Page 12

Chapter 12

Brodie had never been so ill in his life.

His head felt full of cotton again, but now, that cotton was soaked in a vile, viscous substance that seemed to ooze around his skull as he tossed and turned in a futile search for comfort.

At least he wasn’t completely on his own. Lorna had stayed here in his room for hours after yesterday’s football match. Then last night Shu-Fen had deployed herself and the other four residents at their end of the hall to care for Brodie in shifts, bringing him tea, soup, and Lucozade. She’d even phoned her grandmother in Taiwan for an herbal-tea remedy that tasted of bitter cinnamon and let him sleep through the night for the first time in a week.

Sunday evening, as the sky darkened outside, Brodie’s mind began to clear, just enough to process yesterday’s events. It still stung to remember the crowd’s malice, the footballers’ brutality, and Duncan’s utter callousness about it all. But what hurt most was the memory of Duncan’s face, lashed by Brodie’s bitter words.

Had he really said they’d shared nothing but a “meaningless hormonal caper”? What a joke, what a supremely, catastrophically unfunny joke. He’d been trying to convince himself more than Duncan.

Brodie rolled over in bed, resting a bleary gaze upon his desk. The room’s silence was suffocating. He missed the chair creaking with the shift of Duncan’s weight, and the floor thumping with the tap of Duncan’s feet.

They were sure to see each other at Wednesday’s psych exam, if not sooner here at the flat. Would he find the courage to apologize, he wondered, or would he still be reigned by the fear that had made him turn his back on Duncan? How could he even trust his emotions, when this illness swung them about so wildly?

His attention shifted to the constant, cosmic-background-radiation anxiety of exams. Tomorrow was his first, and he hadn’t even opened his statistics notes since Friday. His plan had been to tackle the hardest chapters once he felt better. Hah.

But he refused to admit defeat. He would drag himself to that exam tomorrow morning if it killed him. At least then he’d have death as an excuse for missing his remaining exams.

Brodie retrieved his statistics textbook and notes from his desk, then slumped back onto the bed. Opening to the next chapter, he found a small piece of notepaper tucked within. At the top was the Sunderland football club logo, a red-and-white-striped crest flanked by a pair of black lions, all beneath a banner that read Consectatio Excellentiae .

On one side of the sheet, dated the previous Friday, Duncan had scrawled the basic probability function and a few terms:

P(E) = m/N

Where P = probability

E = I’m falling for you.

m = My heart stops.

N = You look at me.

An arrow with the word ANSWER pointed to the edge of the page. Brodie flipped it over.

P = 1

He’d thought he was too ill to feel any misery but the physical sort. But this… this was like an ice pick jabbing through those layers of treacly cotton in his head. This hurt.

Just then, his phone beeped with a Facebook notification, probably another get-well wish from one of his mates. Even the Rainbow Regiment had sent him a “Bowl of Bunnies” e-card after seeing the state of him yesterday.

Brodie checked his phone, needing a pick-me-up. The notification read, Duncan Harris also commented on Spotted: Glasgow Uni Library’s post.

Heart pounding, he tapped to read the comment.

Duncan Harris: You’ve got your wish.

Brodie squinted at the four words, trying to recall their context. What had he publicly wished for during their day-long flirtation that began with a misunderstanding and an autocorrect-induced Spongebob Squarepants reference?

He tapped the See Post link for the full context. What he saw there squashed the sodden remains of his heart.

Duncan hadn’t commented on the sponge-bath thread. He’d commented on the original poster’s subsequent rant, where she’d savaged Brodie and Duncan for highjacking her message to her ex-boyfriend:

It must be nice not to know what love is, to never feel the pain when the person you want more than anything in the world won’t even look at you, much less touch you again. Wherever you are, all I wish is that ONE DAY SOON you’ll know what it’s like.

In what seemed a superhuman feat, Brodie got out of bed and started moving. He didn’t stop for shoes or socks, didn’t stop to comb his hair. His shirt was pure manky, and he hadn’t showered since yesterday morning, but he didn’t care. There was no strength for hygiene. There was only strength for reaching Duncan.

The hallway in their flat had never felt so long. He passed one bedroom, then another, then the toilet, then the shower, then three more bedrooms. At the halfway point, he paused beside the kitchen door, hoping Duncan would be in there, making tea or microwaving an extra-spicy curry. But the room was empty.

He trudged on. With each step, the pull of gravity seemed to double. If Duncan turned him away, he’d need a wee nap on the hallway floor before making the return trip. The prospect was humiliating. Still he continued.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, his mind chanted as he walked— I’m with the left foot and Sorry with the right, followed by a moment’s rest and an added plea.

I’m. Sorry. Come back.

I’m. Sorry. My bed is so affa, affa cold without you.

I’m. Sorry. Please…please.

I’m. Sorry. I’m. Sorry. I’m. Sorry. I’m.

Brodie was there. After a deep, steadying inhale, he knocked on Duncan’s door, then held his breath, listening.

Silence.

He knocked again, then looked down to see no light leaking under the door. He knocked harder, hoping Duncan had merely gone to bed early, which seemed unlikely the night before his chemistry exam.

Finally, footsteps. Brodie lifted his head, ready to say?—

Petra’s door opened to his right. She leaned out and gasped. “Brodie! God, you look a state.”

His hopes sank. “Welcome back,” he said. “You cut your hair.”

“You like it?” She drew her hand forward over her scalp, ruffling the short blond bob. “I feel sorta naked.”

“It’s nice,” he managed to say before pointing at Duncan’s door. “Is he?—”

“Gone. He said he could study for exams better at his parents’. It’s quieter, and they’ve got more food, and—” Petra hesitated, chewing her bottom lip. “And you’re not there.”

* * *

Duncan spent three miserable days sequestered in his parents’ flat, leaving only for Monday’s chemistry exam—which wasn’t a total disaster, thanks to Brodie’s tutoring on stoichiometry. His mum and dad comforted him the best they could, given that their last major heartbreaks had occurred when the Internet consisted of forty-five websites.

He now regretted sharing his pain on the Spotted post, but let the comment stay. If he deleted it, Brodie might think he no longer cared. Assuming Brodie was still checking Facebook. Assuming Brodie was still alive.

Wednesday morning, Duncan arrived early to his Psych 1B exam, simmering with mixed emotions. He longed to see Brodie’s face but feared it would turn away from him again in disgust. The very thought brought a sour taste to the back of his throat.

Lorna and Paul entered the lecture room, looking anxious. Duncan waved, then peered past them at the doorway.

“He’s not coming,” Lorna said as she sat near Duncan, leaving a chair between them per exam rules. “He’s resitting the exam in August. Too ill.”

“How ill?” Duncan’s stomach churned harder. “Has he gone home for the summer?”

Lorna shook her head. “He says he’ll have a go at his other two exams. Next one’s not for ten days, so he might be well enough then. His statistics exam was a complete catastrophe, but he’ll get a medical waiver to resit that one, too.”

“We never should’ve taken him to that match,” Paul said, opening his review notes for one last scan. “We should’ve duct-taped him to his bed.”

“Duct-taped his mouth shut while we’re at it.” Lorna chuckled. “I’ve never met anyone who babbles in their sleep like Brodie does. I spent all yesterday in his room trying to study while he napped, wishing I’d a pair of noise-canceling headphones.”

“What’s he talking about now?” Duncan asked. “Or would I rather not know?”

“Sorry, he’s not said your name. ” Lorna pouted sympathetically. “He mentioned a Will, though, and a Robbie.”

Duncan’s chest felt suddenly tight. “They’re the gay couple on River City .”

“The soap opera?” Paul guffawed, then held up his hands. “Not judging.”

“Better not judge.” Lorna gave Paul’s head an affectionate smack. “What with your addiction to crap reality TV.”

As the two of them bantered over the relative merits of Ex on the Beach and I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! , Duncan switched on his tablet. Hunching over to hide the screen, he brought up the selfie he and Brodie had taken in bed last week after watching River City . He wished he could dive into the picture and once again lie beside Brodie for the first time, feel their knees touch and their breath sync.

Duncan switched off the tablet and rubbed his face hard. Then he opened his notes, forcing himself to focus on the exam ahead of him, not the memories behind him.

* * *

“This is fucking revolting,” Fergus said, shaking the grease off his fingers.

“Revolting but delicious. Anyway, the chippy was your idea.” Duncan spoke through a mouthful of fried cod as they walked up the paved trail toward the top of Ruchill Park. “I would’ve been happy with the Thai restaurant around the corner. But no, that’s too easy. ‘Let’s walk to Wee Fry,’ you said. ‘It’s just up the road a bit,’ you said, failing to mention that by ‘a bit’ you meant four miles.”

“We needed the exercise, what with Charlotte sending us away early from training session. And the taxi ride back was only ten minutes.”

Duncan sent a wistful glance in the direction of the Warriors’ practice pitch on the other side of the park. His and Fergus’s seasons were over, as they’d each been suspended three games for their conduct in Saturday’s match. At least McCurdy had been suspended eight matches for throttling Duncan.

In other favorable news, Fergus had been unanimously elected captain tonight, though he wouldn’t assume the position officially until next season. Duncan himself had stood before their teammates and made the case for Fergus’s leadership. It was the least he could do for getting the valiant midfielder suspended.

They arrived at the base of the tall white flagpole, famous for its spectacular view of Glasgow and beyond. A handful of people stood at the fence—a trio of tourists taking photos and a mother with her two young lads—but the circular bench surrounding the base of the pole was empty. Fergus and Duncan sat down and spread the remains of their meals between them.

“It’s like a box of heart attack,” Fergus muttered, then popped the top of his Irn-Bru can with a hiss. “But I suppose we all need comfort food sometimes.” He took a long gulp of the orange ginger, then belched. One of the boys climbing on the flagpole trusses giggled at him.

“What’s so special about that chippy anyway?” Duncan asked.

“It’s the sister restaurant to a place in Troon called Wee Hurrie.”

“And?”

Fergus chewed his chip longer than he needed to. “We’d go there on a Saturday. He’d make me stop working on my master’s thesis for a few hours, and we’d drive down in time to see the sunset over the harbor.”

“You and Evan.”

Fergus flinched a bit, then nodded. Duncan realized he hadn’t heard him say Evan’s name since their breakup. He couldn’t imagine how much the end a four-year relationship would hurt. His four- day relationship with Brodie had left him in pieces.

Just then, the sun broke out from behind the clouds near the horizon, bathing the hill and the city in soft golden light.

“Ah, that’s pure gorgeous.” Fergus turned to look south over Glasgow. Duncan followed his gaze past the spires of Lansdowne Parish Church and the Kelvingrove Park towers, past his ancient university, all the way to the green hills beyond the River Clyde. “When I’m inside the city, it seems so huge,” Fergus said. “It seems like the only thing that exists. Then I come up here and suddenly I see where it ends, where the land takes back the space from humans. And then Glasgow seems wonderfully small.” He took another sip of Irn-Bru, keeping his eyes on the horizon. “I’ve not come here to the flagpole since…well, you know. Since then. It’s good to get perspective.”

“This was a brilliant idea. Even the fish.”

Fergus turned back to Duncan with a skeptical smile. “That’s still to be determined. So you’ve lived in Glasgow all your life?”

“Aye. Born and bred.”

“I wondered, since your accent’s not as thick as some of the others—like Colin, for instance. Is that because of your time in the States?”

“A bit, but mostly because I went to private school. My parents aren’t minted, but I’m an only child and they wanted me to have a better life than they did. As long as I remember where it comes from.”

“And where’s that?”

“‘Harris’s Fine Interiors, at the heart of the Merchant City,’” Duncan recited in the soft, enticing voice of their radio advert, concluding with the slogan, “‘Quality. For life.’”

Fergus gaped at him, a chip halfway to his mouth. “That’s your family’s shop?”

“You’ve been there?”

“I’ve…browsed.” Fergus looked like he was trying to be diplomatic. “Mind, until a few months ago I was a full-time student, so disposable income was a foreign concept.”

“Believe me, I know the stuff we sell is pretentious and overpriced. Sadly, that’s my future, or at least my parents hope it’ll be.”

“I thought you were studying psychology.”

Duncan was surprised Fergus remembered his course. “Mum and Dad said I could get any degree I wanted as long as I came back to help run the shop after uni. When I chose psychology, they were like, ‘Great, it’ll make you a stellar salesman.’”

“Hah!” Fergus wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “Is that your plan? Let the customers describe their dreams whilst reclining on one of your thousand-quid pleather sofas?”

“Exactly. Every therapy session will come with a free chenille twist rug. Choice of taupe, oatmeal, or mocha.” Duncan took a long sip from his can of Coke Zero, then lowered his voice, as if his parents might somehow hear from three miles away. “But seriously, after a year at uni, I think I’m more keen to continue for a Master’s, maybe one day be a sport psychologist.”

Fergus sat up straighter. “You mean like for depressed athletes?”

“Possibly, but sport psychology’s not just about mental illness. It’s about mental fitness, too. Being in the right frame of mind to perform, learning how to handle stress and pressure.” He gave a bitter chuckle. “When I told Brodie, he said, ‘What, the stress of being a millionaire? The pressure of everyone wanting to sleep with you?’”

“Clearly he doesn’t understand how mad this life can be, even for amateurs.”

“I think he understands now.” Duncan stared out over the city, toward the East End where he’d played his last match, and where Brodie had said goodbye. Just then, the sun vanished beneath a low bank of clouds, and the group of tourists drifted away, along with the woman and her two boys. “Anyway,” he told Fergus, “it’s an interesting field, and it’s what I want to do. Not sell sandstone toothbrush holders for twenty pounds apiece.”

“Twenty—? You’re joking.”

“On sale now for ￡14.95.” When Fergus laughed, Duncan added with a straight face, “If you consider how many years you’ll own a toothbrush holder, shouldn’t you have one you truly fancy, one which brings you joy to see it every morning and every night?”

“I never thought of a toothbrush holder as a long-term relationship partner. But now that I’ve seen the light, twenty quid seems a tiny sum when spread out over years of happiness.”

“Especially when you could have a matching soap dispenser for just ￡34.95.”

Fergus nearly spit out his cod. He covered his mouth and said, “You sure you don’t want to be a salesman? You seem a natural.”

“Take that back, ya knob!” Duncan threw his empty tartare-sauce container at Fergus, who swatted it away just in time. Beneath Duncan’s mock annoyance was a swell of relief at seeing his new captain able to laugh again, at least for a minute.

“Seriously, though, you should follow your dream. It’s your life. Why not?”

“Because Mum and Dad are the world’s best gay parents and I should feel lucky for their support?”

“No.” Fergus set an intense gaze on him. “You’re not ‘lucky,’ Duncan. Fortunate, aye. But luck is for people who don’t deserve what they get. You deserve your parents’ support. We all do.”

“You’re right.” Duncan had forgotten how calm and wise Fergus could be. “I wish I could convince Brodie. Of course, for that to happen, he’d have to actually speak to me again.”

“The lad you threw that punch for? You broke up?”

“He left me.” Duncan told Fergus everything Brodie had said to him Saturday, including his parting shot about their “meaningless hormonal caper.”

“You know that’s rubbish, right?” Fergus said, tucking into the rest of his chips. “Everyone lies about feelings. They say they love you when they don’t, and they say they don’t love you when they do.”

“That’s rather a jaded way of looking at it.”

“It just means you should pay no mind to people’s words, only their actions. When you were together, did it seem he couldn’t care less whether you were in the room? Or did his eyes light up whenever he saw you?”

Duncan considered it as he licked the grease from his fingers. “The second one.”

“And if he were truly indifferent to you, then why was he so devastated by what happened at the match? At the end of a meaningless hormonal caper, he could say, ‘Eh, good riddance to that wanker.’ He wouldn’t have been greeting his eyes out.” Fergus swirled his chip through his tartare sauce. “Speaking as an expert on crying binges.”

Duncan winced at the memory of Fergus’s public breakdown before the quarterfinal match, when he’d discovered Evan’s betrayal at the same time as the rest of the team. As frustrated as Duncan had been with Fergus’s histrionics and subsequent gloom, he now understood some fraction of his heartbreak.

“I wish I could go back in time.” Duncan tore a chip in half and tossed the pieces to a pair of loitering pigeons. “I’d smash the faces of Brodie’s school bullies.”

“That’s essentially what you tried to do Saturday, and you saw how it worked out.”

“Then I’d erase his memories so he’s not toting around this trauma and letting it come between us.”

Fergus squinted at him. “Getting less realistic every moment.”

Fuck reality. Duncan had a sudden urge to pelt the closest pigeon with the chip in his hand. Instead he lofted it carefully onto the pavement beside the eager bird. “I know I’ve faced less bigotry than most gay men, and Brodie’s faced more than most. But I don’t see why that should matter now.”

“That’s your problem right there. You don’t see why it matters. But clearly it does matter to him. It makes you look an insensitive thug.”

Duncan groaned. “That’s not who I am.”

“Tell that to the referee at our next match. Oh wait, you can’t, because you’ve been suspended for losing your temper.”

“But that’s got nothing to do with—” He stopped himself, remembering Brodie’s words, “There’s violence in you.” He’d dismissed the accusation, made excuses.

He was still making excuses.

Duncan thought back to their date the night before the match, how he’d made light of Brodie’s past in an effort to bring him into the allegedly tolerant present. But the here and now had turned out to be just as harsh as Brodie’s antiquated village. To top it off, Duncan had told him not to take the Shettleston fans’ bullying personally. Like it was nothing.

How could he be so thick, so oblivious?

“You’re right, I should be a salesman,” he said, “because I’m a crap psychologist.”

Fergus rolled his eyes. “Please. You’re eighteen years old?—”

“Almost nineteen.”

“Whatever. My point is, you’ve a lot to learn about life, so try to forgive yourself for not being perfect. You didn’t cheat on him, you didn’t lie to him, you didn’t—” Fergus’s face twisted a bit before his control returned. “This can be fixed, you and Brodie.” He turned away, feeding his own chips to the pigeons.

Duncan waited before speaking again. He might be clueless when it came to Brodie, but he at least knew when his captain needed a moment to collect himself.

After a minute he asked Fergus, “So what do I do, now that I understand? I can’t change the world or make Brodie less afraid of it.”

“Show him you get it. Even if you can’t give him what he needs, at least he’ll know you know him. He’ll know you’re thinking of someone besides yourself. Understanding’s not the end, but it’s a start.” Fergus’s voice turned as soft as the falling dusk. “And you can’t get anywhere without it.”