Cricket (18 page)

Local gin!
It proclaimed.
£3 on its own, £3.20 with mixer.

The barmaid—Caz, Henry was pleased at remembering her name—caught him looking and gave him a wicked grin. “It’s selling really well,” she said. “We’ll need to get more stock in soon.”

“That’s good,” he said and would have let it go at that, if it weren’t for Ryan’s supremely uncomfortable expression. “What?” he demanded, feeling like he was missing something important and hating it.

Caz gestured to a display of gin bottles stacked up in front of a mirror on the back wall, where bottles of spirits usually sat. Each one was adorned with a royal-blue label with the name HENRY’S printed in white across the middle.

Henry slowly turned to Ryan with wide eyes.

“Don’t tell me….”

“Then don’t ask,” Ryan said, his cheeks flaming red.

Aware that the barmaid was watching their exchange with an expression of glee, Henry picked up two glasses and headed back to where Paul and Shenal were sitting.

“You finally found out about the gin, then,” Shenal said as she accepted her pint.

“Am I the last person in the whole fucking village to know about the fucking gin?” Henry demanded, too loudly, apparently, as a couple looked over and scowled at him for his language. He was tempted to flick them a finger but resisted.

“No,” Ryan said as he rejoined the table. “I’m sure there are some recovering alcoholics who haven’t been here in a while.”

Henry shot him an icy look. “Not cool,” he said emphatically. “Very not cool.”

“Doing it or not telling you?” Paul said.

Henry considered this for a moment. It was actually a sweet gesture. “Not telling me,” he said eventually.

The warm presence of Ryan’s hand came to rest on Henry’s knee and squeezed it gently. “If I’d told you, you would have stopped me,” Ryan said.

Knowing that this statement was true, Henry muttered something under his breath and looked away. Ryan squeezed his knee again.

“Which one is it?” Henry asked.

“The sloe gin,” Ryan said.

“The one we got trashed on?”

Paul and Shenal exchanged knowing looks.

“Yeah.”

“Fuck.”

“I haven’t tried it yet,” Shenal said.

“You can have a bottle for Christmas,” Ryan said sarcastically.

“Has Stella finally agreed to stock that poison you make, then?” Paul asked, lifting his glass of beautifully clear golden cider to his mouth.

“In principle,” Ryan said. “She gets final say on what gets sold. We’ve got a plan to maybe do a ‘gin of the month’ if it’s popular enough.”

“You’ll need more baths,” Henry said absently.

Shenal raised her eyebrows. “I beg your pardon?”

“He makes gin in bathtubs,” Henry said, feeling the blush creep across his cheeks this time.

The night grew later and more people left, until there were only a handful of barflies remaining. A few sat on stools, propping themselves up on the bar, and others huddled in corners. Ryan and Henry had waved Shenal and Paul good-bye after they’d both refused an offer of a ride home, Paul saying he’d walk Shenal back to her house and make sure she got in okay. They were fooling no one. Nevertheless, it was nice to keep up the pretense of friendship when one could.

They stood in the doorway to the pub, contemplating leaving but not quite ready to brave the night. The pub was warm and inviting and the night cold, a light rain falling, making Henry glad he wasn’t walking Shenal home and even more pleased he’d refused an alcoholic drink so he could drive.

“Henry?”

“Hmm?”

“You’re thinking very loudly.”

Henry smiled and took a step closer to Ryan, because he wanted to and because he could. They were now standing almost too close to each other. Like Shenal and Paul, it would only take a cursory glance for anyone to conclude they were more than “just friends.” Although, after the gin, Henry doubted anyone in the village was still wondering what was going on with the two men living together at Twelve Acre Farm.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go home.”

Thirteen

T
EN
days later Henry found himself once again working on future plans for the sustainability of the manor house. After some Internet buzz, there had been inquiries about hiring it as a wedding venue, and now he was stuck in the position of having to work out a pricing structure. As was becoming his habit, he worked at the table in the kitchen. In the patch of light coming through the window, Hulk was spread out on his back, snoring.

“I have to go down to the school with a delivery,” Ryan said, wandering into the kitchen.

“Okay,” Henry said absently.

“Wanna come?”

Henry sat up, stretched, glanced over at the clock. It was later than he thought.

“Sure.”

“Hulk?” Ryan called. “Walkies?”

The big sheepdog cocked his head, then rolled languidly to his feet.

“Come on, you big softie,” Henry said as he slipped his sneakers on. Then, to Ryan, “We’re taking the truck, right?”

“No, I was going to go down in the tractor.”

Henry shot him a pleading look. “Please. Please don’t make me ride in that thing.”

“What’s wrong with the tractor?”

“It’s hideous, and it only goes at like, four miles an hour.”

“Fine,” Ryan acquiesced. “But you need to help me load it all onto the truck, then.”

It wasn’t that much, just boxes of fruit and vegetables that Ryan needed to drop off to the school’s kitchen, so it didn’t take too long to transfer the load from the back of the tractor to the flatbed of Ryan’s truck.

Having rained overnight, the roads were wet, but the sun was valiant in its efforts to break through the low-lying cloud, and it was warmer than it had been for a few weeks. With Hulk in the back of the truck (guarding the load), it was nice to wind the windows down and turn the radio up as they made the short journey to the school.

As they passed through the gates, the sports fields on the right of the drive were occupied.

“What are they playing?” Henry asked, pointing out the group of girls on the field. They were all dressed in the same gray polo shirts and navy pleated skirts, with knee-high gray socks and sneakers. Henry was immediately reminded of reading
Malory Towers
when he was younger.

“Rounders, it looks like,” Ryan said.

“Oh. It looks like baseball.”

“It’s fairly similar, as I understand it.”

It was after lunch and before dinner, meaning the cook was free to help them unload the boxes of vegetables and agree with Ryan on the next order to come through.

“See you next week!” Ryan called as they climbed back into the truck.

Halfway back down the drive, Ryan suddenly pulled over and hopped out. Reluctantly, Henry followed.

“Hey!” Ryan called out.

A blonde woman, a similar age to them, looked up from where she was supervising the game. When she caught sight of Ryan, she rolled her eyes.

“Mr. Burgess,” she said, walking over to greet him. Behind her, the girls stopped their game.

Ryan pulled her into a brief hug. “What got you out of the stables?”

“Miss Collard has twisted her knee. I’m taking over the girls’ sports until she’s well enough to come back.”

“Lucky you,” Ryan said with his tongue lodged firmly in his cheek. “Sorry, Henry. This is Clara Reynolds. She’s head of stables, normally. Clara, this is Henry Richardson.”

Henry reached out and shook her hand.

“You’re renovating Nell Richardson’s place,” Clara said.

“That’s right,” Henry said.

“I’d love to have a look ’round when it’s done,” she said.

“Of course. We’re very nearly there.”

“Henry was commenting on the way your game reminded him of baseball,” Ryan said.

The girls had taken their arrival as a sign they were no longer required to continue their game and instead had stared at Ryan with what Henry recognized as pure teenage longing. He was fairly sure it was a mixed school, but even so, Ryan was pretty to look at.

“Do you want to play, sir?” one of the girls asked.

Ryan burst into laughter.

“I’d probably embarrass myself,” Henry said.

“Oh, come on, you big grouch,” Ryan teased. “Play with the girls.”

Henry glared at him, rolled the sleeves of his shirt up, and strode over to take the bat. The assembled girls gave him hoots of approval. As he settled himself at the plate (or whatever the equivalent was in this bastardized game), he flipped the bat from one end to the other, knocking it backward and forward on the tips of his fingers.

He’d played baseball for long enough to be able to pull a few tricks out of the bag.

“Hey, Amy,” Clara called. “Chuck me that ball?”

After some scuffling, the girls returned to their positions around the field, some giggling, some as disaffected and disinterested as they’d been when Ryan had pulled up.
Teenage girls
, Henry thought.

Clara pitched the ball to him, hard and fast, as he’d always liked it. And, as he’d done countless times during his childhood, he smacked it as hard as he could with the fucking short-ass bat.

Technically, he could have just waited for it to land, because if there was such a thing as a home run in this game, he would have just hit it. He wasn’t so out of practice. But Ryan was watching and laughing and cheering him on, so he dropped the bat and gently jogged around the bases, accepting slaps on the hand as he did.

“Hate to tell you this,” Clara said as he executed a little jump back to safety. “But in rounders, you’re not supposed to drop the bat. So you’re out.”

“Oh, fu—”

“Henry,” Ryan interrupted him quickly. “Not in front of the children.”

“We’ll let you off, this time,” Clara said, laughing.

“How gracious of you.”

“Wanna go, Mr. Burgess?” the girl who Clara had called Amy asked, holding out the bat that Henry had so mistakenly dropped.

“No, thank you,” Ryan said quickly. Clara threw her head back and laughed.

“It’s been good seeing you, Mr. Burgess, Mr. Richardson. We should do this again soon.”

“Bye, girls,” Ryan called over his shoulder as he headed back to the truck.

Then a chorus of female voices—“Bye, Mr. Burgess….”

“What?” Ryan demanded as he turned over the engine, checking to make sure Hulk was still in the back.

“Bye, Mr. Burgess,” Henry trilled. “You’re so handsome, Mr. Burgess.” He fluttered his eyelashes. “If you ever want to date a younger girl, Mr. Burgess, I’m nearly sweet sixteen….”

“Shut up,” Ryan laughed, slapping Henry’s leg. “They’re just schoolkids.”

“Mhmm,” Henry hummed knowingly. “I know a schoolgirl crush when I see one. I had plenty myself.”

“I’m not going to dignify that with an answer.”

Henry laughed and looked over at Ryan, who smiled right back. Something flipped over in Henry’s stomach.

The impromptu game of “rounders” had further convinced Ryan that Henry needed to join the village cricket team—sooner rather than later. All of Henry’s protestations that being able to hit a ball with a bat did not mean he was going to make a good cricketer fell on deaf ears. Henry later learned the team had lost two batsmen from the previous season and were desperate to make up numbers.

It didn’t exactly fill him with excitement.

Still, Ryan seemed to be convinced it would all be fine, more than fine, that Henry would be great despite barely understanding the rules of the game. He’d borrowed Paul’s uniform, slightly bemused to discover that it was rather prescriptive and that both teams wore white.

“Like a virgin bride,” he’d told Ryan in a singsong voice and earned himself a slap on the ass.

He’d also laughed at the fact that this was a summer game, and the uniform—cricket whites, Ryan called them—comprised more layers than the average American winter sport. There was a polo shirt and a knitted sweater vest, thick cotton pants, and Ryan informed him he should probably wear a jockstrap.

“I have plenty of my own,” Henry had said, smirking. “I don’t need to borrow one of yours.”

By some silent mutual agreement, their relationship was progressing at a pace Henry liked to think of as “slower than snails having sex.” There was definitely no sex happening at the farmhouse, snail or otherwise. Ryan seemed to need the time to become comfortable with each new facet of their relationship, so Henry tortured himself with long evenings on the sofa, watching TV with Ryan’s arm around his shoulders. They kissed and touched each other above the waist, or sometimes Ryan would rest his hand on the curve of Henry’s ass. It was like being back in high school.

There was no parental supervision forcing them to hold back from anything more, though, it all had to be controlled by willpower alone. And Henry was discovering that any willpower he thought he might have rapidly melted away when Ryan placed whisper-light kisses on his neck.

In public, they probably looked like two unlikely but close friends. Henry was fine with that. He’d promised Ryan he wouldn’t be the one to out him, and he had every intention of keeping that promise. It meant occasionally dialing down the camp that came easily to him after years of perfecting an effeminate side that was still disaffected enough to be cool. He liked to think of it as
drag queen chic
.