Playing With Fire (Glasgow Lads Book 3) (35 page)

“Glasgow Uni.” Eastbank Academy was one of the few East End public schools where it was assumed the pupils would continue to higher education. Tuition was more or less free in Scotland, so even poor Scots could attend uni if they were willing and able.

To the dismay of their teachers and headmaster, Liam had been able but not willing. He’d gone straight into a job, convinced that university was a waste of time.
“Books and lectures won’t put food on Ma’s table,”
he’d said.

Robert and Liam had seen to it that their divergent career paths never led them apart. Their friendship had survived Robert’s move across the city, his acquisition of new mates from every walk of life, and even his evolving tastes in food and drink. Through all these changes, he and Liam had made room for each other, accepting each other as the men they were and the men they were becoming.

And tonight, Robert had destroyed it all in an instant.

He stood and thanked the kind nurses, then walked out into the wind, leaving them to their holiday suicide conversation. He made it halfway to the bus stop outside Glasgow Cathedral before remembering he couldn’t take his cigarette aboard. So Robert turned west and began to walk home. He needed the time to think anyway.

He’d never meant to push Liam over the edge. He’d only wanted to make him stop hurting. Even now, he was sliced clean through by the memory of his boyfriend’s face as they’d endured the rest of the Ferris wheel ride, Liam’s fear of heights swamped by a more unbearable terror, one that no doubt made him feel ten times as helpless.

Halfway across the University of Strathclyde campus, Robert finished his cigarette, surprised to find he didn’t particularly want another. He’d expected to feel different after falling off the ex-smoker wagon. He’d expected to go racing into the nearest shop to buy another pack, in thrall once more to his tobacco masters. Instead he felt jittery and a wee bit sick.

It began to snow, but Robert walked on past the bus stops, still thinking.

He’d said a lot of stupid things tonight, but the worst was his ultimatum, he now realized. He’d only meant to prove his love, let Liam know he’d never leave him behind. Like Tom had. Like Liam’s father had. But Liam’s parents had once been married, so why would marrying Robert make him feel secure?

Besides, Robert’s timing had been pure shit. Receiving a marriage proposal while one’s mum was having a miscarriage would put anyone in a rage. Robert was lucky Liam hadn’t chucked him through the waiting room windows.

Frustrated, Robert kicked a chunk of ice against a nearby brick wall. It shattered into a thousand silver shards that skittered across a fallen poster. The poster’s soggy, star-spangled front advertised a country-Western singer who’d appeared last week at the Hydro Arena.

Go west, young man.
What was that line from? A movie? A pop song? Was it good advice or an empty promise?

Robert had already gone as far west as he could bear. His roots were back in the East End, and those roots were as stubborn as a dandelion’s. Robert could be yanked out of there, but a piece of him would always linger behind, alive, ready to regenerate. No matter how far he traveled, he’d feel that chunk of root waiting beneath cold damp soil and concrete, connected to him forever.

His steps paused when he heard Christmas music still playing at George Square, a few streets from where he stood. The holiday lights created a colorful halo in the distance, their brightness multiplied by the falling snow.

Robert turned that way now, driven by a masochistic impulse to see the last place he and Liam had been happy. The wind whipped up, turning the snowfall harsh. What had started as a cozy Christmasy drift was now a smothering swarm.

It never snows in Sunnyvale
, Amanda had promised.

Suddenly there was a screech of tires. Robert turned to see a small black car fishtailing around the corner. The driver turned at the next juncture, nearly flattening a pair of startled pedestrians. In the next moment, a police siren wailed, crescendoing then fading as the squad car swept past.

“Fuck’s sake,” Robert muttered as he crossed the street. “Must be a
Grand Theft Auto
fan.” He loved that game himself and admired its Scottish creators, but he hated how
GTA
and the like portrayed cities as violent jungles. He’d often felt grateful no one had set a video game in Glasgow, with its reputation for violence and degradation.

He reached George Square and stood for a moment on the corner, taking in the Christmas music and lights, watching people play, shop, eat, and laugh together in defiance of this fierce new storm.

“Och, it’s pure Baltic!” said a man Robert’s age, walking past holding hands with a young woman. “Sure you don’t want to give it a miss and go home?”

“We’ve got tickets for the skating,” she said, tugging him across the street, “so we’re fuckin’ skating.”

The lad laughed and hurried along, wrapping his arm around his girlfriend and planting a kiss on her cheek as he caught up. Then he slipped suddenly in the gutter. The lass doubled over in hysterics, no doubt imagining him trying to ice-skate if he could barely stand up straight on wet concrete.

Robert skirted the square, heading toward home again. Soon his mind returned to thoughts of a Glasgow video game. How could it ever capture the complexity, the
bipolarity
of this city? What narrative could combine the slums of Shettleston with Christmas in George Square?

Maybe it was just a nicotine side effect, but Robert was getting a familiar flutter at the back of his mind, the sort that occurred when a big idea was approaching his mental horizon. He barely heard the music and laughter around him, or saw the colored lights, or felt the snow making its way down the back of his collar. He just kept his eyes on the pavement in front of him, avoiding the lines that separated the dark-gray stone rectangles from—

Wait. Stone rectangles? Wrong surface, wrong street.

He looked up to see that instead of continuing west to go home, he’d turned south from the square and was nearly at the Gallery of Modern Art. As always, a dozen or so people were gathered about the base of the Duke of Wellington statue. As always, the mounted Duke wore a traffic cone on his head, placed there by—well, someone—despite its daily removal by the police.

Robert wandered closer to the statue, mesmerized by the glitter of Christmas lights in the eyes of the Duke’s horse. He remembered how when he was a wean, his mum had told him that every Glaswegian adult was required to sign up for “traffic-cone duty”—like jury duty, but more important. He’d believed it until he was at least eight.

Tonight, in addition to the usual orange cone, the Duke was wearing a fluffy white Father Christmas beard. Robert nearly smiled. His parents would’ve loved that.

He pulled out his phone and took a photo of the Santa-fied statue, then turned and took a selfie with the Duke, struggling to keep his eyes open against the icy snowflakes.

Finally he placed his hand on the cold marble base of the statue and bowed his head as if to pray.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to his city. “I love you, but I have to leave.” He stared at his freezing toes, wondering if they’d ever stand in this exact spot again. Maybe, if he made a point of coming here again in June before he moved away. But what of all the other places in Glasgow he’d visited for the last time?

As he stood there, trying to convince himself to hop on the nearest bus bound for his warm and cozy flat, a small red sheet of paper blew over his shoes. It plastered itself against the statue base, held fast by the wind.

Robert bent over and saw it was a suicide hotline flyer. As he picked it up, he thought of the lad at the hospital, hanged by a bedsheet, and how people in the East End killed themselves at a much higher rate than the UK average.

Then his hand froze. His entire frame froze. His mind seemed to use up all the heat in his body as it smoldered, then sparked, then caught fire with The Idea to End All Ideas.

“Oh my God,” he whispered.

Robert straightened up, slowly and cautiously, as if a sudden move would chase away the thought. Clutching the flyer in his hand, he turned for home—for real this time—and began to walk.

All the way up Buchanan Street, past the stately Church of Scotland with its deluxe nativity scene, past the glittering shops of the Christmas Carnival, Robert thought, thought, thought. When the thoughts came too fast, he took out his phone and began to dictate, hoping that the speech-to-text function could handle his rapid speech and Glaswegian accent, and that the device’s case would protect it from the sheets of icy snow.

When he reached the top of Buchanan at the Royal Concert Hall, he looked back downhill, at the quarter-mile of cold, wet holiday revelers.

“This isn’t goodbye,” he whispered.

He saved his dictated note and brought up his contacts. As desperately as he wanted to phone Liam and tell him his idea, Robert had learned his lesson. He needed to get things in place, find out if this could actually work, before making promises he couldn’t keep.

Besides, if he ran back to Liam now, banging on about the Solution to Everything, he’d look an absolute loon. So instead he phoned the one person who could tell him if he was, in fact, mad as a hatter.

“I barely slept last night,” Dani answered, her voice slurred. “So this better be important.”

“Not
important
, exactly,” Robert said, heading up Sauchiehall Street toward home. “More like earth-shattering.”

L
IAM
TOOK
ANOTHER
garland tie from its packet and handed it up to Scarlett. “You sure you don’t want me to do that? I’m taller.”

“Men always do this wrong—yes, even gay men.” Standing on a chair beside Hannigan’s memorabilia wall, she adjusted the green simulated-pine Christmas garland on its hanger. “It’s gotta lie naturally.”

“It’s made of plastic. It’ll never do anything naturally.”

“That’s why it needs extra help.” She tilted her head, pursing her bright-red lips as she examined the decoration. “Nah, not quite right.” She reached up again.

Liam looked around the near-empty pub and sighed. Normally he would’ve thought it funny that some of their regulars had torn down the garland to wear as victory sashes after Celtic’s 4-1 win yesterday. But nothing seemed funny today.

Last night’s miscarriage was hitting him harder than he’d expected. As worried as he’d been about how they’d support another child, he had to admit he’d already been imagining the baby, wondering if it’d be a boy or a girl, what its name would be, whether it would have Ma’s dark eyes and hair or whether her Italian heritage would once again be swamped by pale Scots-Irish DNA.

“I can’t believe the boys got so excited about beating St. Mirren,” Scarlett said. “Not exactly an epic foe.”

“Aye, but after the midweek Europa League loss, Celtic fans’ll take whatever we can get.”

Behind him, the front door opened with a whoosh. He turned quickly, hoping it would be Robert, whom he already missed with a deep, piercing ache.

Instead he saw the last man he’d ever expected.

“Evan.” Liam set down the garland ties and went behind the bar, watching Fergus’s ex-boyfriend sweep a cool gaze over his surroundings.

“Liam. How’s it going?” The former Warriors captain glided onto the nearest barstool, drawing down the zipper of his leather jacket so soundlessly Liam wondered if it was oiled.

“Erm…okay.” Liam glanced at Scarlett, who stared down from her chair, mouth hanging slack—the usual expression of straight women and gay men upon glimpsing Evan Hollister. “What’ll you have?”

Evan pointed a dimpled Nordic chin at the tap in front of him. “Guinness is fine.”

Holding back a frown, Liam placed a pint glass beneath the tap. A proper Guinness slow-pour took well over a minute, during which Liam would be forced to chat to Evan. He’d never forgiven his former captain for hurting Fergus. Though he set aside his hostility on the pitch in the name of team spirit, they weren’t on the pitch now. Already on edge after his falling out with Robert—he couldn’t yet call it a breakup—Liam wasn’t confident he could be civil. So he let the silence stretch out as the mud-brown beer trickled into the glass.

By the time it was half full, Liam couldn’t stand it anymore. Barmen weren’t meant to be quiet. “Shame about Warriors’ canceled match yesterday, aye?”

“It’s looking a bad winter this year.” Evan peeked over his shoulder at Scarlett, who was nearly finished her garland project. Then he turned back to Liam, folding his hands atop the bar. “But I didn’t come here to discuss the weather.”

“I’m afraid that’s all I’ve got time for tonight. I’m pretty busy.”

Evan’s eyes shifted, taking in the complete lack of customers. “I see.”

“It’s Sunday dinner hour,” Liam said. “The men’ll be swarming in any moment, needing a break after all that tedious family time.”

“Then I’d best get to the point. Why are you being a prick about Fergus’s wedding?”

“I’m not being—wait, how do you know I’m being a prick?”

“I have my sources. I don’t want to see Fergus hurt.”

“Because that’s your department?” Liam set Evan’s pint in front of him, by some miracle not throwing it in his lying, cheating face.

Evan looked away, wincing as though struck by a sudden headache. “I know I brought him—brought all the Warriors—a lot of pain.” He spoke softly in his faint yet unmistakable Orkney accent, the syllables undulating like a Scandinavian’s. “I can’t ever make up for what I did. Just know that I’m sorry.”

Liam had no snappy response for what seemed a sincere apology, so he kept quiet.

“The only consolation,” Evan said, “is that my departure let Fergus fall in love with John.” He clenched his pint glass with both hands. “Which is why I can’t stand by while you ruin his happiness.”

“Obviously I don’t want him and John to break up. I just think they’re rushing into something they’ll regret.”