Epilogue
Scottie
Eighteen months later…
The whistle splits the air, a shrill, metallic blast that confirms the result. The conversion doesn’t even matter now. The clock is dead. We won.
Mud cakes every inch of my kit, blood from a lip I forgot about trickling down my chin, lungs screaming for oxygen they’ve been denied for nearly eighty minutes. The pitch squelches beneath my boots. Three inches of Scottish November slop that’s done its best to drown us all.
The roar hits. A barrage of noise from the Stirling stands. Connor slams into my back, arms clamping around my chest. Jamie follows, then Finn and Brodie, until I’m buried under a pile of bodies, all of them screaming the same word.
Try. That’s what I scored. Ball tucked into my gut, feet pistoning through three Glasgow defenders who thought they could stop me. They couldn’t. Nobody could. I crashed over the whitewash and touched the ball down.
My try. Mine.
I’ve spent over a decade setting up plays for other men. Today, I took the glory.
‘Get off me, you maniacs!’ But I don’t shove them off. I let them crush me into the turf and accept it for what it is – a reminder that I’m where I’m supposed to be. Among brothers.
‘Deal with it!’ Jamie bellows into my ear. ‘You’re being celebrated whether you enjoy it or not!’
Finn’s pink hair invades my peripheral vision. ‘Scottie Kerr scored a try. Alert the historians!’
‘Get it up ye, Lennox.’
He wrenches me upright and cups my face. ‘You big, beautiful bastard.’
I wipe dirt from my eyes, and my gaze drifts to the stands.
She’s there. Third row. A red scarf wrapped twice around her neck because it’s enormous on her. She’s jumping, clapping, and even from this distance, I can see her beaming.
Ava came to watch me play.
I stand straighter. She catches my eye and raises one hand. A small wave, a private signal, a thread strung between us across the roaring crowd.
She’s here. For me.
I see you.
Turns out that’s all I ever needed.
Music is blasting from a speaker in the dressing room – Artemesia’s Bits And Pieces, the unofficial anthem of every Scottish night out since the 1990s. Finn really has no shame.
I duck under the scalding water, letting it beat the dirt from my shoulders. The bruises are already forming. But today it paid dividends.
I soap up quickly, rinse, and wrap a towel around my waist. When I walk back into the main room, Finn has perched himself on the physio table in the centre of the room, swinging his legs.
‘Oi, Kerr!’ He waves a can of deodorant in my direction. ‘Speech. Big try. Big moment. Let’s hear it.’
‘How about no.’
‘Brodie, tell him,’ Finn says.
Brodie is pulling on a shirt. ‘No fucking speeches. We’ve all got places to be. Wives to please.’
‘Charlie isn’t your wife yet,’ Connor points out.
‘Technicality.’ Brodie hikes his joggers up.
I rummage in my bag and pull on my jeans.
The patter washes over me. Eighteen months, and they still show up.
I’ve stopped questioning whether they mean it.
Nevin is long gone – his contract terminated after the board investigation, last I heard he’s languishing in some Championship club in the south – and nobody misses him. We don’t talk about him. Why would we?
I hope he’s taking anger management classes and some therapy sessions.
I’ve practised being loved by these muppets for one and a half years now. It doesn’t feel earned and probably never will. But I’ve stopped waiting for the whistle to blow on this one.
‘Scottie.’ Finn appears at my elbow, voice dropping to something approaching serious. ‘Quick word.’
I’m jutting my chin at him. ‘If this is about Berlin – we’re not going there for my stag d—’
‘It’s not. Just wanted to wish you luck. You ready?’
The thing in my pocket might as well weigh two stone. ‘As ready as I’ll ever be.’
‘Good.’ Finn nods. ‘Don’t cock it up.’
‘Thank you. That’s incredibly helpful, as usual.’
‘That’s what best pals are for.’ He slaps my arm and saunters off to torture someone else.
The last daylight is bleeding out along the horizon. Stadium lights blaze behind us as fans spill across the car park in happy, chattering clusters, scarves and hats and breath misting in the chill.
Ava’s waiting by the gate. Her hair is loose, which is a rare sight, and the wind is whipping strands across her face. She stands out against the grey concrete of the stadium like a flare in the dark.
Then she starts running and jumps at me. ‘You’re the best!’ She peppers my face with kisses.
Warmth spills through me, loosening every tense muscle.
She’s mine and I’m hers, and the whole world knows it.
On the way to the car park, the fans recognise me.
Some wave, some shout congratulations, one kid thrusts a programme at me for signing.
I scribble my name and pass it back. Ava waits, patient and amused, her arm hooked through mine.
This is us now. Public and official. Finn has made about thirty-three TikToks about us, and the numbers, apparently, are excellent. Lots of likes. According to his fiancée Theo, that is.
Yeah, we’re all getting married like proper grown-ups.
Ava pulls open the passenger door of her Volvo. ‘Get in.’
The drive takes twenty minutes until the weathered facade of The Wallace Picture House appears in the windscreen. The Art Deco frontage cuts through the dark under vintage bulbs. It’s quiet for a Saturday afternoon.
‘Go save our seats,’ I tell Ava at the door. ‘I’ll grab the snacks.’
‘You better.’ She kisses my cheek and disappears through the double doors to screen three.
The moment she’s gone, I let out a breath and head for the kiosk.
The queue is short. I pay for the large bucket, salted not sweet, and step to the side.
I reach for my jacket pocket. The box is warm from sitting against my hip.
I flip the lid, check the ring is still there. Then I bury it deep in the popcorn.
I’m proposing to a woman in a cinema. With a ring in a popcorn bucket. What have I become?
Two years since we met here in the dark.
We moved in together three months ago. A small flat in Cumbernauld, her hometown, halfway between Glasgow and Stirling.
Ava premiered Mary Queen of Scots during the Edinburgh Fringe.
Her parents both showed up. They sat on opposite sides, but they clapped at the same time.
Progress. Laurel and Lotta came too, long back from Hong Kong.
I showed up with an enormous bouquet of roses and may or may not have cried.
Even David was there. He finished uni in the summer and moved to Edinburgh with Freya. New job at a tech startup, new flat, new life. The world doesn’t need me propping it up at every corner. I’m still learning what that leaves me free to be. Miracles happen.
I grab the bucket and push through the double doors.
Ava’s already tucked into the back row. I sit down beside her.
‘Here.’ I deposit the bucket in her lap.
She snuggles against my side, her head finding its usual spot on my collarbone. ‘What are we watching?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Absolutely not.’
I’ve run this moment through my head a hundred times. The words. The timing. The exact position of her hand in mine. But now that we’re here… There’s no script for this.
The lights dim, and the trailer begins playing. I should get down on one knee, but it’s way too narrow here. I’ll be stuck between the rows until Christmas.
‘Ava.’
‘Mmm?’
‘Eat more popcorn.’
She laughs, confused. ‘What?’
I nudge the bucket towards her. ‘Dig in. I got extra butter.’
She gives me a suspicious look but reaches into the bucket. Her fingers burrow into the kernels. I stop breathing.
Her hand stills.
‘What…’ She pulls out the box. The bucket tips, a cascade of yellow kernels skittering onto her lap, but she doesn’t notice. She’s staring at the velvet. ‘Scottie. What is this?’
I watch her. The way the light from the projector catches the planes of her face. How her grip slightly trembles holding it. How it finally dawns on her.
‘Open it.’
She does. Her lips part. No sound comes out.
It’s simple. White gold, a single small sapphire flanked by two tiny diamonds. I spent two months with a jeweller in Stirling designing it. The sapphire matches her eyes when she moans my name and tells me she loves me.
‘I was going to make a speech. Had this whole thing prepared. Finn helped me, so you can imagine how awful it was.’
She chokes out a sound that might be a laugh or a sob.
‘But I’m shite at words, Ava. You know that. So here’s the short version.’ I take the box from her shaking hands. Remove the ring. ‘Will you be my best friend and my wife?’
The silence stretches. She looks at the ring. Then at me. Her eyes are swimming, tears threatening to spill over onto her cheeks.
‘Marzipan,’ I add. ‘Please say something before I have a cardiac event.’
‘Yes!’ She hiccups on the word. ‘Yes. Very obviously yes.’
I slide the ring onto her finger. It fits. Of course it fits. I stole one of her costume rings ages ago and had it sized. Her fingers lace through mine. The gold is on. She’s still here.
And then she throws herself at me.
God, I love it when she does that.
She lands in my lap, arms around my neck, kissing me with a fervour that suggests she’s trying to climb right inside me. I kiss her back, grinning against her mouth, my arms full of her, my chest splitting open with a joy I don’t know how to contain.
She pulls back. Her cheeks are wet, and her smile is so wide it looks painful. ‘I love you.’ She holds up her hand. ‘It’s so beautiful.’
‘Like you.’
‘You’re such a sap. But…don’t stop on my account.’ She grins and settles more comfortably in my lap. ‘Thank you for loving me, Bear.’
‘Thank you for loving me back, Marzipan.’
Her weight is warm and real and right where it belongs. All over me. Neither of us is watching the film. Again. Makes you wonder why we keep coming here.
‘Mrs Kerr.’ She rolls the name around her mouth. ‘Maybe I’ll keep MacKinney.’
‘Maybe I’ll take your name,’ I say. ‘Or we could hyphenate.’
‘MacKinney-Kerr? Sounds like a dodgy law firm.’
We’re tangled together in the dark, her head on my chest, my arms around her waist. We make sense together in a way I never expected to find, two different halves of the same whole clicking into place. And I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with my best friend.
The woman I love more than anything.
‘Come on, future wife.’ I rise and pull her with me. ‘Let’s go home and see how that ring looks on you when you’re naked.’
Ava giggles and threads her fingers through mine as we walk out less than a quarter into the film.
Doesn’t matter that we missed the happy ending.
We made our own.
– THE END –