Matchday 24
From Oliver’s vantage point in the visitors’ box, the match unfolds as a Greek tragedy, predestined and unavoidable.
Camden doesn’t look poorly or slow, only hopelessly outmatched.
For the first time since November, Willem leaves his spot on the center touchline and paces back and forth, shouting to the back line and jabbing a clipboard full of notes at Sebastian.
The best moment they have all match is when de Boer himself stops a pass that’s flown out of bounds, flicking it safely down to his feet and trapping the ball under his dress shoes.
It’s futile. Three goals to zero, and not close even for a second: a veritable clobbering.
When all’s said and done, they’ve dropped to seventh place.
Oliver almost expects Finch to burst into the post-match presser and fire them all preemptively.
He’s not sure any of them would be able to defend themselves.
Most of the squad shuffles off to a clubby cocktail lounge on Camden’s High Street in an undignified heap of sweat, cologne, and misery.
Oliver joins them, feeling for perhaps the first time in weeks that it might actually be better being sad among friends than alone in his house under an ice pack.
Even the forbidden cigarette scent and the slight stickiness on the leather booths don’t convince him otherwise.
Under the thrumming bass of the DJ set, Oliver is jammed up along the bar, wedged between Joe and Matty.
The two of them have twin hangdog faces and hands wrapped around brimming pints.
A better man might be capable of pushing his sleeves to his elbows and bucking them up, but Oliver tends toward being a wallower at the best of times.
“Might have gotten a hand to that second one from Hazard, if I didn’t have my head up my arse,” Joe mutters into the foam of his drink.
“He wouldn’t have been on goal at all if I could’ve caught up with him,” Matty says.
“And then we would’ve lost two-nil. Same zero points,” Oliver points out, and even though he’s objectively correct, they wave him away so they can continue their bitching unencumbered by logic.
Letting himself drift through the crowd, trying to find another reason to stay and mostly discovering that he’s ready to leave, Oliver eventually comes to a stop next to Leo and Ahmed, who has his coat halfway back on and his eyes likewise on the door.
Leo’s eyes are glassy to match his vodka soda; he isn’t going anywhere.
“You want me to take him, Ahmed?” Oliver asks.
“I can take myself,” Leo says, but he slurs it. Ahmed plucks the drink out of Leo’s hand and passes it to Oliver, who takes one whiff and then swiftly deposits it on a nearby table. Leo doesn’t fight it, possibly because he’s too pissed to notice the exchange at all.
“Come on, big man,” Oliver says, nudging them both toward the exit.
“Let’s go for a walk, hey?” Leo wrinkles his nose, cranky in the face, but allows himself to be led out to the street.
Out on the curb, weaving through the entry line and several hungry looks of recognition from clubgoers, Oliver propels them both out of the messy nightlife sprawl and onto a brick-laden side street.
“You aren’t drunk,” Leo says, accusatory. He’s wearing a rosary that’s hanging askew out of his shirt collar. Oliver tucks it back in for him and continues to steer them away from the crowd, one steady hand on Leo’s back.
“It’s my night to babysit,” he replies.
Leo mutters something in Spanish that includes a “no,” but when Oliver keeps walking, he follows him, a stride behind.
“I don’t need minding,” Leo shouts at Oliver’s back, sounding knackered and miserable. “I’m allowed to be upset.”
Oliver turns to face him but keeps walking backward, the High Street lights twinkling into blurriness.
“You can be upset without being hungover in the morning, mate,” he says, with wisdom he doesn’t yet possess.
Leo is red-faced in the frosty night, so Oliver relents and walks back toward him so he can rub warmth into his shoulders, looking down at his sullen mouth, finding him handsome even under these circumstances.
“Let me walk you down to the end of the park, then I’ll put you in a cab. Get some fresh air.”
“I get plenty of fresh air,” Leo snaps. “We work outside.” He says it with the conviction of someone ready to pick a fight, but the follow-through evaporates in the air between them and he suddenly half-collapses, going boneless into Oliver’s grasp and tipping his head forward into his chest. They stand there—intertwined in an empty alley, the night sky threatening a flurry of midwinter cold—until time seems to stand still and they’re two figurines in a snow globe.
Oliver isn’t sure if he can have this, if he’s breaking any rules, but the feeling rattles through him regardless, tingling and much hotter than the February air.
He hopes Leo can’t feel how his heart is pounding, pushing at the space in between them.
“I feel like shit,” Leo says eventually, muffled.
“I just want to win one. It’s so fucking hard. And cold.”
Anthony would tell him not to whine, Joe would say it takes ten men and a keeper to win, Willem would say the manager’s tactics are at the root of every loss. Oliver’s not sure what his line should be.
“I wanted you lot to win too. Maybe it’s my fault for being injured, maybe it’s Chelsea’s fault. Who knows? But I don’t think anyone would say it’s yours.”
Leo lifts his head up from the cocoon of Oliver’s jacket lining and frowns at him.
“I don’t need a minder, I told you.”
“It’s the truth,” Oliver insists. “You think it’s fun to tell you how good you are when I can’t play? Don’t argue with me.”
“I’m not arguing,” Leo says tiredly. “I’m moping.”
“Oh, Christ. Sorry, mate, don’t know how I got those mixed up. Come on.”
“You weren’t serious? It’s bloody freezing.”
“Talk to me, then, it’ll keep you warm. Step lightly,” he adds, when Leo’s first attempts at walking are tipsy, diagonal stumbles.
“What do you want to hear?” Leo asks, steadying himself on Oliver’s elbow.
“Tell me about your parents,” Oliver decides. “The ones who cheered when I got injured.”
“It wasn’t like that!” Leo says. Oliver hums disbelievingly and Leo pulls insistently on his sleeve, slowing them to another stop and tugging them all the way into the side of the building on the corner, smushed and laughing against the crumbling facade.
“A ver, let me think.” Leo reaches forward to brush the first clinging bits of frost out of Oliver’s fringe casually, easily.
Oliver is rooted to the spot for one frozen moment, feeling his pulse bleat helplessly out of the veins in his forehead, before he pulls them both upright and several paces down the road.
“I’m listening,” Oliver says, but he’s not making eye contact anymore.
“My mum is from Medellín, in Colombia. She and her sister moved to Valencia, looking for work in Spain, like. And my dad was there too, he’s capital-B British, but he works for HSBC and he was on an international rotation.
They met at a bar. Well, she was the bartender.
She was studying English under the counter between mixing drinks, and he offered to tutor her. ”
“Very magnanimous of him,” Oliver says, grinning.
“Exactly, like, obviously they fell in love immediately and got married right away. Also, because Mum got pregnant with Rafa, my older brother, anyway,” Leo goes on, picking up speed.
“I came along too and eventually Dad got promoted, which was super exciting for him, but kind of rough for the rest of us because it meant moving to London, which was, you know, moving back for him, moving away for us. And there was still a language barrier for Mum, and it’s, like, she’d already uprooted her whole life once, she hadn’t quite bargained on doing it again, with two children, in English, without her sister. ”
“How old were you?” Oliver asks.
“I was nine,” Leo explains. “I actually think I got off easiest, because I was still little, and I went right into the academy. All Dad had to do was say the Prem is better than La Liga and I packed right up.” Oliver can see it perfectly, superimposing a coltish Leonardo onto his own memories of being nine and running pell-mell for the gates of the training grounds, the one place where he could put everything to rights even when the rest of his life swirled between chaos and grief on the hour.
“It was worse for Mum and for Rafa, way worse. He took off for college when I was twelve and pretty much the minute his bags were packed, Mum said, ‘Me too.’ ”
“She left?”
“No way. She convinced Dad to go too, didn’t she? Hard to argue with ‘your beautiful wife, sunny skies, and the sandy shores of the Mediterranean.’ Even he doesn’t like banking that much. They went back to Valencia together.”
“But you stayed?” Oliver likes the feeling of these questions and answers, like he’s fitting the corners of a jigsaw puzzle together.
“After much petitioning. I was good enough, then, that they knew I might make it professionally, that I was good in the Premier League way and not in the proud parental way, you know?”
“Ah, so you are good in the Premier League way?” Oliver can’t resist querying in a singsong.
“You know precisely what I mean, sire,” Leo parrots back, matching him syllable for syllable. “I remember you, you knew even earlier. You were miles ahead of all of us all through the academy.”