‘Sold.’
We walk towards his car. I squeeze his hand, and he squeezes back. Let all the other shoes that life has hoarded drop. We’ll catch them together.
Epilogue
Scottie
Eighteen months later…
* * *
The whistle splits the air, a shrill, metallic blast that confirms the result. The conversion doesn’t even matter now. The clock is dead. We won.
Mud cakes every inch of my kit, blood from a lip I forgot about trickling down my chin, lungs screaming for oxygen they’ve been denied for nearly eighty minutes. The pitch squelches beneath my boots. Three inches of Scottish November slop that’s done its best to drown us all.
The roar hits. A barrage of noise from the Stirling stands. Connor slams into my back, arms clamping around my chest. Jamie follows, then Finn and Brodie, until I’m buried under a pile of bodies, all of them screaming the same word.
Try. That’s what I scored. Ball tucked into my gut, feet pistoning through three Glasgow defenders who thought they could stop me. They couldn’t. Nobody could. I crashed over the whitewash and touched the ball down.
My try. Mine.
I’ve spent over a decade setting up plays for other men. Today, I took the glory.
‘Get off me, you maniacs!’ But I don’t shove them off. I let them crush me into the turf and accept it for what it is – a reminder that I’m where I’m supposed to be. Among brothers.
‘Deal with it!’ Jamie bellows into my ear. ‘You’re being celebrated whether you enjoy it or not!’
Finn’s pink hair invades my peripheral vision. ‘Scottie Kerr scored a try. Alert the historians!’
‘Get it up ye, Lennox.’
He wrenches me upright and cups my face. ‘You big, beautiful bastard.’
I wipe dirt from my eyes, and my gaze drifts to the stands.
She’s there. Third row. A red scarf wrapped twice around her neck because it’s enormous on her. She’s jumping, clapping, and even from this distance, I can see her beaming.
Ava came to watch me play.
I stand straighter. She catches my eye and raises one hand. A small wave, a private signal, a thread strung between us across the roaring crowd.
She’s here. For me.
I see you.
Turns out that’s all I ever needed.
* * *
Music is blasting from a speaker in the dressing room – Artemesia’s Bits And Pieces, the unofficial anthem of every Scottish night out since the 1990s. Finn really has no shame.
I duck under the scalding water, letting it beat the dirt from my shoulders. The bruises are already forming. But today it paid dividends.
I soap up quickly, rinse, and wrap a towel around my waist. When I walk back into the main room, Finn has perched himself on the physio table in the centre of the room, swinging his legs.
‘Oi, Kerr!’ He waves a can of deodorant in my direction. ‘Speech. Big try. Big moment. Let’s hear it.’
‘How about no.’
