Playing With Fire (Glasgow Lads Book 3) (37 page)

“That’s a pretty good stat,” John said, “but it probably doesn’t make her feel any better.”

“No, it doesn’t. She says she feels so old now.” Liam’s throat thickened at the memory of his mother’s tear-streaked face when he’d visited her yesterday. “Also, she asked for her cigarettes back, the ones I took from her last month.”

“Did you still have them?” Fergus gave Liam a sideways look that asked,
Or did you smoke them yourself?

“I destroyed them.” Liam turned away to find a recycling bin, hiding his face as he braced himself for another wave of grief. Everything had seemed so possible the morning he and Robert had drowned the cigarettes, standing side by side in that hotel bathroom, watching the half pack of wee death-sticks swirl into their watery grave.

“And how are
you
doing?” Fergus asked when Liam rejoined them.

Liam just nodded and peeled back the opening on his cup of tea. He’d still told no one of his and Robert’s falling-out—not that many people knew they were together in the first place.

There was an electronic bleep from Fergus’s coat pocket. After checking his phone, he told them, “Charlotte says practice session’s canceled tonight. Supposed to be below freezing again with a nasty wind chill.”

Thank God.
Much as Liam hated the thought of shivering away another cold night in his flat, he hated even more the thought of seeing Robert before sorting out his own feelings about…everything.

“This is the most bizarre weather ever,” John said. “Snow on Saturday night, then warm as springtime on Sunday and yesterday. Still, I suppose training session being canceled is good news for Warriors still in exams.” He turned to Liam. “When’s Robert finished with his?”

He avoided John’s eyes. “Some time this week, I think.”

“Obviously, since they end Friday. Does he finish before then, unlike me?”

“Does it matter?” Liam snapped. Then he shook his head. “Sorry, John. I’m an arsehole in the morning.”

“It’s okay,” John said. “We’re glad you’re here.”

“Me too.” Liam scanned the couples around them. “Notice anything odd about these people?”

“That they’re all twice our age?” John asked. “Aye, we’ve not only noticed. We’ve received bags of advice from our LGBT elders.”

“They say we should wait.” Fergus sipped his coffee, giving Liam an
I-dare-you-to-agree
glance.

“They’re just jealous,” Liam said. “They’re wishing they could have your sort of wedding night, the sort involving double-digit orgasms.”

“Oh, that will be nice.” John beamed up at Fergus, and Liam felt something in his chest flip over in frustration, like an insomniac searching for a comfortable sleeping position.

“If they’re jealous,” Fergus said, “it’s because they’ve waited decades for the chance to marry, whilst we’ve waited only weeks.”

And you should wait more
, Liam thought but didn’t say. Not only was he was learning to keep his gob shut, but he was also beginning to question his knee-jerk rejection of the idea.

For Fergus and John, at least. Maybe marriage
would
work for them. John’s parents had divorced only this year, and they remained friendly, if not friends. Fergus’s parents, from what he’d told Liam, had had a happy marriage until his father’s death. Just like Robert’s mum and dad before she died.

Robert—there was a lad who’d make someone a good husband one day. But not now. And not Liam, not ever.

His heart growing heavy again, Liam stared at the pavement near his feet, where a single clump of ice survived in the shadow of a rubbish bin. A scrap of red Christmas wrapping paper was frozen inside the ice, a snowman’s silver face glittering in the street light.

“There you are, lovelies!”

Liam looked up to see a slim lad with large, black-rimmed glasses and a swoop of dark hair. In his fingerless-gloved hands he carried a large envelope, which he thrust between John and Fergus.

“The contracts!” John hugged him. “You’re a star.”

“I know.” The lad pulled a pen from his coat pocket. “Just need your wee signatures and then you are officially in possession of a wedding photographer.” He glanced at Liam. “Hiya.” Then he did a double-take. “Oh, it’s you.”

Fergus stepped back to introduce them. “Liam, this is Ben, our wedding planner. Ben, this is—”

“Liam Carroll. I’ve seen you on Robert’s calendar.”

Liam’s hand halted as it reached for Ben’s. “Right. I forgot, you’re one of his uni friends.”

“Yes.” Ben shook Liam’s hand with both of his own. “I was so sorry to hear of your falling-out.”

“What?” Fergus said. “Liam, when was this?”

Ben covered his mouth. “Sorry, I didn’t know it was a secret.”

Fergus glared at Liam. “Why didn’t you tell me you broke up?”

“We’re not broken
up
, we’re just…broken.” He turned to Ben. “What did Robert tell you?”

“I’ll not say another word.” Ben pinched his lips together and watched over John’s shoulder as he signed the contract. “Except that he’s learned his lesson.”

“What lesson?” Liam was already keen to throttle this lad he’d just met.

“I don’t know,” Ben said. “He’s up to something he says will change everything. I get the impression he says that a lot.”

“He does.”

“But this time, he says, he wants to—what was the phrase he used?” Ben squinted up at the sky, the street light glinting off his glasses. “Something like, ‘see to it my fantasies actually fit with other people’s realities.’ Does that make sense to you?”

“Not really.”

“I know what that’s like,” John said, “getting a grand mad idea and expecting everyone else to fall in line and be thrilled about it.” He gave Fergus a rueful look.

“Most of your grand mad ideas are brilliant ones.” Fergus turned to Liam. “Now what happened with you and Robert?”

“We just—” Liam stopped and looked at Ben, who was taking the contracts back from John.

“Shall I leave?” asked the wedding planner, though his offer to depart sounded less than sincere.

“Whatever,” Liam growled, then answered Fergus in one breath. “Robert’s got an interview with a company in California, and if he gets the job, he wants us to marry so I can go with him.”

“Oh,” Ben said softly as the other two just stared at Liam. “He didn’t tell me any of that.”

“Hold on.” John raised his hand that held the coffee cup. “Why would you need to marry?”

“Only spouses and children can immigrate with someone who’s getting a work visa.” Liam sipped his tea to melt the lump in his throat. “America wants to keep single hooligans like me outside its borders, I guess so that I don’t corrupt their youth.”

“But couldn’t you just, I don’t know”—Fergus scratched his jaw—“try the long-distance thing for a while?”

Liam shook his head. “We talked about that after Robert first got the interview. California’s so far away and so fuckin’ expensive to fly to, we’d see each other maybe a few days a year.”

“That’s even dafter than marrying,” Ben said. “It’s one thing to be long-distance from the beginning, say if you’d met an American lad online. You’d not have the habit of being together. But you two have seen each other every week for how many years?”

“Fifteen.” Liam wondered how much Robert had told Ben about their history.

“So for you,” Ben said, “a long-distance relationship would be like one of those crash diets. They don’t work—believe me, I know. Also, they make you want to die.”

Liam nodded, a pain rippling through his gut at the thought of five thousand miles and eight time zones separating him and Robert. “It’s not an option for us. So we either stay in Scotland as we are or we move to California married. Or he goes there alone.”

“I vote for the first one,” John said.

“So do I, obviously,” Liam said, “but Rab’s career is not a democracy.” He sighed. “I cannae hold him back from what he loves. I won’t be that selfish.”

After a brief, sad pause, Fergus said, “I still don’t understand why you broke up.”

“I know.” Liam sipped his tea as he considered what to tell them. He couldn’t reveal that Robert had proposed whilst Ma was having a miscarriage. It was a shit thing to do, but Liam sort of understood it. No matter what, he refused to make his best mate look a prick to their friends. “It’s complicated. And I told you, we’re not broken up, we’re just—”

“Broken, right.” Fergus sighed, then put on his stalwart-football-captain face. “So how do we unbreak you?”

“M
C
K
ENZIE
,
YOU
’
RE
BEING
a proper good sport.”

Robert ripped his eyes from the latest in what seemed an endless parade of private strippers performing a lap dance upon John. “Sorry?” he asked Duncan, shouting to be heard over the thump of dubstep-laced disco.

“Being the only straight guy at a gay stag party?” The Warriors striker gave him a broad grin. “That takes guts.”

Robert felt another pang of guilt at the continuance of his lie. Tonight would’ve been a brilliant time to stop pretending he didn’t fancy men, but coming out at John’s stag do would’ve been a bit spotlight-stealing. Besides, he wanted Liam by his side at that moment, even if it was only as a friend.

“Nah, it’s cool.” Robert pointed to the glittering testicle-shaped piñata above the dance floor. “I cannae wait to see what comes out when that’s broken.”

“Christ A’Michty,” said Duncan’s boyfriend, Brodie, who was watching the stripper with an avid gaze. “That thong must be chafing his dowp affa bad.”

“His dowp?” Robert asked Duncan in a low voice.

“His arse. It’s Doric.” Duncan beamed at his boyfriend, who’d not lost his North East dialect after a year in Glasgow. “It’s a-Doric-able.”

Robert looked away from the stripper, unable to see a nearly naked man without thinking of Liam. His skin still tingled at the thought of how his lover had felt moving beneath him, how he’d taken Robert inside, so full of trust.

And Robert had demolished that trust by asking for too much too soon. If only he’d waited a few days, he could have made everything right without having to push Liam into a terrible choice. Then again, Robert’s idea had come during that long, cold walk home from the hospital last Saturday night, so perhaps he’d had to ruin things before he could fix them for good.

Still, it was small consolation, considering it might already be too late to heal the breach between them.

“Cheese tadgers?” asked a bare-chested, bow-tied waiter with a tray of passed appetizers.

Brodie turned around. “Ooh, I’m fair starving.” He took a plate and reached for the pieces of cheese, then froze when he saw they were shaped like wee penises. After a blushing glance at Robert, the lad picked up several and popped one in his mouth.

“This is a fantastic do.” Duncan gazed around at the posh nightclub’s exclusive private lounge. “Lord Andrew obviously spared no expense.”

“I don’t think he knows how.” Robert examined his crystal glass, filled with the best wine he’d ever tasted. “But I wish they’d combined the parties.”

“Seriously,” Duncan said. “I don’t get why Liam was so keen to have separate ones at the same time. Now we’ve all got to choose between John or Fergus—or go to both parties, which means dragging our drunken arses through the snow to the East End.” He stopped himself. “Still, I suppose there are worse problems to have.”

Robert nodded. Liam had had his heart set on giving his middle-class mate Fergus “a once-in-a-lifetime discount ned stag do,” complete with bottles of cheap cider and tonic wine, an orange-spray tanning booth, and tracksuit-wearing dancers who strip down to nothing but their knockoff Burberry caps.

It sounded quite the lark to Robert, but Colin had made him promise he’d stay here at John’s party until the end.
“Andrew and I need your help for a special event,”
he’d claimed, without revealing what it was.

Colin and Andrew were now standing near the lounge’s entrance, the latter checking the time on his platinum watch. Suddenly Colin pulled his phone from his pocket. He smiled at the screen, then hurried over to the DJ.

“Something’s about to happen,” Robert said to Duncan.

“I hope it’s the piñata.”

As the music’s volume dipped, Andrew slid out through the door, probably to brief his beefy bouncer on whatever was coming next. Robert and Duncan shared a look of anticipation.

The door to the lounge slammed open again, revealing not Andrew but Jamie. “All right, then!” The Warriors fullback barreled in, wearing a mass of jingling gold chains around his neck and waving a bottle of Buckfast wine in each hand. “That’s us neds crashing your doooooo!”

“Oh my God.” John squirmed out from under his stripper. “Pardon me. Sorry.” He ran toward the door and leapt into the arms of his fiancé, who was also clad in fake-gold chains.

Fergus kissed John as he set him down. “For once I’m the surpriser.”

“I adore this new side of you.” John gave him a high-five, then turned to embrace Jamie, then Fergus’s brother, Malcolm, then another pair of chaps who must have been Fergus’s coworkers.

Robert moved toward the door, passing Warriors wingers Marcelo and Alisdair as they entered with stacks of pizza boxes. The volume of the party had trebled with the new arrivals, but one person was conspicuously missing.

“Where’s Liam?” Robert asked Colin as he helped him clear a space on the elegant buffet table for the pizza and cheap booze. “Fergus’s stag do is his show.”

“I know, but—” Colin glanced at the door, which was still open but now veiled by a double-paned red velvet curtain. “He had philosophical issues about combining the events.”

“So he’s not coming?” Robert’s tight throat made his voice pitch high. “He’s missing his mates’ stag parties out of what, pride?”
Or is he simply avoiding me?

“Sorry, I’ve got a—a thing to do over there.” Colin headed back toward the DJ’s stage at the far side of the lounge.

Robert took a deep breath, then forced himself to go over and greet Fergus, who was standing with Duncan and Brodie.