Playing to Win (39 page)

Robert held up his own phone. “Someone’s reporting that the Yes campaigners there don’t look happy.”

Colin felt sick. “Here it comes, the first kick in the stomach.”

Katie reached out and took his hand, then took Robert’s as well.

Since his phone was the biggest, Robert laid it in front of them. He dragged the Twitter feed downward to refresh it.

STV News: CLACKMANNANSHIRE VOTES NO. 54% no, 46% yes.

Colin’s eyes scanned the tweet again and again as he tried to process these unthinkable numbers. “It wasnae even close?” Horror crawled through his brain as the truth sank in. “We were supposed to
win
there.”

Katie gripped their hands. “Guys? I think this is gonna get ugly.”

How could we have been so wrong?
Colin checked his own Twitter feed, searching for hope. But all the Yes supporters there—people he’d never met but whom he’d come to love like brothers and sisters—voiced nothing but despair.

It was over. It was over much, much earlier, and more decisively, than anyone could have imagined.

Yet here at George Square, everyone was still happy. Oblivious. Over by the Counting House pub, revelers were jumping up and down atop a bus, chanting “We want independence!”

All Colin wanted was to scream. “No,” he growled. “No no no no no no no no no NO!”

“Mate.” Robert crouched in front of him, taking Colin’s quaking hands in his own huge ones. “Keep the head, all right? You’ll not solve anything by raging.”

Colin tried to jerk away, but his friend was far too strong.

“Hey, before you guys yank each other’s arms out of their sockets?” Katie reached inside her jacket and pulled out a silver flask. “Fergus is gonna kill me, but I’ve never needed a drink so much in my life.” She took a sip, then offered it to Colin. “Don’t bogart it, dude.”

Colin took a swig. The whisky was smooth and fiery and exactly what he needed to survive this night.

They sat and drank and kept an eye on Twitter. No other voting results were expected for a while, but turnout figures by council area started to appear.

The numbers were staggering.

“Angus, eighty-five percent.” Robert scrolled through his phone. “Stirling, ninety percent. East Renfrewshire ninety as well.”

“High voter turnout’s good, right?” Katie asked.

“Naw, it’s not good!” Colin shouted, now lying on his back and staring at the sky, whose blackness mirrored his heart and his future. “Those are all No areas, so that just means arseloads of people were dying for the chance to stay on their knees. Wa-heyy!” He waved the flask above his head, then sat up to take another sip. As he did, he noticed the mood in George Square had subdued a bit, and the crowd had thinned. Apparently the Clackmannanshire news had finally spread.

Good. Another minute and he would’ve started telling them where they could ram their stupid hope and happiness. Ignorant, naive eejits just like himself.

“But compared to Glasgow, those areas are small.” Robert turned back to his phone. “If Glasgow turns out big and it votes Yes—” His face froze.

“What?” Colin leaned forward. “Mate? What is it?”

Robert dropped the phone onto the grass in front of him and sank his head into his hands. His shoulders started to shake.

Katie picked up Robert’s phone and looked at the screen. She closed her eyes and turned it to show Colin.

Glasgow turnout was only seventy-five percent.

“What?” Colin whispered, feeling the bottom drop out of his lungs. “This is impossible.” He lurched to his feet and began to pace. “Glasgow’s come alive. I’ve seen it. No one’s been shat upon like this city. But one out of four of us couldn’t be arsed to vote?” He paced faster, wishing for something to kick—a football, a bottle, a baby, anything. “What the fuck is wrong with us? Why can’t we do anything right?”

“You did the Commonwealth Games right,” Katie said. “The whole world said so.” She took a long sip from her flask, which she then tapped against Robert’s shoulder. He didn’t move.

“You don’t understand,” Colin said. “Our whole lives, we’re telt we’re less than everyone else. Scotland’s less than England, and Glasgow’s the worst of Scotland.” He pressed his fists to his temples. “And maybe we are. We were never too wee. We were never too poor. But clearly we were too fucking stupid!” He roared the last word, hearing it echo off the City Chambers building before them.

“Orkney voted No,” Katie said, setting down her phone. “But there’s only, like, four people there, so…” She looked at Robert’s silent, folded-up figure, then back to Colin. “I know I can never really understand what it’s like to be Scottish, but I know what it’s like to have your hopes crushed. It hurts so bad, you feel like it would’ve been better not to hope in the first place.”

“It’s true.” Colin kept pacing, feeling he’d explode if he stopped. “Independence meant a chance for skint lads like me and Robert to make something of ourselves. Now that chance is gone.”

“You’ll be okay,” she said softly. “We’ll all be okay.”

“Aye, right.” Colin grabbed the flask from her and took a long gulp, then another.
Nothing will be okay again. Anywhere. Ever. This would’ve been the beginning of a new world, one that listened to the people.
He’d never felt so powerless, or so foolish. For a few weeks he’d shed his comforting Scottish pessimism. But hope had brought him nothing but heartbreak.

Katie stood and took back the flask. “That’s enough. We have a match Saturday.”

“Who cares?” Colin snarled. “We’re all losers now, so what’s it matter? What’s anything matter?”

“Please stop.”

Colin looked over to see a pair of lasses to his left, staring up at him with wet, bloodshot eyes. Though the night wasn’t cold, they huddled close together under a Scottish Saltire flag.

“Sorry,” he said. A quick scan of the area showed people in tiny clusters of comfort and mourning. Colin’s own heartbreak was reflected in each tear-stained face.

Robert gave a wordless grunt. Then he slowly got to his feet, looking like a Clydesdale recovering from a tranquilizer dart. “I’m away back to Fergus’s. I need to see—I need to see everyone.”

“And this flask is apparently empty.” Katie turned it upside down to demonstrate. “Hopefully we can drown our sorrows in pizza. Colin, you coming?”

He hesitated. “What if Andrew’s still there? I told him I hate him and never want to see him again.”

“Is that true?” she asked.

“I don’t know.” The thought of facing Andrew—the thought of facing
life
—made the air seem suddenly too thick to breathe, much less walk through. Colin sank down onto the grass again and pitched over onto his side. “It’s just…all too much.” For the first time in years, he wished for a blade, a razor, a shard of glass—anything to bleed out this pain.

Katie kicked the sole of his foot. “Dude.” She kicked again, harder. “Dude!”

“No thanks.” Colin gave a bitter laugh at his accidental use of the Better Together slogan.

Katie’s Skechers appeared in front of his face. “You know what I tell my friends back home? I tell them Scotland is a great place to be a lesbian, because the men are worthless. When you get upset, you either shut down completely, like HAL 9000 here—” She pointed at Robert, who was staring at the pavement. “Or you throw a tantrum like a five-year-old!” Katie bent over, grabbed Colin’s wrists, and lifted him to sit up.

“Whoa,” he said at the swift change in altitude. “You’re very strong.”

“I know.” Katie planted a foot on either side of him, then sat on his outstretched legs. “But so are you.”

“I’m not.” He shook his head, heavy with the weight of grief. “I was, though, for a wee while. I was strong and brave and hardworking and kind. I had hope and trust and dreams. And what the fuck did it get me?”

“Colin.” She grasped his chin so he couldn’t look away. “Do you really not know the answer to that question?”

= = =

Andrew needed a pick-me-up on this worst night ever. So instead of the news, he chose a film he’d watched with Colin last month—
Out in the Dark,
a love story between a Palestinian man and an Israeli man living in the Gaza Strip. For some reason, Andrew held out hope that on a second viewing, the film would have a happy ending.

If nothing else, he could tell himself it was the sad story provoking this steady stream of tears, not the memory of Colin’s hate-filled eyes.

Why was I so brutal?
Andrew wondered as he sat on his couch, knees pulled to his chest, sipping tea he couldn’t taste.
Why not just comfort him, let him have his rant about voter stupidity and the system’s unfairness? Why shove the truth down his throat when he was so vulnerable?

Because Colin deserved the truth, no matter how it hurt. Letting him play victim wouldn’t help him move on from this setback. Colin needed to grow up.

But did it have to be tonight?

Perhaps Andrew’s parents had known best after all. If he’d stayed in London like they’d asked, he and Colin wouldn’t have fought. Anyone with half a brain could’ve predicted their relationship wouldn’t survive this historically histrionic night.

His doorbell buzzed. On wobbly legs he walked to the intercom near the reception-room door, gulping tea to wash away his hoarseness.

He pressed the button. “Yes?”

No sound came for several moments. Perhaps someone had rung the wrong flat and was too embarrassed to say so.

Then came a short cough, one Andrew could have singled out from a lineup of anonymous coughs.

He brought his mouth to the intercom speaker so fast, he nearly lost a tooth. “Colin?”

“Yeah. Erm…I know I should say some pure charming words just now to win you back.” Colin made a loud, wet noise that sounded like a sniffle. “But the only words I’ve got are ‘sorry’ and ‘I’m.’” He sighed. “Fuck. I mean, not necessarily in that order.”

“You can’t win me back.” Andrew swallowed to keep from choking on his tears. “You can’t win back what you never lost.”

“T
HIS
FILM
REMINDS
me of Fergus and John.” Colin shifted his head atop the pillow on Andrew’s lap. “Their story ended better, of course.”

Andrew said nothing at first, savoring the last few moments of
Out in the Dark
as one of the heroes made a noble, heartbreaking sacrifice for love. The ending wasn’t happy by any means, but it was perfect.

As the closing credits rolled, Andrew said, “Glasgow isn’t quite the Gaza Strip, but there are days when you wouldn’t know it.” He stroked the soft waves of Colin’s hair, as much to soothe himself as anything. “I can’t understand why some Catholics and Protestants in Scotland still hate each other. But I’m Church of England, so what do I know?”

“I’m nothing. Religion-wise, I mean.” Colin scoffed. “Maybe more than religion-wise.”

“Stop. You’re not nothing.” Andrew tugged Colin’s earlobe. “You know that, right?” He tugged harder. “Right?”

“Wrong.” Colin snatched Andrew’s hand from his ear and clenched it in his own.

“I was desperately worried tonight.” He kept stroking Colin’s hair with his free hand. “The way you were when you left John’s—not just the things you said, but the way you—” Andrew bit his lip, wondering if he should bring it up. “The way you rubbed your arms, your scars, I thought maybe you wanted to hurt yourself again.”

“No—well, I did, kinda, but not until later. When you saw me rubbing them, that was different. I do that when I’m stressed, but it’s to feel the old scars, not because I want to make new ones.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It comforts me. I know that sounds weird. But it’s like…it reminds me I survived.”

Andrew wanted to cry again. The film credits’ melancholy music wasn’t helping. “You have survived, Colin. You’ve survived much worse than this.”

“No, this is the worst.” His voice was dull and raw. “This calls everything into question. Everything I want. Everything I believe. Everything I am.”

“Right, that’s enough.” Andrew was done coddling. “Why should this make you question everything?” He gestured to the windows. “Because only forty-something percent of Scotland agrees with you? Why do you care what the masses think? If your convictions are true, they’re true even if they’re shared by only one percent. How many agreed with Einstein or Newton or Darwin?” He stopped. “That’s overselling it, isn’t it?”

“A wee bit.” Colin brought his knees to his chest as if he had a stomach cramp. “I just feel so deluded. It seemed we were part of something unstoppable.”

“You were. You still are. You turned the leaders of one of the world’s most powerful nations into beggars. You had them dashing about Scotland last week, promising this, threatening that, turning themselves inside out to keep us. And because you scared them, they’ve promised more powers than they can deliver.”

“We don’t matter to them. They’ll put Scotland back in the box now.”

“They’ll try,” Andrew said, “but they’ll find Scotland has blown that box to bits.”

Colin sat up, his eyes now clear and sharp. “Why are you saying all this? What happened to the reality you were shoving down my throat?”

“Firstly, the reality is much more complicated than No winning and Yes losing. Secondly, I’m sorry about the shoving. I should’ve been kinder.”

“Naw, I was being a dick.” Colin fidgeted with a hole in his jeans, picking at the pale-blue threads. “They say people show their true nature under duress, and my true nature isnae very nice.”

“Your true nature is one which cares deeply and has a lot at stake. That’s why I forgave you. Also, the fish told me to.”

Colin eyed him, then glanced at the aquarium. “Which one?”

“The Answer Fish. Well, it didn’t technically come from there, but it would have eventually.” He turned to the side table and picked up the teabag tag from the cup he’d made before Colin arrived. “I’ve seen every tag at least a dozen times, but never this one before.”

Colin read it aloud. “‘Give forgiveness, that is your greatness.’ Shouldn’t there be a semicolon instead of a comma?”