Playing With Fire (Glasgow Lads Book 3) (34 page)

“What’s taking so long?” he asked Robert. “It’s a fucking ultrasound. Are they charging the wand with solar power?”

“Sorry, mate.” Robert had stopped pacing fifteen minutes ago and was now sitting at one end of the sofa, paging through what looked like a five-year-old gardening magazine. “Sure I can’t fetch you tea or crisps or something?”

“Nah, thanks. The caffeine’d send me over the edge, and I’d probably just boak the crisps.”

“Your ma’s in good hands.”

“I know, I know, but I hate not being in there.” His mother had taken Marianne with her into the examination room, telling Liam,
“Female parts aren’t exactly your specialty.”

“Where’s your mother’s boyfriend?” Robert asked. “Shouldn’t he be here?”

“Archie? Fuck him. He never comes around much anymore.” He sat heavily on the sofa beside Robert, the vinyl cushion making a fart-like squeak. “Why are straight men such bastards?”

“You’re asking me? As if I’ve ever been one?”

He sighed at Robert’s hypersensitivity. “No, really—what is it about women that makes men who fuck them want to hurt them?”

“Most of us don’t want to hurt anyone.”

“Please just humor me and answer the question. My whole life, I’ve watched this tug-of-war between men and women, and men always seem to win.”

Just then, a relieved-looking young couple entered from the hallway where Liam’s mum had disappeared. The woman held a protective hand over her rounded abdomen as they strolled to the discharge desk at the far end of the waiting room.

Robert answered, his voice low. “You know that project I’m doing with Dani, the one with the health data, where we’re trying to figure out why Glaswegians die so young?”

Liam felt a flicker of jealousy at the thought of Robert working late nights with his ex-girlfriend, but that was stupid. “What about it?”

“It got me thinking.” Robert paused. “Glasgow’s a hard city. No matter how many posh shops and wine bars it gets, there’s still an edge to this place.”

“It’s cos the people are hard.” Liam gave a bitter chuckle. “‘People Make Glasgow’—it’s right there in the city slogan.”

“And hard people are always looking for a fight. We’re all trying to protect what we’ve got, and sometimes all we’ve got is pride.”

“Aye, like my customers at the pub. Just last night I stopped a punch-up between these two old yins. They started fighting cos one guy thought this other guy was looking at him funny. Turns out the second guy had lost his glasses. He had one of those lazy eyes, you know?” He watched the young couple leave, hand in hand. Behind them, the discharge clerk slid shut her translucent window. “But that’s between men,” Liam said. “What about the way they treat women?”

“It’s all related, see. A man who’s a macho prick at work or at the pub won’t magically turn into a big softie when he goes home.” Robert lifted his hands, then dropped them in his lap. “What’s a woman supposed to do—try and out-macho-prick him?”

“But what about—I don’t know—love?”

“What about it? How can Glaswegians even express love when we’ve got a thousand slang words for ‘idiot’ but not a single term of endearment?”

Liam tried to come up with examples of harmonious couples he’d known. “Your parents always seemed happy to me.”

Robert’s eyes turned sad. “Even they used to kick off at each other over wee things. Until Mum got sick. Then Dad let her have her own way in everything.” Robert shook his head. “It’s horrible to say, but in those months before she died, they had some of their best days ever.”

Liam’s throat tightened at the sight of Robert’s wistful smile. They’d both lost so much. It wasn’t fair.

“I think my parents got on okay. I don’t remember them fighting much. That’s why I was so confused when Da left.” Liam rocked his feet against the floor. “I’ve got this one crystal-clear memory of sitting on the sofa between them, my father on the left and Ma on the right. Maybe we were watching TV, I don’t know. I remember getting squished between them and looking up to see them kissing.” He pressed his lips together. “I remember laughing at the funny noise their mouths made.”

Robert said nothing, just laid a soft hand on his shoulder. Liam wanted so bad to just curl up in his boyfriend’s arms and pretend the world away.

His phone dinged in his pocket. He pulled it out to see a text from Marianne:
It’s gone. :( We’ll be out in about 15.

Liam released a heavy breath and showed the message to Robert, whose face fell.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Me too.” Liam tucked his phone away, his chest aching with grief. “I don’t know why. It’s for the best, right? She cannae afford another kid. She cannae afford the ones she’s got. Maybe her body knew that.”

“Rich women have miscarriages all the time.”

“True.” Feeling suddenly drained, Liam sagged forward to rest his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. “This probably wasn’t your idea of a perfect second date.”

“My idea of a perfect date is one with you.” Robert paused. “And that sounded like a discount greeting card.”

“I’ll pretend I never heard it.”

“I meant, I don’t care what we do or where we go. And whatever happens, you’ve got me. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Until June,” Liam said, “when you’re away to California.”

“It’s not for certain.”

“It should be,” he said with vehemence. Then he glanced at Robert. “Sorry. I’m not angry. I’m happy for you. At least one of us should get to escape.”

“Everyone keeps using that word.” Robert leaned forward. “Listen, I did some research this week on emigrating to America.”

“So did I.” Liam’s gut felt heavy at the memory. “It’s pretty much a no-go for me.”

“Aye. Unless.”

Robert paused again, and Liam kept his eyes on the polished white floor at his feet. “Unless what?”

Robert took a deep breath. His long, slow exhalation ended with, “Unless we’re married.”

Liam froze. His throat began to close up, preventing all speech. His ears buzzed with panic and confusion, so he barely heard Robert’s next words:

“This must sound like the daftest thing in the world to you. You don’t even think Fergus and John should marry, and they’re older than we are, and they’ve been together for months. But if you think about it, you and I have been together fifteen years. I lived with you for ten months after Dad died. We already know all each other’s faults. There’s nae surprises left, save the good ones. And I—I don’t want to live without you.” Robert’s voice faded at the end of his sentence, but when he spoke again, it was strong and firm. “I
won’t
live without you, so you either marry me and come to California, or I’ll stay here in Glasgow and take whatever job I can.”

Liam covered his ears. This was
not
happening. Not now.

He heard only scraps of what Robert said next, something about a Supreme Court decision and the cost of airline tickets.

When Robert’s uncharacteristic blethering finally ceased, Liam uncovered his ears and said, “Are you finished?”

“Did you hear everything I—”

“Then please go.”

“Wh—what? Why?”

Liam closed his eyes and drew in a shuddering breath. “How could you do this to me?”

“Do what? I’m trying to help you—”

“
Help
me? By making me choose like this? I either marry you or doom you to a life of mediocrity?”

“You’re looking at this the wrong way. If you just think about it—”

“I said I couldn’t go to California because Ma needed me, what with a new wean coming. So now you’re thinking, ‘Oh, there’s no more baby, so Liam’s free to follow me halfway around the world.’”

“No,” Robert said in a horrified voice. “That’s not it at all.”

“But it does help, doesn’t it, her miscarriage?” Liam gritted his teeth with the effort not to shout. “Please leave—now, before I fucking lose it right here in the waiting room and they drag me up to the psych unit.”

“Mate…” Robert’s voice was choked with tears. He touched Liam’s back.

“Get off me!” Liam jerked away and wrapped his arms around his own waist. “I’m gonnae ask you once more—”

“Okay.” Robert stood and took a step toward the door. “I’ll give you a—”

“No. Don’t phone me tomorrow. Just finish your exams and we’ll…” His voice trailed off with his shortening breath.

“We’ll what?”

Liam couldn’t think of an answer. His mind felt suffocated by Robert’s request, coming as it did here and now.

“I don’t know, Rab,” he said finally. Then he shook his head, which seemed ten tons heavier with the weight of silence between them. “I don’t know what we’ll do.”

= = =

Robert walked from the hospital on wobbly legs, pulling on his coat with rubbery arms. His entire skeleton seemed ready to dissolve, as though an essential element had been leached from his bones.

When he got outside, the cold wind stopped him in his tracks, seemingly too much for his waning strength to overcome. Or maybe it wasn’t the wind. Maybe it was his inability to take one more step away from Liam.

Robert half turned, ready to run back to his boyfriend—if that’s still what he was—and plead forgiveness. He’d never meant to hurt Liam. He’d only wanted to show him a ray of hope in this dark night. But what Robert had seen as hope, Liam had seen as emotional blackmail.

His head sank in defeat. For several moments he just stood there, staring at the pavement, its pale-gray concrete painted a sickly streetlight orange.

What now?
Robert closed his eyes, hoping for a sign from within or without.

A familiar smell reached his nose then, sharp and harsh but oh-so-comforting. He raised his head and followed the scent around the corner of the building, mindless as a hound on the trail of a fox.

“Oh! Sorry, mate.” An older gent in a tan coat dodged out of his way, his breath dense with smoke.

“Nae bother.” Robert turned to ask him for a cigarette but couldn’t get the words out before the man disappeared through the hospital’s sliding automatic doors.

Spying a polished wooden bench between two tall bins topped with sand-filled ashtrays, Robert went over and sat down. At least this smoking area, tucked into a fold in the hospital’s exterior, was out of the wind. Here he could sit and think.

He zipped up his coat and put on his wool cap and gloves. The air zinged with the smell of snow. Above him the low clouds were heavy with it, reflecting so much city glow, they seemed to be lit from within.

A car pulled up in front of the hospital. Another man hobbled out to meet it, his face stoic but his posture showing pain. He couldn’t have been more than forty, judging by his still-dark hair, but already he seemed old. Robert couldn’t help thinking of the Glasgow Effect data’s bleakest lesson—how in Shettleston, the only UK district where life expectancy was falling, men now lived an average of fifty-five years. His own father hadn’t lasted even that long.

Get out for your own good
, Dani had told him.
Save yourself.

A woman near Robert’s age stepped out of the car, leaving the door open as she helped the man inside. The car stereo’s volume was turned up, blasting an indie-folk rendition of “Jingle Bell Rock.”

Robert drew up his knees and propped his heels on the edge of the bench, curling into himself like a wean. “Bell jingle rock jingle rock rock bell,” he sang. His breath hitched, but he pushed on. “Bell rock jingle rock bell rock bell. Rock bell jingle—”

The car door shut. A moment later, the young woman drove away with her father, or whoever that guy was to her. The belt of the man’s coat dangled from the door, nearly sweeping the tarmac.

Robert sang a few more stuttering lines of “Jingle Rock Bell,” then stopped when the tears began to clog his throat.

None of that
, he told himself as he tried to breathe in deep.
No crying in public. Or in private, for that matter.
He opened his eyes wide to let the wind dry them.

“I cannae wait until the holidays are over.”

“Christ, me neither.”

Robert turned his head at the sound of two women approaching.

The second voice, older and deeper, continued. “We get enough suicides the rest of the year. December’s fucking ridiculous.”

“Och, like that lad this morning, who hung himself with a bedsheet. Broke my heart, he—”

“Hanged,” the older lady said. “Clothes are hung, people are hanged.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. I learned it at school. You didn’t?”

The women rounded the corner and stopped when they saw Robert. “Oh,” said the younger one, a pretty brunette in a white coat with a faux-fur collar. She pulled an unlit cigarette from her mouth. “Sorry.”

The older woman lit her companion’s cigarette, then her own. “All right, lad?” she asked after taking a puff.

Robert nodded. “Can I have one of those?”

“Sorry.” The young one opened her coat to reveal a set of blue hospital scrubs. “We’re nurses. It’d be unethical to give you something so unhealthful.”

“I understand.” He started to turn away, almost relieved. But then he smelled the smoke again. “It’s just that I’ve had a really bad night.”

The older nurse clucked her tongue. “Here, take one of mine.”

Her coworker held her back. “Cat, are you mad? You know that’s against our Hippocratic Oath.”

“Get over yourself, lass. Hippocratic Oath’s for doctors, and anyway it only applies to our patients.” Cat stepped forward and handed Robert a cigarette. “Here, just one. And in return, you’ll settle a matter for us. Is it
hanged
or
hung
when it’s a person, like in a suicide?”

“Erm…” He stared at the lighter in her hand. “I was always taught it was
hanged
.”

“See, Deanna?” Cat flicked on the lighter. “There’s hope for the youth of today. You from these parts, lad?”

Robert nodded as he took the first puff. “Shettleston, between Sandyhills Park and St. Paul’s Church.”

“Oh? Did you go to Eastbank Primary?”

“Aye.” He attempted a polite smile even as his brain was doing cartwheels at its reunion with nicotine. “Then the Academy.”

“Well, that explains why you know the difference between
hung
and
hanged
. A fine school, so it is. You’re at university now, I assume?”