Chapter 15
Aiden
The coach rumbles away from Gloucester stadium. No overnight hotel stay since it’s very close to Bath—an hour and a half at most. The game was a disappointing loss, but such is the way with pro rugby. Can’t win them all.
Abs is sitting in the window seat next to me. He immediately pulls his phone out to text Orlando. I peer at the screen, but he angles it away.
“Pervert,” he says, laughing.
“Excuse me, I’m not the one sexting my so called ‘just a friend’ on the bus home from the match.”
“I’m not sexting him.” But his face betrays his words and flushes as red as his hair. Not that he’s bothered anyway, nothing seems to dent his mood this evening.
Even though the Cents lost the game, Abs is currently on a high because Gadget’s in Wales, sorting shit out for the Six Nations squad tryouts, and my good friend here got a solid sixty minutes of pitch time in the number ten jersey.
Now, I’m not saying our loss and Abs being on the pitch are related. I absolutely would never think that about my best bro . . .
I do, however, feel like we’d probably have won if Gadget was playing. Of course, these words will never live to see the light of day.
Abs’s receives another notification. He glances at his phone, still angling the screen away from me. His eyes go wide, but in the dark reflection of the coach’s window I can make out Orlando’s lacy G-string clad junk.
I look away and pray that we’re not driving level with a bus full of nuns. At the same time, my phone buzzes. I check the message. It’s a WhatsApp from Eggo.
What are you doing later? I want to cum all over your ass.
“Holy shit!” I hastily stash my phone back in my pocket.
“What’s that?” Abs abandons his device, tries to peek at mine, but I’m too quick.
“Nothing . . . I just remembered I have something to do tonight.”
“What is it?”
“Oh, uh . . .” I scratch my mo. “Are you seeing Orlando later? You didn’t want to hang out or anything?”
Abs grimaces. “Is that alright? If I go see Lan? I know we talked about meeting up, but . . .”
“But he’s sent you a picture of his testicles, and I no longer matter any more?” I say.
Abs is dumbstruck. “Uh . . . No . . . Um . . .”
“It’s fine. Like I said, I need to do something too.”
As discreetly as I can, I turn to Eggo, who’s sitting two rows behind me on the other side of the coach.
He has a window seat, his phone is nowhere to be seen, and he’s chatting animatedly to Snatch and Dan, who’re seated beside him and across the aisle from him.
Eggo catches my eye for a microsecond. I almost miss it, but his tongue traces the corner of his lip, so I know he knows I’m still watching him.
I face forward again, and Abs is maniacally grinning at something on his phone. I slip mine out of my pocket and bring up my contacts. Keeping the device close to my chest, I press edit on Eggo’s profile, and I change his name to the first girl’s name I can think of.
Fern.
Also, it’s only two letters different from Finn.
I shoot Abs a glance. He’s preoccupied typing out what appears to be some kind of essay or review to his beloved, so I reply to Fern with only my address.
The fucker has his message ringtone on max volume. I double check mine’s on silent even though it’s been on silent since 2012.
A few seconds later, I get a saluting-face emoji in response. Shortly followed by the emoji of three water droplets splashing. I close my eyes and butt the top of the screen against my forehead to hide my excitement.
“Is the thing you need to do tonight a girl?” Abs asks me in a whisper.
I’m a terrible liar. Especially to my best friend, but I can’t tell him the truth. He draws his own conclusion from my awkward silence and high-fives me.
“Get in, mate.”
Eggo doesn’t even have time to knock. I see him walking up the path and I’m already opening the front door. Trekkie’s still snoring and twitching on the sofa.
“Oh my, what a lovely home you have here,” Eggo says, in a poorly thought through and probably mildly offensive Southern US accent.
He steps over the threshold and kicks the door closed.
“You had me so bricked on the coach, all the way back, just thinking about what I wanted to do with you. Wait, you live alone, right?” He looks around the hall, cranes his neck, attempting to peer into the kitchen.
“Yes, I live alone,” I reply. “Do you not?”
“Nah.” He lets his eyes travel down my body and up again. He wets his lips. I don’t even think he’s aware of what he’s doing, but it’s hot as fuck. “I have a lodger. His name is Sven. He’s Dutch, from Amsterdam, and he’s . . . very unserious. Can I kiss you now?”
“You want a tour first?”
“Sure,” he says, laughing.
Trekkie finally hears an unfamiliar voice and stirs himself awake.
He lifts his head from behind the arm of the sofa, not that dissimilar to a velociraptor peering over the top of an industrial kitchen counter.
One of his ears is inside out, and his lip is somehow tucked under his teeth.
He cocks his head to the side, realises we have a guest, and launches himself from the cushions in an explosion of extra-long legs and barking and fur and tail whipping.
“Oh my god, I forgot you have a dog,” he says, dropping to his knees to greet Trekkie, who runs head first into his chest. His back legs bunch up comically as he’s forced to come to a stop.
“This is Trekkie,” I say as my animal molests Eggo’s face. “He’s a bit overfamiliar sometimes.”
“You’re fucking gorgeous,” Eggo booms to the dog.
He continues to roll around in the hallway with him until even Trekkie gives up in exhaustion.
“I’m gonna steal you. I’m gonna take you home and feed you roast beef and snuggle you so hard and I’m never ever giving you back.
” He kisses him a dozen times on the top of his head, then holds his hands up in the air like he wants me to help him to his feet. “Okay, that’s out of my system now.”
I pull him up, but really it’s any old excuse to touch him.
“My mum’s got two dogs. One’s lovely. Tuna, she’s called. The other is this fucking gnarly bastard that will tear your bollocks off if given half a chance. It’s named Gristle,” he says, with extra venom injected into the word “it’s.”
“What kind of dogs are they?” I ask, guiding him towards my kitchen.
“Tuna’s a rescue staffie cross, and Gristle’s like this . . .” He shrugs. “Jack Russell terrier mixed with Lucifer himself.”
“Do you want a drink?”
Trekkie follows us, his nails clacking along the wooden floor.
“Lush kitchen,” he says, looking around.
“Thanks. I want to get it remodelled. I like the island there and the dining table, but I was thinking how nice it would be to have the entire back wall switched out for those bifold glass doors to make one massive space for summer, but . . . I dunno. I’m not going to be in England long enough to enjoy it. ”
“Why? Where you going?”
I don’t know if he’s being deliberately obtuse or if he genuinely doesn’t understand how these things work.
“I’m on a sports visa?” I say it like a question. “I can only stay here as long as I have a job with a sponsoring organisation like the Cents, but after I retire—and I’m not stupid, that could be any day if I get injured, just look at Owen Bosley—I’ll have to go back to Australia.”
“Bosley was nearly forty when Gadget smashed his leg up. Besides, can’t you apply for an extension? Like if you got a job as a coach or a broadcaster or something, you could stay. There’s such a thing as indefinite leave to remain.”
I’m speechless. Okay, maybe he wasn’t being dim or uninformed. I feel bad for doubting him. Of course everything he’s saying is true. I just never expected that Finn Eggington, the man who dressed like a half-naked Pokémon, would be well versed in green cards.
I can’t tell him I’ve already agonised over every T and every C of my visa and contract, and logically, I know they won’t send me back yet.
But that doesn’t stop me from waking up in a sweaty panic that perhaps I’ve misunderstood the entire thing, or that something has changed, or that I’ve missed a line of text that says, “Indefinite leave to remain will never apply to you, Aiden Campbell, known to your friends as Pi, you sad, careless fuck. Also, we’re coming for your dog. ”
I simply nod instead. “Wanna drink?”
Eggo stares at me. His expression is unreadable. “No. I don’t want a drink. I want you to finish your house tour, show me your bedroom, take off all your clothes, and let me fuck you with my fingers.”
I know that he’s just being typical jokester Eggo, but I’m so immediately on board with this.
“Okay, here’s the kitchen. There’s the garden.” I grab his hand and drag him through the hall.
“Living room.”
Up the stairs.
“Bathroom. Study. Guest bed. My room.”
I shut the door, locking Trekkie on the landing, and Eggo looks around, taking in the decor, his eyebrows raised.
The walls are painted a deep leaf green because I read somewhere that green is calming and beneficial for sleep, but he’s looking at my Star Trek memorabilia and I know he’s already planning his escape route.
“Should . . . um . . . should I put some music on?” I say. I wonder if he can hear my heart jackhammering through my ribcage.
Eggo doesn’t answer me, doesn’t mention the five toy USS Enterprises displayed on a shelf above my bed.
Or the Millennium Falcon, or the vintage ’90s Jurassic Park Jeep Wrangler, or the replica Fifth Element stones, or the multiple Groot Funko Pops.
He simply smirks, wets his lips, then he’s kissing me, rolling his hips against mine, sandwiching his erection between us.
When we got back to the Cents’ grounds, most of the boys went into town for drinks. I drove straight home, and even though I’d showered at Gloucester, the first thing I did was jump in my shower here, brush my teeth, and wash my ass.
If my shitty parents taught me anything, it was that you should always tidy up when guests come over.