Playing for Keeps (Glasgow Lads Book 2) (11 page)

With a ding, the lift doors opened onto the ground floor. Fergus hit Save.

Once bitten, forever shy.

“P
ERHAPS
YOU
COULD
wait outside while I tidy up a wee bit?” John asked his mother when they pulled up to his house. “I just need an hour or…six.”

“It can’t be in that bad a state,” she said, turning off the engine.

“Remember how it got when you went away to that teacher’s conference for a week?”

“Oh.” She paused in the middle of opening the car door. “Oh, dear.”

“Aye.” He hoped the stack of dirty dishes in the sink didn’t reach higher than the edge of the worktop, and that no washing, clean or otherwise, was draped over the back of the sofa. He’d surely get it in the neck when Mum saw the weeds choking her flower garden.

But they were no longer her flowers. This home wasn’t hers to criticize.

Still, it was worse than he’d feared, he realized the moment they entered the foyer. A pile of mail teetered on the floor inside the door—and yes, there was washing, tossed over the banister of the fucking stairs, no less.

Mum sniffed the air and raised an eyebrow, but made no comment.

“I suppose you’ll stay in Keith’s room,” John said. “It should be clean. Relatively.” He quickly took her bag upstairs, along with the shirt and trousers from the banister. When he returned, he found his mother still in the foyer, eyeing the living room with the detached interest of a home buyer hoping to haggle down the price.

“I’ll make us dinner.” John brushed past his mother to go to the kitchen, but she caught his arm.

“Please, let me,” she said. “You’ve been doing so much.”

He shrugged and moved away. “I manage.” He had no right to self-pity after what he’d done to his father—and especially not after what he’d done out of guilt for what he’d done to his father. The thought of
that
nauseated him.

His mum followed him into the kitchen, where thankfully, the sink held no dirty dishes, only a few dried-on bits of food. Dad had either tidied up last night or left his plate and glass elsewhere in the house.

She examined the surface of the table before placing her purse upon it, then put the kettle on for tea, “just to feel useful.”

John rummaged through the refrigerator, frowning at the selection of vegetables. He wanted to show Mum how he’d learned to cook healthy foods, but a pair of limp carrots and a rapidly browning head of cabbage wouldn’t help that cause. “I hope soup’s all right. Chicken with veggies and whatever starch we’ve got?”

“Sounds lovely.” She opened the cupboard where they used to keep the tea.

“It’s not there now.” He pointed to the deep drawer beside the cooker. “In there.” As John chopped an onion to start the soup, his mother filled the kettle at the sink. “Must feel strange,” he said, “being in this house again.”

“It’s all so familiar, and yet different. Oh no!” She stared out the window into the rear garden. John braced for a chiding about the state of her perennials, but instead she collected herself, smoothing back her dark fringe and adjusting her red-silk hairband. “What if I were to stay here while your father recovers from surgery?”

“It’s not necessary. I probably won’t be around much while he’s in hospital.”

“No, I mean after he comes home.”

He nearly chopped off his fingertip with the kitchen knife. “You’d live here? In the same house as Dad? For weeks?”

“I’d be doing it for you, not for him. No twenty-one-year-old should spend his summer waiting hand and foot on a crotchety old man.”

“What about you? You’d uproot your life for him?”

“For
you
. Temporarily. I’ll go home tonight, then be back Friday after end of term. I’ve been so busy teaching and tutoring, I’d not got around to finding summer work yet.” She measured tea into the white ceramic teapot. “I could bring Milk.”

John gasped. “Really?”

“Of course. That old cat misses you.”

“Yaldy!” John nearly made a fist pump of joy before realizing he was still holding the knife. He moved on to the carrots, slicing with renewed vigor. “I hope you’re not doing this out of guilt.”

“Partly. But what of it?”

He snorted. “I can’t judge you for that, not after today.”

She stepped closer, running her hands over the worktop’s pitted edge. “Can you tell me how it happened? Was your father…upset?”

“I imagine he was upset, hearing his son call him a racist.”

“Oh dear.”

“It’s true.”

“I know.”

“And Fergus is Catholic.”

“Oh.”

“And I really like him.”

“Okay.”

“And I’m to carry the banner in the Orange Walk.” John scraped the sliced carrots into a bowl. “So that’s fun.”

“You must be joking.” Mum rescued a stray carrot slice before it could roll onto the floor. “You told your father you would march?”

“No, I told him I wouldn’t. Then he had a heart attack, and I told him I would.”

“Oh John.”

“Don’t.” He rested his hands atop the head of cabbage. “Don’t ‘Oh-John’ me. I’m ‘Oh-John’ing enough for the both of us.”

“Dating a Catholic man while belonging to the Orange Order is a recipe for disaster. Why would you risk losing someone who’s already shown he’ll be there when you need him?”

“Dad needs me too. And Fergus won’t find out.”
I hope.
“He’s going to a music festival in Loch Lomond that day. And I told Dad I’d only do the Ibrox Lodge’s local parade, not the big citywide one that afternoon.” He couldn’t risk any of his uni mates seeing him downtown. “Then I’ll quit the Order forever. So it’s all sorted. One more march. Just one more march.”

John didn’t tell her how he’d nearly confessed to Fergus in the waiting room. In that moment, he’d felt the secret would burst open his chest. Now, with a cooler head, he knew what would’ve happened next—Fergus would have walked out and never spoken to him again, much less touched or kissed him.

“Even if Fergus never knows,
you’ll
always know.” Mum laid a gentle but firm hand on John’s arm. “If you do another Orange Walk, you’ll forever hate yourself.”

He looked down into her clear, dark eyes. “I already hate myself. So I’ve a good headstart on forever.”

Mum scowled, her lower lip jutting out. “Who gie ye aw this angst, ma wee lad? Ye were ne’er sae dour when ye were a wean.”

He smiled at her purposeful lapse into Lowland Scots, usually suppressed by her schoolteacher’s propriety. He replied in kind: “It’s no frae ma mither, by ma certies. She’s a blythe lassie aw the day and aw the nicht.”

“Better believe I am.” The kettle whistled, so she moved away to pour the water. “I’ll be glad to see Harry more often. He’s old enough now to appreciate being spoiled by his gran.” She chuckled. “Speaking of grans…” Mum held up the red-and-blue Rangers tea cosy her own mother had knitted years ago.

Then she covered her mouth as her smile widened. “Your Fergus,” she said with a titter, “is he a Celtic fan?”

John sighed and bent his head in mock mourning. “Aye.”

“Ah, well.” Mum picked up the kettle. “I suppose no one’s perfect.”

= = =

Fergus was in desperate need of a shower. But more than that, he needed answers.

Sitting cross-legged on his bed—where he’d replaced the Celtic blanket—he opened his laptop and typed in John’s address.

The mapping website put a red flag on a location about half a mile south of the River Clyde. John had said he lived in the Ibrox section of Glasgow—parts of which were quite fashionable—but this address was just past Ibrox’s western edge, in the Drumoyne district. Decidedly unfashionable.

Fergus opened another browser tab to check real-estate listings in that area. A nearby terrace home was up for auction at a rock-bottom price. Then again, auctioned homes were usually foreclosures in terrible shape. He needed aggregate data.

The realtor’s page offered a Zed-index map, showing property values in shades ranging from red (high) to purple (low). Fergus clicked on it.

John’s entire street was purple.

“You poor thing,” he heard himself whisper, then shook his head. John clearly didn’t want anyone’s pity.

Fergus returned to the Google map of John’s house and clicked on Street View, which showed a terraced villa made of almond-colored stone. A low, neat hedgerow sat in front of the living room’s bay window, lending the street a much-needed touch of green. Like its neighbors on either side, the house had a rather decent wooden door topped by a semi-circle of leaded-glass panes.

Exploring John’s street, Fergus realized the kindest thing to be said about the area was that the weather had been nice that day. Two out of every ten homes seemed abandoned, their windows and doors covered in plywood instead of glass. One semi-detached house looked as though a giant termite had feasted on its roof.

How had John survived in this near-slum, when he was not only short of stature, but gay as well? He’d said his older brother had made him lift weights. Perhaps he’d also taught him how to fight.

Fergus’s brain drifted off-topic, into a memory of John’s biceps, how solid and smooth they’d felt under his palms. How they’d bulged as he’d clutched Fergus’s thighs on his way to orgasm. How those same strong arms had clung to him in the intensive-care waiting room.

Thinking of the hospital, Fergus sighed with disgust at himself. He was virtually stalking John on one of the worst days of his life. He slammed the laptop lid shut, then began to undress for a shower.

Setting his football boots inside the wardrobe, Fergus saw the black captain’s-armband in its clear plastic bag, hung on a peg above his shoes. With its white C facing away from him, it looked like a mourning band.

He pulled the armband from the bag and slipped it on, tightening the Velcro against his bare skin, wondering when he would start thinking of it as his own instead of Evan’s.

Fergus looked at his brand-new bed, which he’d bought upon moving into this flat, finally having space for a queen-size. Only one man had ever lain beside him there, a man who’d looked utterly content as he dozed off, like his head was made for that pillow.

Then Fergus looked at the wall where he’d kissed John, and at the doorway where he’d convinced him not to leave. The room appeared the same as it did twenty-four hours ago, but it
felt
different. His entire flat felt different.

It finally felt like home.

“S
UCKS
ABOUT
YOUR
dad,” said John’s friend Katie when he’d finished telling her the week’s events. They were lounging in deep leather comfy chairs on the top floor of their favorite West End pub, sharing a plate of chunky chips and drinking £3 strawberry gin mojitos.

“Could’ve been a lot worse,” he said. “At least there were no complications from the surgery. Plus, he’ll probably never try that fake-heart-attack trick again.”

Now that John’s anxiety over the surgery had passed, his guilt had resurged. He would never forget clutching Dad’s hand in that ambulance, promising to do anything,
anything
, if he held onto life. Or forget how his father had gazed up at him, weak and tiny in that hospital bed, gratitude filling his eyes as John pledged to do the Orange Walk. A secret he would have to hide from Fergus for almost a month.

“I’m super sorry I couldn’t be there for you.” Katie gave a sympathetic head tilt, her long dark ponytail sweeping her shoulder. “You were having a shitty week while I was swaddling about the Highlands and Islands with Siobhan.”

John tried not to laugh. “I think you mean ‘swanning about.’”

“Ugh.” Katie put a hand to her sunburned face. “I’ll never be a real Brit, will I?”

“But ‘swaddling about the Highlands’ sounds pure cozy. The nights do get rather cold up north, even in June.”

Katie kicked John’s foot under the table. “Stop taking the piss out of me,” she said, which sounded adorable in her South Carolina accent.

“No, you’re a genius. Hotels should start offering swaddling services. Like turn-downs, but instead of simply folding back the covers, they come and roll you up in them.”

“I would totally pay extra for that.” She sipped her mojito and glanced behind her at the players in the table-tennis area, which was separated from the pub floor by a ten-foot-high cage to keep the wee white balls from ending up in people’s drinks (mostly). “But what if you’re swaddled up and have to pee in the middle of the night?”

“Well, you’d need a trusted partner, see, someone to pull the emergency ripcord. Like in a parachute.”

“But what if you’d asked to be swaddled
with
your partner?”

“True love holds many hazards.” A boom of thunder came from outside, as if punctuating his statement. “See?”

“I don’t care what you or the thunder gods say. Love is worth any hazard.” Katie laughed at his gagging noise. “Cut the cynical act, John. If you didn’t believe in love, you wouldn’t have joined our LGBT group.” She pushed his knee back and forth with the sole of her bright-red sandal. “And then we wouldn’t be fwends,” she added in a mock baby voice.

“Maybe I joined the LGBT group to fight for fucking, not for love.”

“Maybe you’re full of crap.” She dropped her foot to the floor. “Hey, speaking of the group, what’s up with the charity match? Is it on?”

“Oh, it’s on, lass. And I need your help.”

“Hell yeah!” She sat up straight and bounced a little in her chair. “I’m a master fundraiser. Sophomore year of high school I hawked fifty-two hundred candy bars so our marching band could go to the Rose Parade.”

“Actually,” he said, “I was hoping you’d join the team.”

A whoop of triumph came from the table-tennis room. “Get it right up you!” shouted a short ginger lass as she paraded back and forth with arms raised.

Katie turned back to John. “Are you serious? Play on the same field as guys? Is that even legal in this country?”

A fair point, if slightly exaggerated. British football’s homophobia was surpassed only by its misogyny. “The Warriors’ manager’s a woman, and so are two of the starting eleven. The captain thinks American girls are spectacular footballers.”