Chapter 5
“If you don’t stop pestering me and let me watch the match, I’ll call the local authorities.” I walk into my dad’s house in Blackheath to find him batting his lovely home health attendant away from his sacred television chair.
“It’s the same game you’ve watched a dozen times, you old codger. C’mon, Mr. McKallen. The fresh air will do you good.” Her deep voice is smooth like honey, trying and failing to coax my stubborn father out of his spot.
Dad scoffs. “The air outside is riddled with pollution. It’ll probably kill me faster.” He inclines a brow in her direction. “Is that what you’re hoping for, Myrah? Because if I’m dead, then you’re out of a job.”
“Yes, because you’re the only sick man in all of England.” She rolls her eyes, a soft smile curling her full mouth.
“I think you should listen to her, Dad.” I kick off my shoes by the front door and step into the sitting room to the left of the entry.
“Hello, Pumpkin.” Dad reaches his arms out to me, wanting a hug but refusing to get out of his beloved chair.
I wrap my arms around his shoulders, breathing in the familiar scent of his aftershave, and instantly feel at ease. “I’m serious. Doctor Hasana said staying active is the best way to keep you mobile for as long as possible.”
“Can’t I be mobile after the match?”
“Why don’t you use the recording feature I had installed for you? That’s why we upgraded your tv.”
“Too many bloody buttons. Can’t trust technology these days. Thought I was recording the Tottenham vs. Norwich match and ended up watching an episode of I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here!”
“Oh, I quite like that show,” Myrah chimes in.
“I’ve never seen it,” I reply.
“You have to watch it. It’s an absolute tip, but so fun. Watch it with my boys every week.”
“Maybe you two should go on a walk together and leave me to watch the match alone,” Dad grumbles.
“No way. Off you pop.” I tug on his arm, forcing him out of his seat and lightly pushing him into the hall while he mumbles expletives the whole way, only pausing to put on his trainers.
I grab a jacket for him out of the small entryway closet, handing it over, and his ire morphs into a sheepish look as he gives the tv behind me a final, longing look. “Can you still record it for me?
Rolling my eyes, I pop back into the sitting room to program the tv, recording the rerun match my dad has already seen a dozen times, before meeting him back by the door.
We slowly stroll our way north throughout his neighborhood toward the lush green lawn of Greenwich Park, my arm looped through his, helping to keep him steady.
With the sun hiding behind thick clouds, there’s a lack of sunshine aiding the slight chill in the air, despite it being summertime.
The weather is unpredictable in London, but it’s safe to say that, with the grey skies and the small gusts of wind, rain is likely on the horizon.
However, the overcast day hasn’t deterred anyone from going outside, and the park is packed with parents pushing their babies around in prams, dogs frolicking at the end of a lead, and groups of friends hunting for the best spot to set down their blankets for a picnic at the top of the hill—likely planning on staying until the sun sets over the city in the distance.
“How are you feeling?” With how hectic everything has been in my first week at work, I haven’t been able to get out to visit since I moved here.
“Don’t fuss over me.” He taps the top of my hand clenched around his arm.
“You don’t take this seriously enough. Parkinson’s isn’t a joke, Dad.
” It's the biggest reason I moved here. After his diagnosis was confirmed, I immediately started making plans to move to England thank you, dual citizenship.
We had visited a couple times while growing up and had been back for business, but I was never here longer than a week and always had no time to explore.
But with Dad’s health, everything in LA starting to feel suffocating, and with the team going up for sale, the decision to move here was shockingly easy.
“I choke down the slop you force me eat, don’t I?” he grumbles.
“Fresh fruit and veg is hardly slop. You’re so dramatic,” I huff out a laugh.
“You’re not dramatic enough. You gotta live a little, lovey. You’re too focused on work and never have any fun. You’re young; you should be stealing every morsel of joy out of life you can.”
What is he talking about? I’ve traveled the world, gone to events—I’ve been to Coachella four miserable times. I have experienced things.
“I’m exactly where I want to be.”
He hums contemplatively. “And how are the lads?” Ever since I bought the team, he’s taken to calling the guys on the team the lads, as if they’re all his close personal friends by association.
The camera was turned the wrong way when Dad answered my FaceTime call to tell him the news.
After five minutes, and a lot of swearing while trying to explain to him how to get it to flip around, I gave up and told him I bought the team and was officially moving.
I hadn’t seen him move that quickly in a long time as he launched himself out of the chair and started cheering, ‘I’ve got season tickets! ’
“The lads are fine.” I steer us toward a bench so he can rest, because he’ll never ask for it on his own. He never has.
“What about that Stone fella?”
Something in my stomach pitches at him bringing Tieran up. “What about him?”
“He didn't play the best last year. Do you think this year will be any different? I want to hedge my bets properly.”
“Dad! You can’t bet against our own team!” My voice raises before I remember there are people around me, and I clench my lips closed, afraid of nosey ears. I learned long ago that anyone would sell you out for a quick buck or fifteen minutes of the spotlight.
“I can if they’ll make me some money,” he chuckles.
“You know I can take care of you.”
He’s shaking his head before I can finish my sentence. “I never took money from you before, and I won’t now. It’s already bad enough that I let you pay for that nurse.”
“Oh, come on.” I bump my shoulder against his. “You like Myrah, I can tell.”
“She’s alright.” He looks away from me, saying hello to a Dachshund trotting by and evading my observation, but I swear, there's a slight pinkening to his already ruddy cheeks.
We sit for another half hour, letting him rest and catch up on the week apart. He peppers me with more questions about the team, thankfully not bringing up Tieran again, and I ask about his friends from the local pub as we watch the sun slowly start to set, casting London in a warm golden glow.
My first week here has been far from smooth, but it’s all been worth it to have moments like these again.
“Dad,” I call out from the open refrigerator door. “Why is there no food in here?”
He grunts out something unintelligible in response as I make my way toward the front of the house, grabbing my bag and slipping my shoes back on.
“Where are you going?”
“M&S to get stuff for dinner. I’ll be back soon.”
“Why don’t we just order take away?”
“How many times have you ordered in this week?” My hands ball and rest on my hips in reprimand.
“That’s an inconsequential detail. Doesn’t a chippy sound nice?”
To be honest, it does. Nothing makes me feel more at home than fresh fish and chips, but someone has to make sure he stays fit to stave off the worst of his symptoms. He’s already a little off balance, and seeing tremors in his hands as he stirred his tea this afternoon made me want to cry.
It was a fight holding back tears to avoid drawing attention to it, but Archie McKallen is, and always will be a prideful man.
Needing assistance to do menial tasks made him feel weak, and I didn’t want to pour salt in a festering wound by crying about it in front of him.
In the moment it was a relief, but it made me feel like a coward, being willing to follow his lead just so I could avoid the reality of his mortality a little longer.
It’s still early stages, but watching your favorite person—someone who has always been larger than life—get older and slow down is excruciating.
“I’ll see you in an hour with something green,” I say as I step out the front door.
“No brussels sprouts, please!” His request trails out to me just before the door shuts.
Twenty minutes and three phone calls to Jaded’s manufacturer later, I’m walking through the automatic doors of the local M&S Food with a hope and a dream but absolutely no plan.
My stomach starts to grumble the second I smell the premade hot food lining the far wall.
Doing a food shop while hungry was a fatal mistake, considering how everything is now tempting me.
Grabbing a cart, I make my way over to produce first, grabbing a couple zucchinis, a head of garlic, and a few lemons before somehow finding myself veering into the snack aisle.
Maybe just something small to tide me over until dinner—
I stop dead in my tracks when I see who’s at the end of the aisle. Oh. Oh no.
What deity did I piss off?
Why, in a city of roughly nine million people, can I not stop running into Tieran Stone?
How on Earth is he somehow in this same food shop, on the outskirts of central London, looking irritatingly good in jeans and a slightly cropped graphic tee that shows off the tattoos on his arms, giving the tiniest peek of his toned abdomen as he reaches up for th—
Stop.
How is the one person I am actively trying to avoid, the one person the universe keeps hilariously dropping into my path like an atom bomb? At this point, the only thing that will keep us out of each other's paths is a meteor crashing down and obliterating the planet.