Chapter 30
Ryan
I pull up outside my parents’ house at two on the dot. Right on time for the chores my father has inflicted on me. Today, training was light: just two hours, preparing for Sunday’s game.
I get out of the car and Mum opens the door.
“Hi, darling,” she says, hugging me and giving me a kiss on the cheek.
“I’m here for my grounding,” I announce, stepping inside. “Is that ars…er, is Nick here yet?”
“He’s out in the garden.”
“Where’s Dad?”
“Your dad isn’t feeling great today. He’s upstairs, resting.”
I nod, clenching my jaw.
“I told Nick that…he won’t even remember he asked you to come. But Nick insisted on staying.”
I walk through the kitchen and out into the garden through the back door, followed by Mum.
“If you want to go home, I imagine you’ve got things to…”
“I don’t have anything to do.”
“Do you want me to get you anything? Have you eaten?”
“No thanks, Mum. I’m fine.”
“Maybe a coffee…?”
“Okay, a coffee would be great.”
Mum smiles and goes back inside, while I prepare myself for a whole afternoon with the dickhead.
“What the hell are you doing up there?” I ask his feet, from under the ladder leaning against the wall.
“What do you think?” Nick’s head pokes out from the gutter.
“Couldn’t you have waited for me?”
“I didn’t know you were coming.”
“We’re both grounded.”
It feels like we’ve already had this conversation – loads of times, to be honest. I feel like we’ve gone back in time.
“It was your fault.”
“If you’d kept your mouth shut…”
“If you behaved like a normal person and not a mad stalker…”
I grab the ladder with both hands and shake it. Nick grips the handles, shocked.
“What the fuck, Ryan?!”
“Try that one more time and I’ll slam you to the ground.”
“Easy to be all tough when you’re at the bottom of the ladder.”
“Pure coincidence.”
“Let go.”
“I don’t think so, this is my only enjoyment for today.”
“Here’s your coffee, Ryan,” Mum joins us. “I’ll leave it on the table for you.”
“Thanks.”
She looks at me, then looks at Nick hanging from the ladder.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m holding the ladder for Nick. I don’t want him to hurt himself.”
“Mmm.”
“It’s true.”
“That’s not true, he’s trying to kill me.”
“Again, Ryan?”
“W-what?” I ask, panicked.
“Did you think I didn’t know?”
Damn Ian.
“Maybe it isn’t the best idea for you two to be out here alone.”
“Come on, Mum. We’re adults. You can leave us to play in the garden, I promise we won’t tear each other apart.”
“Adults?”
She’s laughing. Seriously. My mother is laughing in my face. “I didn’t know you were so funny.”
Is she taking the piss out of me?
“I’ll be inside, but I can hear you – and I’ll be keeping an eye on you,” she threatens, before disappearing indoors.
“I didn’t tell her,” Nick immediately gets defensive.
“I know.”
Nick would never have told her.
“Why did you stay?” I ask him, looking up.
“The gutters needed cleaning.” He steps slowly down the ladder and stops when we’re face to face. “Dad can’t do it by himself.”
“I wonder how long he’ll be able to do anything by himself.”
“I think we have quite enough to worry about already, don’t you?”
“Mmm?”
“Me and you.”
“Nick, now’s not the time.”
“It’s never the time for you.”
“We’re here together, aren’t we?”
“And you just tried to push me off a ladder.”
“Don’t exaggerate, I was only joking.”
“You’re not the sort of person to joke around.”
“Depends on the moment.”
“So, what do you say? Shall we get to work? There are dirty windows upstairs with our names on.”
“Shit.”
“Just be grateful he didn’t ask us to do the garage, too.”
“He definitely will next time.”
Mum insisted that we stay for dinner. Something quick, she said, because Dad needs her help today.
We sit down in the kitchen, me and Nick, while she takes something upstairs for Dad. I open a beer and take a few sips, as Nick chews on his sandwich. I gather up my courage and start to speak.
“I need a favour.”
He looks at me, surprised, placing his sandwich back on the plate.
“A favour from me? Seriously?”
I shrug.
“I’m listening…”
“Are you coming to the game on Sunday?”
“What a stupid question. Obviously I am. Why?”
“I need you to take someone with you.”
“A woman?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I say, taking a few more sips of beer to mask the idea that I could also have invited her. But that would never happen.
“A boy.”
He looks at me, one eyebrow raised.
“Evan,” I continue, gauging his reaction. “Christine’s son.”
“Oh holy…”
“Don’t say a word.”
“I didn’t.”
“You were about to.”
“You don’t know what I was about to say.”
“I just need you to take him with you, sit with him, then take him home again. End of story.”
“How old is this kid?”
“Sixteen, I think…”
“What the fuck am I supposed to do with a sixteen-year-old?”
“I don’t know, Nick. It’s just a match. Take him to the stadium, buy him some sweets, I don’t know…”
Nick bursts out laughing. “Sweets? Are you serious?”
“Will you do it or not?”
“That depends…”
“On what?”
“On why you’ve invited him in the first place.”
“There’s no fucking reason.”
“I think the reason might be his mother.”
“Fuck off, Nick! I knew I shouldn’t have asked you. You’re always the same…”
“Hey, calm down, okay? I didn’t say I wouldn’t do it, I just wanted to know the situation.”
“There isn’t a situation.”
“So that must be why you just happened to invited her son to watch you play?”
“He’s never been to a match before. The other night at dinner, he told me that…”
“Woah, woah, woah. Dinner?”
Fuck.
“I had dinner at theirs.”
Nick crosses his arms and looks at me, waiting for me to go on.
“I don’t owe you an explanation.”
“Not to me you don’t. But be careful, Ryan.”
“God, Nick. Why do you always have to do this?”
“Because I know you.”
“Maybe not as well as you think.”
“Let’s see…she’s thirty-two.”
“How the fuck do you know that?” I say, jumping up immediately.
“I talk to people, nicely. I don’t chase them into toilets.”
“This again? Seriously?”
“She has a sixteen-year-old son, and probably an ex who broke her heart, who she will always compare you to because, whether or not he’s a bastard, he’s the father of her son and she hasn’t forgotten.
She runs a business, she’s a busy woman, but she knows what she really wants.
And what she wants is not a spoilt little boy with a tendency to treat her like shit. ”
“Do you want to tell me what the fuck any of this has to do with the fact that I’ve invited her son to a stupid match?”
“Nothing, Ryan. Absolutely nothing,” he says, before picking his sandwich back up.
I hate him.
“I’ll take him,” he says, as if he hadn’t just loaded all this pressure onto me. “Give me the address.”