Play On: A Glasgow Lads Novella (5 page)

“Och…” Brodie gasped, knees spreading wide, thighs trembling, hips jerking. Finally, in one moment, everything disappeared—past, future, memory, fantasy—everything but the singular surge of orgasm. His eyes locked open, fixed on the sandstone-red horizon of his pillowcase as his cum pulsed onto the bed beside him.

As his limbs slackened and his breathing slowed, Brodie’s first coherent thought was,
I fair needed that
.

His second thought was,
Fucking hell, now I need to wash the sheets.

B
RODIE
’
S
SOOTHING
EFFECT
vanished the moment Duncan stepped onto the Warriors’ practice pitch at Ruchill Park. The team had been stuck in a downward spiral since Evan’s abandonment, their once-solid bond unraveling as their form slid into mediocrity. With each sloppy pass from his teammates, Duncan’s fury grew, until he thought his head would burst into flames.

No one made Duncan rage more than Evan’s ex-boyfriend Fergus. The Warriors’ vice-captain had become a phantom of himself. His skin’s pallor and the dark circles beneath his eyes showed he was barely eating or sleeping. Tonight Fergus wore what looked like several days’ worth of ginger stubble, which meant he’d not bothered to shave since Saturday’s loss to Drumchapel.

Because of his skills and experience, Fergus had been moved up into Evan’s attacking midfielder position, which Duncan thought a huge mistake. As the Warriors’ defending midfielder, Fergus’s calm, analytical nature had made the team hard to beat. No one read an oncoming attack like Fergus. With precisely timed interceptions and tackles, he’d disrupt plays before opponents could even dream of shooting for goal. He’d kept the team so organized on the pitch, they seemed to share one collective brain.

Fergus was the one their adversaries had feared most, the one they’d fight to neutralize. In many ways, he’d been the team’s true leader.

But no longer. He refused to become the Warriors’ new captain, despite the urgings of their manager. He’d stopped offering his wise insights at team meetings. To Duncan, Fergus seemed to be fading away from football, and perhaps from the rest of the world as well.

Sprinting down the pitch near the end of practice—toward what should have been an easy score—Duncan pulled up short, stymied by yet another half-hearted pass from Fergus that went far behind him and out of play.

As the other side prepared to throw in the ball, Duncan darted over to the midfielder, utterly fed up. “What the hell’s your problem, mate?”

Fergus turned away, rubbing his eye. “No problem,” he said in his soft Highland lilt. “I passed it to you. You weren’t there.”

“You don’t pass to where I
am
, you pass to where I’m
going
.” Duncan followed him, gesturing at the goal. “That way I can keep running proper fast, which is my job, then score, which is my other job. Fuck’s sake, we’re taught this when we’re five years old. Have you gone off your head?”

Fergus whipped around, towering over Duncan, his haunted gaze chilling the air between them. “What do you think?” he whispered.

The whistle blew then, signaling the end of practice. Fergus turned away with a hollow scoff.

Duncan glanced at the touchline to see their manager, Charlotte Atchison, glaring at him, her face scrunched up against the low-angled evening sun. Hoping to avoid a lecture, he hustled to the other end of the pitch to gather equipment from their training drills.

He knew he was on thin ice as it was. His recent short temper had made him commit careless fouls, enough to earn a yellow-card caution in each of the Warriors’ two league matches since that fateful Cup quarterfinal. If he wasn’t careful, Charlotte would drop him for the next match, and maybe more.

As he collected the scattered footballs into their large net storage bag, he saw his fellow starting forward, Colin MacDuff, trotting toward him.

“Here, I’ll gi’e you a hand. Or a foot. Catch!” Colin lobbed one of the footballs at Duncan, who spread the bag wide open to let it sail in. “Result!” Colin raised his arms in triumph.

“Quality, mate. Do it again.”

Colin sent him another shot, but this one sailed a bit wide, to Duncan’s right side. He stopped it with his thigh, then tapped it up and over with his instep, straight into the bag.

“Get in!” Colin mimed a long-distance high-five, then walked toward the closest football. “So what’s got you round the twist, man?”

Duncan started to protest that he was fine, then stopped himself. He appreciated the spiky-haired, multi-tattooed North Glaswegian’s brutal honesty. As the two youngest Warriors, they’d had a friendly rivalry from day one. By working on their shooting skills together outside of practice, they’d clawed their way into the starting eleven. They were a team within a team. If there was anyone Duncan could talk to, it was Colin.

“Pissed off about Evan, I guess.”

“We all are. What makes
you
so special?”

“I didn’t say—”

“Look,
I’m
the hellraiser on this squad.” Colin fired a bullet of a shot that smacked Duncan’s knees. “
I’m
the loose cannon, the powder keg, the bampot.” He kicked another ball, this one at Duncan’s chest.

“Ow! Knock it—”

“You’re the cool yin, Mister Fuckin’ Reliable. Naebody rattles you.”

“But I don’t—”

“You cannae out-daft me, so gonnae no try it, ya dick.” Colin kicked the last ball straight at Duncan’s face. Instinctively Duncan bent his neck to head the ball straight back at Colin, who caught it in his arms.

“Okay.”

“Okay what?”

“Okay, I’ll chill.” Duncan opened the ball bag. “You are the bam, after all.”

“Sorry? Cannae hear you.”

“You’re the bam!” he shouted.

“Fuckin’ right.” Colin hurled the ball into the bag, then began leaping about like a chimpanzee on Adderall. “
I’m
the bam!
I’m
the bam!”

“Harris! A word?”

Duncan froze, then turned toward the touchline where Charlotte had just called to him. He gave her a wave of acknowledgment, a knot forming in his stomach.

“I’ll get the rest.” Colin picked up two more balls and brought them to the bag. “Any final wishes I should tell your next of kin?”

“Tell them to line my coffin with yellow cards. And instead of bagpipes, I want my funeral dirge to be played on referee’s whistles.”

Duncan headed toward Charlotte, frowning as he saw Fergus standing near her, arms crossed, looking a lot like the captain he lacked the balls to become.

“All right?” Duncan asked his manager, ignoring Fergus.

“I could put the same question to you.” Hands on her hips, Charlotte shook her head at him, her light brown ponytail brushing the hood of her jacket. “I’m worried about you, lad.”

Duncan took a step back. He’d been prepared for her wrath, not her concern. The look in her eyes made him feel like a broken-legged racehorse about to be put down.

“Harris,” she continued, “you’re everything a manager dreams of in a striker. You’re bold, instinctive, and fast as fuck. Most of all, you’re not stupid.”

Though she’d paused, Duncan sensed that wasn’t the end of her speech. “Thanks.”

“I’m not finished,” Charlotte said.

“I’d a feeling.”

“Wheesht!” She held up a hand to hush him. “Your behavior lately has been appalling. It won’t have gone unnoticed by our opponents. All they’ve got to do is look at match stats and think, ‘Hmm, this striker who rarely gets a yellow card suddenly got one in each of his last two starts. He must be on edge. Let’s exploit that.’”

Fuck me, I’m a liability.
“Are you going to drop me for Saturday’s match?” he asked her.

“It’s been suggested.” Charlotte kept her gaze on Duncan, but from the corner of his eye, he saw Fergus shift his weight, which told him where this “suggestion” had originated. Fergus wanted him gone.

Duncan crossed his arms to hide the fact his hands were clenching into fists. “And?”

“And I don’t want to do that,” his manager said. “More than anything right now, we need goals, which no one delivers like you. But be careful out there Saturday against Shettleston. Anything those players say to you, do
not
take it personally. They want you to react. They know you’ve suddenly got a hair-trigger temper.”

Behind her, Fergus muttered something about officials.

“Sorry?” Charlotte asked him.

He looked up from the grass he was toeing. “I said the refs know it too,” Fergus told Duncan. “They’ll be watching you.”

Duncan curled his lips under his teeth to keep from lashing out. Then he nodded, his neck tight with tension.

“I know you’re angry,” Charlotte told Duncan softly. “We all are.”

“You sure about that?” He sneered at Fergus. “Because on some of us, anger looks a lot like giving up.”

“Go home now, Harris,” Charlotte said in a low, steely voice. “And when we see you Saturday, be sure to have grown up a wee bit, okay?”

“Aye. Whatever.”

As Duncan stalked down the path toward the Ruchill Park exit gate, it took all his self-control not to break into a run. He wanted to feel his feet pound against the pavement, feel the earth pushing back on him. He didn’t want to die inside like Fergus.

Is that what love does?
Duncan vowed that if his heart were ever broken, he wouldn’t let himself waste away like that. He wouldn’t be weak. He’d go down swinging, even if it meant losing it all.

= = =

Brodie sat in the empty launderette, trying to review his statistics notes while waiting for his sheets and favorite T-shirt to dry. But the vinyl, mushroom-shaped seats seemed to be designed for anything but human arses. Soon he was too tired to think of anything but being too tired to think.

He stretched out on his back across two of the flat yellow seats and pulled out his phone to do some investigative work. The first call went to his friend John.

“All right, mate?” John answered. “Good holiday?”

“Not exactly.” Brodie told him about his illness and the mystery of its source.

“Aw, ya poor lad,” John said. “Well, you didnae get it from me. I had it five years ago when I was sixteen.”

“Did you kiss anyone else that night we snogged?”

John gasped. “Brodie! What sort of slut do you take me for?” He paused. “Aye, I did, actually. But it was later, after you. So are you still at home?”

“No, I came back to uni. Still ill, though.”

“You need anything? Soup, tea, a naked man or two?”

“Only if you can spare them.” Brodie rubbed his aching forehead, feeling stymied. “I must’ve gotten this virus off someone’s cup or fork or something. Knowing my flatmates, they probably just lick the cutlery clean before putting it back in the drawers.”

“No other kissing candidates, then?”

The launderette door opened to two girls with matching neon pink laundry baskets. Brodie got up quickly, making the blood rush from his brain, and crossed to the far side of the room by the ironing board. “There was another lad,” he said into the phone, “but it happened the night before vacation. Incubation period is a month or two, so it couldn’t have been him. But he thinks it is, and he’s been bringing me breakfast and tea and all, out of guilt.”

“Brodie, ya wicked bastard.” John’s tone was admiring, not condemning. “When you gonnae tell him the truth?”

“Soon. I mean, I should, right?”

“Do you fancy him?”

“Aye, but we’re just pals.” Brodie traced a burn mark on the ironing-board cover and thought of Duncan’s sponge-bath offer. “Pals with potential.”

“Then you should totally tell him. But—maybe not quite yet. Maybe it should slip your mind for a wee while. You must be pure glaikit, what with the fever and all.”

Brodie smiled. John was always one to play the angles. “My brain is pretty foggy.”

“And it’s about to be distracted by news of my summer internship.”

“With who?”

“A charity helping asylum seekers get humane treatment from our inhumane government. I’ll work with LGBT folk who’ve had to flee their home nations’ anti-gay laws.”

“That sounds amazing.” Though John was studying Economic and Social History, his new position seemed applicable to Brodie’s psychology degree. “Have they got any other openings?” he asked as he went to the dryer to check the time left on his load.

“I think so,” John said, “but they cannae pay. This charity’s pure skint. I can only afford to work for free because I’ve money saved from my gap years.”

Brodie frowned at his tumbling sheets and T-shirt through the dryer window. “I need a paying job, but maybe I can volunteer some hours.”

“That’d be brilliant. You could help me fundraise. My goal is twenty-five thousand pounds by the end of summer.”

“Wow. You’ll need more than a cake sale, then.” Brodie’s phone beeped. He pulled it away from his ear to look at the screen, hoping it would be Duncan. “My mum’s on the other line. If I don’t answer, she’ll think I’m dead.”

“See you at our dance party a week on Friday?”

“If I can walk, I’ll dance.” Brodie hung up, then switched lines. “Hi, Ma.”

“Brodie! Fit like?”

“Good, ta. You?”

“You sound trachled,” she said.

“A wee bit, but that’s normal.” He moved his laundry bag from the end seat and sat down again. The two girls had finished sorting their loads and seemed to be using top-up cards and laundry apps to pay for it, which probably meant they’d leave and await the email announcing when their washing was finished. Brodie would have done the same if he could have managed the walk across the student village and back again.

“I’ve been worried,” Ma said, “thinking maybe I shouldn’t have let you away to uni so soon.”

“There’s nae lectures this week, just revision period, so I can rest.”

“I ken there’s nae lectures, which is why you should’ve bided here until exams start next week. Are you eating?”

“Aye, my mate Dun—erm, my mates have me sorted.”

“Your mates?” Her voice took on an edge. “Quines, I hope, not loons.”

Brodie bristled. “I’ve male and female friends, Ma. Fit’s the difference who looks after me?”