Playing to Win (21 page)

Then he ripped his eyes off the phone screen and looked out over the ballroom again. He remembered peering through this banister when he was too small to participate, brought here with the other children to watch for a short time before being bustled off to their hotel beds. How entranced he’d been with the entire spectacle, how overcome with love and admiration for not only his parents, but his teenaged brother and sister.

Finally John’s reply came through:

He didn’t tell you? It’s his fucking BIRTHDAY. Colin’s mum left him on his birthday.

“W
E
WERE
ALL
pure frantic.”

Sitting on Andrew’s couch, Colin stared straight ahead at the once-broken window pane. It was easier to talk about this without looking at Andrew’s sympathetic face.

“I’m sure you were, having no idea where she’d got to.” Andrew stretched out his legs, taking up the other two thirds of the sofa while balancing his plate on his lap. He seemed to be enjoying the takeaway pizza and six-pack of Tennent’s as much as the gourmet food he’d cooked last week. Colin’s dad had given him money to buy tonight’s dinner, as a much-needed solace after his mum’s latest “detachment,” a word that always made Colin imagine a spaceship un-docking from a space station.

“So finally I gave my Aunt Rose a call—she’s not my real auntie, just a friend-of-the-family auntie. She lived in our block before her husband got a job up in Aberdeen. Sometimes she’d look after me and Emma when—”
when Mum needed Dad to be her parent.
“Anyway, I figured Rose cannae help search for Mum from long distance, but at least she should know.” Colin sucked a spot of pizza sauce off his thumb. “I was like, ‘Rose, Mum’s gone,’ and Rose was like, ‘What? No, she’s right here.’”

Andrew gaped at him, the beer bottle poised near his lips. “She went to Aberdeen when she left hospital? That’s like a three-hour drive.”

“Rose said Mum phoned from the bus station saying, ‘Come and fetch me.’ Said Mum told her that Dad and the rest of us knew about it.”

“Did you speak to your mother?”

“No. I didn’t want to.”
I still don’t.
“I wish she could’ve seen Emma’s face when she found out Mum was gone. Poor wee lass nearly had an asthma attack, she was so upset. She woke up screaming at ten past three this morning, said she’d a nightmare where Mum showed up at our flat in a Godzilla suit. Which sounds funny, I know, but I guess in the dream it was pure scary.” Colin picked at the mushrooms on his pizza slice, remembering how he’d sat at Emma’s bedside until dawn, telling her aimless, never-ending stories until she dozed off again near sunrise.

“How long is your mum staying in Aberdeen?”

“Until Rose gets sick of her. So, three or four days at the outside.” He attempted a smirk to show he was kidding, but it felt more like a sneer. “Wherever Mum goes, I don’t think it’ll be here. I think she might be shot of us.”

“I can’t imagine how you must feel right now.”

“Neither can I.”
Or
if
I feel.
“I’d never say this to Emma or my dad, but…I’m kinda relieved Mum’s gone. Things were always easier when she was in hospital—not financially, obviously, but in here.” He poked the side of his own head. “Nae slinking about, praying she won’t notice us, in case our footsteps—or, I don’t know, our
faces
—set her off. When she’s gone, we just walk about the flat like normal people. We can say anything we’re thinking.” He shoved the pizza into his mouth. “Sorry, this must be boring.”

Andrew simply shook his head.

“Nah,” Colin said, “you probably adore discovering all my weaknesses so you can use them against me.”

Andrew just looked at him, his face soft, his eyes sincere.

Colin slapped Andrew’s foot with the back of his hand. “Fucking say something.”

“I talk too much. It’s your turn.”

“I’m done.”

“You sure?”

“No.” He gnawed on the end of the pizza crust, then swallowed before speaking again. “I don’t want to be a whinger. Everyone’s got problems. I’m an adult, I’m not some four-year-old wean left behind in a shopping trolley.”

Andrew’s brows dipped together. “Were you ever?”

“Aye, but weren’t we all?” Colin raised his beer bottle in a mock toast. “Doesn’t every mum decide in the middle of Tesco that it’s just ‘all too much’?”

“She walked off and left you in the supermarket?”

“Me and the groceries.” He scratched his neck, which had grown suddenly warm. “She came back eventually. It felt like an hour but it was probably only a few minutes. Kids have weird sense of time, you know? Like, remember how summer used to last forever?”

Andrew nodded slowly, but his lips were tight.
 

Colin looked away. “She said it was nae big deal, that I should stop greetin’ about it. ‘Big boys don’t cry,’ she said. And a big boy sure as fuck doesn’t cling to his mum’s legs ’til she—” His breath caught. “Until she makes him stop.”

He shut his eyes against the memory of how hard that wall was, how unyielding. It couldn’t be a real memory anyway, it was so long ago.

“Sometimes I wish I was like her,” Colin said, “so I could understand. But that’s stupid. Why would anyone wish to be mentally ill?”

“Because if you were bipolar too,” Andrew said, “you’d know for certain that her treatment of you wasn’t your fault. You’d know for certain it was the illness which said and did those things. You’d know what it feels like to be out of control.”

Colin squinted at him. “You don’t think I’m out of control?”

“I think you want people to believe you are. Sometimes you act daft, but you’re one of the sanest men I know.” He tilted his head. “Apart from your politics.”

Colin laughed, relieved they were back to the banter. He also felt a twinge of guilt, as the September 18 independence referendum was exactly a month away. He should be out canvassing tonight, chapping doors for the cause, not slashing open his own soul for dissection.

Changing the subject, he pointed at the window. “Not to flog a dead horse, but I really think you should tell Reggie about the rock.”

“I can’t, especially now. If he knew, he’d never let us—” Andrew cut himself off, then gave a short laugh. “That was close.” Wearing a sly smile, Andrew turned to the side table behind him and picked up a blue envelope. “Happy Birthday.”

“Thanks.” Dazed, Colin reached for the card. “How’d you know?”

“It’s not exactly a state secret. You mentioned it on Twitter, or you thanked someone for birthday wishes. I don’t remember.”

“You follow me on Twitter?” Colin took his phone from his shirt pocket and opened the app. “I never got a notification.”

“I’m not technically following you. You’re on a private list of people I want to keep track of without anyone knowing.”

“Is this list called ‘People I’m Stalking’?”

“Reading someone’s public tweets is not stalking.”

“Then I guess I should rename the list I’ve got you in.” He turned the phone so Andrew could read the screen, which displayed Colin’s own
People I’m Stalking
private Twitter list.

“Let me see.” Andrew took the phone and thumbed the screen. “Ah, I’m in good company with the Prime Minister, David Beckham, and Justin Bieber.” He gave a lingering glance at his own phone on the coffee table, but didn’t move to check it. “Go on, open your gift.”

Gift?
Colin tore the envelope, nearly getting a paper cut in his eagerness. The card bore no handwritten message, only an
x
above Andrew’s swooping signature. A small white envelope fell into his lap. When Colin picked it up, Andrew shifted nervously, then sat on his hands.

Colin pulled out a pair of tickets that stopped his heart. “What the…”

“You said you’d never seen the
American Idiot
musical.”

“But this says N—” He could barely get the words out. “New York. This theater’s in New York.”

Andrew rocked back and forth, still sitting on his hands. “I went to the Warriors’ website to make sure you’d no match on the thirtieth of August. We could fly over Friday morning and be there in time for dinner and the show, then leave Saturday night and have you back in Glasgow for Sunday practice session.”

Colin stared at him. This couldn’t be real. “What about your social obligations?”

“Sod my obligations. My parents can chastise me during our annual family holiday, which starts the first of September. But…” Andrew got up and walked to Colin’s end of the couch. “The weekend of the thirtieth is for you.” He settled onto Colin’s lap, straddling him. “And me.”

It felt like a boomerang had been released inside Colin’s skull. It didn’t help that Andrew was recreating the exact location and position they’d last fucked, on Thursday after Colin had repaired the window. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Say ‘book the flights, Andrew.’”

Colin kept his hands at his sides, resisting the urge to cling to the man on his lap. “It’s too much. I can’t accept—”

“Firstly, shh.” Andrew put a finger to Colin’s mouth and held it there. “Secondly, it’s not too much. What’s the point of money if not to make people happy?”

“But you could—”

“Thirdly, shh.” Andrew kissed him quickly, then placed his finger back on Colin’s lips. “I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking I should take the money I’d spend on our New York jaunt and give it to the poor. You’re thinking that money could put food in children’s stomachs or books in their hands.”

This was only half the reason for Colin’s protest. He nodded anyway, unable to explain the other half.

“But I’m not going to do that,” Andrew said. “I’m going to spend it wantonly on myself and my chosen companion. I’m going to enjoy life in the certainty that my enjoyment does not decrease that of others by one whit.” He removed his finger and sat back, folding his hands together. “Happiness is not a zero-sum game. Your misery doesn’t leave more joy available for others.”

Colin’s face heated. “Listen, you don’t know what it’s like to scrimp and save and account for every penny.”

“And you don’t know what it’s like
not
to do that.” Andrew reached out and cupped Colin’s cheek. “I want you to know. I want you to be able to take, without thinking of it as taking
from
. I want you to see life as something other than a battle.”

Colin pushed his hand away. “Where’s all this New Age pish coming from? Are you gonnae start quoting from
The Secret
? Tell me to put positive thoughts out into the fuckin’ universe and good things’ll magically—”

“No! That’s not it at all. Look…” Andrew scrambled off Colin’s lap and got to his feet. Then he strode to the bottom of the spiral staircase. “Remove your shoes and come with me.”

“I thought no one went up there but you.”

“Correct.” His nervous glance flicked upward, then back at Colin. “Until now.”

Colin felt frozen to the couch. He wanted to accept this gift, wanted to be happy about it, but how could he dare, when Andrew could rescind it at any moment?

One step at a time
, he told himself. Following Andrew upstairs wouldn’t kill him—not unless he really was hiding dead bodies up there.

The staircase’s spiral was so tight, Colin couldn’t look to the side without getting dizzy, so he kept his eyes on Andrew’s bare feet as they ascended to the storage area.

Which was not a storage area.

“Oh.” Colin kept his voice to a whisper, as this place seemed sacred as a church. A smooth blue mat lay spread in the center of the empty space. Along the single low wall stood a row of candles, a small speaker, and a pair of teapots, one of which was shaped like a fish.

Andrew crossed his arms, holding his elbows. “This is where I do yoga and meditate.” He shifted his weight slightly. “I try, anyway.”

“How long have you been…”

“Practicing? Six years.”

Colin wondered what would make a fourteen-year-old boy decide to take up yoga and meditation. “So you’ve found Nirvana and all?”

Andrew chuckled. “The yogi philosophy doesn’t exactly come natural to me. My consciousness resists all expansion efforts.” He took a step closer to Colin. “Until recently.”

The look on his face sent a shiver over Colin’s nape.

“I know you’re afraid,” Andrew said, “and with good reason. But I just want—” He lifted his hands, then let them drop to his sides. “I just want to make you as happy as you deserve to be. Will you let me? Or will you fight me on this, too?”

Andrew’s silver-blue eyes were more open and vulnerable than Colin had ever seen them outside of bed. Perhaps he truly meant what he’d said last week, that the games were over. It scared the piss out of Colin, because if this wasn’t a game, then he couldn’t win.

He also couldn’t lose. Right?

Colin’s small step forward felt like a giant leap. “Book the tickets, Andrew.”

T
HE
NEXT
TEN
days—excepting the weekend, when Andrew had an exhibition opening to be seen at in Mayfair, followed by the obligatory late-night carousing at Mahiki—found him and Colin inseparable. On the Tuesdays and Thursdays, Colin arrived directly after practice, dressed in full kit and covered in sweat and mud, which was how Andrew fancied him best. Dinner was late those nights, after they’d played some version of “naughty footballer and bent referee.”

On the Wednesdays and the following Monday, Andrew and Fergus taught Colin and John how to reel. The Glaswegian lads seemed keen to exasperate their instructors, “upgrading tradition” with improvised steps. Colin got rather sulky when he discovered he’d have to dance with girls.

“What’s the point in going to this thing if I cannae dance with you?” he’d asked Andrew. “If Fergus and John cannae dance with each other?”

“It’s not a nightclub,” Fergus pointed out. “In reels, everyone dances with everyone, whether you like them or not. It’s a group thing.”

“Group-
think
, more like,” John had muttered, but with that mischievous twinkle in his eye that always seemed to defuse Fergus’s indignation.