Chapter Twenty-Five
November rushes by in a blur of wind and cold.
Most of the players are away at the World Cup, so the training center is oddly quiet.
The empty, echoing corridor reminds me of my first weeks back in June, but now there’s a sense of camaraderie among those left behind.
It’s like we’re camp counselors waiting for our charges to arrive, or bar staff sharing a drink after last call, that strange sense of power and calm that comes with having the run of an empty building.
Lots of the Comms team are taking time off, but I’m too enamored of the long, lazy lunches in the canteen or postwork games of pickup football on the training pitches to give all that up for a few frigid days in Boston.
Plus, I’m still digging myself out of my hole with Charlotte.
That’s why I’m in my office one darkening evening, elbow-deep in edits to a recap video.
It’s coming together well but requires such fiddly little cuts to line everything up just right that I’m mere inches from the monitor, sliding a cursor back and forth across infinitesimal distances, my neck rigid and eyes straining.
So when I feel hot breath on the back of my neck, all hell breaks loose.
“Jesus Fucking Christ!” I scream. I whip my headphones off and turn my chair around, prepared to either karate chop whoever the intruder is, or—more likely—hightail it the fuck out of there. (Fight or flight has never truly been a binary option for me.)
Lachlan is doubled over, his laughter so powerful that he’s gasping for breath. “What. Were you. Going to do. With that?” he chokes out, which is when I realize I’m brandishing quite the powerful weapon: my stapler.
I drop it on the desk and lean forward in my chair. Running my fingers through my hair, I shake my head. “I genuinely thought I was going to die.”
“Not today. Or at least, not by my hands.” He scoots the would-be murder-stapler to the side of the desk and perches in the space it vacated. “So—I know your secret.”
My heart rockets straight up to the vicinity of my throat, borne upon the rush of blood that’s coloring my face.
Are we finally going to discuss what happened in the Lake District?
The secret that I’m slowly falling in love with him?
On the one hand, I assume it’s obvious to everyone who works for the club or, you know, is capable of sentient thought.
On the other, this knowledge in the hands of Lachlan Ramsay is a deadly weapon, if only for how mercilessly he’ll mock me.
I eye him closely, looking for subtle hints in the curl of his lips or the light dancing behind his eyes, but it looks like your bog-standard Lachlan mischief.
So I shrug. “Welp, you found me out: I have fantasized about Mr. Bean.”
His eyebrows shoot up. “Okay, we’re definitely going to put a pin in that one, but no. I know you and Matty and Evie are planning to kidnap me for a birthday dinner tonight.”
“God damn that Matthew Fletcher! Doesn’t he know that loose lips sink ships?”
“If that’s true, then Matty’s a U-boat.”
“Well, I refuse to confirm or deny these vicious rumors.” I clear my throat. “On a completely unrelated note, what time do you think you’ll be done tonight, and could that time be around six-thirty and could you maybe then be waiting in the first-team dining room with your coat on?”
He laughs. “Sure. But first, Bashie has smuggled in some contraband lagers. Let’s go.” He nods at my door.
We wander through the quiet halls of the training center down to the dining room, where as soon as I walk through the door Bashie sweeps me into a bone-crushing hug.
I flail a bit as he lifts me off the ground, laughing in relief when my feet touch the floor again. “Hiya, Bash. Already on the lash, I see?”
“When the cat’s away, Macca.” He bro-hugs Lachlan. “Happy birthday, brother.”
Sadie, Phil, and several of the team physios are there, too. I take a seat and fish two bottles out of the small cooler.
Lachlan takes the beer I hand him. “How did you know it was my birthday, anyway? I try to keep that very private—if the club find out how old I am, I’ll be put out to pasture in America, doomed to spend my twilight years on what passes for a team over in your homeland.”
“Offense taken,” I say. “But I’m sorry to say you haven’t successfully kept that information off the internet, and it’s my job to monitor the players’ Wiki pages.”
“Oh, so you’re the one who keeps editing my Personal Life section to say I have two dicks and one ball?”
“I believe that would be your fans over at Man United. Though, to be fair, I would never delete something like that until I could independently confirm or deny it. Wikipedia requires citations, you know.”
Sadie raises her hand. “If you need a verifier, I’m available.”
“Like fuck you are,” Bashie says. “If anyone’s getting a good look, it’s me.
” He leans over, sticks a thumb in the waistband of Lachlan’s shorts and pulls it away from his stomach, examining what’s down there and sending my pulse skyrocketing imagining the view.
“Nope,” Bashie says after a second. “Just the usual for us Scotsmen: one wee, shriveled cock, two mangled, lumpy balls.”
Lachlan’s grin stretches from ear to ear. He clinks the neck of his bottle against Bashie’s. “Slàinte mhath, mate.”
The two of them slip into an absolutely filthy discussion that has the rest of us in stitches—from what we can understand, that is.
Left unchecked, Lachlan’s accent is just as strong as Bashie’s, and every other word is unintelligible.
But after a minute or two of side-splitting laughter, there’s one thing I hear very clearly: the soft “Oh, shit” from Sadie as she looks up at the door to the cafeteria.
I follow her gaze and see Matty walk into the room.
Even though I was grateful for his help in planning Lachlan’s surprise dinner, my reaction to seeing him these past few days has still been one of silent triumph at the fact that he didn’t make the cut for England’s World Cup squad and so has had to stay here rather than jet off to Qatar.
But today, my shoulders slump: The RA has come to break up the dorm party.
And then I see who’s with him and all the breath is sucked straight out of my body.
It’s a stunning woman in a perfectly tailored blazer and trousers, her hair beautiful cascading blond waves.
She looks different from the pictures I’ve seen on the internet: She’s thinner and tanner, her cheekbones almost skeletal and her lips plump and covered in glossy red lipstick.
But that Girl Next Door aura is still there if you look hard enough.
And I do look hard, because I can’t quite believe that she’s here, in the flesh: Mrs. Claire Ramsay.
Lachlan hasn’t turned around yet, but he does at the look on my face, and then he turns a similar shade of white.
Ironic that the two of us have become so pale when Claire’s the real ghost in the room.
She steps out from behind Matty and does little jazz hands.
“Surprise, Lockie! Happy birthday.” If there’s any part of her that’s nervous about the reception she’ll get from her estranged husband, it doesn’t show in her unlined face.
Lachlan stands up as if in a daze. As he crosses the room to his wife’s outstretched arms, he looks over his shoulder at me, his expression stricken, his eyes a haze of confusion.
I’ve clenched every muscle in my body and couldn’t tell you what look I’m returning: I hope it’s some combination of “Oh fuck” and “I’m here for you,” but probably I just look constipated.
Next to me, Sadie’s sharp eyes take in the whole scene.
Bashie is glowering, picking at the label on his beer bottle, and I now understand why Matty didn’t want to invite him to the Claire surprise dinner.
Phil and the physios at the end of the table look up for a moment but quickly go back to analyzing last night’s game, quite uninterested in whatever domestic drama is unfolding.
When Lachlan does a round of introductions, Claire’s eyes narrow as she examines Sadie, taking in her perfect curves and her pouty lips, calculating whether it’s safe to leave her husband alone with this beautiful woman.
She barely glances at me, and I’m surprised by the emotion this generates: not embarrassment, but vindication.
The fact that she doesn’t consider me a threat tells me everything I need to know about her, including—most crucially—that she doesn’t know a thing about her husband’s life.
Claire turns to Bashie. “All right, Billy?”
He remains firmly planted in his chair and takes a swig of beer, not bothering to look her way. “Claire.”
And my love for Bashie quadruples.
Matty papers over the awkward silence by clapping his hands. “Okay, so, a successful surprise. Evie’s waiting in the car, so we should head to the restaurant. Abby, you don’t mind if Claire takes your spot, right?”
Lachlan’s face falls and he looks like he wants to say something, but I cut him off before he can get us both in trouble. “Of course not. Have fun.”
“Aw, thanks, babe,” Claire says to me in a sickly-sweet voice that turns my stomach. Lachlan flinches as well, which makes my stomach flip in an altogether different way.
“Matty, you guys go ahead,” Lachlan says. “I’ll be right behind.”
As soon as they’re gone, Lachlan turns to me with a pained expression. His voice is low and pleading. “Abby, I am so, so sorry.”
I haven’t yet sorted through all the things I’m feeling, but I know that being petulant and stompy isn’t going to make anything better, so I keep it light. “What did we say about saying sorry in this friendship?”
He doesn’t laugh. “No, I can’t believe you organized the whole thing and now you can’t go. It doesn’t seem fair. And also, it’s my birthday: I want you there.”
“Well, I’m certainly not going to go fifth-wheel a double date.” Light, Abby, keep it light despite the stabbing feeling in your gut and the fact that your heart is beating at roughly the speed of sound. Don’t think about how this could be the end of your life as you currently know it.
“It’s not a…I mean…I just don’t know what to say. I can’t believe she’s here.” He runs a hand through his hair.
I give his elbow a little squeeze. “Go. Have fun. I’ll crash at Amina’s tonight. Just let me know when you’re ready to debrief, and whether said debrief should be accompanied by a whisky from Islay or from the Highlands.”
He grabs me and pulls me into such a tight hug that I fear for the integrity of my kidneys.
His long sigh ruffles my hair and he holds the embrace for ages.
I rub idle circles in his back and don’t let myself contemplate the possibility this might be the last time we can hold each other like this.
Then he withdraws and walks out of the room without a backward glance.
Sadie materializes at my side like some sort of sexy vampire. “Well, fuck me running.”
I shake my head. “You can say that again.”
Then Bashie’s there. “Good fucking riddance.”
“Why do you hate her so much?” Sadie asks.
“I used to love her. We were all obsessed with her, all the Scotland lads. But she changed. Two years ago, Lachlan’s da died, near the end of the season.
Lach was in Madrid, and they were so close to first in the league, but ’course he had to go up for the funeral.
Missed the most important match of the season, but everyone understood.
But he had to beg Claire to come to Oban.
She was there for less than twenty-four hours, then went straight back to Spain.
Left him to sort everything out, didn’t lift one wee finger to help.
Poor Moira in shambles with her husband gone, Eilidh come all the way from New Zealand devastated, Lach tore up about it.
Maybe he can forgive that, but I cannae.
You don’t fucking do that to someone you love. ”
“That’s awful.” Sadie slips her fingers in Bashie’s hand and squeezes it. It’s a small gesture, but filled with so much tenderness that it makes my heart hurt. I wonder if she took my advice and said something to Bashie. I hope she did, because they’re great together.
I’m touched by Bashie’s story as well, for the obvious love he has for his teammate, his brother.
And I have so much pity for Lachlan for not having the support of the one person who should have been there for him unconditionally.
And I’m filled with rage at Claire, at the very thought of her and how she treats this man like an afterthought.
I realize I’m actually clenching my fists like a cartoon character, like if she came back in here I’d give her a good POW! right in the kisser.
The moment is broken, though, not by Claire’s return, but by Bashie slinging an arm around Sadie and me. He leans close, the smell of beer on his breath. “Anyway, Macca, now that the she-beast has binned you off, Sadie and I are free if you’re looking for something—or someone—to do.”
Sadie smacks him in the chest, but I have to laugh at the audacity of taking a sweet, poignant moment like this and trying to leverage it for sex. “I’m flattered, Bashie, but I’ll have to pass tonight.”
“Offer’s always on the table.”
I slip out from under his arm and wave goodbye with one hand while pecking out a text to Amina with the other. Back in my office, I grab my gym bag from under my desk and hope there are clean clothes in there, because I’m sure as hell not risking going back to Lachlan’s tonight.
Two buses and a train later, Amina answers her door after only one knock and presses a bottle of chilled rosé into my hands. “Tell me everything.”