Playing to Win (36 page)

Perfect.

The whistle blew, and the Barrowfield captain sailed in a swooping corner. Colin saw Liam leap up at the near post, his bright red hair glinting in the sun. He headed the ball sharply, out past the edge of the penalty area, where Duncan brought it down with a deft chest-tap. Colin took a single step forward, making sure he was still onside the moment the pass left Duncan’s foot.

It came like a cannonball. Colin backed up, watching the ball descend, keeping the converging fullbacks in his peripheral vision.

No fear. They can’t hurt you. Well, they can, but that’s the price of playing.

Just as the defenders reached him, Colin leaped to meet the ball with his head, flicking it backward toward the opposing goal. Then he landed, spun on his once-injured leg, and took off. It was now a race between him and the goalkeeper, who was just now springing off his line.

As Colin caught up to the ball, the speedy left back thundered in, but Colin trapped the ball with the studs of his boots—only for a fraction of a second, but long enough to lose the defender, whose momentum kept him going. As Colin took the first step to the side, his knee twinged, but it cooperated, catapulting him like a sprinter off the blocks.

The gigantic keeper rushed forward as Colin neared the penalty area. Colin watched the keeper watching him, waiting for Colin to signal when and where he would shoot. Colin angled his body as if preparing to slam home the ball with his left foot. Just like he always used to do.

The keeper dived, buying the act. Just before his foot struck, Colin turned it, poking his toe under the ball, lifting it over the keeper’s sliding body. As the ball arced up, up, up, Colin vaulted over the keeper, ready to tap in the rebound in case his shot hit the crossbar.

There was no rebound. The ball’s slow, graceful journey ended at the back of the net.

“YAAAAAASSS!” Whirling to face the crowd, Colin tapped the Warriors crest over his heart, then lifted it to his lips.

The other Warriors swarmed him. From behind, Duncan lifted Colin off his feet in a bear hug and spun him around.

“Put him down!” Colin heard Katie roar. “Jesus, what is wrong with you people?” When Duncan obeyed, she muscled in between them and held out her arms to block the others. “Celebrate gently, everybody! We can’t afford to lose him again.”

As they headed back to the center of the pitch for the kickoff, Colin raised a hand to the cheering crowd. He tried not to search for his mum, tried not to beam at her like he did when he was seven and scored his first goal in a youth football match. Tried not to care.

He failed. But, whatever—he’d more important things to worry about than lingering birthday bitterness.

The scoring dam broke, with three more Warriors goals in the second half (including a header by Colin, which would please Andrew), and two by their opponent.

When the final whistle blew, the Barrowfield players queued up to congratulate them. Unlike most of the Warriors’ opponents, these guys dispensed handshakes and high fives without a trace of homophobia.

“Brilliant play, mate,” the Barrowfield left back told Colin, giving him a backslapping hug. “Heard your knee was hurt, but obviously not anymore.”

“Yeah, feels great.” As soon as the words left Colin’s mouth, his knee began to ache. He’d need to hurry home to an ice pack and a pot of the anti-inflammatory tea Andrew had given him. “Hope you win next week.”

“Me too. Maybe we’ll even get our own regiment of fans,” he added with a laugh as he trotted off to join his team.

Colin’s knee twinged with every step as he approached his manager. Had it been hurting during the match? If so, he hadn’t felt it. It was probably just stress at the thought of talking to his mother. Duncan, an aspiring sport psychologist, had once told him that anxiety can actually
cause
pain by depriving muscles of oxygen, and the more one focuses on the pain, the worse it gets.

Get tae fuck
, he told his brain.

“You were brilliant out there today, lad.” Charlotte leaned in and whispered, “I saw your mum in the crowd. You okay?”

“We won, so yeah, I’m grand.”

She patted his arm, grinning. “Go and see her now, but make it quick, and don’t forget your cool-down stretching.”

“Right. Thanks.”
You’re the sane mum I never had.

His mother was already waiting for him on the other side of the chest-high fence, which provided a welcome barrier.

“Mum,” he said as he forced himself to step forward.

“Colin.” She stood rigid as well, twisting the handles of a yellow plastic shopping bag. “It’s good to see you.”

“Yeah.” He stopped out of reach. “How are you here?” he asked her, meaning
Why are you here?

“Your Aunt Rose and her friend were driving down for the Yes rally. I hitched a lift.”

Colin looked away, resisting the urge to shift his weight off his throbbing knee. “Why didn’t you tell us you were coming?”

Mum dropped her gaze and smoothed a long black lock of hair behind her ear. “I was afraid I’d lose my nerve.” She held out the yellow bag without looking at him. “It’s almost a month late, but Happy Birthday.”

Colin clenched his fists.
You have got to be kidding me.
What extravagant gift was she foisting upon him this year? How long before she phoned him, begging him to return the item for her and send her back the money?

As he took the bag, he saw it featured a pound-store logo. He relaxed a bit, realizing the gift’s affordability meant it was permanent.

He opened the bag to find a stress toy that looked like a wee football. Colin crushed it in his grip, the spongy material yielding under his fingers. It felt good.

“Thought maybe you could fidget with that instead of rubbing your scars,” Mum said. “Saw you doing it out there on the pitch today.”

Colin resisted the urge to fold his arms. Instead he held up the toy. “I doubt the refs’ll let me carry this in a game.”

She laughed. “Can you imagine if it popped out while you were crashing the goal? Such confusion for the defenders.”

“Aye.” He squeezed the ball again, once with each hand. “I like it. Thank you. It’s…actually very thoughtful.”

“Good.” She met his eyes and offered a tight smile.

He sensed she was about to say something awkward, so he changed the subject. “Gonnae go and see Emma today?”

“No, I—I hoped she’d be here, actually.”

“She and Dad and Gran went to the rally.”
Which I could’ve told you if you’d phoned before coming.
“Besides, she never comes to my matches, what with being allergic to grass, artificial turf, and giving a fuck.”

“True. If you were on a curling team, Emma would claim she’s allergic to ice. Or circles.”

Colin laughed despite himself. He’d forgotten his mother could be funny. She seemed frighteningly normal today.

“Your sister loves you, though,” Mum said. Then she stepped closer, pressing against the fence. “And so do I.”

He stared down at the stress toy, flattening it between his palms, feeling Mum’s eyes boring into his skull. “Okay,” was all he could manage without his face exploding.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t here for your birthday,” she said in a near whisper.

He scoffed and raised his head to glare at her. “It’s not that you weren’t here, it’s—”

“I know.” She held up a hand, shutting her eyes hard. “It was wrong of me to leave without warning. Especially on that day.”

“Then why did you?” The instant the question left his mouth, he already knew the answer:
It was all too much.

“It was just…all too much for me.” She put a hand to her head. “It’s hard being in hospital, but sometimes getting out is even harder. When I’m inside, the only thing to worry about is getting well. But the moment I step outside those doors, I need to worry about
staying
well, and then the thousands of other…life things to manage on top of it.”

Colin swallowed. “So your family—your children—we’re just a ‘life thing’ to ‘manage’? We’re a chore?”

“I know you cannae understand.” She dropped her hand but kept her gaze down, her eyelids looking like they weighed ten pounds each. “I hope you never truly understand.”

Colin bit his upper lip hard for a moment before replying. “I understand you’ve nae energy to give us, aside from the odd appearance like today.” He took a deep breath. “I’m not saying that to be a dick. I really do get it. I get that we’re only to have a small piece of you, probably for the rest of our lives. But that means you only get a small piece of us, too.”

She nodded, head bent, hair swaying against her cheeks. “I accept that.”

“Good.” His tongue hit the
d
even harder than usual. When he opened his mouth to speak again, his throat felt suddenly clogged with tears. So his words rushed out in one great torrent. “Thanks for coming to the match, but next time a wee warning, okay? Okay.”

Then he turned his back on her and walked toward the bench, where Charlotte was speaking quietly with a sullen-looking Evan. As Colin sat on the grass for his cool-down, his manager looked over and met his eyes.

Her brows rose, questioning. He gave her a quick, tight nod, then straightened and spread his legs for a hamstring stretch, setting the stress-toy football between his feet where Charlotte could see it.

Her slow smirk was all he needed to feel sane again.

= = =

Wednesday night, hours before referendum voting was to begin, Andrew declined several fashionable “Doomsday” party invitations throughout London. Instead he opted to return to his uncle’s Knightsbridge terrace home for an early bedtime with Colin.

Not
literally
with him, of course, a fact that hurt more each night they slept apart. On the plus side, it was much easier to have heart-to-heart conversations when they were separated by three hundred fifty miles rather than a couch cushion or two. Neither of them could interrupt the other with a kiss or a distracting hand on a thigh.

It meant they were finally sharing innermost secrets, ones they’d been afraid to tell—and afraid to hear.

“So why did you stop cutting?” Andrew asked Colin as he prepared a cup of chamomile tea, hoping to get a decent night’s sleep.

At the other end of the line, Colin started to answer, but then stopped. “Funny, you’re the first person ever to ask me that. Most people ask why I started.”

“I can guess why you started. Hold on a moment.” As Andrew left the empty kitchen and passed the sitting room, he waved goodnight to his cousin Karen, who was sprawled across her boyfriend’s lap in front of the television. Then he carried his tea up the carpeted spiral staircase to the guest room.

Andrew entered his guest bedroom and shut the door. “My guess is that you were in a great deal of homophobia-induced pain,” he told Colin, “but you couldn’t express it at home because your mum had so much pain of her own. You may have even thought you were protecting her by hurting yourself.”

“Erm…yeah. Pretty much bang-on there. Wow.”

“Good. My distant second guess was Borderline Personality Disorder. I’ve a mate with BPD who burns himself whenever life gets dull.” He crossed the guest room to the window overlooking a now-quiet Walton Street. “Back to my original question—why did you stop?”

“My mother found me one day in the bathroom with a razor and thought I was trying to kill myself. Of course she
would
think that, since she’d—you know, had those thoughts herself a lot. Anyway, she took me to a therapist, who told Mum that not only was I not trying to kill myself, my cutting was helping me stay alive.”

“It was how you coped.” Sipping his tea, Andrew watched the elderly Mrs. Sturridge from across the street return from taking her trio of pugs on their nightly walk through Lennox Gardens.

“Aye. It’s funny, after that, Mum got—I don’t know, softer? More like a mother. My whole life, she jumped down my throat about every little mistake I made, but this…she didnae.”

Andrew closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the window, wishing he could make Colin understand how amazing he was. George and Elizabeth had belittled Andrew growing up, but they were merely siblings. How much worse must it be to have your own
mother
run you down? “I’m glad she was more supportive after that,” he told Colin.

“Uh-huh. So anyway, when I mentioned in session that the worst part of being outed was having to quit football, my therapist told me about a club in North Glasgow called the Warriors.”

Andrew smiled. “And the rest is history.”

“Not exactly. I had to wait until I was sixteen to be eligible. Then I failed my first trial with Charlotte, so I joined a team in a gay football league, which was great fun but not exactly high-level play. Then on my second Warriors trial, I made the team, and the next season I was starting.”

“It must have felt good to find kindred spirits.”

“Yeah, I didn’t feel so alone anymore. And between the players and fans of both teams, I met
so
many hot guys. Hot gay lads who love the football. Do you know how rare that is?”

“Try finding hot gay
toffs
who love football. I think I’m the sole member of that club.”

“That must make you president.” Colin gave a soft laugh. “You know, a year ago I thought I’d die without the game. It saved me. But then I started at uni, and that was a thing. Then I started campaigning for independence, and that was another thing.” He sighed. “Then I met this wee fandan called Lord Andrew, and that was the biggest thing of all.”

“Oh,” Andrew whispered as his stomach tingled. Colin had spoken Andrew’s title with almost no sarcasm.

He wanted to ask if Colin still felt the urge to cut himself. He wanted to reach through the phone and hold him. He wanted to hop on the next train north—even if it meant traveling coach class—to be with him again.

Out in the hallway, the grandfather clock struck midnight. “Happy Referendum Day,” he told Colin. “How are you feeling?”

“Excited. Terrified.” Colin let out a long breath. “Scotland’s always been the land of glorious defeats. We’re so proud of how bravely we fight, like victory doesnae matter. But this time it’s not enough to fight well, cos if we lose…it’s over. We’ll never get another chance.” He cleared his throat. “So we’ll talk Friday, then? Tomorrow’s gonnae be mental, and we’d best stay out of each other’s faces until it’s all over.”