Chapter Forty-One
The road back to real friendship is mostly smooth.
We don’t have to start from scratch, we just have to start from a place that feels right.
It’s a bit like coming back to college after summer break: We’re excited to see each other, nervous about whether we can pick it right back up, and pretty unwilling to have yet another rehashing of what we did in our three months off.
Perhaps subconsciously, we both invite third parties the first few times we hang out outside the “office” (such as it is).
Phil and the physios join us for drinks at the pub, Bashie and Sadie come over for dinner.
One Sunday morning, Amina has us round for brunch.
She says it’s so Lachlan can meet the baby, but I know it’s really so she can side-eye him until she’s satisfied that he’s changed.
We crowd around her kitchen table, now strewn with patterned bibs and colorful plates and other baby paraphernalia.
The house has an air of benign neglect and I’m thinking it’s high time I give her another evening of help, but Amina is as sharp as ever.
She lays out a plate of store-bought pastries and a couple of Nespresso pods and bounces Hamza on her knee.
With an unapologetic shrug, she says, “I don’t know what I was thinking hosting brunch with a fucking three-month-old, but the croissants aren’t bad if you pop them in the microwave. ”
Lachlan obliges with a smile, and while his back is turned, Amina and I have an entire conversation with our eyes. In my mind, it goes something like this:
Her: So everything’s cool, then?
Me: Yeah, we’re still figuring it out, but it’s trending in the right direction.
Her: And are you…you know…
Me: No. Off the table for now, perhaps forever. And that’s a good thing.
Her: Bitch, please. You know you still want it.
Me: What I want is for us to be best friends again.
Her: And a little piece of that ass.
Me: I mean, it is objectively a fantastic ass. But again, not now. Not yet. We’re not ready.
Her: Hmm…I guess…
Me: Yeah. Now put those eyebrows away because the microwave dinged.
I think her translation was largely the same, but with significantly more profanity.
I pick at a croissant as the three of us chat.
Then Lachlan offers to hold Hamza, which he does by saying, “Give us the wee bairn,” and I’m briefly reminded of how sexy it is when he lets himself go full Scot.
But if we don’t end up going down that road, I’m sure that feeling will pass with time, or will change into something bearable.
For now, I distract myself by watching Amina, who looks like she’s just handed over an active nuclear device, such is the relief on her face.
Lachlan is adorable with the baby, and Hamza is obsessed as well, never lifting his sticky little fingers from Lachlan’s stubbly cheeks, and crying when Amina takes him back.
I guess I’m supposed to say something like “It makes my ovaries explode,” but I can confirm that all my internal organs retain their structural integrity.
And yes, after Lachlan leaves, Amina and I have fun idly speculating what he would be like as a dad, but I no longer let these flights of fancy have a meaningful impact on my life plans. Progress! Growth! Self-actualization!
Sometimes I do feel that ache, the slow bloom of want.
Not just physical—after all, that ass is extraordinary—but emotional.
Once at dinner, he took a call from Moira, and I couldn’t stop thinking about what it would be like to sit around her table in the house in Oban, to have her welcome me into the Ramsay family, to get to know Lachlan’s sister Eilidh and commiserate about what it’s like to grow up in the shadow of more talented brothers.
I think about the big “We’re in Love” things: shopping for Christmas presents for his niece, looking at holiday homes in the Highlands, helping him navigate what happens in his career once his knee finally gives up the ghost. I think about bringing him home to meet my parents, seeing him welcomed into the fold by my brothers, watching him fight through the boredom as they make him watch interminable Red Sox games.
But I also think about standing in line with him at the post office, getting the Range Rover’s oil changed, finally hanging the curtains that have been heaped in the corner of the guest room for months.
I think about slotting into his life in the most quotidian ways until I’m just an established fact, as automatic as breathing.
I think about Claire’s notion that all Lachlan wants is a simple life, someone to grow old with, and I think about how that’s all I want too.
And I think about the panic that rises in me when I contemplate what would happen to me if he ever met someone else.
But I can’t focus on things I can’t control, which is why I remind myself every day: I can only try to be the best advocate for myself and my happiness.
Lachlan breaks the news about the divorce to the team after training one day; I know this because Bashie tells Sadie, who promptly sprints to my office.
She throws herself into the chair and proceeds to stare in disbelief as I explain that even though I know they’re splitting up, Lachlan and I are just friends.
Her disappointment is palpable, and the wheels in her head couldn’t be more obviously turning as she concocts some scheme to push us together.
Like she can shove us in a closet, seven-minutes-in-heaven style, and we’ll just emerge from it happy and in love.
But I think I convince her to stand down—at least for the time being.
After all, I’m not ready, and neither is he.
Once, over coffee, Lachlan admits that though it was months or maybe even years that he knew, on some level, his marriage was ending, it was still way too soon for him to think about being with someone else.
I finally find a therapist in Liverpool, and this is also something she and I discuss at length: the idea that barely three months on from the worst breakup of my life, I thought I was ready to fall in love again.
Books and movies make it seem so easy, so quick, like walking out of your divorce lawyer’s office and bumping into the love of your life in the lobby.
The reality—at least for me—is that if you rush your recovering heart straight into something new, it takes that much longer to heal.
Healing is a process. It’s not as easy as a scab closing over a wound, it’s a slow and steady realignment of things in your body.
When Steven left me, I was a raw wound, and the Mersey job was my audacious attempt to heal over quickly.
Lachlan was a Band-Aid, hastily applied to an injury that was far more than skin-deep.
And that was good enough for a really long time, but truth always wins out over dare.
Dare is fleeting glances, flirtatious touches, unchecked fantasies.
Dare is fun for a while, but Dare is not forever.
Truth, though? Truth is patience, honesty, hard conversations.
Truth is maturity, vocalized desires, emotional intimacy.
Yes, even after everything that happened, I’m still so glad I took this job, still so glad that I met him.
And since I’m choosing the path of Truth, maybe one day we can explore the possibility of being more than friends, if it feels right.
Maybe one day we will slot into each other’s lives in the way I imagine.
I don’t know. I won’t let myself engage with that question yet, because I’m not ready, and neither is he. We both still have healing to do.
This is what mine looks like:
I convince my landlord to let me paint my living room green, and it is not exactly the color of vomit, but it is far closer than I would have liked. Still, it makes me happy.
I meditate every morning, or at least every morning that I remember to.
I get extremely drunk and do karaoke with Kieran and some of the other young players. We sing “Mr. Brightside” three times.
I have a ninety-second conversation with Torsten Vogler in the cafeteria. He smiles once and calls me Addy; I count it as a victory.
I join an improv comedy class. As I predicted, it is cringey, but it is also fun; some of my classmates can’t seem to move beyond the idea that dildo is a funny word, but some are actually clever and cool.
I book a nice lunch and a couples massage for Amina and Faizan and stay home to watch Hamza, who screams nearly the entire time but is an angel as soon as they return.
I up my phone calls home to twice a week and work with Mom to plan the perfect trip for when she and Dad come over in July.
I get coffee with Fiona. I almost succeed in not thinking about her tits flopping around in my bed.
I write Steven a letter, wishing him and Jessica well in whatever comes next. I enclose a Mersey F.C. onesie for his impending parasite.
I go on a date with Insurance Nick from the bar that night with Sadie. I still do not understand his job, but there is maybe a single beat of a butterfly’s wings in my stomach when we say goodnight.
I book a weeklong trip to Boston over the summer off-season and watch Josh actually tear up when I tell him I’m coming home. I tell my old boss from the Sox and she insists I come back to Fenway to watch a game with the team.
I cook a passable lasagna for family dinner with the Iqbals and watch Hassan beam with pride as I perfectly explain the offside rule to him.
I run three miles and do my own stretches.
Perhaps most importantly: I get back on the bus.
It’s Phil who makes it happen, convincing me that the lads could use a boost to get through the last five matches of the season.
Mersey have clawed their way back up to second, fighting tooth and nail for first, and every game matters.
We decide that after the next victory I’ll surprise the team by riding the bus back and resurrecting #EarnTheShirt.
And there’s only one option for whose kit I’m going to choose.
He plays a hell of a game, with a ferocity that’s on a whole other level, even for him. He’s a blur of motion, an angry crimson tornado all over the pitch. And when I step on the bus after a well-deserved Mersey win, he’s the loudest voice in the chorus welcoming me back.
I unzip the hoodie slowly, primly, like I did that very first game, as the noise on the bus roars to a crescendo. And then I reveal it, the Man of the Match: ASHBURN 4.
Bashie is irrepressible in triumph, nearly kicking poor Marco Riva in the face in his mad dash up the aisle.
When he gets to me, he grabs my head with both hands and shakes me, screaming in my face.
Then he puts me in what many people would consider a headlock, slinging a heavy arm around my neck while he turns to face the rest of the boys.
“That’s what I’m talking about, lads. This doesn’t stop!
We go again and again and again until it’s fucking finished. Isn’t that right, Macca?”
I gasp out some sort of affirmative as the blood rushes to my face.
Kieran is chanting Bashie’s song and Lachlan is alternating between laughing and yelling, and even though it feels like I may never regain the use of my windpipe, this is the moment I know everything will be okay.
I’m putting all the hells I’ve been through behind me, and I won’t stop.
I’ll go again and again and again until it’s fucking finished.
Vogler mounts the stairs of the bus and gives his customary taciturn congratulations, and as I turn to sit down, I catch Lachlan’s eye.
Old habits, I suppose. He smiles and gives me a little nod and my eyes prick with tears.
I can’t tell if they’re happy or sad or both, but I know that whatever happens, it’s going to be okay.