Chapter 18 Saturday 21st June 2025
Harry
Iwant to kiss him. Team Boss lost the game by seven points, but it doesn’t feel like we lost at all. Lando scored the last try of the game, and I converted it, and I want to kiss him.
Right here, right now, in front of everybody.
He’s just a friend. He’s just a friend.
He’s just a friend I want to kiss really, very badly.
The full-time whistle has gone, and I was the first in his arms to congratulate him, but now Owen is pulling me away so that he can hug Lando.
And Mum is beside me wrapping me in an embrace, telling me how absolutely incredible I was, and how proud of me she is, and how she can’t wait to tell (brag to) my auntie (her sister) in Australia (who’s stayed up late to watch the live stream).
Usually I enjoy being fussed over, but right now I want to be back in Lando’s arms, with his lips on mine.
But we’re just friends. And it has to stay that way. We’d never be compatible in a relationship because we want opposite things.
“Harry, hi,” says a male voice from behind me. I whip around to find Lionel standing there.
He’s even more violently handsome than I remember.
His skin is a beautiful soft bronze colour, like he’s spent a month in Greece, and he’s pulled his dark hair into a high ponytail bun thing.
There are streaks of silver running into his hair tie—they’re new—and his arms bear a whole host of tattoos that weren’t there the last time I saw him.
Lionel slots himself in beside Mum. “Donna has been so excited for today. That was a stellar performance, by the way. I don’t know much about rugby, but wow, that was so intense to watch. I’m Lionel. I work with your mum.”
It feels like I’ve swallowed a molten rugby ball. He doesn’t remember me. After all these years, he doesn’t remember me.
“We’ve met, actually,” I say, trying to keep my voice from breaking, even though the warmth is rising in my cheeks and flushing my face already.
Lionel doesn’t acknowledge that I’ve even spoken. “She’s very proud of you. And rightly so.”
Mum is nodding along beside Lionel like her head is attached with a spring.
“And . . . is that your little friend?”
My little friend? Little?
At my no doubt confused expression, Lionel points over my shoulder to Lando, who’s busy getting squeezed to death by Daisy. Doesn’t she know not to press too hard on his abdomen?
“Donna said you’ve been talking nonstop about him. You two played fantastic together. It’s great when you find a friend you can be yourself with,” Lionel says.
The next words slip out of my mouth with no cognitive input from my brain. I don’t know why I say it, only that I do, and now it’s too late to take it back. “We’re actually more than just friends.”
Why? Why? Why, Jesus, why?
“Ah, even better,” Lionel says, with his stupid grown-up suaveness. “Oh, please excuse me, I’d like to pay my felicitations to Mathias Jones. It was nice to meet you, Harry.”
“We’ve met before,” I reply, but he’s already fucked off. “I thought he didn’t know much about rugby. Why the fuck does he want to pay his felicitations to Mathias Jones?” I can’t help but put on a whiny voice when I say the word “felicitations.”
Who even says that anyway? What a stupid jerk thing to say.
“Honey, why didn’t you tell me about you and Orlando? How long has it been going on? How long has it been official?” Mum says, ignoring everything else that was said and focusing intensely on my accidental lie.
“God, no, we’re not actually together. I didn’t mean to say that.” My face is on fire. It’s literally aflame. Look up the word inferno in the dictionary and you’d see a picture of my abject humiliation.
Mum tilts her head to the side. “Oh, is it one of those newfangled situationships?”
I scratch my ear. Even that feels feverish. “Uh . . . yeah, I guess so. Don’t . . . uh . . . say anything, though.”
“Of course not, honey.” She taps her nose, then waves to someone over my shoulder, checks her watch, and mouths, “Five minutes!”
“My king!” It’s Lando.
As if I couldn’t suffer any more mortification, Lando slides up next to me, wraps an arm over my shoulder, and kisses me on the cheek.
Mum smiles and winks in an exaggerated panto-style way, like she’s in on this huge secret. I feel the banana and protein bar I ate during halftime surging back up my oesophagus.
I hide my face behind my palms. “Mum, this is Lando. Lando, this is my mum.”
“Mrs Ellis, finally we meet. Congratulations on raising such a beautiful, considerate, and compassionate boy.”
I know Lando is being a sarcastic little shit, but Mum doesn’t see it. She flushes as red as I am.
“It’s so good to meet you at last, Orlando. Harry has talked about nothing but you for weeks now,” she says.
I stare wide-eyed at her while I try to mind-control her mouth shut.
“That’s because he’s obsessed with me,” Lando says.
Mum wiggles her finger into the spot on my cheek where my dimple would be if I were smiling, which I am most decidedly not. “You know, I think he might be a little bit.”
“I hate you both,” I say through gritted teeth, though my words have lost all fight.
“Aw, don’t be like that, babe,” Lando says, and boops me on the nose.
Why is everyone touching my face?
Mum actually squeals and covers her mouth, then she checks her watch again. “Oh, honey, I’d better go, but we really need to catch up sometime as a three. Text me later, yeah?” She kisses me on the cheek and jogs off in the opposite direction.
“Kill me now,” I whisper to Lando, but I’m extremely grateful that it’s just him and me again.
“We should slip out now while everyone’s busy with the awards announcements,” he says.
“Urgh, yeah, good plan.” I don’t much fancy seeing Mathias Jones win yet another shiny trophy.
Lando weaves his fingers into mine and guides me through the bushes and down a shortcut into the car park.
“I have a surprise for you at my house,” he says to me as we climb into his sporty grey Audi. “Also . . . does your mum think we’re dating?”
“Maybe?” I say, like a question. “Lionel was there, and I just got flustered and . . . I’m sorry, I’ll call her tomorrow and make it right.”
“You don’t have to. I don’t care about that. Your mum seems nice, though. Donna?”
“Yeah.”
“Is your dad as nice?”
“Oh, yeah. They’re eerily similar, Mum and Dad. They find the same random shit hilarious.”
“I love that,” Lando says.
When we get inside the main entrance of Hooke Manor, Lando pauses and stares at me wide-eyed.
There’s a strip of light bleeding out from underneath Warwick’s office door, and muted sounds of a man’s voice float over to us.
“My father is home.”
“Should we say hello?” I say, hoping, praying Lando says no.
“Yeah, probably.”
Dammit.
Lando takes my duffel bag from my hands and flings it towards the foot of the stairs, not bothering to check where it lands.
We still have our Team Boss kits on. They’re covered in dirt and grass stains, and Lando even has Dan Chelford’s blood on the back of his shirt, though we changed into our trainers in the car, so at least we’re not scratching up two-hundred-year-old wooden floorboards.
There’s a grand piano in the entrance hall, and Lando’s dad’s office lives on the other side of that, beyond a set of seven-foot-tall, carved mahogany double doors. If the space had been designed to intimidate guests, it’s working. I have to clench my jaw to stop my teeth from chattering.
Lando knocks on the door, but doesn’t wait for an invitation to enter before he pushes it open.
The office itself is as grand as the entryway.
High ceilings, with ornate plasterwork and opulent chandeliers, and walls lined with either dark wooden panels or floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.
A fireplace big enough to camp inside rests against the far side, and the largest desk I’ve ever seen sits in the very centre of a navy and burgundy floral rug.
A cluster of leather Chesterfields is arranged in the nearest corner, looking like wildebeests huddled together for safety in the dead of night.
Even though it’s only about seven or seven thirty, it’s dark inside the office. Warwick stands at a large sash window, chatting on his phone. He turns in our direction as the door swings inwards and Lando and I squeeze through into his study.
“Hi, Dad,” Lando says as Warwick is mid-sentence, and okay, Lando’s father? Hot.
Like, what the fuck?
I had been picturing him as some grumpy old man with grey hair, and sure, I guess he still is those things. He’s mid-fifties with short salt and pepper hair pushed back off his face, but Jesus, fuck . . . he’s no Statler or Waldorf.
It makes total sense now that this man had fifty per cent input into the guy standing beside me.
Warwick is tall, and has the slim physique of someone who runs as their primary form of exercise.
His skin tone is more tan than his son’s, but his eyes are a much lighter brown.
He’s wearing tailored suit trousers, shiny brogues that make his feet look extra long, and a blue button-down shirt with an open collar.
A few silver hairs have escaped at his throat, and I can’t stop staring at them.
“Orlando!” he says. A smile blooms over his face, and his eyes crinkle at the corners. I can’t tell if it’s genuine, but knowing what I know about this guy, I’m inclined to think otherwise. “Sophie, my son is here . . . No . . . Not until next Friday . . . I’ll call you back in twenty.”
He hangs up the phone and walks closer to us, and I expect him to hug his son, but he simply places his mobile on the desk and stops beside it. “You boys been out playing sports?”
Lando looks down at his kit. “Rugby. For Mr B’s fundraiser.”
“Oh, what’s that? How is Bosley anyway?”
“He’s fine. It was to raise money for the roof of The Little Thatch?” Lando phrases it like a question. Big mood.
“That was today?” Warwick says.
“I sent you an email weeks ago,” Lando says.