Playing for Keeps (Glasgow Lads Book 2) (10 page)

His father’s hand released, dropping like a stone. Then all at once, his eyes went dim.

F
ERGUS
GLARED
AT
the heavy clouds, willing them to hold their rain for ten more minutes. The wind was picking up, but it bore a welcome chill after a massively sweaty practice session.

“Colin looks brilliant at midfield,” Liam commented as they sat side by side on the pitch doing cool-down stretches. Since becoming captain and vice-captain, this ten-minute span between training exercises and Charlotte’s end-of-practice conference had become their unofficial review period. Everyone knew to leave them alone whilst they discussed important matters such as team morale, defensive formations, and the sordid details of Liam’s latest hookup.

“Aye, he’s a natural number ten.” Legs straight in front of him, Fergus touched his toes to stretch his hamstrings. “The position will help him mature, force him to see the bigger picture. Of course it’s early days yet—no way to know for certain how he’ll handle it until we play a real match.”

“Talking of which, what’s the story with your wee man and this charity thing?”

Fergus smiled. “We never got around to discussing it last night over dinner.”

“Oh?”

“Or at my flat.”

“
Oh?
”

“And FYI, he’s not so wee.”

“
OH?
” Liam punched Fergus’s foot. “Gaun yersel, lad! About time you moved on, even for one night.”

“We’ve a second date Thursday, which seems forever away. Also, he might come with us to Retrofest.”

“So I’m to be the fifth wheel. Bad enough I’ve got to watch Robert and Danielle tongue wrestle all day, now you and John, too?”

“Shall I buy a sixth ticket so you can bring someone?”

“Nah, I’ll just troll the festival for a fellow lonely lad, buy him some Morrissey on vinyl in exchange for a hand job.”

“That’s rather a bargain.” Fergus pulled back his toes to lengthen his calf. “I’d think vinyl would demand oral.”

“The Smiths on vinyl would absolutely demand oral.
Hatful of Hollow
might even be worth a fisting. But for solo Moz, no, my conscience won’t allow more than a quick handie.”

“It’s good to have moral standards.”

“Aye, lets me sleep at night.” Liam stood, then drew his leg up behind him to stretch his quad. “So you’re buying John concert tickets after one date and counting the hours until your next. He must have given you the orgasm of your life.”

“It’s not that—well, not only that. He makes me feel, I don’t know, alive again.” Fergus swiped his thumb over a scuff on his black football boot. “Still, I get this sense he’s hiding something.”

“Everyone’s hiding something. ’Mon, Charlotte’s ready.”

Fergus rotated the last bit of stiffness from his ankle. “So what are
you
hiding?”

“My plan to marry you.” Liam helped Fergus up, then they headed for the bench. “We’ll make sparkling ginger bairns that will blind the world with their bright red hair and freakishly pale skin.”

Fergus held his arm beside Liam’s to compare. “Speak for your own white self. This summer I’m getting a tan.”

“This summer you’re getting a delusion.”

“I don’t think two men can have a baby.” Fergus raised his voice as their forward Shona jogged past. “We’d need a surrogate.”

“Don’t fucking think about it!” Shona said, giving them a two-fingered salute.

Liam linked his thickly muscled arm with Fergus’s. “Gonnae no worry, my wee cabbage. Science will be our surrogate. We’ll wank into a Petri dish and let the geniuses do the rest.”

As they approached the bench, a musical ring tone blared from Fergus’s kit bag underneath. “It’s John!” He literally bounced toward the phone, not caring how gay he looked.

“He’s got his own ring tone after one date?” Liam said. “This is fucking terminal.”

Fergus grabbed the phone from his bag and answered, out of breath. “Hi.”

“Oh. I forgot you’d be at practice.” John’s voice was high, almost wispy. “I’m so sorry to bother you, it’s just that—well, most of my mates are away on holiday, and—” He made a choking sound. “I didn’t know who else to call.”

= = =

Fergus found John in the otherwise empty intensive-care waiting room, knees drawn to his chest, heels pressing the edge of the blue vinyl chair, looking like a lost, abandoned child.

He sprang to his feet at the sight of Fergus. “You didn’t have to—”

“Shh.” Fergus pulled him close. John clung to his back, his body quaking with bottled-up sobs.

Then he pushed away from Fergus. “I thought he was faking it again. We were having a rammy about my brother, and I called him a—it doesn’t matter. Dad was so angry, and then he just—he just
stopped
. But I didn’t stop. I kept shouting at him while he was in pain.” John clutched his own neck like he would strangle himself. “What if he dies and that’s the last thing he remembers? I didn’t fetch his meds or call 999 when he first collapsed. What if that one minute made the difference? What if he dies? What if I killed him?”

“Here, come sit with me. Just breathe for a minute, okay?” Fergus guided him to the chairs, where he took John’s fear-chilled hands between his own. As he rubbed them carefully, Fergus watched John gulp breath after breath, each slower and deeper than the last. “That’s better. So what’s happening with your da now?”

“They’re putting in another—a—a—what do you call it? A stent. And if it—it—” He pulled one hand away to flap it at his own chest. “If it does the thing and lets his heart breathe again, they’ll wait and do a bypass tomorrow morning. If not, they’ll do it now, emergency surgery. That’s more dangerous.”

“I know. I went through this with my own father.”

John slumped back in the seat with a groan. “And now I’ve dragged you into it. I’m so sorry.” He tried to pull his other hand away, but Fergus held tight.

“Don’t apologize. I’m glad I could be here for you.”

“But I’ve gone and broken Rule One.”

“Rule One?”

“‘No Drama!’” John raised his fist in a mock cheer.

“That only applies to team members.” He sat back, pressing his shoulder to John’s. As they waited in silence, John’s hand gradually warmed in Fergus’s grip, but he kept staring through the waiting-room wall, deep vertical lines etched between his dark brows. On the wall-mounted TV, the BBC was broadcasting from sunny Brazil, discussing England’s chances in next weekend’s World Cup battle with Italy.

Finally a young blonde nurse entered the waiting room. “Mr. Burns?”

John stood quickly, face painted with fear. “Aye?”

“Good news: The stent is doing a splendid job. Your father’s out of pain and stabilized now.”

John closed his eyes. “Thank God.” He pressed his palms to his cheeks and took a deep, shuddering breath. Fergus felt his own stomach untie the knots it had formed in the last hour. “Can I see him?” John asked the nurse.

“Soon. Dr. McKenna will be in momentarily to take you to him. She’ll also go over tomorrow’s bypass procedure.” She handed him a clipboard with a pen attached. “In the meantime, if you could confirm his personal information? Just initial in the wee highlighted spaces if all’s correct.”

John sat down again, knees visibly shaking. He scanned the clipboard’s top sheet, running his finger below the boxes containing Mr. Burns’s name, address, and date of birth.

The last item caught Fergus’s eye: the tenth of December. Not the fifth of July, as John had told him this morning.

Fergus blinked hard, hoping he’d misread it. But there it was, clear as day, now with John’s initials scrawled beside it in blue pen.

Why had John lied? Had he already made plans with someone else—like another man—for the day of Retrofest?

Fergus looked away, suspicion and guilt at war in his mind. Suspicion won a swift and decisive victory, so he glanced back and quickly memorized the Burns’s street address.

John gave the papers back to the nurse. When they were alone again, he told Fergus, “My mum’ll be here soon. You don’t need to stay.”

“I’ll stay until she arrives. If you’d like.”

John lifted his chin, a hint of spark returning to his eyes. “I would like.”

Fergus tried to return John’s smile, but failed. He knew he should let this lie go until a calmer moment. But he just couldn’t. “I hope your da’s out of hospital in time for his birthday next month.”

John’s face froze. His eyes darted left to right, but then finally rose to meet Fergus’s in a steady gaze. “I lied to you. His birthday’s in December.”

“Oh.” He wasn’t sure if John knew Fergus had seen the date on the sheet or if this were a spontaneous burst of honesty.

“The fifth of July is…it’s when Mum left us last year. So this’ll be my parents’ first, like, anti-anniversary.” John folded into himself, lowering his chin and curling his arms around his own waist. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth straightaway. It’s just embarrassing.”

Fergus softened again, cursing his mistrustful mind. “It’s not your fault she left.”

“That’s not what I mean.” John thumbed a frayed seam on his jeans. “I’m not ashamed because they’re divorcing.”

“I don’t understand.” Fergus leaned in, close enough to John’s hair he could smell the sharp, piney scent of his shampoo. “What are you ashamed of?”

He shook his head, almost imperceptibly. “I—I cannae—”

“John!” cried a woman to their left.

Fergus jerked back, startled, as John leapt up to greet a short brunette woman with black-rimmed cat-eye glasses.

“Mum!” He gave her a long, hard hug. Fergus stood as well, wondering how long he should stay.

John’s mother took his face between her hands and examined it closely. “How are you, lad?”

“I’m not the one in hospital, Dad is.”

“I’m here for you, so I want to know how
you
are.”

“Better, now they told me he’s stabilized and the surgery won’t be until tomorrow.” He introduced Fergus to his mother, who offered a warm, crooked smile reminiscent of John’s.

“You’re a footballer?” Janet asked as she gave his mud- and grass-stained kit the once-over.

“Just an amateur club,” he said, wishing he’d showered before coming to the hospital.

“Mum, Fergus is the captain of an all-LGBT team.” John fluttered his lashes. “And he’s an architect.”

The praise made Fergus blush, but he was glad to hear pep in John’s voice again.

“Impressive,” she said. “Where are you from?”

“Perthshire. Outside Pitlochry.”

“Beautiful area. John’s father and I spent a night there during our honeymoon.” She paused, perhaps realizing the awkwardness of that fact. “Do you miss it?”

“A bit,” Fergus said, “but I go home a lot to visit my mother.”

“As well you should.” She nudged John. “I like this one. You can keep him.”

“Oh. Erm…” John grimaced at Fergus, then looked past him. “There’s the doctor. Perhaps she can cure me dying of embarrassment.”

Fergus turned to see a middle-aged woman wearing a surgical cap over her fair hair and an untied mask dangling from her neck. She greeted John, then turned to the others. “Are you family as well?”

“No,” Fergus said as John’s mother said, “Not anymore.”

John gave her a sharp look. “You won’t see Dad, even here?”

“I said I came for you, not for him.” Janet looked down, twisting a tattered tissue in her hands. “Besides, it would only upset him to see me.”

For a moment, John seemed to blink back tears. Then his face turned stoic. “You’re probably right.”

Dr. McKenna motioned toward the corridor. “Your father probably won’t be awake for long, so…”

John made a move to follow her, then rushed back to Fergus and kissed his cheek. “I’ll phone you later. Thank you again.”

The moment John was gone, his mother turned to Fergus. “How long have you known my son?”

Ah, the obligatory interrogation.
“As of tomorrow, it’ll be a week.”

“Oh.” She sounded both disappointed and intrigued. “Yet you’ve run to be by his side in a crisis? Must have been a significant six days.”

“I suppose.” Now that he thought about it, she was right: He barely knew John. But he
hadn’t
thought about it when he’d heard John’s voice on the phone, so full of pain. Pure instinct had made him dash off the practice pitch for the nearest taxi.

“Tell me, how is he getting on? His father can be difficult, and now with his brother away—” Janet gasped and covered her mouth. “John did tell you about that, right?”

“He told me Keith was in prison.” Fergus fished for more details. “It’s a shame what happened.”

“I blame myself. I know I shouldn’t, but I do. It happened shortly after I left them last summer. First weekend in July, of all times.” She tucked a lock of black hair behind her ear. “I wasn’t trying to make a point, I only did it then because I knew the house would be empty.”

Relief rushed over Fergus so fast, he barely heard anything after “first weekend in July.” John had told him the truth this time. It
was
his parents’ anti-anniversary.

He remembered what Janet had originally asked him. “I think John’s got a lot to juggle, between university, his internship, and looking after his father. I don’t know how he does it.”

She smiled sadly. “That boy’s always been a dynamo. But everyone burns out.”

“It’ll be even harder after the surgery. My own father, he was never the same after bypass.”

“I’m so sorry. It’s hard to watch the men we care about grow old before their time.” Janet gave his arm a sympathetic squeeze. “Anyway, you probably want to get home and shower. I’ll see you again soon?”

“I hope so.” He stepped away, taking her subtle hint about his reek.

In the hospital lift, Fergus pulled out his phone and added John’s street address to his contact information. But then his thumb hovered over the words Save and Cancel. Investigating John verged on stalkerish. After all, he’d told Fergus the truth in the end.

Yet he’d lied first, as if by instinct. Besides, if Fergus had been more vigilant with Evan, he’d have known about the other man months sooner. He could’ve avoided the humiliation atop his heartbreak.