42 Days until Matchday 1
The line at the coffee shop had stretched all the way from the till to the door, spilling messily onto the street.
Oliver has nowhere to be and the wait would have been worth it regardless, because now he’s strolling home and Camden is in full bloom; roses are bursting and ballooning off every planter, coating the air with the smell of a spilled bottle of wine.
It’s perfect like this, a midsummer morning’s dream—Oliver is, too, laden with latte and pastry, a rose himself, down to the red in his cheeks.
Every time someone recognizes Oliver now—somehow even more than before—the whole last month replays in slo-mo in his mind, plotting the distance between point A and here.
It’s been a whirlwind of publicity, more than he bargained for, pushing at the upper limits of fame.
There are new New York Times headlines, and party invites, and the scary feeling of going to a concert hand in hand, scarier still when Robbie bloody Williams shouts them out in the audience and the whole arena roars when he says someone ought to make Oliver a knight (he’ll pass, thanks), and even after all that there have been the security threats, and keynote speeches, and this new frame around his life that leaves him split open in a way he still doesn’t want to take back.
Every day of vacation, today’s normal, wonderful morning, is so much bigger and better than he dreamed, the line at the till time well spent, being stopped for photos by teenage girls with pink hair instead of their dads.
Oliver still flashes back to the press conference on most days, remembering the primal pull of it cut with levels of anxiety like being hunted for sport, rapidly overtaken by some kind of righteous indignation.
“Do you think your personal life will be the story next season?” a bespectacled journo had asked right at the start, looking at him over his glasses like he was personally disappointed with Oliver’s choices. “Will it be a distraction for the team, all this attention on who you’re…seeing?”
Willem had moved to interrupt, reaching for a table microphone like he was making to throw it, but Oliver had spoken first, before he could talk himself out of it.
“All due respect,” he’d replied, meaning it entirely disrespectfully, “I’m Oliver Harris, aren’t I? You lot were already writing about my romantic life. This is just par for the course, I should think.”
Then he’d shrugged affably and the room exploded, evenly split between follow-up questions from the reporters and suggestive whoops from the Camden squad.
“Take a bow,” Leo had whispered from his left, and the photograph of the two of them huddled together, Oliver grinning smugly and Leo smushed along his side, cupping his ear, makes it above the fold in nearly every major newspaper in the world.
Other memories float their way back to him, too, like his actual favorite press conference moment of all time, coming from Ryan Loxley, who announced in Kilburn’s respective end-of-season presser that he didn’t hate Oliver because he was gay, only because he’s a bellend, and he just wants everyone to be clear on that.
Woodsy still sends the video clip of it to the team group chat once a day, like clockwork.
Probably the kindest response was the text from Conor Bishop, reading: Glad to know my radar for these things is still in working order. I’m proud to know you.
(“Come off it! That guy actually wants you so bad,” Leo had exclaimed, craning to look over his shoulder.
“He’s just got good taste. You staked your claim pretty clearly,” Oliver replied loyally, pulling Leo close and kissing the crown of his head.)
Probably his least favorite reaction is still unfolding, in the form of Henri having asked Oliver for Maggie’s number, which, apparently, he figured was all well and fair, on account of Oliver not liking women.
When she’d first said they were going out for dinner, Oliver felt a sudden urge to acquire weaponry.
(“Henri? Really?” he’d asked.
“Listen, Ollie, I went for the right kind of footballer once before—” Maggie had begun saying.
“There is no right kind of footballer!” Oliver yelled back.
“And look where that got me. If I want a handsome Frenchman with a mustache to explain wine vintages to me, that’s my right as a woman. Don’t piss me off,” she’d said, settling the matter.
“I want you to be happy, Maggie, but I’m going to kick his arse.”)
Despite his best attempts at reasoning with her, Maggie is well and truly besotted.
Leo, the turncoat, is on her side—they went shopping for sunhats to wear on her impending trip to the South of France, even after Oliver threatened a hunger strike.
So, he hasn’t yet kicked Henri’s stupid derrière, but he’s going to.
On the training ground, where there’s plausible deniability.
After dark, when there are no witnesses.
He’s still deciding what exactly to do about that, just crossing St. Mark’s Crescent, when Leo appears up the street, jogging toward him, dressed implausibly in the hideous Hawaiian-print shirt Oliver bought for Joe’s stag do, worn open over his shirtless chest, flagging Oliver down like a drunken, queer traffic marshal.
“What on earth happened to you?” Oliver asks as Leo skids to a stop in front of him and snags one of the coffees, gulping and then wagging his burned tongue in pain.
“Come on, you’ve got to come home.”
“Is the house on fire?” He’s not entirely joking. Leo is allowed to use the kitchen, but not without supervision.
“There’s a great deal, super cheap, on first-class tickets to Medellín,” Leo wheezes. “Only one stop, Ollie! My mum is on the phone, she wants us to book now.”
“Do we need a deal?” Oliver is now being made a spectacle of, pulled down the street by the hem of his shirt, croissants jostling dangerously in their paper bag. “How much money have you just re-signed for, anyway?”
“It’s about the thrill of the thing, Ollie—honestly, don’t you know anything?” Leo explains impatiently, picking up the pace. “Would you please come on, my grandma insists on picking people up from the airport, but she goes to bed at half past eight. Hurry!”
All the impending vacation chaos unfolds itself in front of him like a road map of disaster: Leo definitely won’t be ready to leave for the airport in time, Oliver will inevitably make a fool of himself trying to speak Spanish with Abuela, and by the time they get back to London it will practically be preseason, so they’ll show up jet-lagged to the first week of training and Willem will absolutely be able to tell.
Who is he kidding? He can’t fucking wait, not for any of it—not if he’s doing it with Leo.