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“I think you were that,” Luke said.
“So I’m going to say,” Hayden went on, as if he hadn’t heard him, “that if you’re asking that because you want me to come with you … if it would help, maybe, support and all that. Or, you know, love. Then … I can ring my senior partner and explain. Not sure how I’d explain, but I’ll think of something.”
Luke had forgotten about his nose. Mistake, because two big globs of blood fell onto his white button-down, team-required travel shirt. He pinched it shut again and said, “If there’s a money issue, I could make that up.”
“Luke.”
“Oh,” Luke said. “Sorry. You’re not a toy and all that. Got it.”
“No.” Hayden’s hand was on Luke’s chest now. “I’ll go out on a limb for you. You just did it for me, didn’t you?” He was trying to smile, to be bright and funny, but it wasn’t quite working. “I’m good at my job, and I’m tired of dancing around my life, trying desperately to be … to be acceptable, sure that if I take one false step anywhere, I’m out. Out of my family, out of my relationship, out of my job. If we want this, if it’s worth it—let’s go for broke. Let’s stop protecting ourselves and do it. Flat to the boards. What do you say?”
“I say,” Luke said, and decided, to hell with the shirt. He put his arm around Hayden and kissed him, blood and all. “I say—I’m in.” He laughed. He had to leave, but this time, leaving didn’t have to hurt. “I say—if you want that?” He kissed Hayden again and promised it. “I’m your man.”
Another Saturday night for Hayden. Another stadium, not even domed this time. The stands were covered, but the wind was whistling. He didn’t care. He was in the WAG section this time, because he’d actually met them.
“You’re welcome,” Madelyn Osandu, Henry’s wife, had told him yesterday, when he’d met a few of them at Harvey Nichols to go shopping, which you tended to have to do if you flew across the world without so much as a change of clothes, and then been in the papers over and over again, possibly not looking as fabulous as you’d like as the first-ever rugby HAB. You had to represent, after all. Madelyn had gone on, “Though you’re better dressed than most of us. You’re the one getting the press this time, so that’s something, instead of me copping it for not losing the baby weight yet.”
Since they were being followed by about eight photographers at the time, she was right. Hayden hadn’t done any interviews, and neither had Luke, but that hadn’t stopped anybody from commenting, or the photos from appearing, either. The ones from Wednesday, Luke’s day off, when they’d gone to Edinburgh Castle and walked down the Royal Mile—Hayden couldn’t help it that he’d never been much of anywhere and wanted to be a tourist—and held hands, had been especially popular. Or disgusting, repellent, and “against nature.”
Oh, well. Not like it was news that heaps of people in the world shared Hayden’s dad’s view of things.
“I can’t say I think much of this scarf,” Hayden told Madelyn now, wrapping the thing an extra time around his throat as they watched the teams finish their extremely enticing groin stretches and other manly displays and trot off the field. “Red and black. Basic as. English rugby needs a new designer.”
She laughed. “Never mind. This is the last match, then it’s back to French chic.”
“Nah,” Hayden said. “I have to fly home tomorrow. Back to work, eh.” If he still had a job. His senior partner hadn’t been best pleased with his sudden absence. The firm was stuffy. Law firms tended that way, but big commercial firms especially tended that way. Bad enough to be gay. Worse to be …
Well, notorious.
They’d thought it was Luke’s career that would suffer. Ironic if it turned out to be Hayden’s.
“Oh, what a pity,” Madelyn said. “I would’ve come over to Paris to shop with you. Sacrifice, but there you are.” She laughed again, then sobered and said, “My son Duncan asked me about you yesterday. Well, about Luke, mainly.”
“Oh?” Hayden asked cautiously.
“Yeh,” she said. “He’s seven. He wanted to know if gay people can play rugby, and I could say, ‘Well, of course they can. There’s our skipper doing it. That’s why you’re asking, isn’t it?’ And he said, ‘I guess so.’ That’s going to means a lot to kids. Especially teenagers.”
“I see that,” Hayden said. “Not sure Luke ever wanted to be a poster boy for anything, though. He hasn’t been enjoying this.”
“Somebody had to be first, I guess,” Madelyn said. “Sorry if it’s been dread. It’ll be worse tonight, fair warning.”
“What do you mean?” Hayden asked.
“Watch,” she said, “and you’ll see. Never mind. He’s tough, and they’re all used to copping it over something, especially when Scotland plays the Auld Enemy. He can take it.”
Easy for you to say, Hayden thought and didn’t say. We’re tired of taking it. And why should we have to?
Luke had run out of a thousand tunnels in his career. He’d run out at the head of his team dozens of times, too. He knew about hostile crowds and hostile stadiums.
It had never been like this.
They ran out to a rousing hail of boos, as full-throated as 67,000 voices could manage. Which wasn’t unheard-of, but this was worse. He could hear, somehow, some individual words in the midst of that yelling, or he thought he could. He did his best to ignore all of it and lined up facing the stands for the anthem. At the end of the row, because he was the skipper, with Henry’s arm around his shoulders and his arm around Henry’s waist, since Henry was the next-most-senior player on the squad. If Henry wasn’t comfortable with it, he didn’t say anything.
The crowd did. “God Save the King” began to play, and the boos increased, drowning out the music. And then came the hail of drink cups. Murrayfield was a dry stadium, so beer wasn’t the reason. It was Luke.
All you had at the end of the day, though, was your refusal to be cowed. If he hadn’t backed down when he was nine and some twelve-year-old was beating him in the toilets, when his nose was bloody and he’d been kicked in the head, he wasn’t backing down now. He didn’t think, I’m putting the team under the pump, because there was no point. The anthems ended, and he jogged to his spot and braced for the kickoff. England were receiving, and that was all that mattered right now.
The ball was in the air, spinning high under the lights. Trevor Martin, the lock, who hadn’t looked Luke in the eye all week, was backpedaling, then backpedaling some more, and Luke was running with him, behind him.
