Matchday 21
It’s an injury-approved walk to Castlehaven Arms, only five minutes up Camden Road into the center of the neighborhood, the cluster of the city where he’s always felt most at home.
Camden might look different now, more and more so every passing month, but the bones are the same.
It’s been a long time since people recognized him as Oliver from Camden instead of Oliver from Camden FC, but when he looks closely, Oliver can still find his home in the bricks, among all the familiar sounds and streets.
Sometimes he suspects everything in his life is eons away from where things started, no matter what the map says, and that makes him wonder if everything is eons away from where they should be, but then he takes the same route through the same park he’s always known, and his feet meet the road as solidly as if they were rooted to the earth.
Camden is playing in the first match of the day, so Oliver lets himself into Conor Bishop’s pub before noon, exchanging the cold city air for the smell of beer-damp wood and hot oil.
Conor is the dreamiest restaurateur north of the Thames and openly gay to boot, and he never misses an opportunity to flirt with him.
Conor seems to think it’s a fun game of chicken with a famous footballer, but for Oliver, it’s the most reliable action he’ll get all season.
Inside it’s a fantasy of twenty-first-century England, posh and homey at once, brimming with tartan and black-and-white photos of Conor’s extended family at home in Nigeria.
Conor is behind the bar like he pulls pints for a living instead of collecting Michelin stars, the sleeves of his waffly shirt pushed back and a tea towel draped over his shoulder to great effect.
Oliver feels somewhat the knob wearing double denim and stark-white trainers.
“Don’t think you can always just show up before we open, Oliver,” Conor says, but he’s eyeing him up and down and kicking open the door to the private back room.
“I’ll never learn if you never turn me away,” Oliver tells him. “You spoil me.”
“Someone ought to,” he replies in his deep, deep voice, flashing his white teeth, and Oliver flushes so pink he feels the color in his toes. He wants to reply in kind, wants to grope around for the limit just a bit, but before he can, Conor’s eyes flit to the door and he nods a greeting.
“Looking for him?” Conor asks, and Oliver turns to find Leo and Woodsy standing at the threshold. He feels like he’s been caught doing something incredibly illicit.
“Looking for you, brother!” Woodsy tells Conor cheerily. He hops nimbly onto a barstool and reaches over to smack him on the shoulder. Oliver waves, slightly bewildered, to Leo, beckoning him over.
“Have a good night?” Oliver asks the pair of them; Woodsy nods.
Conor slides two sweet red ales across the counter, the chilled glasses already sweating condensation down the sides, looking so good it doesn’t matter that it’s still morning. Oliver is going to down his in one enormous glug.
“You’re a new face,” Conor says to Leo. “Injured too? What do you like to drink?”
Leo has a suspicious scrunch of his mouth where Oliver has come to expect an easy smile.
“Healthy, just getting my sea legs. I’ll have what they’re having.”
Conor, to his credit, is undeterred, reaching under the bar and pulling another pint.
“I hope you teach these lot some manners. I say the Camden boys are always welcome wherever I am, then I usually regret it immediately.”
“Oh, shove it,” Woodsy declares. “I’m your favorite customer.” Conor shakes his head.
“Sorry, Woodsy. Harris is my guy.” Oliver feels a pleased rush alongside the feeling, again, that he’s been spotted in the middle of something private. Undeterred, Woodsy pivots the conversation as cleanly as he can kickstart a counterattack.
“This is a big day for Davito—you’re really home now! Drinking at Castlehaven is as close to hazing as we’re allowed to get,” he says, knocking each of their glasses together in rapid succession.
“Here’s to Leo,” Oliver adds. “May you never again know the pain of drinking here on matchday, only the thrill of drinking here after a win.”
“And may he never stand on top of my bar and try to start a round of karaoke,” Conor chimes in. “As both of you idiots have done before, despite knowing you were risking a lifetime ban.”
Finally, Leo cracks a toothless grin.
“I’d have liked to see that,” he says, buffing Oliver with one shoulder.
“You’re giving him too much credit. It was bloody awful,” Woodsy snorts.
Conor nods in somber agreement. Oliver feels sabotaged and embarrassed as he faintly recalls tottering along the narrow wooden surface last season, regrettably belting The Smiths, then abruptly remembering nothing else of the rest of the evening.
“Let’s talk about something else, shall we?” Oliver tries, turning his attention to the TV mounted above the liquor bottles. “Leo, a pop quiz?”
Right on cue, Woodsy begins slapping his hands rhythmically on the table, chanting “Pop quiz, pop quiz, pop quiz” under his breath. Leo nods, bravely and gravely.
“Tell us everything you know about the strikers,” Woodsy says.
“And the midfielders, your new comrades,” Oliver tacks on. “Learn anything useful the other day?”
“All right, all right,” Leo replies, training his eyes to where the TV is showing Camden’s squad warming up in Swansea, each of them looking cold but determined.
“Charles and Gavin,” he starts, counting on his fingers and screwing up his face in concentration. “Dynamic duo. I bet they retire soon, but they’ve got a combined football IQ of, like, a million.”
“Generous,” Woodsy says. Oliver hushes him and gestures for Leo to continue.
“And then besides Oliver, there’s Lukas and Noah and Garcia. Noah is just getting back from being hurt, he won’t play today. He invited me to a yoga class with him, which was nice. Lukas is…German? And Garcia is from Colombia too, he speaks Spanish the same way my mum does. I like him.”
“Lukas is German,” Oliver agrees. “That’s the lot. Who do you think you’ll play well with? When the time comes, I mean.” He’s dead curious for the answer, though he tries to ask it casually.
Leo runs a finger down his glass and ducks his head, put on the spot.
“I think we’d do pretty well, Ollie,” Leo says after a beat.
Woodsy roars with approval while Oliver’s heart turns a somersault in his chest and drops like a cannonball straight through his belly.
Ollie, Ollie, Ollie, echoes through his head.
Conor saves him by delivering three glasses of water, which Oliver gratefully chugs, just to have something to do with his mouth.
“What about the strikers?” he manages, when he feels in control of his voice again.
“Marcos is, uh, not friendly,” Leo says matter-of-factly, cutting through the strange tension and making all three of them laugh.
“Do go on,” Woodsy snickers, spinning the top of his stool around. Oliver’s never met a footballer who wasn’t as big a gossip as a schoolgirl, childishly delighted by any exchange of secrets or shit-talking.
“Trevor has the most goals on the team, but Emmanuel has the second-most assists in the entire Prem,” Leo continues.
“Black excellence.” Woodsy nods sagely, to which Conor offers him a fist bump.
“Then there’s Georgie and Finn and that’s it. Do I pass?” Leo asks.
“We’ll keep you,” Oliver says carefully.
In Swansea and on the screen over their heads, Camden is assuming position, a smattering of small green soldiers on a big green expanse.
Conor shouts that he’s opening the doors, and with their hands full of pint glasses, the three of them slip into the back room for some privacy from the rest of the pub crowd, the revelry and beer drinking settling to a focused quiet as they turn their full attention to the match.
Oliver feels the keen ache of the sidelines—he wishes he could run the length of the pitch a hundred times over, even if he could never have the ball.
Maybe the last week of playing around and finding themselves actually worked, because the starting eleven looks fearsome and famished for goals.
They’re running circles around the hapless Swansea midfield.
Emmanuel is moving so quickly he keeps straying offside unexpectedly, slipping past defenders without realizing it.
Camden keeps up a sustained, hard press for twenty-five minutes, chipping away until there’s nothing left to do but break through.
Alberto Garcia, the best-looking holding midfielder in all of Europe and perhaps the slowest runner on any continent, steps around his opponent almost nonchalantly, just inside the penalty box, and delicately lobs the ball over the keeper and safely into the back of the net.
In the moment of chaotic, flooding giddiness, Oliver casts a fleeting glance at Leo, who’s tipsy and looking maybe a touch overwhelmed.
“All right?” he asks, under the pretense of nudging their glasses together before play resumes.
Leo nods and shakes his hair out of his face.
“I’m good, I’m good! God, it’s nice to be home. It’s so normal, actually. I didn’t expect we’d get to go out in public like this.”
Oliver takes a deep, satisfying gulp of his drink, letting the carbonation wash all down his body in place of the celebration on the pitch that he’s missing.
“Not every week, and not in places where we can’t get a room to ourselves, or we’d all get beer guts and be stalked by the fans,” Oliver says wistfully.
“But when there’s something to celebrate or something to need perking up over…
” Sitting next to each other here, crammed into one booth even though most of the room is empty, Oliver can smell the floral notes of whatever product Leo uses in his hair and can see how fine the gold hoop in his nose is.
“Which are we doing?” Leo asks, startling Oliver out of his observational trance. “Celebrating or perking up?”