Chapter Fifteen
“All right, Stripes, how long is this going to take?” Lachlan sidles up to me in the training center and drapes his arm over my shoulders, peering down to try to see what’s written on my notecards.
I press them to my chest and turn to look at him—not hard to do, as his face is impossibly close. I can smell the mint of his mouthwash. “Stripes?”
“Yeah, that’s your new nickname. As in ‘Stars and—’ ”
“What happened to ‘Macca’?”
“That’s what all the lads call you. I want something special. Something that’s just mine.”
A little firework, a little pinwheel of sparks, fizzes in a circle in the center of my chest. Something that’s just mine. Before I can retort with a nickname of my own, Matthew Fletcher shows up and slaps Lachlan on the ass.
“Come on, big boy, let’s get into it,” he says. Then he turns to me. “All right, Macca?”
We’re filming a new segment today called “BFFs”—basically the Newlywed Game, but with pairs of Mersey players. As probably the two closest people on the team, Lachlan and Matty are up first.
Phil and his crew make final adjustments and then I kick us off with the first question for Matty. “Who did Lachlan make his debut against in his first Mersey game?”
“Everton. He assisted my goal. Great match.”
Lachlan nods and shows us what he’s written on his whiteboard. “Yep. Very special day. The beginning of a beautiful friendship.” He leans his head on Matty’s shoulder; Matty jerks his shoulder and shoves him off.
“Don’t try to distract me with affection, Ramsay. I’m going to smash you.”
“Who did Lachlan say was the most talented defender he ever played against?” I ask.
Matty looks at Lachlan. “You’ve always hated Damon Talbot, right?”
“I don’t hate the man, but fuck I hate playing him.” He turns to me. “Oh shit, I’m not supposed to swear, am I? Anyway, well done, Skip.” He flips around the board, where he’s written “Talbot” and drawn a face with angry eyebrows and devil horns.
“Get in!” Matty shouts, pumping the air.
“I’m on a roll.” Matty’s shout has drawn the notice of a couple of the players leaving the gym, and a few of them come over to watch us film.
Matty’s energy intensifies as he notices the audience; he sits up straighter and the expression behind his eyes darkens.
Lachlan, on the other hand, is smilier than ever.
“Who did Lachlan say was the most talented teammate he ever played with?”
Matty pulls a face. “I mean, me? He must have said me.”
Lachlan is hiding behind the dry erase board, but we can all see his shoulders shaking with silent laughter, and some of the players watching us from the circle have immediately twigged what’s going on.
Matty notices too. “Come off it, are you serious?” He tries to prize Lachlan’s fingers away from the board, but Lachlan’s got a death grip on the thing. “Who did you say? If it’s some bloody Spaniard, I’m going to lose my mind.”
Through his giggles, Lachlan slips the eraser up into the infinitesimal gap between the board and his chest and furiously erases something.
Pulling off the cap of the marker with his teeth, he scribbles a word and flips the board to the camera.
“Look,” he says, tears in his eyes. “Matthew Fletcher, obviously.”
Matty is apoplectic. “That doesn’t say anything! You’re such a liar.”
“No, it was you the whole time, I swear. It was always you.”
Matty unclips his microphone and jumps up out of his chair.
I suck in a sharp breath—if he really pitches a fit, we won’t be able to use the footage.
But just when it looks like he’s about to throw his water bottle on the ground and stomp back to the dressing room, he turns to the camera again and winks.
“Only joking. Let’s just say that Lockie’s going to regret that answer next time we face off in training. ”
Phil and the players watching the show laugh, but I find my scalp prickling in annoyance. Honestly, I don’t know what it is about this guy, but he just rubs me the wrong way. I shuffle my cards and move away from the football-related questions.
“What is Lachlan’s favorite Scottish band?” I ask.
Matty clicks his tongue. “Fuck if I know; man’s got dire taste in music. The Proclaimers?”
I laugh, then throw my hand over my mouth to stifle it, hoping Phil can edit that out, but Matty ruins the take anyway by looking straight at me. “Why is that funny?”
Phil zooms out and pans to capture me in the shot. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to laugh. It’s just that he hates the Proclaimers. I think.”
Lachlan smiles at me. “And who’s my actual favorite?”
I blush and attempt to demur, but Lachlan gives me an encouraging nod, so I answer. “Um, Barfy Clifford or whatever they’re called.”
Matty narrows his eyes. “Biffy Clyro?”
Lachlan winks at me and flips the board around. “Bang-on.”
“Like I said, terrible taste in music.” Matty shifts in his chair and moves his head to the left and right, cracking his neck.
“We can’t all be the world’s biggest Pink megafan.” Lachlan sings a few bars of “Get This Party Started” and his teammates laugh. It’s a bone of contention among the team that when Matty’s in charge of the music during training, they are inundated with the Pink back catalog.
“For the sake of team morale, I will not engage on this matter.” Matty smiles and wags his finger at all his snickering teammates, then turns to me and claps his hands a few times to pump himself up. “Come on, give us another one.”
“What is Lachlan’s biggest pet peeve?”
“Undeserved yellow cards.”
I shake my head.
“Okay, what is it?” Matty asks me.
“Um, I think it’s people who use their phones while they’re walking and slow everything down,” I say.
Lachlan beams as he flips the board around: “Walking phone wankers.”
“Okay,” I say. “I’m not so eloquent as him, clearly.”
“Yeah, but you have the answers,” Matty says.
“I don’t, actually, I’ve just heard him complain about it every time we’re on the sidewalk.”
Matty is quick to aggression; it’s what makes him such a tenacious player but can also get him into trouble with refs. But since there’s no one here to give him a yellow card—deserved or not—his latent rage is allowed to simmer freely. “I think this is rigged.”
Someone slings an arm around my shoulders but I don’t have to turn to see who it is because the unmistakable smell of Axe Body Spray hits my nose right as the unmistakable accent of local boy Kieran Campbell hits my ears.
“Come on, Skip, let’s let our girl off the hook.
Lockie talks about himself so much it’s no wonder she’s picked up on some of it. ”
There’s a round of laughter from the players, and Lachlan laughs along with them, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes, which seem to be fixated on Kieran’s arm on my shoulder.
I’m not sure what to call the expression I see there—curiosity, maybe, but there’s something sharper hiding behind it.
Something that sends a shiver up my spine.
Kieran cranes his neck down to look at the cards, drawing my attention away from Lachlan. “May I?”
I nod and hand him the stack. Not moving his arm from my shoulder, he looks at Matty. “Okay, Skip, you ready for your comeback to begin?”
“Here, let me get out of the shot.” I gently disengage from Kieran. A brief look of disappointment crosses his boyish face, but then he dives into his new role as question master.
The rest of the shoot proceeds without drama.
Lachlan gets all of his questions about Matty right, as it turns out, and when I pass by the training center’s pool later that afternoon, I hear Biffy Clyro blasting from the speakers.
Phil is in there capturing some footage of the players doing hydrotherapy workouts, and he waves me over to see what he’s got.
Lachlan is on the other side of the pool with one of the physios, but when he sees me he shoots through the water like a seal and hauls himself up out of the pool, a small wave splashing over the rim.
I know I shouldn’t look, but I can’t help myself, because water is wending its way down his abs like a river carving out a canyon.
His navy blue swim trunks are slung low across his hips, and, sodden as they are, they cling to his perversely muscled thighs and the outline of his perfect…
“Dick!” Kieran shouts from the hot tub, his voice jarring me from a train of thought that was getting filthy fast. “You got water all over Abby’s shoes.”
I look down at my flats and see that they are, in fact, soaking. Funnily enough, I hadn’t noticed.
“Shit, sorry, Stripes. I’ve just got so much energy from kicking Matty’s arse earlier. Can’t contain it.”
“Yeah, well, you’ll get my bill. These shoes cost twenty-five American dollars.”
“Damn, can I pay that in installments?”
Kieran steps out of the hot tub to come join us, wrapping a towel around his waist. “What are you guys talking about? Coordinating a few more answers so you can beat the Skipper again next time?”
I laugh. “I swear, there was no collusion. I just know a lot about all of you. It’s kind of my job.”
“Yeah, but I bet he doesn’t know all those things about you.” Kieran jerks his head at Lachlan.
“Try me,” Lachlan says. There’s a spark in his eyes and he crosses his arms. It’s making me a little nervous—he’s inherited Matty’s aggressive energy, and it’s being directed squarely at Kieran. There’s absolutely no need for this to escalate.
“What’s her favorite band?” Kieran asks, before I can say anything to stop him.
Lachlan smirks. “Easy. The Beatles.”
Kieran turns to me, and I shrug. “Pedestrian as that choice may be, he’s correct. It’s the only reason I moved to Liverpool. Certainly wasn’t to go work in football. Am I saying that right? Foo-tuh-ball?”
The men ignore this pathetic attempt at a joke.
“If she was a footballer, what position would she play?” Kieran asks.
“Midfielder,” says Lachlan. “She’s clever as hell, has great situational awareness, great communications skills. Easy.”
Kieran shakes his head. “Nah, mate, she’d be a striker. American aggression, innit? Good for goals. She’d be banging ’em in left, right, and center.”
I’d never thought about it before, but Lachlan’s analysis seems much closer than Kieran’s.
I may be American, but I’m certainly not aggressive.
Ever wary of playing favorites, I choose a third option, and attempt once more to move us all along.
“Sorry, but you’re both wrong. I’d be a goalie, because what girl doesn’t love ten men knocking their balls at her face for ninety minutes? ”
Kieran laughs at that, maybe a little bit too hard. The energy is truly bizarre right now, with Lachlan tense and aggro, Kieran flirtatious and challenging, and me standing here with soaking wet shoes and no clue what’s really happening.
“What’s her pet peeve?” Kieran asks.
I jump in quickly this time and say the first thing that pops into my head. “People asking me to explain offsides, duh.”
Lachlan smiles and rounds on me. “What did you just say?”
I slap my forehead. “Fuck, offside, I know, I know. It’s a surprisingly hard habit to kick.”
He takes a step toward me. “That’s right. Now if you could kindly explain it to me, you won’t have to go into the pool.”
I blanch. He’s explained the rule at least three times at this point, and I get the gist of it, but there are nuances I can never quite nail. “Well, I, I mean…” I stammer. “I know it when I see it: The guy getting the ball has to be behind someone from the other team or he’s offside.”
He takes another step. “Starting from when?”
“When he…gets the ball?”
Lachlan makes a buzzer noise. “Wrong!” He scoops me up and dangles me over the pool. “Starting from when?”
I’ve always hated being picked up, because I’ve never been a waif.
I have this mortifying fear that I’ll be too heavy, that I’m somehow so much denser than anyone expects, and it would be like hoisting a huge sack of flour.
But Lachlan lifts me like I’m a loaf of bread.
I feel weightless. I feel giddy, but that’s maybe because of how his chest is pressed into my back, my now-damp shirt the only thing between us.
His arms are locked around my waist and they’re still cold from the pool, and they feel so smooth under my touch.
I’m flailing wildly as he holds me over the water, but he doesn’t move at all.
He shakes me and repeats the question but I’m laughing so hard I can’t get out any words—which is good, because I’ve forgotten the answer. I wonder what happens if I get it wrong, if he’ll throw himself into the pool with me still in his arms, if the two of us will float there together for a while…
Of course, of course, this is the moment that Charlotte enters the room.
She clears her throat and Lachlan whirls me around to face the sound, then drops me as soon as he sees who it is.
We’re like a couple of teenagers who’ve been caught raiding the beer fridge, and the fear hits me like a punch to the gut.
The entire pool room has gone quiet and I have the urge to jump into the deep end and not surface until Charlotte’s gone.
“Can you please dry yourself off and meet me in my office?” She walks out without waiting for an answer.
Lachlan steps around me to follow her, but I grab his arm and pull him back.
We have a tense, silent exchange of looks: him wanting to explain to her what’s going on, my frantic, wide-eyed plea that doing so will only make it worse.
Finally, he relents. Looking somewhat abashed, he tosses me a towel and I do my best to make myself presentable.
As I pass Kieran on the way out, he hangs his head and whispers, “Sorry.” It’s so sweet and pitiful that I almost laugh, but then the terror reasserts its grip on my body and I head upstairs to await my fate.