Playing to Win (32 page)

“I suppose I must too.” Andrew opened the app and checked his #Indyref feed. “Good God, the internet just exploded.”

Colin was far from alone. Every Yes activist—along with many neutrals, including fellow journalists—was up in arms over this alleged distortion.

How bad can it be?
Andrew wondered. Then he saw a tweet by Colin himself:

Colin MacDuff: Does @BBCNews understand we have this thing called the internet? #indyref

His tweet included a YouTube link, which Andrew quickly tapped. It showed the original footage of this afternoon’s press conference.

“I knew they were biased,” Colin said, “but this is—”

“Shh. I’m seeing it now.” Andrew stepped out onto the porch so he could hear better.

As Andrew watched, a chill snaked over his shoulders and down his spine. Colin was right. Salmond
had
answered—and answered well, much as Andrew hated to admit it.

This wasn’t a case of lazy paraphrasing or a slight slant. One of the world’s most revered news organizations had edited footage, then added narrative to portray an event as the opposite to what had actually happened.

“Impossible,” Andrew whispered. Had the world lost its collective mind? He was far from a paragon of honesty himself, but this deception turned his stomach.

Colin bounced over to the door. “I’ve already got four retweets and five favorites!”

Andrew returned to Colin’s original tweet.
My followers should hear the truth.
He tapped the chasing-arrows icon. “You’re about to get a lot more.”

= = =

Colin’s phone beeped. He looked down at the screen.

Lord Andrew Sunderland retweeted you.

His breath caught in his throat. “You—you retweeted me? To your million followers?” He staggered back a step. “Does this mean you agree?” Maybe Andrew was coming around after all.

“My bio clearly states that retweets are not endorsements.” Andrew brushed past him through the doorway. “I merely pass on information I find intriguing.”

Colin’s phone beeped again. Someone calling himself “Say No to Yes” had replied,
Aww, the cybernats are throwing their toys out of the pram again.
There was a .gif of a crying baby attached to the tweet.

Colin thumbed the screen to see other replies in the same vein. His scalp prickled at the words they called him. “Hey, your followers are attacking me!”

“Now you know what I go through every day.” Andrew slipped out of his shirt. “Come, let’s have a swim.”

“Now? Are you mad?” Colin’s hands were trembling with adrenaline. “I need to answer these. I need to defend myself.”

“No, you don’t.” Andrew grabbed Colin’s phone and tossed it onto the bed, where it beeped again. “Also, you should turn off notifications so it stops making that infernal noise.”

“How will I know—”

“Do you ever hear my phone make sounds unless it’s a call or a personal text?” Andrew asked as he swept off his trousers and underwear with one smooth motion.

Colin eyed him, for once too distracted to admire his boyfriend’s naked body. “No, I guess not.”

“That’s because I’m a master of social media. It is not the master of me.” He stepped into one of the swimsuits. “I just made you internet-famous, so start acting it. Never reply to insults. You made your case, it was a good one. Defending it would only make you look, well, defensive.”

Colin had to admit he was right.
Don’t feed the trolls
was Rule #1–Infinity of the internet.

“You know who you are.” Andrew handed him the other swimsuit. “Those people online don’t know you. If you can ignore name-calling on the football pitch, surely you can ignore it on Twitter. Now take off your clothes and jump into the loch.”

Andrew had that imperious
don’t-argue-with-me
look, an expression Colin had learned to distinguish from his imperious
please-argue-with-me
look.

“I’ll be outside.” With his usual unnatural grace, Andrew stepped onto the porch and climbed up to perch on the wooden railing. After Colin undressed, then stuffed himself into the Speedo, he followed, sucking in his gut and wishing he’d spent more time on his abs this past summer.

“I feel like there’s a fire-code violation going on down there.” He gestured to his trunks. “Such crowding can’t be healthy.”

Andrew’s attempt at a smile looked pure sad. He turned back to the loch. The water sparkled with the light of the full moon fighting its way through high clouds. Colin put a hand on Andrew’s bare shoulder and gave a gentle squeeze, wishing there was something he could say to ease the loss of this place.

Finally Andrew took a deep breath and sat up straight. “Right, then. In we go.” He stood up, balanced on the bottom railing. “It’s fairly shallow, so no diving. Your manager would break my neck if you broke yours. I’ll go first.”

Before Colin could speak, Andrew flung himself into mid-air with a ringing whoop.

“Wait, where’s the—” Cold water splashed up onto Colin’s arms. “—ladder?”

Andrew bobbed to the surface and smoothed the hair out of his eyes. “It’s freezing! Come warm me up.”

Colin leaned over the railing. The drop was minimal, but that wasn’t the issue. “I can’t swim.”

“What, at all? How’s that possible?”

“It costs money to go to swimming pools.”

“You don’t have to swim. See?” Andrew rose on his toes and held up his arms. The tar-black waves lapped just above his collarbone.

Colin peered over the side of the porch to his right. He could go back through the house, out the front door, and around to the shore, where he could wade in gradually. But then he’d look a coward.

Besides, he’d crowd-dived from much greater heights at raves. Maybe this would be just as fun.

He climbed over the railing, holding tight, feeling paint flake off against his palms. He turned to face the loch, telling himself water was more reliable than a mass of ravers’ arms.

Then, with a warrior’s roar, Colin leapt.

The cold water swallowed him whole, stealing his breath with its icy fists. His legs flailed, but his feet slipped on the slick mud, and he felt himself fall backward. For one panicky moment, he had no idea which way was up.

Then a pair of strong, warm hands found his arms. They made their way up under his shoulders and lifted. Colin’s head broke the surface, the moonlight bright as a mirror ball.

“I’ve got you,” Andrew murmured. “Put your feet down.”

“Can’t.” Colin’s lungs already ached. “It won’t hold me.”

“It will. It’s the earth. It’s a big place.”

Colin stretched out his legs and found the muddy loch bottom again. This time it didn’t move. “Oh. Okay.”

“All right?” Andrew overlapped his toes with Colin’s, then pulled him close. “There, that’s warmer.”

Colin kissed him, the fingers of one hand threading through Andrew’s wet hair and the fingers of his other splayed on his silky-smooth back. As always, the heat between them melted his fear away.

They stopped kissing to catch their breath. Pressing his forehead to Andrew’s, Colin closed his eyes and let the magic of this place sweep over him. Dunleven wasn’t the Scotland he knew. Dunleven was a fantasy world.

But Andrew…Andrew was real. Somehow.

“You want to go deeper?” he asked Colin. “I’ll carry you. Just put your arms and legs around me.”

“How will you swim if I’m all over you?”

“Slowly, that’s how.” Andrew pinched Colin’s waist. “Don’t worry, I won’t drown you. I’m not a kelpie.”

Colin gave a nervous laugh. “Well, I’ve heard kelpies don’t look like kelpies until it’s too late. Then their heads turn into horses’ heads and—”

“Colin.” Andrew kissed his nose. “You don’t have to. I won’t say, ‘Oh, just trust me’ and pressure you into it, because if you panic, you could drown us both.”

Colin looked past Andrew’s shoulder, out to the middle of the loch. He imagined what it would feel like to float amid the moonlit waves, held by this man. Then he imagined his own fear surging forth, dragging them down into the darkness forever.

“Nor e’er of me one hapless thought renew,” Andrew recited in a low, sonorous voice. “While I lie welt’ring on the ozier’d shore, drown’d by the kelpie’s wrath, nor e’er shall aid thee more!”

Colin stared at Andrew, his entire face tingling at this sudden appearance of a Scottish accent. “What was that?”

“‘An Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands.’ William Collins.”

“More. I want to hear more.”

Andrew looked pleased and surprised. He furrowed his brow. “Okay, er—”

“Tell me on the way.” He wrapped his arms around Andrew’s neck and his legs around his waist. “Take us out.”

At first Colin kept his eyes on Andrew’s face, upon the beauty mark in the center of his left dimple. But then, as Andrew stopped walking and started swimming backward with long, waving strokes, Colin let his gaze travel over the water rippling by. Its blackness was dotted with a million drops of moonlight, shimmering like liquid stars on an inverted sky.

Andrew recited poetry as he swam, his tongue caressing each lilting syllable.

“To his faint eye the grim and grisly shape,

In all its terrors clad, shall wild appear.

Meantime, the wat'ry surge shall round him rise,

Pour'd sudden forth from ev'ry swelling source.”

Colin could feel Andrew’s legs beneath them, folding and unfolding with a power unknown to a land-dwelling footballer like himself.

”What now remains but tears and hopeless sighs?

His fear-shook limbs have lost their youthly force,

And down the waves he floats, a pale and breathless corse.”

The last line sent a chill down Colin’s back, a chill that had nothing to do with the water temperature. He rarely considered his own death, as it seemed so distant in space and time. But here in the murky, now-possibly-bottomless loch, mortality felt a mere breath away.

Andrew stopped swimming. “That’s far enough,” he said in his usual accent.

“Far enough for what?”

“There’s a loon colony at that end of the loch. It’s easier to hear them out here.”

To Colin’s right, the loch showed itself to be crescent-shaped rather than round. It bent around its forested shores farther than he could see.

They waited, Andrew treading water with what seemed like little effort. Colin tried not to shiver in his embrace.

Then came a low moan that spiked higher, an eerie, unearthly sound that made every damp hair on Colin’s arms stand erect.

The call repeated, cracking at the end of the sustained note.

“That’s the loneliest sound I’ve ever heard,” Colin whispered. “What’s it mean?”

“It’s a pair wail.” Andrew blinked, shedding drops of loch water from his long lashes. “It means they’re searching for each other.”

Another call came, and this time, a second one overlapped it. They rose together, in a strange, shrieking dissonance. Colin’s eyes heated and his throat tightened. This sound, he knew, would haunt his dreams tonight. He wanted it to stop. He wanted it never to stop.

As the loons’ keening continued, Colin glued his gaze on the far shore. He couldn’t look at Andrew without revealing everything he felt. This moonlight was too bright to hide beneath.

At last the wails ceased, and he heard nothing but the soft splash of water against his and Andrew’s skin. “I guess they found each other,” he said with a weak laugh.

“Seems so,” Andrew whispered. “Colin?”

He turned his head to look at Andrew, into eyes that matched the silver water engulfing them. And he knew that no matter how safely they made it back to shore, tonight, he will have drowned.

“From the day we met,” Andrew continued, “there was something about you that I knew could strip me down to my core. I knew that with you, I could stop pretending. And it terrified me, because I’m so very good at pretending.” He lifted a hand out of the water to smooth back an errant lock of hair. “But I’m a better man for knowing you, so I just want to personally congratulate myself on having the courage to stick it out.”

Colin hooted with laughter, nearly sounding a loon himself. “I’m not feeling panicky, but I might fake it, just so I can kill you.”

“Then we’d both perish, which seems a waste.”

“Admit it, though”—Colin kissed Andrew’s lips, which were somehow still warm—“mutual homicide would be a fitting end to our relationship.”

“Perhaps, but I’d prefer to postpone it as long as humanly possible.”

“Which, the tragedy or the end of us?”

“Both. You know, I—” A slight wave lifted them up, splashing water into Andrew’s mouth. He spit it out, then tilted up his chin. “Unfortunate timing there.”

“What is it?”

“Hush. I’m trying to say something momentous.”

Colin’s heart pounded. “Go on.”

“I’m trying to tell you I—” A blaring car horn interrupted him. Andrew shifted to peer at the boathouse behind Colin. “What in God’s name…”

“Andrew!” Even from this distance, Colin could hear the rage filling Lord Ballingry’s voice. “What have you done?!”

U
NTIL
TONIGHT
, A
NDREW
had never fully appreciated the magnitude of his older brother’s prickishness. It was a quality he vowed never to underestimate again.

By the time Andrew swam near the shore—carrying Colin on his back to make better time—George had been joined by their parents, sister, and brother-in-law. The headlights of their three parked cars threw a harsh glare over the side of the boathouse.

“What’s going on?” Colin whispered as the two of them waded through the shallow water near the loch’s edge.

“I’ve no idea.” In fact, Andrew had some idea. He just couldn’t believe that such a brief, innocuous act of his could cause such furor.

“Whatever it is,” Andrew said to his family as he and Colin stepped onto shore, shivering and dripping, “it can wait until we’re warm and dry, or at least clothed.”

“Two minutes!” George shouted as Andrew passed him.

Andrew stopped, conjuring his best death stare despite being drenched and nearly naked. “I don’t take orders from you. Dunleven isn’t yours yet.”