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I never thought anything could top the feeling of walking into Fenway Park, coming up the stairs and seeing the perfect green of the outfield, the diamond, the Green Monster, all of it. It was a ritual in my family for my dad to take my brothers and me to Opening Day the season we turned six, and I remember it vividly. My sweaty little hand clutching his, the smell of sizzling sausages on the carts outside the park, the sheer joy of emerging from the darkened interior concourse into the light of the stadium. I thought nothing would ever be better.
And then I stepped into Knowsley.
American fans are passionate, no doubt: There’s nothing quite like a tailgate in American football, with the face paint and boomboxes, the chants and whistles, that bubbling cauldron of pregame excitement. But football—thisfootball—is more than a game. These are more than fans. There are sixty-eight million people in the U.K., all crammed into a country about the size of Oregon. Rival teams in the U.S. can be separated by hundreds of miles; here it may be more like hundreds of feet. Your team is partof your identity, fiercely protected because there’s comparatively so little ground to give. And God, can you feel it.
As I climb the stairs, I see seas of people, tens of thousands of them, on their feet, chanting and singing and stomping. They wave giant flags with club slogans I don’t yet know the meaning of. Huge, section-spanning banners crawl around the stadium, borne upon thousands of hands passing the fabric along like a slow-moving wave. They’re belting songs I only catch snippets of, but what I do hear is hilarious or filthy or heartfelt or buoyant, and I’m trying hard not to get whiplash from all the emotions ricocheting around the stadium.
But that’s nothing compared to the roar when the players take the field for the first time. I know my mental state is precarious at best these days, but still, I actually tear up as the whole stadium starts singing the club anthem.
The social media team are gathered in a box halfway up the pitch. We’ve drilled for this, and as soon as the whistle blows, we kick into gear, making sure we’re updating all our feeds with every significant action of the match. About twenty minutes in, I can’t believe I ever thought football was boring. Okay, yes, if you don’t know what you’re looking for, it can seem like a bunch of dudes just running back and forth failing to kick a ball into a net. But now that I’ve actually started to learn what makes a team, a player, a formation great, it’s awesome. The speed, the stamina—these things don’t come through on TV, but you can’t help but be impressed at how maniacally they all run for ninety minutes, and also how well orchestrated it really is.
Between my work responsibilities and the fact that I’m still learning where everyone goes, it’s often hard for me to find Lachlan. When I do manage to watch him for more than a few seconds, I’m impressed. The assumption I made that first time I sawhis Wiki page seems bang-on: He’s out there in the middle of it all, directing everyone with a steady hand. He’s like a fulcrum in the middle of the pitch, and everyone pivots around him. Mersey scores two in the first half, and passes from Lachlan set up both goals. Then, near the end of the second half, Nando Herrera is fouled and Mersey have a free kick not too far away from the other team’s goal. To my surprise and delight, Lachlan is the one to take it. He rearranges some Mersey players, then looks, cool as you can, at the goal, calculating the angle and how he’s going to kick the ball. After a little run-up, he blasts it with his right foot. We all watch as the ball soars through the air, bending around a wall of defenders before barreling through the outstretched hands of the goalie and—swish—into the back of the net.
I scream and clap and jump out of my chair, alongside everyone else in the box, allowing ourselves a second or two of celebration before tweeting out the update. I smile as I see the post go out: It’s the little video we shot on Media Day, after I sassed Lachlan back into happiness. Now, Video Lachlan beams back at me and Mersey’s eighteen million Twitter followers, thumping his chest with a look of unbridled intensity. Real Lachlan down on the pitch is doing the same as his teammates surround him, chest-bump him, and climb up for a piggyback, and the fans go wild. They start singing a song to the tune of “The Boys Are Back in Town,” except they change the lyrics to “Our Lachlan’s back in town.” Tens of thousands of people are singing, and I can’t help but wonder how they all know the new lyrics. Like, is there some sort of email distro they’re all on? A TikTok that escaped my notice? Maybe it’s just a simple, catchy song—after all, by the second chorus, I’m belting along like a tween at her first Taylor Swift concert.
It’s all over after Lachlan’s wonder-goal; there’s no way ouropponent can come back, not with how well we’re playing. Soon, the ref blows the final whistle and that’s that. Mersey is off to a perfect start. Even an hour later, as we’re headed back to the team bus, the energy remains electric. I’m thrumming with excitement like I was the one who scored all the goals—how must the actual players feel? My brain can’t comprehend that kind of elation. The lads are all chatter, comparing notes with each other, rehashing plays, sharing headphones like they’re coming home from summer camp with new best friends.
I’ve been true to my word and haven’t taken my hoodie off all game, but I’m unsure what to do now. Will the players remember the boast I made before the match, or am I making a bigger deal of this in my head? On the one hand, I don’t want to make their victory celebrations all about me. On the other hand, itiscool that Lachlan indeed got Man of the Match, just like I (accidentally) predicted.
I walk onto the bus behind Phil, who’s filming postgame reel for our Insta stories. But no sooner has my foot reached the top step than Bashie stands up in his seat and points at me. “Oi, Macca, time to pay the piper.”
Dozens of heads turn in my direction, and the lads start shouting their agreement. I hear more than one “Take it off!” and several wolf whistles. My face flushes as crimson as the mystery shirt I’m wearing, and I’m full of a giddy energy that’s threatening to burst out in an ill-timed fit of giggles. I steady myself and shout back, “You doubt me, Bashie?”
He grins, a lopsided smile that only pulls up half his mouth but enhances his brutish charm. “I cannae comment until I see the shirt, lass.”
Phil has taken a few steps away from me to capture the exchange. He slowly pans around the bus as the team start chanting“Take it off!” in unison. I step into the aisle, turn my back to the boys, and unzip the hoodie. Like the world’s most prim stripper, I shrug off the left shoulder, enough to show the white accent on the kit but not reveal the name. The raucous chorus swells as I shrug off the right shoulder, now holding the hoodie around me like a shawl. Some of the wolf whistles turn to boos and I shoot them a look over my shoulder. “You ready?”
The noise when I let the hoodie fully drop is deafening. There it is, plain as day on the back of my shirt: RAMSAY 14. Lachlan Ramsay, who was named Man of the Match not forty-five minutes ago. The lads bang their fists on the seats, and I swear one of them shouts, “She’s a witch! Burn her!”
“Yo, how’d you do it?” Kieran Campbell asks. He looks like someone has just told him Santa actuallyisreal, his eyes full of a childlike wonder. Which is appropriate, since he is barely more than a child himself.
I find Lachlan in the crowd; he’s smiling along with everyone, but there’s something else in his expression, something guarded and private that I can’t guess at. I look away before too many other eyes follow mine. Shrugging at Kieran, I raise my eyebrows. “I just felt like Lachlan was going to get off to a great start.”
“Attaboy, Lockie,” they shout, and the guys sitting behind him reach their arms over the seatback to thump Lachlan on the chest. The cryptic look has vanished, and he’s all smiles as he stands up to take a little bow.
“Are you going to do that every week, Abby?” asks Kieran.
But before I can answer, Vogler boards the bus and the din subsides in an instant; you really do have to admire the control he has over them. With the terseness I now recognize as his hallmark, he simply says, “Good match, boys. Let’s go home.”
There’s a scattered round of applause and the sound of dozensof asses hitting seats as everyone falls into line. I slip into the seat next to Phil, who has switched off the camera for once. As the bus pulls out of the grounds, he turns to me. “Seriously, though, how’d you pull that off? I never saw you change.”
“Honestly, I just happened to pick his shirt to wear today.”
“That’s kind of amazing. It would be cool to do that every week. Maybe there’s something there? A series?”
My mind is whirling. “Yeah, I was thinking that. We could get the fans involved, too. Maybe a campaign built around it, a hashtag…#WhoseShirt or #WhichKit or something like that, but, you know, better.”
“Good for clicks, good for sales.”
“Good for us!”
As we pull out of the parking lot, I realize that for the first time since we broke up, a whole day has passed where I haven’t thought about Steven once. I haven’t stressed out about a wedding email that needs to be responded to, I haven’t felt that crushing weight of loneliness or that residual simmering anger. It’s an encouraging thought, and I’m sure as hell not going to let him in now. I pat the Mersey F.C. badge on my shirt as if to say thank you to the team for this exciting development, and I look over my shoulder to see if I can catch Lachlan’s eye a few rows behind. He’s already staring at me, and when our eyes meet, he winks. I smile and turn back around, and the fizzling, joyful feeling in my stomach doesn’t go away until long after we’re back to the training center.
Chapter Twelve
A couple of weeks intothe season, it seems Mersey F.C. has found its groove. We’re unbeaten so far, and everything is gelling. The new lads are developing well, the older guys have remained injury-free, even the weather in Liverpool seems to be cooperating more than usual. It’s done unbelievable things for team morale and has had the added bonus of keeping the darkness out of my own thoughts as well. The stretches of time that pass without me thinking of Steven are getting longer and longer, wrapped up as I am in the team and the job. If someone had predicted this when I was catatonic in the wake of his departure, there’s no way I would have believed it. But my plan to distract myself is going gangbusters, allowing time to do its thing vis-à-vis my wounds and the healing thereof.
