Chapter 20 #2
In another life, that sentence would have been the starting pistol. The old Hamish—the one Ian called a bawbag with a gift, the one whose body count was the stuff of tabloid legend and a sex tape I'll never fully live down—would have leaned in. Matched her energy. Found the angle.
Because that was my other talent, wasn't it? Not just football.
Women.
The chase, the read, the moment a look shifted from curiosity to decision.
I lived for that. I was generous, attentive, completely devoted to making sure every woman I was with felt like the only woman alive.
It was my second superpower: making people happy.
On the pitch, in the stands, and between the sheets.
But that was the shadow version. Happiness as a performance I gave to an audience of one, repeated nightly, with rotating cast members.
What I have with Amy is the low, steady burn that gets hotter every single day.
Not fireworks-and-exit. Not a dopamine spike and a hollow comedown I'd fill with football and the next chase.
It's the coffee. The fights. The way she steals my pillow.
The fact that she made a color-coded emergency contact list for our unborn daughter and taped it to the fridge and it includes the poison control number, our vet (we don't have a pet), and "Shannon (if I'm incapacitated and you need someone to yell at the hospital staff but don't call Carol because she'll get arrested). "
That's love. The real thing. Not the shadow happy. The real happy.
"Bristol was lovely," I say, trying to ease out of this.
"Could be lovely again."
"Gemma," I say, and the word carries all the weight I need it to. "I'm marrit. Ma wife's havin' a bairn in about six weeks. I'll be a da soon."
She doesn't blink.
"I heard. Congratulations. She's a lucky woman."
"Nah. I'm the lucky one."
"Modesty always was part of your charm." She touches my arm, fingers lingering on the bicep. "If you ever need anything in the studio—coffee, water, a friendly face during the long breaks—I'm right over there."
"Water's grand, Gemma. Thanks a million."
"Out of the studio, too," she says quietly. "My number hasn't changed."
She walks away with a look over her shoulder that I recognize from several previous lives. I watch her go and something in my chest stirs, not desire but recognition. A distant signal from a radio station I no longer tune into.
What used to be music is now static.
My phone buzzes in my jacket pocket.
Amy.
I can't answer. Malcolm has my segment timed to the second. I send it to voicemail and type: In studio, going live soon. Call you back in 20. Love you x
The tactical walkthrough begins. I stand at the LED floor with the virtual pitch beneath my feet and my old match data floating around me. They want me to break down the free kick—the angle, the wall positioning, the keeper's weight distribution.
I walk through it. Literally. My feet trace the same path I took on the pitch seven years ago, and the graphics follow me, ghosting my movements, showing the trajectory and the spin.
"Wait. Hold it there," I say, and the video playback pauses.
"The thing about a free kick from this range is that the keeper has already decided where he's goin' before ye've struck it.
He's readin' yer hips, yer plant foot, yer eyes.
So if ye're goin' top right, ye look bottom left. Ye lie wi' yer whole body."
"You were good at that," Roshani says.
"I was a professional liar. Now I'm on telly. The skillset transfers beautifully."
Roshani bites her lip. Malcolm buzzes: "Less. Banter."
My phone vibrates again.
Amy doesn't call twice in ten minutes unless something's happened. The last time she double-called, Shannon had driven her car into a bollard outside a Dunkin' and needed a ride. The time before that, Chuckles had become lodged behind the refrigerator and the fire department was involved.
Malcolm's voice hits my ear: "Hamish, we're transitioning to the panel discussion. Stay on your mark."
"I need thirty seconds," I say.
"You have zero seconds."
"Malcolm, ma wife is pregnant and she's rung me twice in the last ten minutes. I'm takin' the call."
I pull out my phone and answer.
"Amy? Ye all right? Is the bairn—"
"I'm fine. Baby's fine. I quit my job."
The words land like a football to the face at close range.
"Ye what?"
"James called. He pushed the resort thing again. Told me I only have my job because of Shannon. So I told him he only has a relationship with his sons because of Shannon and Amanda, and that he's a lonely, manipulative chess player who fills his emptiness with younger women and expensive resorts."
I am in love with this woman beyond all reason and comprehension.
"And then he fired me, and I said he can't fire me because I quit. And then I told him it's his turn to bring the watermelon to the Fourth of July barbecue. And then two Gen Z employees clapped. And I ate a donut."
"Amy—"
"HAMISH." Malcolm's voice is so loud in my ear, I flinch. "We are LIVE in forty-five seconds. Get off the bloody phone."
"Amy, pet, I love ye so much, and I want ta hear every single word of this, but I'm about ta go live on air and Malcolm is gonna have me murdered—"
"Go. Go! I'm fine. I'm eating another donut. Kristin gave me the whole box. Go be brilliant."
"I'll call ye the second we're done. And Amy?"
"What?"
"Ye're ma hero."
I hear her laughing as I hang up and shove the phone under the desk.
Malcolm is saying something that includes "unprofessional" and "contractual obligations" and "control your wife," but I can barely hear him over the blood roaring through my veins.
Amy just quit her job, while I am trapped in a television studio wearing a slim-fit suit with a plastic bug in my ear and Gemma giving me eyes from the production desk and Malcolm trying to shave every ounce of joy from my performance.
"Five seconds."
I look at camera two. The red light blinks on.
"Welcome back," Roshani says smoothly. "Hamish, you were telling us about the psychology of the free kick."
I smile. My body sits perfectly in the chair, hands relaxed on the desk, posture open, tie straight. The version of me the camera sees is calm, confident, and fully present.
Inside, I'm a bonfire.
Amy quit. James is going to retaliate. Now everything's on me.
Her salary wasn't close to mine, but she carried her own weight, her own pension, her own—shite, our health insurance.
Does she still have health insurance? Do I?
Do I know how American health insurance works?
No. No, I do not. In the UK, you get sick, you go to the NHS, you wait four - no, ten - hours in a room that smells like disinfectant and curry and hindsight, and eventually a very tired nurse or doctor sees you for free.
Here, you get sick and someone hands you a bill that requires a mortgage broker to decode.
Amy is thirty-four weeks pregnant. Does CObrA mean something other than the snake? Is there a grace period? A form?
Of course there's an app. This is America. There's an app for everything except fixing the actual problems the apps are meant to solve.
The Str1kecast contract pays well but it's structured over eighteen months with appearance fees and performance metrics and a ratings review at the twelve-week mark. There's no health insurance because they assume you'll live in a civilized country with national healthcare.
I have financial obligations. Mum and Da's bills are on autopay. My brothers' school fees. There's the feeder league I sponsor. The community center in Glasgow. Jody's commission. Vince's sessions. The condo. The baby.
Have I locked myself into something that will eat me alive, the same way the pitch eventually did?
"Hamish?" Roshani prompts, gentle.
I look at the LED wall. My own face, seven years younger, stares back, mid-celebration, arms wide, mouth open, joy pouring off him.
That lad didn't know what was coming. The knee. The end. The reinvention. The girl who'd organize his entire life into an AirTable and make him happier than any goal ever could. He thought sleeping with all the hens was the height of happiness.
But it turned out just one is more than enough.
"The free kick," I say, and my voice is steady, warm, and clear, "is about commitment. Ye pick yer spot. Ye trust yer technique. And ye follow through, even when the wall's in yer face and the keeper's set and every part of yer brain is screamin' that it willna work."
I pause.
"And sometimes, it bends exactly where ye need it ta go."
Roshani nods. The camera holds.
Malcolm says nothing.
And I think: Aye. Sometimes it does.