Playing With Fire (Glasgow Lads Book 3) (3 page)

That voice, breathy with awe, took Robert’s mind to the last place he wanted it to go—a dream he’d had…was it last night, or the night before? It didn’t matter, as the same storyline played out nearly every time he slept.

Robert shifted his weight, his foot brushing the plastic bag beside him, the one holding the Warriors calendar. It was that day two months ago, shooting those photos, when everything changed. When everything got weird.

He’d not even been aware of it at the time. Despite years of secretly fancying men, Robert had always looked at Liam like a brother. They knew each other too well for any attraction to take root. And during the shoot, Robert was too busy—changing outfits, being slathered with makeup and tanning spray, following the photographer’s directions—to lust after his half-naked teammate.

But that night, lying alone in bed, absentmindedly stroking himself beneath the sheets, Robert had let his thoughts wander over the day’s events. His prick had swelled stiff in an instant at the memory of Liam’s bare skin against his.

Horrified, he’d yanked his hand away, knowing he could never act on that impulse with Liam, not even in fantasy. It would warp their friendship
and
their football partnership, two of the most precious things in Robert’s life. But his cock wouldn’t listen to reason—not that night, nor all the nights since, when the most glancing thought of Liam would make this rebellious body part beg for attention.

And definitely not tonight, as his best mate stood oblivious beside him, looking and smelling and…existing the way he did. Not with the fireworks glinting off his flame-colored hair and lighting up the mass of freckles that clustered near his lips like a signpost reading
Kiss Here Please
. The thought of them sleeping together Saturday night in their tiny tent, bodies pressed close for warmth, made Robert dizzy with desire.

Inching away from Liam, he adjusted himself as subtly as possible to ease the ache in his groin. In the last few weeks, Robert had found a way to fend off these thoughts, at least temporarily. He needed more of that, pronto. Then he and Liam could return to the way they were in August when they’d filmed the
Back-to-Back
quiz show video—at ease, in sync, laughing at their thousand-and-one inside jokes. Robert needed a permanent distraction before he said or did something pure stupid.

Before he ruined everything.

H
ANNIGAN
’
S
PUB
WAS
like an all-in-one emotional minefield and graveyard. But Liam needed the money, and he loved working at a place dedicated to his favorite team—Celtic Football Club, aka the centerpiece of Glasgow’s Irish-Catholic community. So he’d stayed in the job even after the owner’s son had used and discarded him.

Most nights he kept busy enough to fend off the year-old memories. Most nights there was no time to think about his and Tom’s first kiss, after closing when they were scrubbing anti-Protestant graffiti off the walls of the women’s toilet. Or the first time Tom had gone down on him, in the basement whilst they were meant to be tapping a fresh keg of Smithwick’s Ale. Or the balled-up receipt Tom had tucked into Liam’s shirt pocket during a Friday night rush, on which he’d scrawled,
I love you. Let’s do this.

It was quiet shifts like today’s that tortured Liam most. Luckily he never needed a crowd for conversation. His mother always said he could talk the ears off a dead donkey.

 
“Have you ever heard the term
best lad
?” Liam asked his fellow bartender Scarlett. “Like for a wedding?”

“Is that the wean who carries the rings?” asked old Billy O’Brien, one of Hannigan’s regulars. Billy had the early shift as a hospital maintenance worker at Royal Infirmary, so he was always here in the late afternoon when Liam arrived.

“Page boys carry the wedding rings.” Scarlett turned to Liam. “Never heard of a best lad. Where’d you get that?”

“Two of my mates are gay-marrying.” Liam opened a cardboard box containing a 10x8-inch picture frame. “You remember Fergus, right?”

She nodded. “Tall ginger guy from Perthshire, massive fan of Celtic? Where’s he been lately, by the way?”

“He’s not keen to come to Hannigan’s now that his new boyfriend—fiancé—is a Rangers fan.” Liam smiled at their scandalized gasps. “Anyway, Fergus asked me to be his best lad. He said it’s like a best man who’s single.”

“I think he made that up.” Scarlett turned back to the box of snacks they kept behind the bar and started counting packets of crisps. “Still, it’s sweet he wants you to be part of the wedding.”

“Yeah.” Liam pulled the backing off the picture frame and inserted a sheet of white paper reading
No Sectarian Songs Please
in black block letters. The previous sign had been graffiti’d in green marker by a cheeky customer to read
Nothing But Sectarian Songs Please
, so from now on the sign would hang encased in glass behind the bar. “But don’t you think they’re a bit young?” Liam asked. “They’re twenty-five and twenty-two.”

“I was twenty-three when I married my Jeannie,” Billy said.

“But that was—”

“What, back in the Stone Age?” Billy’s bloodshot blue eyes sent Liam a warning glare.

“More like Bronze Age.” Liam snapped the backing onto the frame, then hung the sign on the rustic post beside the dispenser of Powers Irish whiskey. “I’m just saying, these days, who marries so young? Who marries at all?”

“Maybe that’s the problem,” Billy said. “Lads today got no sense of responsibility.” He nudged his empty glass a few inches forward.

As he poured the old man’s refill, Liam considered pointing out how Billy spent most of his pay packet here at Hannigan’s, leaving his wife to make do with the few quid left over. Instead he used a more personal example.

“Marriage doesn’t make men responsible. Ask my da.” He gave Billy his drink. “Oh wait, you cannae, cos he did a runner seventeen years ago.”

“Ever think that’s why you turned out, you know…” Billy tilted his hand back and forth, palm down.

“A good dancer?” Liam prompted.

Billy chuckled. “Maybe that’s why there’s so many lads like you these days. No male role models.”

Liam laughed and shook his head. Such was the price he paid for being out and proud in the East End. Though any of his neighbors would take a bullet for him—and vice versa—they didn’t pretend to understand why he fancied the lads. Their ignorance could have offended him, but it was more fun to play along. “Maybe if you’d adopted me, Billy, and introduced me to the wonders of womenfolk, I’d have my own wee wifey today. I’m pure gutted, seeing as marriage has clearly made you so happy.”

“You’ve got me there, mate.” Billy lifted his glass. “Any seats on the fairy train for an old yin like me?”

“That train never leaves the station.” Liam toasted his customer with a glass of water. “Gonnae get your ticket punched before you die.”

“If you two are finished flirting,” Scarlett said, shoving the snack box beneath the bar again, “Liam, can you cover for me the third of December? I need three days in a row off and that’s the only one I’ve not sorted.”

Liam checked the calendar by the cash register. “Aye, nae bother.”

“Cheers, lad.” She smoothed a rebellious dark curl back into the hair clip at the base of her neck. “Remind me to give you pointers on how to manage Quiz Night. You’ve not worked a Wednesday since we started that circus.”

“Och, I hate Quiz Night,” Billy said. “Bunch of hipsters coming in, taking over.” He tapped a gnarled finger against the bar. “This pub is no place for thinking. It’s a place for getting drunk and talking the footie with gallus Irish laddies like Liam.”

Liam smiled as he bent over to examine the spout of their leaky Guinness tap. Though his ma was mostly Italian, he took after his absent Scots-Irish father. And here in a pub where customers were made to feel as if they’d stepped into a tiny piece of Dublin, his ginger hair and freckles had surely helped get him this job.

But it was Liam’s ability to read customers that had
kept
him this job the last two years. He’d developed a sixth sense for when these men needed to talk. He could spot in their postures, in the angle of their smiles or frowns when they asked for another drink, that moment of transition between wanting to be alone with their troubles and wanting to spill them all over the ancient stained wood of the bar.

Their confessions often started with a moan about football or City Council or the weather. Then small talk led to big talk, about how the customer’s boss didn’t respect him, how his wife didn’t understand him, how his kids shrank into themselves when he walked through the door. How the world made him feel so fucking small.

Liam knew he might be the only person these near-strangers could open up to. So why had Robert shut him out? Liam had phoned his best mate this afternoon to ask what he’d been on the verge of confessing last night on Glasgow Green. But Robert had dingyed his call, sending it straight to voice mail.

Things would be different Saturday night at the campsite. Liam would find a way to make Robert talk, even if it meant shutting his own gob and letting the silence stretch out for seconds at a time. Maybe even minutes.

Scarlett joined Liam at the Guinness tap and gave him a one-armed hug. “Thanks again for covering my shift. Now I can help my sister move house.”

“It’s taking her three days?” Liam finished unscrewing the tap’s faucet with a small wrench. “Where’s she going, Mars?”

“Close—Dundee. She got a job at one of those video game companies. There’s a billion of them up there. It’s where
Grand Theft Auto
was created.”

Liam nodded. Robert had mentioned that fact only a thousand times or so.

“It’s her first flat away from home,” Scarlet said, “so I want to get her settled in proper, you know? She’s only nineteen, and I think she’s nervous.”

“Dundee
is
a scary place,” Liam managed to quip, though his mind was snagging on Scarlett’s words. He’d always assumed Robert would take a job with one of the gaming companies in Edinburgh, an easy forty-minute train ride from Glasgow. “How long’s it take to get there?”

“Hour and a half—maybe more, depending on traffic. So it’s not like she can commute from here.”

“Right.” Feeling unease grow in the pit of his stomach, Liam reached a finger up into the Guinness faucet and pulled out the restrictor disc, the part that slowed the flow to make a proper pour. The disc’s O-ring washer was old and worn.

“Is your mate McKenzie still doing that rubbish?” Billy asked Liam. “Making video games?”

“Oh aye,” Liam said brightly, as if he’d not been thinking of Robert just now. “He’s almost finished his degree.”

“Och, I pure forgot Robert was in that field too.” Scarlett’s eyes sparked with excitement. “Maybe my sister could put in a word for him. What’s his specialty? Art? Animation? Writing? Has he found a job after graduation?”

“He does all that stuff. He’s keen to work for a wee startup so he can have his hands in everything.” Liam paused, staring up into the tap’s dark cylinder. “And no, he’s not found a job yet.”
At least, not that he’s told me.

Perhaps this was the secret Robert was keeping. Perhaps an offer had come from a company in Dundee rather than Edinburgh. Perhaps he was leaving Glasgow—leaving Liam—for good.
Just like Tom.

Liam shook his head. The two situations were entirely different. He loved Robert, but not in
that
way. Not with an unquenchable fire fueled by every glance, word, and touch, a fire that died only after being buried beneath the damp sludge of reality. His love for Robert was pure and clean, feeding them both but burning neither.

So why did losing him feel like Liam’s worst nightmare?

= = =

IllusiveMan: Nice pecs.

Robert sat on the bed in his one-room student flat, phone in hand, staring at the Grindr profile of the lad who’d just chatted him. He was slim, with black-framed glasses that matched his swooped-up hair and accentuated his high cheekbones. The guy was cute, but not in an intimidating way, thanks to the giddy smile and a profile reading,
Patience of a sedated saint. If you’ve got questions, I’ve got answers
—not to mention his
Mass Effect
–alluding username, which suggested he was a gamer.

Holding his breath, Robert replied,
Thanks
, then sent a followup response.
Nice face.

IllusiveMan: LOL. I’d like to see yours.

Robert bit his lip. Like many others on the app, his own profile featured a photo of his bare chest rather than his face. It was a choice that seemed to inspire skepticism about his looks and sincerity.

For his profile name, he’d used an online random obscure-word generator, refreshing the page until he found one that amused him.

Flustrated: Sorry.

Flustrated: Paranoid.

Flustrated: New here.

IllusiveMan replied,
I totally understand. You know, you’re allowed to type >2 words at a time
, concluding with a smiling emoji.

Robert coughed out a laugh, which reminded him to breathe before answering.
Problem is, I’m not out yet, and long sentences contain so many telltale verbal tics. What if you’re secretly a forensic linguist, and one day when I’m Prime Minister you compare this Grindr chat with my Queen’s Speech, then decide to out me? I’ll be ruined, and the country’s economy will collapse, and it’ll be all your fault (and a wee bit mine).

After a long pause, the lad replied,
OK I need to meet you, like, yesterday.

Robert’s pulse thumped harder than ever.

His two previous Grindr encounters had been brief and awkward. During the first—a late-night, side-by-side wank in Kelvingrove Park—he and his anonymous companion hadn’t even touched each other. The thrill of watching another man masturbate while Robert did the same had worn off the moment it started raining. They’d finished anyway, as it seemed the polite thing to do.