me. Jake.”
“But I thought we were the only ones,” I blurt. The second I say it, I realise how stupid that is. What an arrogant assumption to make, to believe yourself to be the first, theonly, when millions of people have played the sport for decades. Thousands have played it professionally.
“Yeah.” Dark curls fall into Julian’s forehead, hiding him from view. He pulls the thin leather straps tight around his left wrist. “I figured. We did, too.”
So many questions. I want to ask him so many things. How did he figure us out? Are we that obvious? Has he told anyone? Are he and Jake still a thing? Wait—Julian has a girlfriend. Not that that necessarily means anything, I should know. But Jake ismarried. “Are you still—I mean, your girlfriend, and Jake’s wife, and?—”
“No.” Julian sounds so forlorn I want to hug him. So far from the person I thought I knew, it’s like someone else is sitting beside me. “Not for a long time now. It wasn’t meant to be, you know? Not, not, like, not with our jobs. With the world the way it is.” He sighs. “Sarah is…great. We both benefit from the relationship.”
Yeah. Fuck, I know that feeling. Whatever it is that Sarah is getting out of it, Julian’s benefit is probably the same as mine: a mask to hide behind. A beard. A safe place. It’s good to have that, but I’m starting to understand that havingjustthat is maybe not enough.
“And—” I take a deep breath, horrified to find it’s shaky. “Will it ever stop being so…awful? When will it stop hurting so fucking much?”
Finally, Julian looks up. I read the answer in his eyes before he even opens his mouth, and it breaks my heart. “I’m the wrong person to ask that. We couldn’t make it work and it hasn’t stopped hurting yet. So, you know…I hope it stops, eventually. But I don’t know.” He glances over at theScrabbletable, but they’re completely caught up in their game. So he puts a hand on the nape of my neck and pulls me close. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you, yeah? To tell you. Make you understand how terrible it feels when you fail. I just—I want you kids to make it work.” He looks straight into my eyes and I’m horrified to find tears in his. “Because it sure as fuck was the best thing I’ve ever had, when we did have it.”
CHAPTER 13
Marlon
