I devour his Wikipedia like it’s my last meal on earth, and I learn the following things: Lachlan Ramsay is from Scotland, hence the delicious accent. He’s thirty-two years old, and unless football is different from the other sports I follow, that means he’s probably past his prime. So I guess we have that in common, as I’m definitely feeling like day-old bread these days. He’s a midfielder at a team in Madrid but actually started his career at Mersey. That’s cool—there might be an angle there, about his homecoming. Over the course of his career, he’s scored a couple dozen goals; something about Ramsay’s gravitas makes me think he’s more of a playmaker than one of the flashy, goal-scoringstrikers Amina talked about. Like a general marshaling the troops rather than, I don’t know, the best sniper in the army? I shrug off the analogy, the military being perhaps the one field more opaque to me than professional football.
I slide my finger over the trackpad and hover over the table of contents, clicking on the Personal Life section—famously the best part of anybody’s Wiki. My stomach clenches again as I read the brief paragraph about his childhood. I won’t let my eyes skip ahead, though I’m certain I saw the wordmarrieddown there. What are the odds it says, “Lachlan Ramsay is not married butisromantically interested in recently dumped American social media managers in tragic polyester pantsuits”? Because this could be a make-or-break moment for old Abby McIntyre…. As if performing for an audience of Amina’s childhood dolls, I mutter little comments here and there as I inch my way down, reading about the charities he’s involved in, his older sister who’s a nurse, and his parents (Moira and Michael). I actually say out loud, “Oh, that’s interesting!” when I read that his family runs a restaurant in his hometown of Oban, but then I can’t prolong the charade any further. I reach the last line of the section: “In June 2016, Ramsay married Claire Walker, whom he has known since childhood.”
Well, that’s it, then. My momentary, fantastical, completely unrealistic dreams of marrying Lachlan Ramsay are dashed almost as soon as they’ve arisen. I snap my fingers at the dolls. “Aw, shucks, ladies.Soclose.” Claire and Lachlan got married right around the time I met Steven; hopefully that whole relationship thing is working out better for them than it did for us. But I’m a masochist, so instead of letting the fantasy completely die, I google Claire, like I need to see what I’m up against. And okay, yeah, she’s gorgeous. But what makes it even worse is that she alsoseems reallynormal. It would be one thing if she were some untouchable goddess, but she’s just…a woman. A stunning woman, to be sure, but a woman who probably has stretch marks and acne and bad hair days like the rest of us—though perhaps a little less frequently than some of us. It makes me like him more, seeing her, but it also makes me sad, for reasons I can’t quite pinpoint.
There’s no time to wallow in these feelings, though. I need to come up with some ideas for social campaigns for these players, and the best my jet-lagged brain can come up with for Lachlan right now is “Lach be a lady tonight”—an assertion not backed up by his Wikipedia page. Clearly it’s time to call it a day. Maybe my brain will reward my newfound obsession by making Lachlan Ramsay the star of tonight’s dreams, rather than replaying the greatest hits of my breakup. It’s a nice thought to cling to as I fall back onto the pillow and into a deep sleep.
Chapter Three
I have an office! Thisis one of the unexpected bonuses of the job—the job I accepted three days ago from Charlotte Collins. I had just about finished drafting a humiliating email to my old boss begging to come back to the Sox when Charlotte called me with the offer. I can’t quite believe it, and I’m not sure she can either. I swear I heard her mutter “an American” as I signed my contract. But I guess my pitches won her over (good thing I left “Lach Ness Monster” on the cutting-room floor). I spent the longest on Lachlan’s, playing up the homecoming angle. I found a number of photos and videos of him in his tween and teen years, playing first for local teams in Scotland and then for Mersey’s own Academy. I spliced them together into a montage, then thought it would be a nice touch to have a song from a Scottish band playing in the background. After wading into someextremelyopinionated Reddit threads about Scottish music, I chose a band called Biffy Clyro, who are apparently pretty big in the U.K. but who I’d never heard of. Absolutely absurd name, but their sound was perfect for the video. For the final clip, I found an interview where Lachlan says, “I’ve always hoped I’d wear the crimson and white again,” which I faded into a black screen displaying a simple message:Welcome Home.
I replay the video at my desk; I’m pretty pleased with it. Sure, it’s a bit janky because I had to rip low-quality stuff from YouTube, but it makes me kind of emotional. Watching hours of footage of games and interviews has given me a taste of the passion from the Mersey players and their supporters—it’s intense. It’s almost daunting, really, the idea of jumping onto this team’s bandwagon as a thirty-year-old, rather than as a child. With the Sox, I grew up watching games with my family, so working for them was kind of a dream come true. But Mersey F.C.? There’s a storied history here, one I know nothing about. I’m going to have to earn this fandom.
The first few days in the job have been a blur—filling out paperwork for my work visa, meeting coworkers, getting oriented to the office. But as much work as there’s been, it’s also quiet. Preseason doesn’t start until July, so the building is mostly empty. Charlotte keeps making vague apologies for it, promising more hustle and bustle when the team returns from their summer break. I don’t mind, though; I have more than enough to catch up on.
This morning, for instance, I’ve scrolled Football Twitter for so long that my thumbs have started to cramp. But as soon as I put down the phone, a pang of loneliness that had been held at bay bursts through. It comes and goes, triggered by the most random things. Like walking around Liverpool yesterday, trying to get my bearings, I saw a sign outside of a coffee bar that had spelledespressowrong. In an instant, I was thrown back to a bitterly cold day in the dead of a Boston winter, standing in front of a similarly misspelled sign and agreeing with Steven that despite the fact we couldn’t feel our fingertips, we would refuse to go into the store on principle—until we realized it was the only café in the neighborhood, and we traded in our pedantry for piping-hot mochas.
It’s strange, though: I don’t feel sad when I think about Steven. It’s just a void, like a faint ringing in an empty room. The hollowed-out remnant of a thing that once was and no longer is. A chalk outline of my life, sprawled on a grimy sidewalk. I almost think sadness would be preferable—at least then I could cry over some Ben & Jerry’s and cut his head out of old photos and do all the things the rom-coms of my childhood taught me to do. But I don’t know how to process the emotional vacuum I’m trapped in. Bridget Jones didn’t show me the way.
Now I’m deep in a funk, and no amount of googling my new favorite footy crushes will put me right. I have to talk to someone from home. It’s a little after sevena.m.on the East Coast; probably too early for my parents, but Josh might already be in his classroom, tutoring kids before first period, supervising bus arrivals, or generally devoting every waking hour to his students. I open my computer and FaceTime him, crossing my fingers that he’ll respond.
“Cor blimey!” he says, in the most ludicrous British accent this side of Oscar season. “Is that the queen herself ringing me on the telly?”
“The telly is the TV, you idiot.” But I can’t stop smiling; it’s like my whole body has warmed up five degrees.
“Ah, right, right. How the hell are you, Abs? When are you headed back stateside?” He’s all smiles underneath his crown of untidy brown curls, the same boyish grin I’ve (platonically) loved since we were seated next to each other in Mrs. Boothby’s second-grade class.
“I’ve got good news and bad news.”
The grin slips. “You got the job. That’s the bad news, you know.”
“I’ll come back to visitsooften, I promise.”
He smirks. “That’s what all my transcontinental best friends say.”
I can’t look at him while he’s wearing his sad face, so I speechify while staring at the corridor outside my office door. “I don’t know, Josh. Yeah, it’s crazy that six days after calling off my wedding I quit the Sox and flew across an ocean to a place where I don’t know anyone to work in a sport I don’t follow. But I can’t sit around Boston and carry on with my life like nothing happened. I’ve gotta dosomethingto shake myself out of my funk. So I kind ofhaveto do this, right?” I dart my eyes back to him. “It’s the only way. Clean break. Fresh start.”
His sigh is sad, but somehow supportive. “No, of course. It’s the right move. I’m really, really happy for you. Just devastated for myself.”
“Devastating you is, as ever, my only goal in life.”
“And you’re pretty damn good at it these days.” He wobbles in my screen while he repositions his phone. “When are you coming back to pack up your apartment? Or have you decided to leave it to the raccoons?”
“I shoved everything I wanted into my car and drove it to my parents’ house before I left. I don’t think I can handle Boston at this point. Not with Steven lurking somewhere in the shadows.”
“Have you told him you’ve up and moved across the pond?”
All the warmth from seeing Josh seeps away at the thought of speaking to Steven, and my fingertips go ice cold, like I’ve been plunged into a frozen lake—or a bitter Boston winter, no mochas in sight. “No. We agreed to give up our lease via email and I’m pretty sure I deleted ‘Abby and Steven wedding’ off our shared calendar. If he needs to talk, he knows how to get in touch. Of course, he’s now saved in my phone as ULTIMATE SHITWAD—DO NOT CALL.”
“I can’t believe you gave him my pet name. You slut.”
When I laugh, it’s like shrugging off a heavy winter coat on the first day of spring.
Josh smiles back at me. “Seriously, though, you know Erica can get your stuff and have it packed and shipped to you in ten minutes flat.”
“With my books arranged in rainbow order to boot.” Erica is Josh’s wife, and I’m not entirely convinced she’s human (I mean that in the best possible way—mostly).
There’s a tiny pause where Josh looks like he’s deciding whether or not to say something. His smile has gone from rambunctious to sincere, slightly pulled down at the corners. “Hey, Abs, not for nothing, but you sound good. Like you’re almost happy again.”
