Matchday 27 #3
“She’s not that kind of ex,” Oliver hedges.
“I hadn’t really ever thought about it that way.
” Leo’s eyes snap up and he gives him a look that says, I’m not buying it.
But he doesn’t press, only shrugs and finally gives up on picking the plates clean.
“I can make something else, since I’ve obviously starved you,” Oliver says. “Growing boy.”
That gets a laugh out of Leo, even if it comes with an eye roll.
“I’ll stop, I’ll stop,” Leo says. “Forgive me for fighting food waste.”
“I swear I have some contraband sweets around here somewhere. Give us a minute, I’ll hunt for chocolate.
” Oliver knows exactly where the chocolate is: third shelf of the pantry, right-hand side, in a basket hidden under the muesli.
He gives himself a break anyway, stepping inside the oversized cupboard and poking around the bins and boxes, quashing the feeling that he was put on the spot and gave the wrong answer a moment ago.
They’re friends, real friends, but he can’t tell Leo the truth about this one.
He especially can’t tell him. It would be so obvious on his face—how Oliver feels, what he wants—if those walls were ever breached, even for a second.
He steps back into the kitchen with half a Dairy Milk and nearly drops it. Speak of the devil, he thinks, wretchedly.
“I let myself in,” Maggie says. She’s standing just at the top of the entryway, carrying a cardboard box that reaches up to her chin. Oliver sneaks a glance over at Leo and finds the knowing look he expected, cut with something darker, almost angry.
“We were just talking about you,” Oliver says, regretting it instantly. “Is that—”
“It’s the piece I set aside for your mum,” she replies, holding it outstretched. Oliver steps forward to take it and promptly lowers it to the ground, feeling idiotic.
“Doorbell not working?” he asks. Maggie’s eyes are huge and trepidatious. “Come here a second.” With that, he swiftly deposits them both back into the pantry and yanks the door shut after them. He can see the joke forming on her lips. “If you say one thing about a closet, I’m going to kill you.”
“Jesus, Ollie! I’m not going to say anything! You know I wouldn’t tell.”
“What do you mean?” Oliver asks, confused.
“If anyone was going to find out, aren’t you glad it’s me? I can’t believe you didn’t say anything!”
“Say anything about what? We’re just having dinner!” he snaps.
“Oh, sure,” Maggie replies, throwing her hands up in exasperation. “I always look like The Sun caught me skinny-dipping in the canal when someone finds me having my casual friend over for a normal dinner.”
“Mags, I’ll do anything you want for the rest of our lives, if you’ll just be silent,” he pleads.
“You and I are friends, not together. Me and Leo are friends too. Everyone is mates, yeah? No one has feelings for anybody. But ah, fuck, don’t say anything about feelings at all. Please do not make this weird.”
“Ollie!” she snaps, as close to a yell as a whisper can get.
“You are the one making this weird! If you don’t want him to know what’s going on, why are you afraid he’ll think we’re together?
” Oliver shakes his head, but she whips her right hand out and slaps it over his mouth before he can respond, gagging him. “Don’t answer that. We both know why.”
He tries in vain to free himself by licking at her palm, but she holds firm.
“Breathe through your nose,” she advises.
“I’m going to leave now and I won’t say another word.
Try not to have an aneurysm.” She leaves Oliver dumbstruck and the door swinging on its hinges behind her, walking past Leo with only a nod goodbye.
Oliver is too stunned to move until the sound of her footsteps and the sight of her plaid trench coat recede down the front stairwell.
His spirit is floating somewhere around the ceiling, looking down helplessly while his body is in motion and stepping back into the kitchen, though it looks all wrong—he’s not certain he’s ever been here before.
Leo is standing just where Oliver left him, leaning against the island, but now his arms are tightly crossed over his abdomen.
His easy face, handsome and readable, has gone tight.
“Hey,” Oliver says to announce his return, since Leo’s eyes are locked to the floor. “I’m sorry about that. She should’ve knocked.”
“Well, I guess she’s not that kind of ex,” Leo bites out.
“Whoa, easy—” Oliver starts to say.
“ ‘Don’t want him to know what’s going on.’ ‘We both know why,’ ” he quotes, cutting Oliver off midsentence. His tone is dripping with antagonism, his lip curled up almost like a snarl. “You do talk your shit, don’t you? All this time, I thought—”
“Mate, when you eavesdrop, you don’t always hear what you think you do,” Oliver says frantically, but Leo takes a step toward him that feels threatening.
“We’re supposed to be friends. You keep doing this to me, and I can’t—Friends don’t lie, Ollie.”
“I’m not lying to you,” Oliver murmurs, retreating a pace backward, stunned by the acid in Leo’s tone.
“You fucking are,” he replies, voice cracking. “I should’ve taken you at your word on that first day and spared myself the trouble.”
Oliver is rent in two, panic and pain mingling. In all his worst anxieties about how Leo would react to this, it hadn’t felt quite so terrible. If he walks out the door, before Oliver knows what else he heard, before he’s had a chance to explain, he’ll never recover.
“Leo, please. It’s not—I’m not trying to deceive you. This is something, it’s so personal. No one knows, no one on the team.”
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” Leo fairly shouts. “Can you actually just give me a straight answer?”
Oliver laughs, a stunned gut-punch noise, not an ounce of humor in it. There’s no straight answer to be had.
“I never wanted you to be in this position,” Oliver whispers bitterly. “I’ve always been so careful, I promise you. You can trust me. I won’t…I won’t do anything stupid.”
Their eyes meet and Oliver’s breath comes in shallow waves when he sees it click on Leo’s face, epiphany writ in the O of his mouth.
“So you are gay?” Leo asks, so quietly it’s almost to himself. But Oliver hears it and now it’s in the room with them, impossible to put off or ignore.
“Mate, listen—” he says, good as a confession.
“Is there something wrong with me?” Leo asks, like he didn’t hear him at all.
He’s turned himself away, but the anger is gone in his voice.
Oliver risks a step forward and reaches for his elbow, completely bewildered by this reaction.
Leo resists for a split second, arm tense in his grasp.
When Oliver pulls, so they’re facing each other again, he’s agonized, eyes shiny with tears.
“Hey, hey,” Oliver tries, but Leo pushes him away: palm to his chest, the same way he’d defend himself after a tackle, the same way Oliver had when they’d played that horrible, fateful scrimmage at Camden Crossing.
“Is it?” Leo accuses. “You like blokes, just not me? You’d rather I was Conor Bishop?”
Oh. Maggie, damn her, was right. It wasn’t hero worship, or Willem, that kept drawing them to each other; it was this all along.
“Leo,” Oliver says, calculating his words.
He’d never even bothered to fantasize about getting the chance to say them.
“Please. I’ve been killing myself trying not to cross every line I’ve ever drawn for myself.
It’s not other blokes that I want, okay?
” He’s getting the next sentence ready, the chance to reiterate that he won’t ruin this, that the conversation they’re having right now will go to their graves.
The words don’t make it out, because he’s suddenly been walked backward right into the wall, and Leo has the collar of Oliver’s sweater balled up in each hand.
And then they’re kissing. Oliver is being kissed.
The first go-round, their teeth clack together, then their noses slot into place and it’s sublime.
Oliver’s not a monk, he’s a grown man and an occasional underwear model, but he didn’t know it could feel like this.
He finds Leo’s hip bones with his fingertips, sliding beneath his belt loops and pulling with intent.
Someone is making gasping sounds with each breath, maybe both of them.
Leo goes up to his tiptoes and grabs for the soft curl of hair at the back of Oliver’s neck.
He’s panting into Oliver’s open mouth, and he tastes sweet, even though they never got to the chocolate after all.
The tentative brush of Leo’s tongue and the velvet of his skin, muscled but soft to the touch under Oliver’s hands, root him to the spot; he couldn’t move even if he wanted to, which he doesn’t—he only wants to do this for the rest of his life.
It occurs to Oliver to open his eyes, to remember every second of this.
He’s about to, when Leo’s phone begins to blare a shrill series of beeps and vibrations.
Packing alarm, Oliver realizes, stricken.
He’s going away to play for England tomorrow.
The force of the noise wrenches them apart: Oliver boneless against the wall and Leo a few steps away.
“Oh,” Leo whispers, and Oliver’s eyes snap to his.
“I have to go.” That’s all he says, out the door before his next blink, the doorframe rattling with the force of his exit.
Oliver is left knock-kneed, buffeted by the remnants of the best first kiss he wasn’t supposed to have and the keenness of its absence.