Playing With Fire (Glasgow Lads Book 3) (32 page)

Robert’s brows scrunched together. “Liam, I promise that when you wake, I’ll still be naked, and I’ll still be yours.” He leaned in and kissed him softly. “Tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, and the next day, and the—”

“Okay, I get the picture.” Liam reached down and drew up the covers, enveloping them in warmth. “Now shut up and spoon me.”

= = =

Once Robert was asleep, Liam rose from the bed, quickly dressed, and went to the living room. He was pleasantly surprised at his lack of soreness, having assumed Robert’s size and inexperience would leave him wincing. But Robert had been as careful with Liam’s body as he was with his heart.

After fetching a snack of toast and cheese, Liam sat on the sofa and opened his laptop. Most nights he didn’t sleep until three or four a.m., so his brain wasn’t remotely tired now. On the contrary, it was buzzing with questions needing immediate answers.

When he opened his web browser, a news headline flashed in a shouty, all-caps font.

MASSIVE ‘WEATHER BOMB’ TO SMASH SCOTLAND AND NORTHERN IRELAND

Though he’d not gone online for meteorological information, Liam clicked to read the article. It warned of sixty-mile-per-hour winds, giant waves swamping the west coast, and widespread power outages.

Brilliant.
Slightly crap weather meant brisk business at the pub, but
very
crap weather meant people stayed home. If Hannigan’s lost power, Liam would lose a shift. With Christmas on the way—not to mention a new sibling—he needed all the hours he could get.

He scrolled down to the satellite image of the storm tracking across the North Atlantic from Iceland. “Fuck’s sake,” he whispered, his skin prickling at the size and thickness of the clouds.

Hoping to banish the uneasy feeling the coming storm had given him, Liam typed his search terms into the bar near the top of the browser:

immigrating to the us from the uk

After wading through sites trying to sell him immigration (or emigration—he wasn’t sure what the difference was) services, he found his way to the US Department of State’s Bureau of Consular Affairs.

The labyrinth of terms and options made his head hurt, but Liam eventually figured out Robert’s path. He clicked on
permanent work visa
.

Naturally, there were several types, each with descriptive paragraphs and unique forms to fill out. The US government apparently enjoyed making people jump through as many hoops as the UK’s.

Pausing to rub his neck, Liam read the list of worker types, chuckling at the phrase
alien of extraordinary ability
. “Sounds like you, mate.” But after reading the descriptions, Liam wasn’t sure which category of worker Robert fell into. No matter—that was up to his employer to decide, as they’d be the ones filling out the paperwork for his visa.

“Now what about me?” he murmured.

He scrolled to the bottom of the list, where he found an option for
unskilled workers
, which was no doubt what the State Department considered bartenders (though he’d like to see John Kerry or Hillary Clinton try to wrangle a room full of raging Celtic fans after a League Cup loss). Perhaps he could pop over to the States with Robert as a tourist and find a job at a pub, whose owner could then file for a visa on Liam’s behalf.

Maybe this could work.

Out of curiosity, he clicked on the PDF containing the instructions for filling out the I-140 form, wondering if there were really one hundred thirty-nine other immigration forms or if they just wanted to make it sound impressive and intimidating. Scanning the types of eligible employees, he zeroed in on the last:

An unskilled worker (requiring less than 2 years of specialized training or experience) to perform labor for which qualified workers are not available in the United States.

Those last words turned his gut to stone.

Then hope reignited as he realized he already had more than two years of experience. America considered him a
skilled
worker, which was found under number 4—

And there was that phrase again:
to perform labor for which qualified workers are not available in the United States.

Liam curled his lips under his teeth, biting down hard to hold back a groan of despair. He was no expert in American culture, but he was fairly certain there was no lack of bartenders. Or massage therapists, for that matter.

He really was useless after all.

“H
OW
’
S
THE
WEATHER
over there?”

Robert hesitated, wondering if Amanda were joking. Their Skype connection was a bit shaky due to the eighty-mile-per-hour winds ripping through Glasgow, so he couldn’t clearly glimpse the expressions on the faces of his two interviewers. He could see, however, that they weren’t much older than he was.

“It’s bad,” he said, “even for Scotland. We’re having an explosive cyclogenesis.”

“A what?” Dev put a hand to his ear. “What’s exploding?”

Robert reminded himself to speak slowly and clearly so they could understand his accent. “Everything, pretty much. Explosive cyclogenesis is the scientific term for ‘weather bomb.’ This morning the Western Isles had waves of—hold on…” He switched to his web browser to check the exact figures. “Fourteen meters. That’s about forty-five feet,” he added, in case they didn’t do metric. “Bad day for sailors.”

And for footballers. Robert had looked forward to seeing Liam at last night’s practice session, where they might have even told the team about their relationship and his orientation. But Charlotte had canceled training, seeing as it was impossible to walk more than a few feet down the street without getting blown over.

“Fourteen-meter waves?” Amanda stared at him, her mouth agape. “Robert, there’s something you need to see.” She picked up the laptop, making him feel motion-sick as she moved across the room. “Close your eyes until I get it set up.” He took her suggestion, and ten seconds later she said, “Okay, open your eyes.”

Robert saw a simple rear garden, no more than a tenth-of-an-acre patch of grass, but flowers were still blooming in the beds lining either side. On the far edge, a man in a T-shirt—a
T-shirt
, in
December
—was bent over the dirt.

“Say hi, Rick!” Amanda called.

Rick waved a leafy plant over his shoulder, then turned to grin at the camera. “Just picking basil for tonight’s pasta. My turn to cook.”

“Ready Fire Game is kind of a family,” Amanda said off-screen. “Most of us come from far away and are hopelessly single, thanks to the business. Since we work most evenings and weekends here, we decided to start making our own food instead of getting fat on takeout. Now hold on, this is what I most wanted you to see.” She tilted the screen upward.

“Oh,” Robert whispered. The sky was pure blue, dotted by only a pair of whimsical-looking clouds, like something out of a children’s animated TV show. The sun, though angled low due to the season, shone sharp and bright on an oak tree that still held its leaves. “It’s beautiful.”

“I know,” Amanda said. “I’m from Vancouver, which is gorgeous—like Scotland—but it also rains all the fucking time there.”

“You’re Canadian? How is that all sorted, being able to work in the States?”

“You get an employment visa—you’ve probably heard of green cards? Hang on, I’m carrying you back in.” The camera shifted rapidly, stealing Robert’s view of the sunny blue sky. “Sometimes the paperwork makes you want to say ‘screw it all’ and go back home, but you manage.” There was a thud as Amanda set the laptop back on the table indoors. “Employers file visa applications for people they want to hire. You’d probably sail through the process, considering it’s a specialized position and you’re extremely qualified.”

“And probably not a terrorist,” Dev added as he adjusted the computer to get them both in the shot.

Amanda smiled. “We’d also help with other parts of the immigration process,” she told Robert, “to make the whole thing less painful.”

At the word
painful
, he thought of Liam. “What if someone wanted to come with me from Scotland?”

“You mean like a family member?” Dev asked.

“No, I mean like—” He stopped himself from saying
friend
. “Like a boyfriend.”

Neither of them so much as blinked at the
B
-word, but Dev shook his head. “Only your spouse and kids can immigrate with you. Your boyfriend could come visit for three months as a tourist, but that’s it. Sorry.”

Robert tried to keep his face smooth, even as his jaw ached and his eyes began to burn. “I see.”

“I had to leave my girlfriend in Vancouver,” Amanda said. “We’re still together, and she visits a lot. But that’s only a two-and-a-half-hour flight.” She looked at Dev. “How long did it take us to get to London?”

“About thirteen hours, connecting through Dublin. Cost about eleven hundred dollars each—and that was the cheap flight. Nonstop was more like fifteen hundred.”

His stomach sank. Seven hundred pounds to get to California and back. Even if Robert could afford to pay the airfare, Liam couldn’t leave his job for three months without losing it.

“Obviously if you came aboard,” Amanda said, “RFG would pay your relocation costs. But once you’re here, you’d have to pay for any trips home.”

“On the other hand,” Dev said, “as a European you’d be ideal to help represent the company at EGX, which is twice a year. So you could take a day or two to visit Glasgow then if you wanted.”

Robert’s skin chilled. A day or two twice a year to see Liam. A mere one percent of their lives would be spent together.

“Anyway.” Amanda smacked her hands together. “Moving on to the actual work part of the interview…”

They discussed the games in Robert’s portfolio and what he’d been developing since September. He asked them loads of questions as well, about their business philosophy, development processes, and market analysis. As indicated by their name—a play on the cheeky, cliché-reversal business strategy “Ready Fire Aim!”—RFG was nimble and customer-driven. They listened to what gamers wanted, then provided it as quickly as possible. It was safe to say Robert would never be bored there.

“If resources were no object,” Dev said, “which idea of yours would you most like to see get off the ground?”

Robert launched into his ready answer. “I’ve always wanted to combine video game genres, especially my two favorites, graphic adventures and sports.”

“Hm.” Dev tapped a ballpoint pen against his chin. “How would something like that be played?”

“Think of
Dragon Age
, for example. You have to kill demons and all, but the game’s about much more than fighting. There’s a bigger narrative, with mysteries to solve and characters to romance. So in a sport-adventure game, instead of battling with guns or swords, you’d play a match. If you win, you get to continue, just like in an adventure game.” He forced himself to stop there, in case they decided to steal his idea.

“Is there a market for that, you think?” Amanda asked Robert.

“Most people say no. They say gamers who like sport don’t like stories and vice versa. But sport is full of stories—about fear, loss, heroic sacrifice, and especially redemption.” Just then a great boom came from outside, making Robert jump in his seat. “Fuck. Sorry.”

“Was that thunder?” Dev asked. “In December?”

Robert glanced at the soggy flakes battering his window. “Thunder-snow, specifically.”

“It never snows in Sunnyvale,” Amanda said. “I’m pretty sure there’s a law against it. Anyway, I love your sports adventure idea—not saying we’d develop something like that, but it shows you can think out of the box.”

“Given that,” Dev said, “have you ever considered starting your own company?”

Only since I could walk.
Robert wondered if it would be wise to tell prospective employers he wanted to be his own boss. “Maybe,” he said, “but I’ve got no money.”
There, let them think me naive to the ways of funding.

Sure enough, Amanda laughed as if he’d said something adorable. “You use other people’s money.” She spread her hands to gesture at the room around her. “This little bungalow may look like a shithole, but because of the location, it’s a million-dollar shithole. If it weren’t for venture capital, we’d be living in the streets.”

The interview lasted another hour, during which Robert met other members of the small startup company, including Rick from the garden, a faux-hawked girl named Polly, and Rick’s golden retriever, Zaphod. The humans all seemed happy but exhausted, eager to share their workload with new hires.

Five minutes before the interview ended, Robert saw a text pop up on his phone:

Dani: How’d it go???

So after he signed off with Ready Fire Game, Robert phoned his girlfriend-turned-friend.

Dani answered straightaway. “Well?”

“It seemed good.” He stood and pulled his foot up behind him to stretch his quads, which felt like they’d shrunk during the interview. “They won’t make any decisions until after Christmas. So at least I can put it out of my head during exams.”

“Are they okay with waiting until you graduate?”

“They’re expanding in two waves—one at the beginning of next year and one in about six months when the next bit of funding comes in.”

“Wow, Silicon Valley,” she said. “So much brain power in one place. I’m jealous.”

“No, you’re not.” Robert sat on the floor to stretch his hamstrings. “You like studying things. You’ll be happy in grad school. Me, I cannae wait to get out.”

“Out of uni or out of Glasgow?”

“Out of uni.” His stomach felt full of lead again as he recalled what Amanda and Dev had said about Liam. “I wish I could stay in Glasgow.”

“And do what, I.T. work for a bank? You’d kill yourself in six months.”

“I know.” He pulled his knees to his chest and rested his forehead upon them. “Talking of suicides, have you looked at the new Glasgow Effect data?”