Playing to Win (25 page)

Colin finally opened his eyes, but he didn’t look at Andrew. Instead he turned his head and stared across the street toward Ground Zero. “Funny how magical the truth seems when you’re drunk. Like if you just speak it, the world’ll be okay.” He sniffled. “Maybe I should always be drunk.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right.” Colin sat up straight, rubbed his face, then rose unsteadily to his feet. “Can we go to the
Seinfeld
diner?”

= = =

By the time he and Andrew boarded their plane Saturday evening, Colin’s hangover was nearly gone. His temples still throbbed vaguely, but at least his eyelashes had stopped burning and his tongue could taste flavors again.

“I really liked Americans,” he told Andrew after takeoff as they eased back their first-class seats into bed-like lounges. “They were so friendly and open.”

“Yes, rather like Glaswegians, but more polite.” Andrew swallowed an Ambien with a swig from his water bottle.

“I just wish they could understand me.” Colin smoothed the airline blanket over his sock feet, hoping they didn’t stink. “You understand me, right?”

“About eighty percent of the time. A year ago it would’ve been more like eight percent.” Andrew gave him a lingering look, his lids already drooping with drowsiness. “Goodnight, Colin,” he whispered just above the hum of the plane’s engines. “Thank you for a lovely weekend.” Then Andrew pulled his sleep mask over his eyes, switched on his noise-reduction headphones, and tugged his blanket up over his chest.

The cabin lights dimmed, and the crew asked the passengers to lower their window shades. Colin closed his until the flight attendant had passed by, then lifted it again to look outside. A crescent moon was setting behind the plane, casting its ghostly light upon the thin clouds below. He checked the map on the monitor in front of him. They’d be off the coast of Greenland in less than an hour. He didn’t want to miss that.

He pressed his finger to the cold window and pondered Ground Zero. He’d thought it would make him feel better to see it, to try to understand the source of all that American fury. Instead it had only stoked his own.

Perhaps it was mere hangover fatigue, but Colin was starting to get really sick of being angry. For the first time in his life, he felt like that bottomless reservoir of rage might one day run dry. Or at least get a wee bit shallower.

After all, if he could spend so much time with the insufferable toff Lord Andrew without killing him in his sleep, Colin’s mind must be expanding. Either that or he was losing it entirely.

He turned to Andrew. “Hey,” he said softly.

Andrew’s face stayed smooth and undisturbed, even after a gentle nudge to his elbow.
 

From his rucksack, Colin retrieved a pen and the small notepad he used to jot down his football thoughts. He wrote a short message on one of the sheets, which he then tore off, folded, and tucked between Andrew’s slack, sleeping fingers.

Then he pulled his own blanket up to his chin and stared out the window, waiting for Greenland.

= = =

“Wa-heyyy!” Dad exclaimed as Colin came through the door of their flat the next day. “It’s our own world traveler.”

“Thought you’d come back with a tan.” Emma strutted past him with what looked and smelled like a piece of cottage pie. “I bet you didn’t actually go.”

“I’ve got proof. Hah!” He whipped out his passport and opened it to the page with the US Department of Homeland Security stamp.

Emma examined it, gave him a once-over, then nodded. “Cool.” Coming from her, that was near-worship.

“I bet it was amazing!” Gran practically danced out of the kitchen to hug Colin. “You must tell us all about it.”

“No!” Emma and Dad said in unison, covering their ears.

She scowled at them. “I meant the bits suitable for a general audience.” She gave Colin a wary look. “If there are any.”

“A few, Gran. I’ve got pictures, too.” He bent over and kissed her cheek. “But I need to run and change for football practice.”

His father followed Colin into his room. “You’ll be home usual time?”

“Aye.” Colin tossed his bag onto the bed. “Andrew’s with his family until late Saturday. They’re on a ‘gulet holiday,’ which is apparently a fancy Turkish name for a yacht cruise. Besides, I’m fucking knackered.” He went to the chest of drawers and emptied his pockets of American money, smoothing the rumpled dollar and stacking the coins atop it in pretty wee piles.

“That’s good,” his dad said. “Not good that you’re knackered, but good that you’ll be home. Cos at five o’clock I’m away to Aberdeen for a day or two.”

Colin’s fingers froze around the pile of nickels. “To see Mum?”

“Aye.”

He turned to face his father. “Are you bringing her home?”

“I don’t know.” With a heavy sigh, Dad sat on the edge of Colin’s bunk. “I don’t even know whether it’s…you know.”

“Whether it’s what you want.” A chill seeped up Colin’s legs. This was it. The beginning of the end. Separation. Divorce. His mother gone for good.

Dad nodded slowly, as if his head weighed fifty pounds. “And whether it’s what’s best for all of us, especially you and Emma.”

“Me and Emma are fine either way.”
Or
not
fine either way.
“You need to do what’s right for you.”

Hands in his lap, Dad pressed his fingertips together, then tapped them lightly, pad to pad, as he considered his next words. “I still love your mum. I always will.”

“Me too.” Colin rubbed the scars on his right arm, working up the courage to speak the ugly truth. “But love’s never enough, is it? Mum loves us in her way. That doesnae earn her a royal pardon for the things she’s done.”

His father let out a deep breath that sounded like relief. “No, it doesnae. You and Emma deserve a wee bit of stability. We all do.”

Colin had never felt less stable. It seemed like he was falling off a cliff with no limbs to help him scrabble for rescue. “So that’s what this trip to Aberdeen is about, then. To tell her not to come home.”
And I’ve just given you my blessing to end it all.

“I think so. I’ve got the papers to make it official.”

Colin stopped breathing. It was the only way to hold in the sob wanting to burst from his lungs. He simply nodded, and nodded, and nodded, until his father looked away.

“All right, then.” Dad stood slowly. “I should be back Tuesday night. Thanks for keeping an eye on your sister and your gran.”

Colin heard the hallway floor creak. He raised his voice. “Be Emma’s boss all week, Dad? Happy to!”

“Get tae fuck!” she said, then kicked the wall before running back down the hallway to the living room.

“Your daughter’s mouth is a sewage farm,” Colin said.

“My daughter learned every word she knows from her big brother.” Dad took a step toward the door, then turned back and pulled Colin into a tight embrace. “Thank you,” he whispered.

“Nae bother,” Colin tried to reply, but the words came out as a hiccup. Holding his dad close, he opened his eyes wide to keep them dry.

For now, at least. Later, someday, he would cry about this. But today he had to be strong—for his family, his team, and especially himself.

= = =

Andrew gave a happy sigh when he spotted the island of Kara Ada silhouetted against a deepening blue sky, surrounded by an Aegean Sea doused in flaming sunset colors. It wasn’t only the gorgeous sight that pleased him, but also the fact he once again had internet access.

He slid a glance over his shoulder to see if his family was watching, but they were all in the yacht’s aft deck finishing their baklava and Turkish coffee. So he quickly powered up his phone. The Greek islands of Rhodes and Kos had been beautiful as always, but the gulet-holiday tour provided WiFi only within Turkish waters.

The message from Colin he’d hoped for was in his Wickr inbox:

Don’t forget canvassing in the Drum on Sunday. Meet me outside the towers at noon in your best slumming clothes.

Andrew cursed when he saw the text had been sent yesterday. He’d warned Colin of his spotty internet access, but considering the rough week his lover was having back in Glasgow, he might have forgotten and thought Andrew was ignoring him.

Seeing he had three bars of mobile service, he rang Colin immediately.

“Hiya,” he answered in a voice that made Andrew’s toes curl within his Top-Siders.

“Hello. I thought it’d be quicker to phone.”

“You just wanted to hear my voice, didn’t you?”

“Your voice is the only thing which could make me hate this scenery.” Leaning on the gulet’s polished mahogany railing, Andrew gazed at what was still, even with the fiery sunset, the bluest sea and sky in the world. His heart ached for Colin to be here now to see it with him. “That and the fact my family are the worst.”

“Shocker.”

“I was so looking forward to spending time with my nieces and nephews, as I rarely get to see them. But in the last year they’ve become insufferable.” He cringed as a pair of shrieks behind him proved his point. “What can one expect, though, when they’re boarding at Glenalmond instead of Fettes?”

“So different prep schools produce different levels of prickishness?”

“Precisely.” God, he missed this lad. The banter among Andrew’s family was just as lively, but it left him with a bitter taste in his mouth.

“Have you been on Twitter today?” Colin asked.

“No, I’ve been offline for an unspeakable number of hours. Why?”

Colin hesitated. “Erm, nothing. Just wondering if you’d heard from your stalker. I know you’re probably safe out in the middle of the sea, but I still worry.”

Andrew softened at Colin’s concern. “Thank you. No, the internet seems blissfully quiet, as per usual this time of year. And so far no seagulls have shat the words ‘fascist faggot’ onto the deck of the gulet.”

Colin made a gruff noise. “I wish you’d stop joking about the fact someone hates you enough to chuck a rock through your window.”

“I don’t know what else to do.” Andrew gripped the yacht’s railing, feeling his mood dip at the thought of his mystery stalker. “How was your match today?”

“It was a belter.” Colin proceeded to break down the Warriors’ first-round victory in the Scottish Amateur Cup. Last season’s tournament had ended for them in a quarterfinal heartbreak that left them gutted for weeks. Andrew knew the Cup meant as much to the team as winning the league, if not more. Their success in it meant they could go toe-to-toe with the best straight clubs, at every level of play.

“I wish I could have been there,” Andrew said when Colin finished. “Perhaps I’ll delay my trip to London Fashion Week so I can see your league match next Saturday.”

“Yeah?” Colin said in a high-pitched voice, then coughed. “I mean, sure, whatever. If you want.”

“Now that you’re a pinup boy, I need to fend off your throngs of admirers.”

Colin groaned. “Christ, the photo shoot.”

Andrew laughed, knowing how nervous Colin had been about posing for the Warriors 2015 calendar, which would raise money for John Burns’s charity for LGBT asylum seekers. “How was it?”

“Weird. They made me go taps aff for every shot.”

“Wise folk.” Andrew closed his eyes to better picture a shirtless Colin posing under the glare of a flash bulb.

“Most of us got spray tans, courtesy of the calendar people. Must have cost a fortune to make a bunch of Scots look like we’ve ever seen the sun. So we’re still on for tomorrow noon?”

“Of course,” Andrew said, trying not to sound reluctant. “A gentleman always pays his debts.”

“Hmm, I’ve a few debts of my own that need paid.”

“You don’t owe me anything.”

“After New York, I owe you a threesome. But since neither of us can handle it, I’ll just give you twice as much ‘me’ as usual.”

“I’d love that.” Andrew heard the breathiness in his own voice. “I miss you,” he added before he could stop himself.

“Oh. Well…” Colin coughed again. “Good.” He hung up.

“Ha! Caught you.”

Andrew turned to see his brother-in-law, Jeremy, approaching with a pair of cigars, one unlit.

He tucked away his phone. “I was just talking to my, er…”

“Boyfriend?”

“I’m not sure that’s what we are.”

Jeremy handed him the unlit cigar and pulled a lighter from the pocket of his dove-gray seersucker blazer. “How long have you been dating?”

“A month, roughly.” He smiled inside at the double entendre. Not every encounter had been rough—only when Andrew begged for it.

“Either of you seeing anyone else?”

“No.” He frowned at the thought of Colin in another man’s arms. “Not that I know of.”

“And I assume you’re not in the habit of taking casual acquaintances across the Atlantic to see their favorite Broadway shows.” Jeremy lit Andrew’s cigar with his lighter, shielding the flame from the swift sea breeze. “He’s your boyfriend, whether you admit it or not.”

“It’s complicated.” As Andrew took the first puff, he slipped a hand into his trouser pocket, fingers closing around the note Colin had given him on the plane:
I don’t want to share you either.
“He can’t be my boyfriend, no matter what we feel. He’s not…you know. One of us.” He spread his arms to encompass the gulet and its passengers.

“I wasn’t one of you. Sarah’s a commoner too.” He glanced back at their sister-in-law as he leaned against the railing beside Andrew and puffed his cigar. “Of course, she came with a gas-and-shale inheritance, which helped.”

“And you came with deep connections to the Conservative Party.”

Jeremy put a hand to his own chest in mock shock. “Surely you’re not suggesting your sister’s marriage was political?”

“If Elizabeth hadn’t wed you for love, then I would have.” Andrew batted his lashes, only half jesting. Years ago he’d had a bit of a crush on his shrewd-but-kindhearted brother-in-law. “You deserve it.”

“As do you.” Jeremy swiped a hand through his short chestnut hair, which was as meticulously coiffed on holiday as it was back home. “Talking of politics, I think it’s time to reassess our plan for you.”

“Which plan specifically?”

“The one keeping you above the referendum fray. We need you now, desperately.”