Chapter Five
The days continue to speed by in a blur, the sensation aided by the fact that I’m still doing my football crash course.
It’s like learning a foreign language while also living in the foreign country—and honestly, with how thick some of these accents are in Liverpool, that may as well be the case.
But I’m keeping my head above water. For instance, in a meeting with reps from Nike, I learned that what I would call a jersey or a uniform is, in this sport, a shirt, a strip, or a kit, but that kit can also be used for all the accoutrements as a whole (like cleats, which are called boots, and balls, which are thankfully still balls).
On Friday, after my last meeting of the day, I return to my office to find a large envelope postmarked from Boston waiting for me.
When I open it, out falls a piece of paper folded several times over that opens up to display an elaborate, hand-drawn chart entitled “THE REN-AB-SANCE: ABBY’S GUIDE TO RE-FINDING HAPPINESS.
” There’s a Post-it stuck underneath the title: “Dearest Abby, All good quests require good maps. We’ve made this one in the hopes it helps you find what you’re looking for. Love you lots, Erica I think he and my mom are in cahoots, because every few days I get a text from one of them with a picture of Fenway or Harvard Yard or sailboats on the Charles.
My friends from the Sox are also maintaining a persistent pressure: I left in such a hurry that all I could do was go out for one last, rushed cocktail with whoever was around.
I know they all mean well and just want to have a proper goodbye, but my mad dash for the exit was kind of intentional.
In that hazy, miserable fog after the breakup, momentum was the only thing keeping me going.
If I had stopped for one second to think, to explain myself, to say goodbye, the whole effort would have fallen apart.
And though I’m perhaps marginally more stable now, I’m still not ready.
I can’t stop picturing myself standing in front of the departure gate at Logan, unable to board the flight back to Liverpool.
Unable to return to this life I’ve started to build out of Scotch tape and dreams and denial.
Was it utter foolishness to start from scratch, away from everything and everyone I’ve ever known and loved?
Is this the world’s most unusual game of conflict avoidance?
It’s entirely possible, but too late to back out now.
I check my watch; it’s past seven and my work is done, but all that awaits me outside of these walls is some reheated lamb curry, an uncomfortable twin bed, and the all-too-familiar frosted tips of the Westlife boys.
The Iqbals are away for the weekend, so literally the only thing on my calendar is a phone call with my parents—well, that and all the unscheduled bouts of depression that pop up when I think about the state of my life.
No. I can’t face all that nothingness just yet.
I guess that means it’s time to get cracking on the list. The first box under MOVE BODY is simple: Walk a mile.
Easy. In a fit of optimism last week, I hauled a gym bag into my office, full of the very best athleisure fashion.
I do an aggressively casual stroll through the Comms Department to make sure all my coworkers have left, because the thought of Charlotte Collins seeing me in pink tortoiseshell running tights fills me with existential dread.
When I’m sure the coast is clear, I head down to the gym.
Like every one I’ve ever been in, it’s full of machines I have no earthly idea how to use.
Straps and poles and handles and that weird cushy vinyl, and everything smells vaguely of antiseptic with an undertone of man sweat.
And even though I know I’m allowed to be here after training is done and the players are gone, it still feels like a transgression.
It’s like I haven’t been at the club long enough to have earned this, as if I’ve just transferred to a new high school and am immediately putting on a mandatory one-woman show in the auditorium. But fuck it.
I’m supposed to be working on a highlight reel of some of Mersey’s greatest games from the last decade, so I pull up a video on my phone to watch while I walk.
I put my headphones in and start the treadmill at a leisurely pace.
And damn if it isn’t an engrossing game—nearly fifteen minutes pass before I’m even aware I’m on the treadmill, and at the twenty-minute mark I’m actually oohing and ahhing out loud along with the crowd.
There’s a beautiful little run of play and then a Mersey player (whose name I don’t know; the announcer is saying everything so fast and in such a thick accent that I can barely understand what’s going on) slots a gorgeous ball into the back of the net.
I’m cheering along, but I’m not the only one.
From somewhere far outside the little world of my headphones, I hear “Gooooooallllll!”
The screech I let out could break glass.
If the treadmill had been going faster than its current glacial pace, I would have fallen smack on my face and rolled down the belt, perhaps accompanied by farcical trombone sound effects.
But because I’m barely strolling, I’m able to hit the emergency stop button and turn around as the belt slides to a halt.
In athleisure he wears far better than I do, and with the biggest shit-eating grin on his face, Lachlan Ramsay stands at the base of my machine. “Did I give you a wee fright there?” His grin widens, his eyes positively glittering.
I take off my headphones, and the now small, tinny sound of the announcer screaming wafts up from the earpieces, as if the mayor of Munchkinland moonlighted as a World Cup commentator.
Some breath finds its way back to my body.
“Ironically, you scaring the shit out of me raised my heart rate far more than the exercise.”
“I do what I can.”
“Sorry, I know I’m not supposed to be in the gym if there are still players in the building. I could have sworn everyone was gone.”
“What did I tell you about apologizing?”
“Sor—Okay wait, that feels like a trap.”
He nods at my phone, still playing the video. “I loved that match, though I did think that goal was going to be disallowed.”
“Because he was offsides?”
“Offside. Never an S, Yank. But yes. It was a tense few minutes on the pitch.”
“Hang on, you were on the team then?”
“Yep. That’s little Lachlan, right there.” He climbs onto the treadmill next to me and points out a tiny speck of a player.
I try to ignore how close he is, how his arm brushes against mine as he points at the phone, but I can’t. Lachlan Ramsay is standing next to me on a treadmill! What a world! “Oh my God, you were such a baby.”
“If only I could go back and tell that lad a few things I know now…” There’s a brief pause where he looks uncomfortable, but then he sort of vaults himself over the arm of the machine and lands back on the ground.
He gestures to the wall of glass looking out onto the training pitches.
“One thing I do know is that it’s a perfectly lovely Friday evening, and yet for some reason you’ve chosen to be in a room that smells faintly of jockstrap. ”
“There are a lot of people in the world who would pay good money to smell what I’m smelling right now.”
“You’re very strange.” He laughs. “Do you want to get dinner?”
“With you? Now?”
“No, with Ringo in 1964.” He rolls his eyes. “Come on, I’ll cook you something.”
My eyes narrow. Lachlan and I have had a few chats since that first encounter in my office, but I wouldn’t have said we were at the “It’s Friday, let’s hang” level of work friendship.
What’s his game? On the other hand, I can’t shake the feeling that he’s somehow my boss, which is emotionally if not corporate-hierarchically true.
Am I actually allowed to refuse him, or does that violate the cardinal rule? I have to ask: “Why me?”
“Because you moved to Liverpool ten minutes ago and I moved here nine minutes ago and it’s past seven on a beautiful Friday evening but we’re both still at work, so I’m guessing neither of us has big plans tonight.
” Golden hour light pours in through the windows, bathing him in a rosy glow. “Why do you seem so skeptical?”
It’s weird being taller than him, but up here, I am.
It gives me confidence. “Because you’re an internationally famous footballer and I’m just some girl from work?
And there’s no way you don’t have cooler people to hang out with?
And there’s a small part of me that thinks maybe you’re actually a serial killer and the whole football thing is just a ruse? ”
He laughs and leans back, pulling against the arm of the treadmill like a bored little kid swinging on dress racks while his mom shops.
The light in his eyes is just as childish; it’s delightfully at odds with the crow’s feet that have started to branch down to his cheekbones.
He holds his arms ramrod-straight, his feet pressed up against the base of the machine, like he’s doing a weird inverted vertical push-up.
I wonder if I provide enough ballast to keep the thing from tipping over; I’m sure it wouldn’t reflect too well on me if I inadvertently crushed Mersey’s new signing before the season even started.
“Lachlan, here’s a free tip from a communications professional,” I say, as the silence stretches past the point of comfortable. “When someone accuses you of being a serial killer, it’s best if you don’t just laugh and then pivot hard into silence.”
“You’re funny, you know that?”
“Funny-looking.”
“Nah, just the good kind. Anyway, what do you say?” He nods at the windows.
“Prove to me you don’t have duct tape and plastic sheeting in your bag.”
“No, that’s all in the boot of my car.”
“Beep beep beep,” I say, flashing my hands like blinking lights.
“What is that? A serial killer alarm?” When I nod, he smiles. “Good one. Come on, I’m hungry.”
“I’m not dressed for dinner.”
“Don’t worry, my ma?tre d’ has a tie you can borrow. And if you’re very nice to me, I’ll show you more footage of baby Lachlan and allow you free rein to take the piss out of an unfortunate mullet I sported for three weeks of the 2014–15 season.”
“Well now, that is an incredibly tempting offer. And I do need to watch these videos…”
“What better way than with an expert who can explain things in a way that’s so simple, even your feeble American mind can comprehend?”
“Yeah, like why don’t you just pick up the ball and throw it down the field like in real football?”
“I’ll not have you discuss that ‘sport’ in my presence again.” He reaches up and hovers his hand over the speed button. “Now say yes or I’ll set this thing to a hundred miles an hour.”
“You really need to work on your threats.”
Lachlan smiles and picks up my bag, and I follow him into the hallway like an obedient dog tailing its master.
I guess I’m doing this, going to dinner at Lachlan Ramsay’s house in pink spandex and a Beatles T-shirt.
Not quite what I would have imagined, but then again, very little about the last month has gone the way I thought it would.