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Jamie wakes the morning after Man City with a throbbing ankle and a mouth full of stale sleep-bitters masked by the lingering bite of champagne. Light cuts through his eyelids, all orange haze.
The sheets shift, stir. Muffle the old familiar sound of Keeley nestling down into the pillows when the sun grows too insistent. A warmth at the back of his neck, the ridge of her knuckles.
When he opens his eyes, Roy’s staring at him. Lying on his side, facing him, arms tucked close.
Jamie can’t move. Wouldn’t, even if he could, because the whole thing’s made of sand.
But Roy sighs, reaches out slow, and as his palm settles against Jamie’s face, nothing collapses. Not the newest win in Richmond’s record, not the silence hovering taut between them. Roy’s thumb traces up part of Jamie’s cheekbone, stops. Taps there a few times. His hand retracts and Jamie nods off again, like—
Like—
#
The champagne didn’t last long, and Keeley insisted that solo drunk-crutching around the clutter of Jamie’s home would only lead to him actually breaking his ankle, so of course they took him home. Left their cars in the Nelson Road car park, waved down a cab, fell into Jamie’s king bed with the bottle of prosecco he forgot he’d stashed in the fridge. They passed it between themselves, getting a quarter of the way through before all that adrenaline finally leaked away. The wall ran up on them fast, distant at first, then scraping their noses.
#
—like nothing in that moment’s real.
When Jamie wakes the second time—or maybe the first time—he’s turned to his other side and spots the tepid prosecco on the bedside table sitting in a ring of its sloughed-off sweat.
He’s alone.
He lifts his head off the pillow to survey the room and his hearing clicks back on: Keeley humming through the cracked door to the loo, Roy grumbling under his breath as something spits hot on the stove.
Keeley emerges as he sits up and scoots to the edge of the bed. She wraps his shoulders in a passing, one-armed squeeze on her way to the kitchen, telling off Roy for swearing at breakfast, they’re just eggs, they can only do what your spatula tells them.
Jamie listens. There’s a sting of cheddar in the air, sausage oils, implications of a run to the shops unless Roy dug around the fuzzed civilizations in the back of his crisper. His ankle still hurts and he’s hungry and there’s something physically tensing around his throat, to the space between his lungs, and he can’t decide if he should fight the urge to cry.
So he swallows the whole thing away and puts on a good face and a velco brace and a short silk robe a post-Keeley fling left at his old flat in Manchester. Sauntering’s tricky on a bum ankle but he makes it work, and it’s worth it for the two pairs of wide eyes, Keeley’s appreciative smirk and compliments on the florals, Roy’s—whatever that face is that follows the eyerolls. The stove’s turned up too high and the edges of the eggs are crisped black, steam scalding Roy’s face pink.
There’s enough pepper and cheese to mask the taste of carbon once they do sit down to eat. Jamie can’t remember the last time he’s had more than one person sitting at the counter barstools. He doesn’t always eat here himself; he can hold a plate on the couch by the telly just fine.
Roy and Keeley flanking him here turns the eggs rubbery in his mouth, though maybe that’s the only way Roy knows how to cook them.
They can’t stay longer and apologize for it, as if how long they stayed isn’t already more than Jamie thought to expect. Sunday’s halfway over and they’ve all got shit to do. Pulling on their shoes by the front door, Keeley folds him into a hug that bodies him back to those first few months of their relationship and the thick golden glow of the honeymoon and Roy hugs him like this is something they do outside of the colossal moments that plug up any utility words could ever afford.
Like it’s normal.
It’s too quiet without them, once the door clicks shut. He limps back to bed, takes a swig of the warm prosecco once he lands in Keeley’s spot and its lingering rose sugar scent. Goes for a second, just because it’s already in his hand and he’s tired and his ankle fucking hurts, and then he checks his phone.
One message. From Dad.
#
The match ended in a draw but almost didn’t. England put Jamie at midfield and when he saw the opposing strikers start weaving up the pitch he jumped into action, spotted the gaps around the penalty box and ran where he was needed, slammed the ball away before the shot on goal could be taken. There was no way to know now if that would have turned the match but it cut the opportunity out at the knees—or the ankles, an Achilles tendon blow at the eighty-ninth minute. He wasn’t a starter but he got his moment under the limelight.
And after, he saw his dad among the fans at the barrier as they left the stadium, flask gripped white-knuckle tight, jabbing his first finger vaguely toward him in the crowd of these teammates he didn’t really know.
He flinched, and then he heard him.
That’s my son, that’s my fuckin’ son! When it comes home, it’s gonna be because of him, mark my words!
Jamie waved, because how could he not. Couldn’t fight that habit, not yet. He felt his mouth pull wide and miss the mark of a real smile, settle into a grimace. An assistant coach ushered him along before he could see his father react.
#
Sorry for not telling you, I checked myself into rehab. Today’s my first day of phone privileges.
Saw the match against City. Proud of you, even if we lost.
If the prosecco were still in his mouth, he would spit it back into the bottle.
#
Training Monday takes on a weird air. Coach Lasso’s half outside his head, and Coach Beard’s got his own half-head dedicated to sussing out that mystery, and Nate’s back and fully diving into the new ethos around Total Football. Only Roy stands as the unchanged stone in the stream, except something is still off and Jamie misses one too many passes during drills to write it off as Post Miraculous Win Monday Gunk.
Jamie makes plans with himself to chat with Roy after but he’s on his way to the car park as Jamie’s leaving the showers, a pink and blonde figure waiting while the sun sharpens its glow against the horizon. His throat closes on itself but despite that he has a solid time cutting into Nate’s chat with Bumbercatch about the darker secrets of the League’s big-name clubs. Have you heard this about Arsenal, did anyone talk about this at West Ham, when was the last time you accosted a Tory official in public.
Back home over a microwave meal Jamie scrolls through every page of the rehab facility’s website. Every other Thursday, upon approval by both the resident and their attending physicians, they can host visitors. This Thursday isn’t an on-week, for the best since he can’t spare an eight-hour round trip that close before the biggest match of the season.
But on Tuesday he’s thinking about it. Isaac bloodies his nose when he doesn’t duck out of the way of a kick in time. His head knocks against the soil and the scent of grass orbits around his eyes. Heavier as it passes before his mouth, barely-there brushing against the top knot of his spine. Wednesday after lunch he trips over Dixon’s ankle and retreads the strains in his own, and then the docs are making him take Thursday off.
Wednesday evening, Jamie calls and the rehab admins move some appointments around, duck bashful under the pull of a star footballer, and soon he’s got a pass for the next day. He’s running hot under the skin, and he has a beer about it. His stomach churns, partly asking for another, partly admonishing for following the curling path of genes one step closer to the dark.
His house is so quiet.
Mummy works early Thursday mornings so he can’t quite call her, and Simon’s never been a night owl even if they did dig that deep.
He calls Roy.
“Why are you not asleep?” Roy grumbles into his ear. “Your ankle—”
“I need to go north tomorrow.”
Silence rolls on the other end.
“Manchester,” he says. “If it weren’t clear.”
Roy grumbles the equivalent of a nod.
“Me dad. He’s at a treatment—”
“Half-five. Be ready.”
#
Roy’s car pulls up early, quarter past, and Jamie beats him to the door. He bounces on his good leg as he locks up, spillage from from the jolt awake at half-three that expected him to be well on his way running through the streets of Richmond by now.
Keeley’s in the front seat, asleep but still balancing a drink caddy in her lap: a travel mug with a swinging tea tag, a small coffee, and a larger iced number softening the cardboard. Jamie slides into the back, drops his crutches by his feet, and Roy hands him the iced coffee while eyeing the strings of caramel still sinking to the bottom. Wordless, straw pinched inside his little finger.
He can’t remember the last time he let himself have one of these. A team dietician’s nightmare, that, so—Lust Conquers All, probably, and nowhere near Nelson Road since. But—
“Hope it’s all right Keeley’s here too,” says Roy.
“Yeah, ‘course.”
“You got an address for this place?”
Roy plugs it in and they pick up the M40 outside Uxbridge, a burst in the engine as they leave Greater London traffic behind them. Keeley snores, and Roy plucks the tea from the caddy, shoves it between his legs. Takes the coffee and settles it into the only free cup holder in the center console. The other’s stuffed full of pens and stacks of napkins and post-its with the sticky all covered in lint. Illegible, as typical.
The first hour passes in silence. Jamie can’t stop thinking about the pressure of Roy’s hand on his face, if it even happened.
“Thanks for this,” he says.
Keeley starts to stir and stretches her hands up toward the ceiling.
“You didn’t have to,” he says.
Roy grumbles. “Shut up.”
Which maybe means: let Keeley sleep.
Or alternatively: yes we did.
#
They don’t come inside with him, and he’s not sure he wants them to, anyway.
When he returns after an hour, they each embrace him, one on each side, and his crutches clatter to the pavement.
#
They start passing signs for Birmingham before Jamie lets himself think about any of it.
He didn’t know what to do with his hands, waiting there in the little room. Habit had them tucked inside the bottom of his shirt, a nice one he picked up in Wembley made to look like an England kit. Dad would get on him about stretching it out, ruining it, so he pulled them free. Held them under the table, thumbs tucked inside his first finger, wrists twisting.
“I’m doing this for you,” Dad said twenty minutes into the visit. “I know you never asked me to.”
But Jamie had, was the thing.
“Proud of you,” he said instead, because it was true. “Really am.”
Dad grinned. Weird sight, outside the roar of a stadium and no flask in hand. Maybe Jamie was dreaming again, or leaned too far to the left and landed in some other reality where this sort of thing just happened, normal. James Tartt Sr. happy and warm and sober. Roy and Keeley pressed up against him in his bed.
His throat caught. Dream or not, he could chase it, right? He could have a good father. Just for now. Here, in this bubble. And if this bubble expanded as the minutes ticked on into hours and days, then—
“Seeing you at Wembley… I was so fuckin’ proud, Jamie,” Dad said. “Made me have a hard think about me life, yeah? Can’t be dying ‘fore you get called up for the World Cup, now can I?”
A pop, barely audible, the rainbow film filtering the fluorescent lights gone in a blink.
Jamie swallowed—once, twice, and again to shove the lump down. He knew what he wanted to say but also knew he couldn’t, that Dad might get tossed out of here if there was a fight from it, and then he’d get pissed to an even earlier grave.
So he held it. He held it as it spun around the inside of his head, on repeat.
I wasn’t worth getting sober for until I played for England. I wasn’t worth getting sober for until I played for England. I wasn’t worth getting sober for—
“D’you remember our trip to Amsterdam?” He couldn’t un-say it now.
“Oh, yeah,” Dad said, grinning again. “Sixteen, weren’t you?”
“Fourteen.”
#
“You still with us?”
Roy’s parked at a petrol station near Warwick, swearing at the nozzle for one reason or another, and Keeley has an open bag of crisps pointed toward the back seat. She’s twisted around, brow all atilt in the way that gives her those doe eyes that sent him crazy and still do, except now she’s also chewing at the corner of her lip and Jamie’s not hungry anymore.
“I’m golden.”
He smiles, and it’s probably not convincing.
#
“Fourteen… really?” said Dad. “It weren’t after your O levels, then, all right. That must’ve been something else—”
“Why’d you take me to the Red Light District?” he said, all in a rush, the words bumping into each other. He stared at the corner of the table, and it was comfortable there, but his ankle throbbed an extra nudge. He glanced up, and Dad was waiting for him to continue, surely another question was there, an elaboration. Something.
“You asked me to take you,” he said after a beat. “Don’t you remember?”
“No I didn’t! A-and—I don’t! Which I’m told is a problem!”
(Roy’s eyes, dark against the shadowed Dutch countryside.)
“Jamie, no, you definitely asked. We planned the whole thing out together.”
They hadn’t. It was a surprise. Mummy didn’t even know it was happening until he showed up with the train tickets and called Simon the wrong name at the door. But Jamie knew Dad’s tells. He couldn’t lie to anyone that had kept him in their lives past the average.
And at some point, Dad had let this set as the truth.
“Oi,” he said, nodding down toward Jamie’s hands—out from under the table, flapping for who knew how long because Jamie sure didn’t, he never did, and his face burned. “How old are you, seven? Knock it off.”
“You knock it off,” he said, tucking his hands back out of sight, thumbs under his middle fingers now, tighter.
Dad sighed, loud and thick. “If you’re mad about it—”
“I’m not…” No, it was true. He could say this. He was after something else. “I’m not mad.”
“Then why bring it up? Past’s past, can’t change it.” He paused, ran a hand through his beard even though it was closer shorn than it’d been in ages, maybe since Jamie could remember. “D’you want me to say—look, I’m sorry, can we move on now? Once I’m out of here our future’s bright, Jamie, that’s where we’ve got to be lookin’.”
Jamie nodded, felt a pit gather in his stomach, dense and digging into a nerve straight down to his ankle. “Yeah, all right, Dad.”
#
They cross over the border of the M25 and weave toward Richmond.
“Glad as I am Dad’s getting help… decided I'm not going to see him again for a while,” he says.
Keeley reaches back and squeezes his knee, and Roy mumbles something too low for Jamie to catch as he guns the engine to merge lanes in time for their exit.
And neither of them can stay after they drop him off at home, missing so much of work, and he understands, kind of wants the space to drop everything without consideration of an audience.
Dropping everything apparently means an early night. Only one more day of training before West Ham, the title match, some peak he’s been running toward his whole life, and he needs both his ankles for it.
Needs his whole head.
#
West Ham comes to Nelson Road and loses: each goal finds an answer in the first half, but Richmond pull away with two assists from Jamie, one to Dani and another to Colin that really clinches it. The ball arcs through the air, over the defenders heads. Colin leaps, thrusts up his leg, kicks it into the net, and lands on his back with a triumphant scream. The stoppage time’s only got thirty seconds left when he scores, and the team hoists him up like a palanquin.
The air at the stadium crackles at the final whistle. The crowd roils like there’s going to be a proper pitch invasion, some ode to Kansan sensibilities.
Too much to look at, and it all grows slow: the bodies of his teammates rushing into him, grabbing, hugging, shouting, the screams of Rebecca and Keeley cutting through the noise, Coach Lasso himself oddly still beside Coach Beard, who has a hand on his shoulder.
Roy finds him in the throng, holds him fast, face buried in the crook of his neck. “Fucking hell, fucking hell,” over and over. A hand crawls up and grasps at the back of Jamie’s head, and the hard lines through Roy’s whole body go loose the longer they stand there.
Roy finds him again at the afterparty, the whole team and staff in Colin’s house since they all realized karaoke couldn’t contain them. Roy finds him, and they find Keeley, and the three of them end up at Jamie’s passing around the old bottle of prosecco, now flat.
#
Jamie can’t think about Coach Lasso’s announcement.
#
Or: he can’t until he has to, because Roy has to, because Coach Lasso and Rebecca have passed the mantle onto him.
“Fucking hell,” Roy said, because he’d found out at the half with the rest of the coaches.
#
Keeley tugs Jamie into the kitchen the next morning—midday, if they’re being honest—and she’s got on his silk robe from last weekend, leaving him in his boxers.
(Which neither of them asked him to wear to bed, and having them there meant the temperature kicks up that much more. But.)
“Roy’s not going to,” she says, digging through a cabinet on her tip-toes and looking for a clean set of mugs. “But do you want to talk about it?”
“Nothing else to say about me dad.”
She spins on her toes and the robe flares out, offering a bit more thigh. “Not that.” It’s barely a whisper.
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
Jamie fishes out a slice of the weird bread Roy bought last weekend and chews at the corner, wonders for a moment why he doesn’t own a toaster until everything else rushes back at a choking pressure. “No one thought he’d last even a season,” he says. “It was—”
“Don’t you dare say it was always going to happen,” she says around a browning slice of apple. There’s a baggie in her other hand with another nine or ten chunks bearing a thin film of age. “Not after the last two years. I was at those games too, y’know.”
The latest bit of bread has seeds that cleave against Jamie’s teeth in a way that makes his bones shudder under his skin. He wordlessly extends a hand for an apple slice and Keeley tosses it, waiting for him to say something, waiting longer as he nips at the corner. Not mealy yet, with the right amount of sweetness to warrant a larger bite.
“It’s his son, though, innit?”
Jamie can’t fault Coach Lasso for that. The kid had so much light in his eyes the last time he visited Richmond but something was still dimmer from that first time, half a meter of height ago. He’ll start to see the world better from those new vantage points, see his dad with every flaw that once slid by unnoticed. It will happen no matter what choice Coach makes, and at the distance between Wichita and Richmond, it will seethe.
“And people leave,” Keeley sighs. “Babatunde’s getting traded to Wolverhampton.”
“Fuck, really?”
She nods, tucks one of the thinner apple slices whole into her mouth.
“He’s the only one on the team who keeps up with movies,” he says. “We had plans to see that new Wes Anderson bit together.”
Keeley shoots him a look like she doesn’t know if she’s getting played. “Babe, what?”
Babe—later. Unpack it later. “What do you mean, what?”
She doesn’t answer, only hugs him hard around his stomach. Stays there, eases the grip, props her chin up against his chest.
“Manager’s a big deal,” she says. “Lots of attention. And we know how Roy feels about attention.”
“From the press and pundits, yeah,” he says with a snort, resting his head on top of hers.
He’s missed this. Her. How she can make him laugh with just a look, the right raise of an eyebrow, perfectly timed. How she bosses him around under the mask of a gentle guiding hand, so if he lets his attention slide he could forget everything at his hand is her idea.
Roy arrives in the kitchen with a stiff knee and bleary, stuck-shut eyes, too quiet. He can’t quite see Jamie and Keeley exchange glances over the mash of fruit salad and bacon they put in front of him, but he senses it. Swears about it, just for a bit.
“I stashed some good Darjeeling over the stove,” he says. “If you don’t mind setting the kettle.”
#
When Babatunde had Jamie and Bumbercatch over to watch The Darjeeling Limited, it was the first time either of them had been to his home. They didn’t know his style when watching movies, so they stayed silent, looking for any kind of cue.
Jason Schwartzman’s character pepper-sprayed his on-screen brothers and shouted, “Stop including me!”
And Babatunde pointed at the screen, caught their eyes, said, “Roy.”
#
That was years ago, just before the last match under Cartrick and Mannion.
So things change.
Jamie knows this.
#
Two days after the entire outfit of AFC Richmond sees Coach Lasso off at the Heathrow lobby, Jamie realizes he can barely remember it. One moment he’s knocking shoulders between Jan Maas and Isaac, the next Coach is grasping his hands in his own, and then he’s in a cab stuck in traffic and ignoring ping after ping from his phone stashed into the depths of his pocket.
He’s dropped off at Nelson Road, and Keeley meets him in the car park. He falls into her arms, breathes in her rose sugar lotion, the new melon in her conditioner, and he knows he’s fine to cry here but grits his teeth against it. Roy’s not far behind him.
Not Roy, and not the rest of them.
The next season and all that work won’t wait.
#
Coach Beard stays behind and he won’t tell anyone why.
Nate takes Coach Lasso’s desk, and Roy remains in the adjoining room, though halfway through their first week in this new setup the door separating them disappears, screws and all, and no one is fessing up.
Nelson Road is quiet in the short off-season, and Jamie’s only hanging around because Roy’s there staring at whiteboards and Keeley’s there conferring with Rebecca on the campaign announcing Richmond’s newest era. Jamie kind of hates it, the echoing hallways and Will-less boot room, but after a couple days he stops getting comments about loitering in and outside the coaches’ office.
And when it comes time for Roy’s first official presser as the Richmond gaffer, Jamie stands off to the side, at the door back into the facility, and he catches Keeley winking at the far corner behind a camera tripod. In Rebecca’ stead, because part of her’s still finding her footing amid the change.
“Let’s get on with it,” Roy grumbles into the mic. “Yeah, you—you’re new. BFG.”
A woman a solid head taller than Jan Maas or Van Damme stands at the back. “Juniper Stanwix, The Observer.”
“Go on then, Juniper.” Roy leans forward.
“Your predecessor, Ted Lasso, has arguably had more of an impact on Richmond in his three seasons than many managers have in their entire careers. How are you approaching filling his shoes?”
Everyone in the room knew it was coming. Juniper gives a small grin, delighting in being the one to ask it..
Roy’s so alone at that table. Coach Lasso gave the illusion of taking up two additional seats when he ran it solo, which was more often than not, and Roy’s not a small man but for once he looks it.
“Hard to fill his shoes without his feet, yeah?” Roy says.
That earns a ripple of laughter through the reporters. Jamie waits for it to reach Roy at the head table, smooth out his nerves, but once it hits he clenches harder. The last chuckle dies at the back, near Keeley.
And Roy says nothing.
#
He would have slept at Nelson Road overnight if Jamie and Keeley hadn’t come to get him.
“Ask Nate and Beard to do it with you,” Keeley said, leaning in the doorway. She caught Jamie’s eye, nodding, got him to nod along too. “You can say you’re… giving a full picture of what’s to come in the leadership this season.”
She kept on, citing other successful PR campaigns and adjusting their specifics to mold around Richmond’s collective shoulders. And still Jamie could only nod, offer a well-timed exactly, because she was so fucking good at this.
“I did ask Nate,” Roy said. “He didn’t think he was ready. And I can’t ask Beard.”
#
Roy saying nothing goes on for another thirty seconds, which stretches to hours under all the eyes in the press room.
And the thing is, they practiced this: all the way home to Roy’s place, then while Jamie threw together a plate of snacks, as Keeley forced Roy to stop pacing, sit down, unball his fists, please.
At the back, Juniper Stanwix shifts from foot to foot. “Coach Kent?”
A short sigh, mostly grumble—and then more nothing.
Jamie nearly trips over the leg of an empty chair at the edge darting to the back, staying outside the camera lenses. A pink blur at the corner of his eye leans forward, waves for his attention, and when he glances that way, he sees Juniper first, brow pinched behind her thick cat-eye glasses.
Off the record, he mouths to her.
He holds up two middle fingers high above his head, turning back to Roy.
Who rolls his eyes, runs a hand over his face—because he can’t be caught smiling in front of all these journalists, but the corners nudge past the ends of his fingers. The light catches on a tooth just as he ebbs back into his well-worn frown.
Still staring at Jamie’s middle fingers, then at the two that appear on the opposite end, a tad bit lower.
“Fuck,” Roy says, drawn out, and the press breathes again. “I’ve asked myself that same fucking question every fucking day. Still don’t know. Might never.”
Juniper nods, and a number of the familiar faces follow suit as they scribble shorthand in their notebooks and steno pads.
“But he was my coach during my last season as a player and my colleague in my first two seasons as a coach,” he says, “so that has to fucking count for something. And the team’s still mostly his team after the trades.”
“Would you say, then, that Ted Lasso is still here, in a way?” Juniper asks.
“Fuck no. I mean…” Roy glances at Jamie, then at Keeley. “Fuck no,” he says again, but more mildly. “Ted didn’t leave Richmond after making us more like him. That’d be a fucking nightmare. All those puns? From the whole team? No… he led us to this point and made sure all of us could keep up. Then he turned down a different path. And I can’t fill his fucking shoes if he took them with him. Not like I haven’t got my own, either.”
He shrugs, nods to Juniper, and points to Marcus Adebayo (“Sequel Trent,” this time), who asks after the player Richmond’s received in the Wolverhampton trade, something Izadi, and Jamie shoves his hands into the bottom of his shirt.
Another new face from the back row’s staring at him, and he notes the INTERN mark on their badge from The Times.
“What was that about?” they whisper, pointing their chin toward the stretched hill of his shirt.
Juniper leans back, taps their shoulder. “Off the record.”
#
Jamie keeps his hands hammocked there out of habit.
And cultivated wariness of the press and their camera and pens and careful eyes.
And sensing his heart expand to every corner, even with everyone in it, when he’s really only thinking of two people in particular, and when his heart’s the size of a room his hands jump to keep up. They reach. They don’t have eyes, so they’ll bump into whatever’s in their way before Jamie knows they’re off.
#
“Could you repeat the question?”
It’s one of the big papers’ backups who asks, which explains it.
“Coach Beard worked alongside Lasso for over fifteen years before coming to Richmond. Do you have any insight into what prompted him to remain?”
Jamie can’t move. Neither can Roy.
Keeley, though—she’s marching up the other side of the room, waving a sparkly pink pen around like she’s trying to erase them from the facility. “So sorry, that’s all the time we have for today. Coach,” she says to Roy, “you’ve just had an appointment come up with the new head of engagement. Come on.”
She beats them both to Roy’s desk in the coaches’ office, hops up, and lets her swinging leg knock the chair away. Glowing.
“What the fuck is a head of engagement?” Roy says.
“An out, yeah?” says Jamie. “Tactful-like.”
Roy grumbles. He extends the leg with his bad knee once he sits, mutters something about whatever errand plucked Beard and Nate out into the city in the middle of the day. “Sometimes they bring back baklava, so I don’t ask. I also wouldn’t ask if they didn’t.”
#
The baklava’s good. Really good. First time Jamie’s actually enjoyed the stuff.
Nate insists that he take the rest home, which means it ends up on Roy’s kitchen counter that night while he and Keeley and Jamie debate where to call for a pizza.
#
The anchovies always smelled like crisped saltwater left out in the sun for too long, over-pungent against the tomato sauce. Jamie never understood why Dad liked them so much.
Half the time he ended up over at his flat while he was coming up the Premier League Youth Development dinner was pizza. All anchovies, only half with mushrooms because that was one topping Dad could bargain over. Jamie could pick off the fishy slivers but it stained the whole slice.
#
Roy loves anchovies and it’s his dirtiest secret.
If this colors him in another light, it’s somehow warmer than before, golden, and Jamie wants to dig a fist through all the years layered between now and when he first looped the tape at the corners of that poster at the end of his bed. Dad bought it for him on his first trip to London for an open day at Crystal Palace’s academy. Man City was playing Chelsea away, and they didn’t have the money for actual tickets, and Crystal Palace had turned him away for being too young, and the taste of the anchovies still salted his tongue long after lunch, after the train ride back to Manchester, after sneaking a spoonful of ice cream from the freezer. Under the salt it tastes of beer-splashed chips and under-table kicks to the knee about not looking sixteen.
Jamie’s chest is sore from how it spread in the Richmond press room, but it still lets itself grow. Roy’s kitchen is smaller than the press room so it’s more doable, and Jamie reaches himself to every wall while Keeley begrudgingly calls in the order, fish and all.
Roy loves anchovies and Jamie doesn’t have to put all that barbed wire around it in his head.
#
The sun hasn’t yet pushed out most of the dark when Jamie wakes the next morning, but he thinks that’s just how Roy likes it: thick curtains, colors prone to swallowing as much light as they can.
Keeley’s wrapped an arm across Jamie’s chest, the tip of her nose tickling the shorter hair at his nape. He closes his eyes and it’s three years ago. He opens his eyes as the bed shifts and Roy’s staring at him again—it’s not three years ago, and it’s also not now. Can’t be. He’s still asleep, that’s it. Just another dream-haze turning everything around.
#
He squeezes his eyes shut again because, if anything, he should be coming to tangled in his football sheets in Manchester ten years ago because there’s something about being both a Premier League star and lying between Roy Kent and Keeley Jones in Roy Kent’s bed that seems—
#
Roy’s drifted off, but his hand’s latched around Jamie’s wrist between them. Keeley tugs herself closer.
#
The bedroom can’t beat back the day much longer, but it has Keeley’s help. Throwing open the curtains startles Jamie and Roy awake, nearly sends Roy tumbling off the edge of the bed.
“Oh! Sorry, sorry,” she says, already on the other side of the room to check her phone. “Crisis mode is better than a double espresso to get you going, yeah? Shit—” In the time it takes to tap out a response, four more dings roll in. “Barbara went in early and she’s already drowning—gotta run.”
She manages to pull on the last pieces of her outfit, still precisely coordinated despite the rush, as she darts back to the bed.
Kisses them both on the forehead.
“Be good!” And she’s already out the door.
Roy sighs, no grumble present, and it’s completely unreadable.
#
Jamie’s first thought is that he could get used to this, but the thought comes as feeling before words, and if he lets himself vocalize it, even just in his head, then there’s no way he’s not going to wake up ten years ago.
And if he wakes up ten years ago after all this, then he’s never going to get it back.
#
Nelson Road has its own spot of crisis that morning and Jamie finally learns the weird barking and howling the team sometimes heard wasn’t the physio room’s new ghost tenants.
“You really want to be a fucking Diamond Dog?” Roy says as he wheels his chair from his desk in his half of the offices.
“I’m here, ain’t I?” says Jamie. “Answered the call, or whatever that was.”
Nate and Higgins murmur in agreement. Beard stares, heavy like he never did before Ted left and like he tends to lately.
“This is a sacred institution,” Beard says. “You have to respect its—”
“He’s good for it,” Roy says, nods toward Jamie to shut the door to the locker room behind him.
Jamie listens more than anything this first session—following a cue from Roy’s approach to these things, or reluctant to stick his foot through a mess that was covered before his time. A lot rests between the lines as Beard talks about Jane and how they’re through, for good this time. Details hide behind twitches at the corner of his mouth, or a tic of his eyebrow, and they mean something to everyone else.
The session’s forced to disperse with a couple cell phone chimes and hurried barks: Roy and Higgins summoned to Rebecca’s office, Nate hopping up to chase an idea in a closet at the far end of the locker room, Beard leaving his feet propped up on his desk.
Jamie lingers, his hand barely brushing the jamb back to Roy’s side.
“You good?” Beard asks.
It’s out of his mouth before he realizes: “She’s not the reason you stayed, is she?”
And he could about kick himself.
“Nope,” Beard says. Tilts his head back to peer through the blinds at Nate in the other room and the increasingly wide ring of boxes and outdated gear he’s excavated from storage. “I figured…well.”
“Sorry. Shouldn’t’ve asked.”
Beard shakes his head. “I have shit to do here. So,” he says, sitting back up, “I’m not leaving. It’s okay,” he adds, quieter. Opens his book, closes the discussion.
#
That night Roy drives Jamie over to Keeley’s place, where they find her on the couch wrapped in the fluffiest white blanket Jamie’s ever seen. Only her eyes peek out at one end, fixed on the laptop screen open to her email. Every unread message has a scary little red exclamation point next to the subject line.
“I’m just taking a break,” she says, muffled.
Roy glances at her, then to Jamie.
“What do you want for dinner?” Jamie says.
Too stressed to eat, she claims, which Jamie takes to mean I’ll take whatever you put in front of me, and sure he hasn’t got skills like Sam or Richard but he can boil water. Follow the directions on the box.
So half an hour later he’s got three plates of buttered noodles mixed with chicken that’s undergone an experiment of seasoning. Lemon wedges on the side, cut at a clumsy angle. And just as Jamie suspected, Keeley peels herself out of her cocoon and brings the plate to her lap.
“Smells fucking delicious,” she says. Her fork’s already twirled a bundle around its tines.
Roy mumbles, squinting at the laptop screen. “The fuck is everyone so worked up about?”
The proposal she and Barbara toiled over a few months back—it worked, swiped away one of the bigger clients from another firm the board of Jack’s company took their money to, and part of the initial deal was a new ad campaign. High end, real posh, lots of comparisons to Variety cover shoots, Annie Leibovitz, more names Jamie doesn’t recognize. National Trust finally let them book the Ham House and Garden for this weekend, and the clients were elated.
“But they fucking canceled,” she says around a piece of chicken. “‘Another party’ wanted use of the place. Just like that, after the weeks we spent nailing down terms and hearing so much ‘this is really outside normal use’ or whatever.”
#
Jamie’s knows what’s between those lines before he goes to read them. There’s a way the words mold around whatever’s in the center and for a moment Keeley’s voice takes on a Mancunian lilt.
She won’t say it, and Mummy never did either, but financial trouble looms in the branch of the path where the issue isn’t solved.
#
“Rebecca is pulling some strings for next weekend,” Keeley says, “but it’s all tentative. Her people haven’t said yes yet, the client is still…” She shrugs, and both Roy and Jamie reach for the closest knee to them.
So: nothing to do but to wait, twiddle the thumbs and examine every possible bad outcome from every angle until it’s the only thing visible on the horizon.
Roy’s chasing the final scrap of noodle around his plate when he gets a shine to his eyes that last preceded a purchase of far too much red string. “Do you know the arseholes who swiped the house from you?”
They get Bumbercatch on Facetime within the minute, and in another five, he’s sent them all a link to the gala, to the organization it’s benefiting, and the unlisted page to purchase tickets.
“Are you fucking kidding me,” Keeley mutters. Her laptop cursor hovers over one of the larger names on the sponsor page, right under the green, white, and purple banner.
Jack Danvers.
“I’ve got the full guest list here, too,” says Bumbercatch. “If you give me an hour, I can send you all their offshore bank account information.”
They pause, glance at each other. Keeley frowns in thought.
“Maybe later,” Roy says.
“Got it, yeah, one thing at a time.”
Keeley takes a couple deep breaths to center herself, then steals a piece of chicken off Jamie’s plate, pinched between her thumb and first finger.
“We’re crashing this thing, yeah?” Jamie says. “Pretty obvious?”
Roy grins, and it really is the red string all over again.
#
But it’s not so straightforward.
Even if the gala’s the kind of event thrown by the most-upper upper crust in the country without toeing into the royal family, the cost of the tickets isn’t an issue. Steeper than they would like to pay, sure—
“We’re not fucking giving money to this,” Keeley says. “Wouldn’t have fucking dated her if I knew.”
So Bumbercatch hacks them onto the guest list, signs off with a tchuss and a promise to be on call should they need a guy in a chair to run interference the night of. Keeley starts thinking through her wardrobe out loud trying to find the best option for a white tie dress code.
#
The second time Dad took Jamie to London to try to slip under the age requirement for an academy, the owner of Arsenal was hosting one of these benefit-like events. Had asked a handful of prospects from across the UK to attend with their families, and Dad had a story about Jamie’s invitation getting lost in the post. Jamie knew better than to believe it, but he also knew better than to openly push back because Dad could push back harder and it was never clear what form that would take.
Pack your best suit, son, he’d said.
And Jamie had simply forgotten.
That was his story, and Dad knew better than to believe him too.
#
“You’re fucking mental.”
Roy opens the door to Keeley’s in a sensible black suit with black shirt to match—or maybe midnight charcoal, upon second inspection—and there’s a white bow tie at his throat that he’s fiddled with to the point it’s ready to come apart.
“Yeah,” Jamie says, “and that’s not what ‘white tie’ means.”
“Well that super isn’t what it fucking means!”
It’s like Roy’s never crashed anything before—not always about blending in, crashing. Sometimes it’s all spectacle, going loud enough for the petrol to catch fire around the crumpled boot.
Keeley rounds the corner just as Jamie steps inside, and she stops cold, hands flying to smudge the freshly-applied rouge. And she cackles, the real full-body thing she can only let go in private after so many years of constantly being on as a model. “Jamie!”
“What? Too much?”
Roy mutters yes under his breath, and maybe it is: a teal suit he bought on a whim last summer, a pink-and-white houndstooth pocket square to match his socks peeking out at the ankle, no shirt. A silver hoop in one ear, the long dangling cross in the other, thin chain and belt buckle to match.
“It’s perfect,” she says, smiling almost too wide to get the words out properly. Her whole face shimmers, from the white glitter of her eyeshadow to the clear dainty sequins sewn into her black gown in curving lines accentuating her figure.
#
If Jamie steps outside with the two of them, his heart will expand to the full breadth of Britain’s coastline, and he’s not sure anyone could survive that.
#
The cab arrives three minutes early, and Jamie doesn’t collapse in the dozen steps from Keeley’s stoop to the back seat. He counts it as a minor miracle.
#
The entrance to the gala is through the estate’s gardens, a light-lined red carpet laid down on the grass and lumpy with pebbles threatening the incoming train of high heels. As such, the line slows.
They wait, and Jamie pulls Roy a step closer to him to redo the tie.
“No one’s going to care about me if you’re fucking nearby,” he says. “Won’t even notice I’m wearing a tie.”
“Oh, shut up, old man.” He grins while he says it, all soft edges, and even the angry little crease between Roy’s brows unclenches. “If you wanted people to notice you, should’ve told me outright not to get me tits out.”
There the crease goes again. Keeley snorts, and the snobby couple ahead of them in line throw a scowl over their shoulders.
“Evenin’,” Jamie says, to no reply.
The doorman wrinkles his nose at Jamie’s get-up once they’re at the front, but he still lets them in. The list is the list, after all, and Bumbercatch’s not one for cutting corners.
“Right then,” Roy says. “Let’s cause a problem or two.”
“Or five,” Keeley adds.
“Thought we was ambitious sorts,” says Jamie, poking his tongue out at the corner of his mouth as he hops forward, breaks away and dips into the crowd filing into the manor’s rear door.
They call after him. He pretends not to hear.
#
This kind of crashing’s an art, a quarter-ways lost to him, and he’s got to get his bearings. Put his feet back into the step they held before Coach Lasso even renewed his passport.
He takes two laps around the widest perimeter of hallways, downs as many flutes of champagne as he goes, picks up a third as a prop. In an alcove, where someone’s abandoned a two-finger glass of bourbon, he dips his thumb in and lines the underside of his jaw, the tendons down his neck.
On his third lap, he spots an older man who makes no attempt to hide the scandalized lip curl upon catching Jamie enter the room. Easy target. Pop the hips just so as he launches into a speech about the upcoming season, flash a nipple, the shadow of abs. Lean into his accent, all the grammar these Eton-bred knobs shudder at in their nightmares.
When that man’s dragged away, there’s another and his wife. More, as he trawls from room to room, refreshing his champagne at a clip to keep his buzz steady, nothing more. Just oiling the inhibitions a bit, letting the bourbon stains on his skin push the rest. He lets himself get loud, elbow trays of little pate crackers into smears on the nice tablecloths, scuff up dress shoe brands that none of his fellow new-money footballers would have ever heard of.
#
At some point in his life, Jamie had developed an internal clock, a countdown timer constantly taking in the scene around him to predict when his act would cross the line. If he was going to get swarmed, taken out and to task, he wanted at least a semblance of a heads up.
In Ham House, the count is ticking dangerously low.
#
And then he sees her.
She’s standing at the center of a small circle of other rich twats laughing at her witty fucking anecdote in that obligated way, begging to not get shoved off the pedestal at the next possible chance. From a distance, all context stripped away, he gets it—Jack is fit, exactly Keeley’s type in women.
But context doesn’t like to stay away, and then he’s back to hating her and her money and—
“Oi, Jackie Danvers!”
The entire room hushes, but Jack’s careful posh prick smile doesn’t waver. “It’s just ‘Jack,’ actually.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.” He takes a step forward, and she cuts through her throng of abettors to ensure that’s all the steps he takes while still keeping her distance. “Imagine seeing you here!”
Her eyes widen slightly at his volume, how it’s still leaning higher, and then they widen again when she senses the bourbon. “I could say the same thing.”
“Don’t want to keep you too long.”
Yes, he does. Everyone is staring. Ham House, a new kind of pitch, the spectators holding their breath—and at its center, Keeley and Roy’s thrumming heartbeats at his back.
“I think everyone here should know, yeah?” He’s proper shouting now. Not like his father, but like he’s trying to get Colin’s attention over the roar of the crowd. “You fumbled the bag good. Incredible. No one’s fumbled it like that before. Fuckin’ highlight reel shite, you know what I mean?”
He thumbs over his shoulder, glances back, and sure enough Roy and Keeley are there, both pink in the face and there’s no time to figure out what that’s supposed to mean. The countdown clock is starting to crumble.
“No one fuckin’ fumbles Keeley fuckin’ Jones without pinning that at the top of their life regrets.”
Ten seconds. Nine.
“Maybe not right now, ‘cause you think your money can buy you a better girl, but you’re kidding yourself. ‘Sides, you ever seen how dirty a quid note is? What kind of bandage is that? Fuckin’ infected in a day.”
Six. Five.
#
The clock’s only an estimate, anyway. He’s been wrong before.
#
Two guards take the lead with Jamie out one of the side doors, another close behind with Roy and Keeley’s collars each in a hand. The six of them wait for the cab to show up in silence.
“I had a plan,” Roy sighs as the estate’s lights fade under the horizon behind them. “We were almost through setting it up.”
“Sure,” Jamie says, sitting on the word until Roy rolls his eyes. “Mine was more efficient, though, I can tell you that much.”
“And you did marvelously,” Keeley says in a stage whisper. The passing streetlights spark at the glitter around her eyes and the flecks that migrated to the backs of her hands.
To the backs of Roy’s too, and then to Jamie’s as their arms loop through his on either side, clasping their hands together, fingers braided.
#
Jamie’s never been a praying type, but he prays not to wake up.
#
In Keeley’s kitchen, she hoists two bottles of champagne out of her bag. Magic, that. Sorcery, even, how she pops the cork out with a trick of her hands.
Jamie has a few swigs but his stomach’s not in it. There’s an unread text in his phone that landed just as the cab dropped them off, a note from one of the physicians at the rehab facility saying Dad’s had a relapse, he’s going to need an additional four weeks, it’s normal, not the first patient to sneak booze in, progress isn’t linear.
#
“Oh Jamie…your father’s going to make his choices,” Mummy said, and so many times. “You can’t make them for him.”
#
Jamie blinks away the blurry filter of sleep, tucked on his side in Keeley’s bed between her and Roy, just under a sunbeam cutting in from the gauzy pink curtains.
Roy’s staring again, and his fingers rest, curled, on Jamie’s upturned palm. His eyes are intense, searching, tracing over something on Jamie’s face. The scar from his headbutt, a stray line of hair, he can’t tell.
“Roy.” It’s barely a whisper. Maybe there’s a question in there, too, but he can’t articulate it, can’t even curl the end of his name up to imply it.
He can’t dream this three times, can he?
“Morning.” Keeley props her chin up on Jamie’s shoulder, smirking.
The pressure of her is grounding. There’s nowhere else for any of them to go.
Jamie reaches his free hand forward, grasps the back of Roy’s neck, pulls him close. Roy gasps like the wind’s been kicked out of him, wheezes like he can’t decide whether he should catch his breath or chase Jamie’s, and Jamie doesn’t have much to spare.
His heart’s ticking faster than he can count—Roy’s hands in his hair, Roy’s tongue in his mouth, Roy’s stubble across his jaw, Roy’s thigh between his legs, and.
And—
Keeley, kissing at his neck. Behind his ear. He turns his head, catches her by the lips, and he could cry. Roy slides a hand up his shirt, and the corners of his eyes start to sting.
#
Jamie knows now there’s nothing to wake up from, but he still wants to find a dark night. Fifteen years ago, give or take. The hall lamp from under the door lights up the posters’ gloss at the end of his bed, the red salty sheen in his eyes left in Dad’s latest warpath.
He wants to find one of those nights, grab it, hold it close enough for him to hear all the way in Manchester, under all the intervening years.
#
You’re all right, kid. You’re going to be all right.
You’re hardly going to believe it.