Chapter Twenty-Four
It’s heartbreaking, but there’s no sugar-coating it: Mersey lost tonight because of Lachlan Ramsay.
It was a massive match against one of our biggest rivals for the title, and I could tell from the first whistle that he was…
off. Distracted, almost. Constantly losing the ball, missing tackles, botching passes.
I mean, hell, if I noticed that he didn’t play well, it must have been an absolute train wreck.
My heart aches thinking about him, about how he’s carried the weight of the team for so many weeks on those broad, resolute shoulders of his, but how tonight, something slipped and he staggered.
True, it’s barely November, but I know he’ll take this one personally, and my mind is already spinning up ways to relieve this pressure.
As is protocol after a loss, the Comms team has stayed out of the dressing room to give Vogler space to yell (or, more likely, seethe tersely in German).
So I loiter outside, waiting for the haranguing to finish.
Lachlan finds me there. He slinks his arms around my waist and buries his face in my shoulder, nestling into the hollow of my collarbone.
I loop my arms around his neck and just hold him, hoping I can transmit some measure of empathy and support through my body, hoping I can somehow communicate to him that it’s going to be okay, all of it.
He smells like sweat and dirt and defeat, but I take a long deep breath in and underneath it all, there are hints of the Lachlan I know.
He uses my inhale to get even closer, linking his arms around my back and squeezing me so tight I fear I might burst.
“Sorry,” he says, his voice muffled in my shirt. “I just needed to feel like there was one person in Liverpool who didn’t hate me.”
“Oh my God, Lachlan, don’t be ridiculous.” I stroke the hair at the back of his neck, feel the stress coiled in the taut cords of muscle. “Of course I hate you. You’re dogshit. Absolute rubbish.”
His shoulders shake in laughter.
“I’m horrified to be seen with you. You disgust me,” I continue.
He sighs into my shoulder, and as he exhales, the tension ebbs away from his body. He doesn’t let go of me, he just stays there, breathing in and out, letting the stress melt away. Then, at long last, he speaks. “What are you doing this weekend? Can we go somewhere?”
“Yeah, you wanna grab dinner Saturday night?”
He pulls back and looks at me, but doesn’t drop his arms from my waist. “No, I mean, like, really go somewhere. Out of the city. I need to get away.”
“Come on, everyone will get over this in a few days. You don’t need to go into witness protection.”
His smile is an echo of his earlier sadness, the corners of his mouth tense. “I know. But, you daft American, the World Cup is about to start, so this was Mersey’s last game for six weeks. A perfect parting gift for our fans.”
I knew this, of course, as I had already made a fool of myself in a Comms team meeting for not knowing that when the World Cup is in a hot country like Qatar, they have to play it in November. “Right, and you’re not going to the World Cup because Scotland didn’t qualify.”
“Yes, thank you so much for adding insult to injury.”
I facepalm. “Sorry, sorry. I was just so proud of my football knowledge there. I forgot that it’s probably, you know, devastating for you since it might be your last chance at the World Cup.”
His eyes boggle and he looks at me like, really?
“Sorry!” I say again. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
He looks at me, his expression almost desperate. “So can we please go somewhere and not think about all of it?”
Not thinking about all of it is famously not my strong suit, and—true to form—his suggestion raises a million alarm bells.
But he looks so dejected, I can’t bear to throw cold water on his plan.
When I hear the sound of the rest of the squad coming down the hallway, I take a step back and squash my doubts.
“Okay, sure. Let’s go away. What’d you have in mind? ”
—
Two days later, we’re speeding up the west coast of England en route to the Lake District, a national park two hours north of Liverpool.
It turns out that when money is no object, you can plan a pretty fantastic trip on very short notice.
Lachlan booked us a luxury cottage on the edge of one of the lakes, told me to pack my hiking boots, recoiled in shock when I told him I didn’t own hiking boots, and dragged me to the local sporting goods store to buy some all in the span of about two hours.
We stop at a grocery store just outside the park and load the car up with food and a truly terrifying amount of whisky-no-E, which—under Lachlan’s enthusiastic tutelage—I have an increasing fondness for.
Back in the Range Rover, I press my face to the window and take in the stunning views.
It turns out the Lake District also has mountains, which are stark and beautiful under the gray, late autumn sky.
We find our cottage as the sun disappears beyond the horizon, and despite doing all the planning and driving and shopping, Lachlan still has the energy to cook a fabulous feast and build us a fire.
All I have to do is pour the whisky and choose the movie (Jurassic Park, because it’s a classic and because, in this unbelievably picturesque setting, anything not involving violent dinosaur attacks has the propensity to read as romantic, and my psyche is not ready for that).
We spend the weekend scrambling up and down gentle hills, dodging copious amounts of sheep shit, reveling in the obscene beauty of this place, drinking pints in quaint country pubs, petting every dog we can find, and bandaging the blisters that my unworn-in hiking boots gouge into my feet. All in all, it’s perfect.
On our last night, I make us a batch of my grandmother’s clam chowder (after all, what’s sexier than hot, milky seafood stew?).
Lachlan declares that we’re going to get extremely pissed, because we don’t have to climb any hills tomorrow morning.
I am extremely down with this plan—especially the no more hills part.
After the chowder (and, yes, after I sneak to the bathroom to brush my teeth), we take our seats on opposite ends of the giant sofa in the living room.
The fire is crackling away in the hearth and Lachlan pours us each a respectable measure of whisky.
The hours tick by and the bottle gets emptier, and I’m cocooned by so much warmth: the blanket, the fire, the booze, and him.
We talk about everything—families, childhoods, hopes and dreams. I explain my complicated relationship with my brothers: how I love them more than anything but always feel like I’m in their shadow.
How Liverpool and Mersey were my chance to start over and make something for myself.
He tells me about growing up in a small town in Scotland, knowing he was good at football but wondering if there was something in the world he would be better at, if anyone would give him a chance to find out.
It’s a new level of depth and intimacy, and I know this makes me sound like Oprah or something, but it genuinely nourishes my soul.
But as deep into each other’s lives as we get, one area remains steadfastly out of bounds: relationships.
Steven and Claire are not welcome in this house, and I’m not sure how I feel about that.
I don’t want to talk about Steven—I don’t want to ruin this lovely weekend by bringing him into it—but I am, as ever, dying to know about Claire.
As I develop these new feelings about Lachlan, they’re accompanied by a louder and louder drumbeat of guilt and confusion about her.
Where is she, what are they doing, is the separation real, why hasn’t he divorced her yet?
I’m dying to know, but I take my lead from Lachlan and keep my mouth shut.
After all, denial is the coward’s best friend.
As the night gets later, a change comes over him.
There’s this thing that happens to his eyes when he scores a goal.
They sort of glaze over with this almost manic look…
It’s a visceral thing, primal. As the crowd screams at him, his whole body goes tense, like he’s been electrified.
The rest of the team piles on all around him, but he’s in the middle like a statue, completely disconnected.
I’ve seen his goal celebrations in person, but it wasn’t until I started editing video clips for socials that I noticed the eyes.
Whatever emotion he feels when he scores is reflected there.
It’s innate, intense. He’s tapping into some animal instinct about kill or be killed, a hunter yanking the spear out of the mastodon.
Whenever I tweet a picture of him postgoal, I know exactly what I’ll get in the comments: hundreds and hundreds of people posting all manner of drooling, wide-eyes, and/or eggplant emojis.
And I totally get it: It is hot. It’s the kind of look that a person can really run with, just a hop, skip, and a jump away from him throwing you roughly onto the bed to claim another kill.
And that’s why, as I look at his face bathed in the firelight, I sit on the sofa feeling every single nerve in my body coiling in anticipation: He has his goal-scoring eyes on.
Almost twenty years of constant training and the resultant 7 percent body fat have put to pasture any expectations about a Scotsman’s ability to hold his liquor, so as he warned me so many months ago, he’s drunker than a freshman at his first keg party.
We’re perched at either end of the sofa, and though it’s certainly big enough for us to keep to our own kingdoms, as the hours pass, our legs inch into the middle, drawn slowly together like dying stars collapsing into each other.
“Let’s play a game,” he says, somewhere around two a.m. His eyes are dark but his smile is mischievous. “What did you Yanks do at slumber parties growing up?”