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It begins, as many things do at Nelson Road, with a demand that Jamie wear a shirt.
The invitations to the club’s annual gala went out yesterday and, as befitting his position as captain, Isaac took it upon himself to draw up a dress code for the occasion. The email was short, curt, and very Isaac, but rule number one—bolded, underlined, and italicized—is that every player must wear a shirt. In finer print, no less bold: including, and especially, Jamie Tartt.
Probably goes without saying, but Jamie is not taking it well.
“I’d be benefiting the kids, wouldn’t I?” Jamie insists, sweeping his hand down his bare chest.
Colin really wishes Jamie would have put on a shirt for this particular conversation. His eyes skitter to the ceiling, but he stands firmly on the side of his best mate. Isaac is fuming. Flanking his other side, Richard has brought out a roll of “break in case of emergencies” Rollos the team keeps stashed in the bin of a free locker for situations exactly like this one.
See, they all love Jamie. They all forgive him. They all wish the best for him. They all wonder what type of person would be uniquely qualified to make him happy. (Okay, fine—Colin may stand alone on that last bit). But something no one can deny, not even the man himself, is this: Jamie Tartt still has moments where he remains a colossal prick.
“Mate, how is you not wearing a shirt to Ms. Welton’s gala benefiting any kids?” Isaac asks.
“He can donate the shirt he could’ve worn to a kid?” Zoreaux suggests. He’s not taking the piss, even a little bit. Somehow, Jamie has succeeded in amassing a vocal minority of teammates on his side of the locker room, consisting largely of guys like Zoreaux and Dani who hope if Jamie wins his case, they may win theirs against fancy dress shoes.
Colin just wants everyone to listen to Isaac. Really, is that so much to ask?
Must be, because Jamie keeps at it.
“Right, mate.” He grins, tapping Zoreaux twice on the chest in appreciation. “And me without my shirt gets more old nans bidding on me, yeah? It’s like Becky said on Lust Conquers All”—the room, including his anti-dress code contingent, groans; Jamie ignores it—“you’ve got to let people see the full package, ‘else why are they supposed to pick you?”
That strikes Colin as a deeply sad philosophy for life, but also misattributed. “Bethany said that.”
“Wut?”
“Bethany said that, not Becky. Becka, with an ‘A,’ is the one who said she wanted you to kick a ball off her…” Colin trails off, because the entire starting line have their eyes trained on him and he realizes he has made a terrible, terrible admission.
Bumbercatch, arms folded in the stance of a put-out form teacher, asks slowly, “And how do you know her name was Bethany?”
Colin gulps, audibly like a bloody looney toon. “…the news?”
“Which news was that?” Bumbercatch asks, eyebrows up.
“The…internet news.”
A hush falls, as the team works over his sorry excuse for themselves. Colin’s eyes inevitably land on the only bewildered one of the lot, Jamie looking about the room wondering why no one wants to talk about his package anymore. He doesn’t know things are about to explode in a very big way. Catastrophic, to borrow a word from Coach Beard. If Colin got one wish, anything his heart desires, it’d be for backstage passes to a Drake concert at Wembley. But if he got a second wish, he’d ask for one of those remote control gizmos the cool sci-fi heroes sometimes have that allow them to rewind time. A fifteen-second do-over and his teammates never had to find out—
“You broke the pact, bruv!”
His teammates never had to find out that.
Pandemonium erupts. A towel is thrown down. Fingers wag. Tears of disbelief spring. Goodman is uninviting him from his birthday party. The accusations of betrayal flying around are colorful, complex, spoken in a myriad of languages, and almost all true because they boil down to the same central point: Colin Hughes watched Jamie’s season of Lust Conquers All and then spent over a year pretending he hadn’t.
“What pact are you even on about?” Jamie asks above the hub-bub.
“The pact we”—Sam moves his arm about the circle like he’s stirring a big pot—“made not to watch you on Lust Conquers All. Not even a hate-watch, like Richard with Emily in Paris.”
Richard swears up a firestorm in French and spits to the side while Jan cheerfully announces, “I did not know you, but I would not have watched the show regardless.”
Murmured gratitude goes Jan’s way and a fresh round of glares go Colin’s. The stink eyes seem to say: see, the new guy understood the assignment—what the hell went off with you?
“Pricks,” Jamie denounces them all, but when his sulky face turns over to Colin, his expression tempers to something more curious. Colin squirms. “But you watched the show anyway?”
“I didn’t—” Except denial is as pointless as trying to explain what a crumpet is to Ted. Everyone knows Colin did not read intricate Lust Conquers All lore off the internet news, just like everyone knows the gaffer will continue calling crumpets “holey English muffins.”
Colin is a traitor, plain and simple, even if he does not like how the boys are tossing out the names Judas, and Benedict Arnold, and—worst of all—Lando Calrissian. Colin also does not like Issac’s intense stare, slow-cooking one side of his skull, nor the mournful head shake of a not mad, just disappointed Sam. But he is especially not a fan of how Jamie is looking at him now.
Apparently, he has won a sweepstakes and Colin is the grand prize.
Colin did not set out to break the pact. Honest, he didn’t.
He barely watches TV. Like alright, of course he watches Bake Off because he isn’t a philistine and Taskmaster when he needs a laugh. Ditto to Friends and Parks and Recreation reruns. All Creatures Great and Small because he likes farm animals, Midsomer Murders because he hasn’t guessed right once on who did it. Squid Game and The Crown because everyone else does, same goes for Bridgerton, Succession, and a silly comedy about a British manager who crosses the pond to coach a professional American football team. Oh, and Stranger Things, but he usually skips to the scenes with Steve Harrington. Really, not much television, busy guy that he is.
In the end, the never-ending tie streak was what sent him down the path of no return.
The night after Richmond’s fourth tie of the season, a brutal 0-0 where Colin cocked up an assist that might have seen Dani net their first win, none of the lads felt much like hitting a club, so Colin went home, burrowed himself under the fluffiest blanket he owned, and started flipping channels, hunting for a panel show.
Jamie, lighting up his screen in a full face of bronzer, abs glistening with baby oil, stopped Colin dead in his tracks.
The Hawaiian shirt open to the navel, an early 2000s spray tan, the frozen daiquiri with a little pink umbrella in it—really, Colin watched those first fifteen minutes because he finally found someone sadder than himself. That sad sack being Jamie Tartt? What a bonus.
Then yes, truthfully Colin got a bit obsessed. Reality shows are designed to be like Oreoes, okay; once you watch one episode, you can’t stop cramming them into your eyeballs. And Colin, well, he indulged.
That night, in his shame spiral, he binged every episode of the season he had missed. He decided Becka was his favorite because she claimed a hint of Welsh ancestry and she told it like it was (and not because she convinced Jamie to let her lick salt off his abs that one time). He muttered prick every time Jamie showed up on screen, which was a lot, so that had to count for something. Seriously, his mouth had gotten tired.
Against all better judgment (not that Colin has lots of that, admittedly, but still), Lust Conquers All became his post-tie comfort show. Richmond couldn’t seal the deal to save their skins, but Bethany and Becka could bury the hatchet over a round of Mai-Tais, so maybe there was some leftover hope in the universe. Hope that didn’t kill.
The one teeny, tiny problem—besides lying to his best mates and betraying their pact—was the further he got into the show, the less Colin enjoyed making fun of Jamie. Around tie seven, the infamous Earl Incident, Colin stopped delighting in Jamie’s tailspin and started feeling a tad sorry for him. He seemed lost amidst a wreck of people who didn’t have much in the way of real passion. It had Colin wondering if Jamie missed football.
Worse, Colin wondered if he missed Jamie. Not the dick who called him a jaundiced worm and treated him like a minion, but the person he might have become if he had stayed at Richmond, coached under Ted, brought up like the rest of them had been. He thought he was pining for something he’d never have.
How was he supposed to know what was about to come next?
“Whaddaya think my best look was?” Jamie seamlessly steals the ball from under Colin’s feet, sends it flying into the right pocket out of Zoreaux’s reach, and then looks to him for an answer to his context-less question. After Colin only blinks at him, utterly bewildered, Jamie tries again, “My best look! From the show. Was it the Vilebrequin swim shorts, yeah? Thought I could get ‘em to sponsor me…”
The white Vilebrequin swim trunks paired with the Ralph Lauren navy and white striped button-down—fully open, always, and sleeves cuffed to show off an eyeful of his biceps—had made Jamie look like a deck boy at a yacht club. The Marine Layer tropical-print matching set in flamingo pink, on the other hand—
No, Colin is not doing this.
“I don’t know, mate,” he says, snatching up the water bottle Will is offering with both hands. His mouth is disgustingly dry. “I wasn’t paying that much attention to the clothes.”
Jamie smirks. “What were you payin’ attention to then?”
“Nothing! The ocean!” Colin snaps, squeezing his bottle hard enough to send up a geyser of water, straight into his face. It’s Coach Beard’s whistle that saves him further humiliation.
You’d think going on two weeks of this madness, Colin would have come up with some better lies.
After a few days of lightly-seasoned roasting—including a DVD box set of an earlier lustful season magically spawning in his locker—the rest of the team transitioned to judging and vetoing each other’s proposed gala outfits. Exactly as it should be. They’re Greyhounds and Greyhounds are goldfish. They forgot Colin’s mistake and they moved on. Everyone except for Jamie.
The only thing he wants to talk about is Lust Conquers All.
While changing into their kits: “Do ya think Alistair deserved to go first?”
And changing out of their kits: “What episode did my hair look the best? Three, right?”
From an ambush in the car park: “You don’t think Danthony has more muscles than me, yeah? He’s got two abs, maybe, but there were people up on Twitter saying…”
If Colin has to hear the name Danthony one more time, he’s going to crash his Lamborghini into the Thames. And that’s dire—usually, he’s doing everything in his power to avoid driving it in there.
Sure, he’s got opinions. Alistair seemed like a stand-up lad too sweet to have Lucy B toy with his heart, Jamie’s hair looked best in the fifth episode after Clara let him borrow her sea salt spray, and Danthony wishes he had half the muscles Jamie Tartt has in his hams alone. What a crock.
Of course, Colin cannot share any of that or he’ll lose this battle of wills he and Jamie are engaged in. He’s pretty sure it’s a battle of wills, or maybe it’s a game with confusing rules that Colin has not internalized outside of say nothing.
But what’s even more confusing is what Jamie’s endgame is here.
Once upon a time, Colin might have thought Jamie was out to humiliate him. Old Jamie would have peacocked about the dressing room, crooning that Colin wished he looked so good with his top off. But this is New Jamie he’s working with and New Jamie would never seek to embarrass him on purpose. So far, he’s just pestered Colin about the show in whispers, out of earshot from the other boys. It’s not a show Jamie’s after.
What then? Attention is Colin’s only solid guess, as if he doesn’t give Jamie enough of that already.
“Why does he have to be so impossible?” Colin mutters, deep into a night out that has seen Jamie trying to twist his arm about the Bethany and Becka rivalry, the state of John G’s highlights, and Jamie’s tattoos, and his eyebrow threading, and his tan lines. And his abs. Never forget his proclaimed eight-pack.
Saint that he is, Sam has steered Jamie away from their table and towards the bar for water refills, leaving Colin to hold down the fort with Isaac, who must have the hearing of a falcon because he answers Colin’s muttering with, “Who’s impossible?”
“No one!” Colin shouts over the thumping beat. “I said why does the—the missions have to be so impossible. Ya know…the ones from the movies…Tom Cruise!”
He drops his forehead to the sticky table, feeling a napkin paste itself to his forehead. Seriously, he should be at the bottom of a river swimming with the fishies.
“Tom Cruise is a scientologist, bruv!”
Colin turns his head to the side, smushing his cheek against the tabletop, and eyes Isaac’s empty glass, wondering if they better cut him off.
“And I know you were talkin’ about Jamie,” Isaac tells him, a stunningly sobering thing to say. Colin straightens, his cheeks on fire. The napkin stuck to his forehead peels off and flutters into his lap, looking an awful lot like a white flag he should be waving. “Just wanted to let you come out with it yourself.”
“It’s just this stupid Lust Conquers All crack he’s on,” Colin admits, fidgety fingers tearing into the napkin. “Dunno why he hasn’t let it go.”
Isaac’s eyes hold steady on his face, reading him like a book he has memorized, recited, and contributed two full chapters to. Most of the time, Colin loves how Isaac knows him so well. Makes communicating on the pitch a dream and communicating off it possible through purely eyebrow movement and emoji strings. But Colin does not love when the vault where he keeps his tip of the top secrets just opens to Isaac, no code required.
“Do you need me to talk to him, bruv?” Isaac asks in as quiet a voice as the blaring music allows.
“No, I—” Colin knows Jamie will back off immediately if Isaac sits him down and reprimands him. He’ll think he’s made Colin uncomfortable, which isn’t the truth. What he is is confused. And as hard as it’ll be, Colin would rather do the adult thing and talk to Jamie about it himself. Later, much later, when he’s sober and he doesn’t have to compete with Bad Bunny. “I can deal with it, matey.”
“You sure?” Isaac is not looking at Colin as he asks this; instead, his eyes lock on something over Colin’s shoulder.
Before Colin has time to twist around and see what’s coming, a drink the color of a blue raspberry lollipop is plunked down in front of him. The concoction arrives complete with a thick slice of pineapple, a maraschino cherry, a pretty yellow umbrella, and Jamie grinning like a fool about it.
“Called a Blue Hawaiian,” he announces, trapping Colin in the middle to squeeze onto the booth seat better fit for two. “Clara’s favorite drink.”
“No, Lucy always ordered—” Damn it.
Jamie’s grin widens, shows off his sharp canines. He plucks the maraschino cherry from the drink and pops it in his mouth, stem and all. Not even asking if anyone wants to see a trick, like he did to Amy three times in the first episode alone, Jamie sticks out his tongue to reveal the cherry stem tied into a perfect knot. Good with his mouth, Amy said in a later confessional.
And Colin has yet to tear his eyes away from that good mouth. God fucking damn it.
He takes a long sip of Lucy’s favorite drink, painting his tongue blue, and wills himself to stop thinking about all the ways Jamie Tartt ties him up in knots.
If it were up to Colin (and nothing ever is), the revelation he watched Jamie’s season of Lust Conquers All would have come to light shortly after Jamie returned to Richmond.
The lads would have behaved the same, puffed up and mighty astride their high horses, planting flags atop moral superiority mountain. Maybe Jamie would have wanted to be a twat about it, but in those early weeks of his return, he avoided stepping on anyone’s toes, do-si–doing around the team like they were at a square dance.
(Colin’s pretty sure square dancing is the one where no one touches anyone, or is that just the Cotton-Eyed Joe?)
Basically, Jamie wouldn’t have made it into a thing because he wasn’t done with his apology tour yet and Colin would have been grateful enough to forgive him a little harder, and it all would have ended before Colin went and caught big, fat, gross feelings for Jamie Tartt 2.0.
See, Colin has had crushes on teammates before. Eighteen and new to the Premier League scene, freshly recruited by his home team, Colin had followed the center forward—a dark, foul-mouthed Cardiff legend with a mean right cross—like a lost puppy dog asking for the boot. Colin will argue he wore the guy down by mid-season, but it didn’t count for much. Cardiff got sent down, his nan stopped speaking to him, he somehow received a transfer to London, and he never saw the legend again.
Of course, at Richmond, he soon discovered he shared a locker room with a different league of legend—Roy Kent of Chelsea fame. Dark, foul-mouthed, once upon a time, Colin thought he had a type. But Roy took little liking to him and, in retrospect, Colin doesn’t blame him. He let it go. Scoured Grindr for pale imitations. Became more of a cocky little shit than he already was upon the arrival of Jamie from Man City. Didn’t think much of Jamie sexually outside of a distant acknowledgement he was fit, if you were into pretty and obnoxious (and pretty obnoxiously hot) guys.
Ted came along and Jamie went away, falling off Colin’s radar except for the vow every Greyhound swore to hate him until their dying breath.
Then Jamie turned up again, humbled and sorry. Still fit, still obnoxious but in a bearable and endearing way, and definitely still ridiculously hot.
The crush snuck up on him this time. He wants to blame it on how little he’s getting laid—has to shield himself, is his excuse—or even on one of Cupid’s arrows, but the truth is both much more mundane and whole lot deeper. He likes Jamie, of his own free will.
Like likes him. As a person.
He and Jamie tend to arrive at the club early, often right as the building is being unlocked, because they both feel they have something to prove. For Jamie, it’s that he’s all in on Richmond, ready to give the same effort he gave at City. More, even. For Colin, he has to prove he belongs here. With Richmond, in the league, at such an elite level of the sport.
They run drills together, ones Colin stumbles on the day before. Colin feeds Jamie balls and dutifully applauds his impossible goals. They jog cool-down laps, chatting about the boys, and sports that are not football, and dumb childhood memories (Jamie lost his first tooth from a header gone sideways; Colin lost his first by accidentally punching himself in the mouth). They take turns bringing each other fancy herbal decaf teas. Ted now refers to their duo as the early birds.
It’s a friendship, a real one. The more they practice together solo, the more bricks come down in Jamie’s wall of cool.
Turns out, when he lets himself be, Jamie is goofy. At the beginning of the new season, Richmond back in the Premier League where they belong, Jamie started pointing at Colin as he lined up a free kick and saying, “This one’s for you.” He sinks the ball, every time, though sometimes Colin wishes he’d miss wildly, just so he may stop feeling like he’s earned the undeserved favor of some minor golden god.
Big, dumb, disgusting feelings, all because Jamie is committed to Richmond, until retirement do they part. Because he always remembers Colin likes green tea. Because he’s an egotistical prat who also happens to be a dork sporting a head of offensive bleached highlights he believes has him looking like the leader of a boy band. Obviously, he’s pulling them off.
It’s annoying. He’s annoying. Colin likes him, so much.
“Eh, Coach? Do you think we could skip the movie tonight?”
The lobby falls completely silent, practically unheard of for a room with Ted Lasso in it. The team is gaping at Jamie in disbelief, to put it mildly. They always opt for away game movie nights because opting out meant—
Ted scrubs at his ears. “Sorry, am I hearing that right? Are you boys telling me you’re finally ready to have an all-out, some holds barred because we got an important match tomorrow and I wouldn’t want you fellas wearing yourselves out on fun, honest to goodness pillow fight?”
“No!” half the team cries out, while the other half, the ones closest to Jamie, try to swat at any body part within reach.
Jamie is devastatingly confused—a good look on him, but whatever, he always looks good—and Colin remembers he wasn’t there for their last away match at Everton. Isaac has kept them so well in line since that no one has uttered the words “pillow” and “fight” in the same sentence even in the safety of their own homes.
“I don’t know anything about no pillow fighting,” Jamie says, smacking Bumbercatch’s hand away from his ribs, “but I thought we could use the pool.”
Ted and Beard’s eyes light up. They turn to each other in sync and whisper, “Splash fight.”
That is how AFC Richmond ends up in the closed hotel swimming pool, happily and privately reopened for the celebrities who bought out a full floor for two nights. A splash fight is waged, with Beard’s team taking the prize of soaking wet glory, and many a chicken fight is held, everyone wanting their turn on the undefeated Jan Maas’s shoulders. After his go-around, him and Jan demolishing Richard and Isaac, Colin ducks outside to the hotel’s hot tub, hoping for a relaxing soak before bed.
Colin should have known Jamie would be out here. The guy would live in a hot tub if scientists discovered a way to prevent hot water from wrinkling people into prunes. Colin considers slipping back inside, tail between his legs, but all Jamie is doing is chatting with Bumbercatch. What’s the worst they can dish out to him?
“Oy, here’s your biggest fan!” Bumbercatch crows, just as Colin has dipped a single big toe into the water. Not that Bumbercatch needed to announce him; Jamie is already openly staring and it’s a miracle Colin sinks into the bubbling water instead of tripping and falling flat on his face into it. “You can help us settle a debate.”
“It’s not a debate, mate,” Jamie sighs.
“Colin, you’d know better than me,” Bumbercatch says, and doesn’t seem to notice Jamie is more frustrated than amused. “He should have married that Amy girl, yeah? She’s mad fit and she works in the Harrods beauty department. Think of the unlimited free cologne samples.”
Colin shifts beneath the water, his toes curling and uncurling to give the nervous energy in his body somewhere to go. Truthfully, he skipped just about every moment between Amy and Jamie. She seems like a nice enough lady, but that didn’t mean Colin wanted to watch Jamie go down on his knee for her, in any context. At the time, it had been like being asked to watch a childhood mate’s sex tape. Asked to reflect on the almost Mrs. Jamie Tartt now, Colin thinks he should probably exit the hot tub with how sick his stomach feels.
“I shouldn’t have proposed to her,” Jamie says, shoulders tense. “Even to try to win the stupid game. Wasn’t even my type really.”
“What? Blonde and gorgeous?” Bumbercatch questions.
Jamie shrugs. “Didn’t have much to talk to her about, did I? She didn’t even know there was a difference between Man City and Man United.”
“Well, I think you’re out of your mind,” Bumbercatch declares, standing up. He places a hand atop Jamie’s hair, a pitying expression on his face. “Romantic, but out of your mind.”
Belatedly, Colin realizes Bumbercatch stood because he’s leaving. Which means, barring someone else miraculously arriving to save him, Colin will be in the hot tub alone with Jamie. And thanks to Bumbercatch, they’re already talking about Lust Conquers All. Why does the universe hate him so much? Is it because he walked under his da’s ladder when he was nine? That’s only supposed to count for seven years of bad luck—Colin checked.
He must have broken a hundred mirrors in a past life because no one comes outside. Bumbercatch disappears and Colin doesn’t have a good enough excuse to follow him that will spare Jamie’s feelings. Not that he assumes Jamie is so desperate for his company he’d be wounded to see him go, but Colin isn’t about to behave like a prat because his dumb crush is becoming unbearable. That’s not Jamie’s fault.
Well, maybe it’s a little Jamie’s fault if he keeps watching Colin like he wants to eat him for a midnight snack.
“What?” Colin asks, knocking his foot against Jamie’s ankle in the hopes he’ll quit it.
Jamie nudges back. The hot tub is small, not leaving them much room to stretch out. Even sitting on the opposite end of the tub, Jamie only has to slip an inch and their legs are instantly brushing under the water.
Battle of wills, Colin reminds himself. That’s why he doesn’t pull his legs away.
“You didn’t agree with Bumbercatch, ‘bout me marrying Amy.”
Colin takes his turn sinking deeper into the water. His calf slides against Jamie’s and he suppresses a shiver. “‘Course I didn’t,” he grouches, “You barely knew her.”
“Mate, your favorite Disney couple is Eric and the little mermaid,” Jamie points out. “Thought that meant you believe in love at first sight.”
“That’s different,” Colin protests. “It’s just a movie. In real life, you’ve got to really know someone to fall in love with them.”
“No love at first sight, gotcha” Jamie says with a nod, like he's committing this detail about Colin to memory. “What about second chances then?”
Colin has no clue how what they’re talking about now relates to Lust Conquers All. The rules of the show explicitly state there aren’t any second chances once the audience votes and the lust ends for the biggest loser. Unless Jamie is talking about—“Do you mean like when you hooked up with Lucy even though you were already paired off with Amy?”
“No, I…” Jamie exhales, shaking out his hair still wet from when Bumbercatch ran his hand over it. “I shouldn’t ‘ave done that. Even if it was just playing the game and everyone else was gettin’ it on behind everyone else’s backs…I wasn’t thinkin’ straight. For a while, actually.”
Colin leaves off saying, I know. He—and the whole team, really—has a better sense of what being sent back to Man City did to Jamie. While watching Lust Conquers All, Colin thought Jamie was mad to have given up his spot in Manchester. Now, Colin wishes he had fled sooner. Honestly, he should consider sending the creators of Lust an edible arrangement.
“Do you keep in touch with any of them now?” Colin finds himself asking. “Like Amy, or…”
“Nah, none of us really got on,” Jamie says mildly, as if it was all well and good spending three months of his life shacked up with people who had no interest in who he was as a person. “We didn’t have anything in common, ‘sides being fit. Danthony claimed he was a fuckin’ Liverpool fan. Think he was just tryin’ to give me shit.”
“Did you miss it?” he asks. “Football?”
“Yeah, mate, constantly,” Jamie answers without hesitation. “And when I was thinking about it, I was always going back to the day we did the ghost exorcism out on the pitch. Singing Richmond ‘til we die. It was never really Man City I was wanting to get back to, ya know?”
It requires every bit of the very little self-control Colin possesses not to shoot across the short distance between them so he can kiss the chlorine from Jamie’s lips. In the low light coming from the lights beneath the water, soft shadows roll across Jamie’s face, but the warm glow manages to catch the upward quirk of his mouth and the spark of something dangerous in his eyes. Colin swallows, watching as Jamie stretches, the movement exaggerated, his chest lifting out of the water to reveal his many tattoos.
“Do miss always having a jacuzzi ‘round, though” Jamie says, settling back with his elbows crooked on the edge. “Got a bit famous for my game in ‘em, ya know.”
Oh, Colin knows.
The infamous Jamie Tartt Hot Tub Method was a fan-favorite of the Lust Conquers All Twitter-sphere (a place no one can prove Colin stalked because he never liked any of the tweets there, even by accident).
Step one of the method: be in a hot tub. Jets on, preferred.
Colin slides even deeper into the water, bringing it up to his flushed neck.
Step two: get a game of footsie going under the water.
Their legs are still overlapping, one of Jamie’s ankles hooked around his. He begins drawing his legs back at the same time Jamie scoots around the bench, arriving in Colin’s territory without an invitation.
“Bet I know more of the constellations than you, mate,” Jamie says, and Colin has officially lost the plot. Jamie’s bare shoulder is hot and slick against his, jostling him as he reaches his arm up and draws a slash through the sky. “That right there? Orion’s belt.”
Reckless as it is to hold his eyes on Jamie, Colin gazes in the direction he’s pointing and does not see a belt. “Are you sure?” he asks while he himself hunts for the North Star. That’s the one that’s supposed to give a person guidance, right?
“Obviously, see—” Jamie grabs Colin’s hand and drags it up towards the sky, tracing along a jagged path of three tiny stars. One step, two steps, three. Jamie moves Colin’s hand back down slowly, his fingers wrapped around his wrist. “A belt,” he concludes in a whisper, his eyes darting to Colin’s lips.
Step three of the Jamie Tartt Hot Tub Method: make the move.
“Jamie, I—”
“Hey there, fellas!”
At Ted’s sudden, intruding voice, Colin panics and, in his panic, he dunks his head underwater. He stays under for the five longest seconds of his life, thinking perhaps if he wanted it bad enough, he could drown. Not like he was breathing much before his gaffer almost caught him sticking his tongue down one of their aces’ throat.
An arm scoops under his armpit, hoisting him up. His return to the breathable world is met by a puzzled but smiling Ted and a peeved Jamie. Weirdly enough, his annoyed pout is shooting towards Ted and not Colin.
“Sorry to be the bad news bear, but it’s about time we all hit the hay,” Ted says, holding the door open for them. The moment—if Colin is allowed to call it one—has officially passed.
Most of the other lads left for bed already, but he and Jamie have to share an elevator with a smug and victorious Jan Maas and a sore Isaac, face of a harder stone than usual. Isaac still gives Colin a curious once-over as they head for their separate rooms, which has Colin a bit worried about how good a view the indoor pool has of the hot tub. But Isaac says nothing other than gruff good night.
Jamie looks about to say something, too, once the corridor has emptied, but whatever it is, Colin doesn’t stick around to hear it. He jams his key card in the lock, pushes into his room, and slams the door behind him, collapsing all his weight against it.
Half-hysterically, Colin thinks to tweet an apology to Amy, Becka, Lucy, and Alexandra A. The Hot Tub Method is no fucking joke.
What Colin needs is a Jamie Tartt detox.
After descending into the bowels of the Instagram influencer extended universe, he discovers no one sells an herbal supplement or green juice to combat the crush of unrequited love. Fine, he’ll just have to put himself on a strict regimen. Cut out any and all alone time with Jamie. Easy, peasy. They’re exhausted from the grueling mid-season match schedule and have already scaled back their early-morning training sessions for two. The lads are around the rest of the time, so Colin is golden.
Leave it to Jamie to make things not easy, or peasy, or lemon squeezy.
The boys may be around, on the pitch, at the clubs, or in the locker room, but that does not stop Jamie from rooting out Colin, more persistent than ever.
During cool down laps: “Do you think they made my abs look sculpted enough?”
While spotting him during weight training: “If you were on the show, who would yer type ‘ave been?”
In the bloody showers: “Have you been watching the new season? Well, I was thinkin’ we could do a night where we—”
Colin had shut off his shower and resolved to bathe at home. Alone. Forever.
Neither of them have brought up what happened at Everton. To be more accurate, what did not happen at Everton. What maybe could have happened. What Colin really, really wanted to have happened, but probably never will. Because Jamie had been teasing him and then took it too far without meaning to, right? Right. He wasn’t after kissing a teammate, even for a laugh. Now, they’ve past the point where apologizing wouldn’t be awkward and either of them apologizing means admitting it almost happened in the first place and what if Jamie hadn’t been anywhere close to laying one on him and—
Colin is having a bad time all around.
“And what’d you think Danthony meant when he said I’m not cut out for loving anything seriously,” Jamie is prattling on, dogging after Colin and Sam as they leave the club for the night. Sam is shaking his head fondly, but Colin feels as if someone has jabbed a fork in his ear and started twisting it. He can’t do this anymore. He’ll go truly and utterly mad. “…because I dunno what romantic comedies he’s been watching, but—”
“Fucking hell, will you just shut up?” Colin snaps, shocking everyone in the vicinity. At the base of the staircase, Laughing Liam stops in the middle of a chortle. Poor Will trips, dropping a stack of shoe boxes meant for the boot room, and Sam is gaping between the pair of them, unsure if he should intercede. All the while, Jamie is looking as though Colin had driven a free kick right into his groin. “Sorry, I just…”
“Nah, that’s alright, mate,” Jamie says, wiping the pained expression off his face and replacing it with a fleeting smile, close-lipped and unemotional. He yanks up his sweatshirt hood over his ears and draws his keys from the pocket. “I’ve got a run anyhow. Late for my touch-up, aren’t I? Can’t have anyone seeing my hair like this.”
He darts out of the building ahead of Colin and Sam, his shoulders hunched and braced against the wind. The door shuts in Colin’s face and activity in the corridor resumes, more subdued than before. Funny how a couple of years ago, a conflict had to go nuclear for it to register as more than a blip on the radars of everyone else at Nelson Road. Now, the slightest shift in a relationship has the potential to affect the entire Richmond ecosystem. Guess that’s what happens when everyone actually cares about what’s going on with the people they work with. Sometimes, Colin still can’t quite wrap his head around the level of change Ted Lasso has brought to Richmond.
“Are you okay?” Sam asks gently, his caring always dialed up to the maximum setting.
“I’m alright,” Colin answers, driving another nail into his prick coffin by lying to Sam of all people. “Just worn out.”
“I do not mean to be cryptic,” Sam starts, holding open the door for him. Colin notes Jamie’s car is gone. “But I believe it is probably not what you are thinking.”
He furrows his brow—that sure is cryptic. “What is not what I’m thinking?” he asks, because Colin is thinking about how hard it’s going to be backing out when he’s parked beside O’Brien’s hulking G-Class, and about the vegetable curry he’s ordering for dinner, and how annoyingly good Jamie will look tomorrow with refreshed highlights. And how to get his relationship with Jamie back to normal, if normal is still an option.
“I will talk to Jamie,” Sam declares.
“No, that’s okay!” Colin protests quickly. Is he really so pathetic that Isaac and Sam are offering to clean up his messes? “There’s nothing to talk about, boyo.”
More lying, right to Sam’s angelic face, but Colin will work this out. Honest to God, he will, even if it breaks his own heart and kills him. Preferably if it does.
Colin is not resting in peace, yet.
He also has not worked out anything with Jamie, but Dr. Sharon taught him that changing your life often happens in small steps taken over time and he decides small step one will be surviving the annual charity gala. After that, Colin will move on to step two. Which he has not come up with as of now, but it’ll be a good one.
The gala is as classy as ever and Colin thanks his lord and savior, Isaac McAdoo, for choosing a rich green suit for him that, according to two ladies who could’ve been his nan, brings out the color of his eyes. Each of the ladies offers to buy him a drink and he accepts because it’d be impolite not to and he’d like to guarantee a couple bids on his lot number. He’ll never say it, but it’s stung in the past having two or three bids to his teammates’ eight or nine. Richard once topped twenty.
Ms. Welton calls the room to order with a single delicate tap to her champagne flute. After thanking the present company for joining them for another year, she announces with a knowing smile, a secret shared amongst a room of hundreds, “And now for why you are all really here.”
Colin downs the rest of his drink. He knows Isaac and Sam are eying him carefully, meaning well, but he’d prefer if they took the night off from mother henning. Just like he’d prefer Jamie stop shooting furtive glances in his direction. Jamie has been antsy the whole night thus far, for reasons he’s not copping to, and all the weird looks not going to Colin belong to him.
After Goodman receives a respectable five bids, Colin is up. He sees a couple familiar faces getting ready to throw their invisible hats in the ring. The year before, he had a perfectly lovely time with a nice old gal named Margaret, who he definitely allowed to win their tennis match in a tight three sets.
Ms. Welton gives him a generous smile as he joins her on stage and opens the bidding. His tennis rival, Margaret, is the first bidder, upped by one of the women who liked the shade of Colin’s eyes. If he matches Goodman at least, Colin will call the evening a success.
“5000!”
That accent—Colin would recognize it whispering in the most crowded tube station in London. Everyone in the room cranes their necks to look at Jamie. He is leaning back comfortably in his chair with his plum jacket pulling across his shoulders, the top of his shirt suggestively open, not disarmed to have all the eyes in the room on him. Never has been before.
And he doesn’t seem like he’s joking.
“Uh…” Rebecca pauses, flummoxed. Colin has never seen her at a loss for words. Deciding to roll with Jamie’s ludicrous bid, she asks the room tepidly, “Do I hear 5100?”
Colin is under no illusion she’ll see a pound over five-thousand. Jamie has left the ballroom hopelessly confused and no one raises their hand to best him. After a heavy beat of silence, Rebecca clears her throat and announces, “Sold to…well, Jamie Tartt, I suppose.”
Belatedly, the room applauds. The sound reaches Colin’s ears distant and fuzzy, like music blasting from a passing car with all the windows rolled up. He’d quite like a getaway car right about now. Rebecca has not even finished calling Kukoč to the stage before Colin is racing off it, escaping into the wings so he may have a moment to catch his breath.
That did not just happen. Colin pinches his inner wrist, hard enough to leave a crescent mark, and expects to shoot up in his bed at home, the last two minutes nothing but a terrible fever dream. Because only in his dreams would Jamie Tartt fork over five-thousand pounds to charity for a night with Colin Hughes, something he can get for free without even having to ask.
“What are you doing back here, mate?”
That accent, again with that accent. Colin pinches himself for a second time, close to drawing blood. Mr. Sandman—looking like Tom Sturridge, please and thank you—time to wake him up.
“Are you good?” Jamie’s puzzlement appears genuine. Colin finally turns to see him standing a few feet away, his hands stuck deep in his pockets, frowning.
“Am I good?” Colin echoes, asking it of himself because he’s not entirely sure what he’s feeling. Blindsided is a start. Like an idiot is a given. But beyond that, Colin is a disgusting stew of confusing emotions threatening to overflow the lid he has slammed over his heart. “Do I look good?”
Jamie treats him to an indulgent once-over. “Yeah.”
“No, I don’t mean…” He folds his arms over his chest, feeling indecently exposed in a shirt buttoned up to his Adam’s apple. “What is the matter with you?”
“You’re mad at me,” Jamie realizes.
To say he is mad is stuffing eight weeks worth of slow-burning torture into three tiny letters, but for lack of anything better, Colin will take it. “Yeah, kind of!”
Jamie tilts his head, blinking vacantly. “Why?”
“Why do you think?” Colin flaps his arm in the direction of the stage, now onto a heated auction for Jan Maas. “What was that?”
“A grand gesture!” Jamie says as though that explains everything from the last two months. “Always works on Lust Conquers All, don’t it? Sam got all in me head about giving it time and dropping hints and the like, but that was going crap, so I thought what the hell.”
Jamie shrugs, lackadaisical, even as what he’s saying is very big and baffling and it’s doing Colin’s head in, just a bit. “You were making a grand gesture,” he repeats slowly, sparks flying behind his eyes, something broken in the mainframe. “…of friendship?”
“Of friend—wut?” Jamie peers at him like Roy might’ve given Colin another concussion while he wasn’t looking. “Who makes a grand gesture of friendship?”
“I don’t know! Ted?” Colin suggests helplessly. A grand gesture of friendship is the only explanation he has for why Jamie would be making a grand gesture at all.
Jamie sighs and takes a careful step forward, as though afraid Colin will scamper away if he makes too sudden of a move. Seeing Colin resist that urge and stand his ground, Jamie crosses the last bit of distance between them and grabs one of Colin’s hands, his thumb skating across his knuckles. No friend has ever held his hand like that.
“Mate, I’ve been telling you every goal I shoot is for you for months now.”
Colin sputters, but doesn’t drop Jamie’s hand. “Yeah, and I thought you meant in a friend way!”
“Who does that in a friend way?”
“I don’t know! Probably the guy who called me mate three seconds ago.”
“Sorry, love,” Jamie says, smooth and sure. The bastard has the audacity to smirk while all the blood in Colin’s body floods to his cheeks. “Is that better?”
More than, but Colin still doesn’t know how to believe it. Pinching his wrist hadn’t worked, twice over, but that doesn’t mean Colin is not dreaming this to life. Yesterday, he thought he’d have to bluster through telling Jamie to knock it off with his Lust Conquers All teasing and settle back into a comfortable, if a little distant friendship with Jamie as he tried to get over his feelings for him. Only in his wildest fantasies had he entertained the idea of Jamie returning those feelings and then some. Enough to put down five-thousand in deposit.
“You like me?” Colin asks softly.
Jamie nods, his eyes cutting away from Colin’s. The backstage area is shadowy, but Colin swears he sees a blush. “That’s one way to put it, yeah.”
“Really?”
“Uh, yeah, really,” Jamie confirms. “Is that so hard to believe?”
“A bit,” Colin admits. “You’re Jamie Tartt. You’ve got a jacuzzi method named after you.”
“Knew you remembered the jacuzzi shite,” Jamie crows, well pleased. “And ‘course, I’m Jamie Tartt out on the pitch, but I’d like to be just Jamie with this, if you don’t mind.”
Not fighting a blooming smile, Colin shifts his hand in Jamie’s grip, better to lace their fingers together. “Of course I don’t mind.”
“So,” Jamie says, a slow smirk spreading on his face. It’s insufferable and Colin loves it, affirming just how screwed he is. “What am I paying for then? What’s the Colin Hughes experience?”
“Usually it’s just a round of tennis,” Colin answers, flushing down to his toes. “Maybe dinner at some club.”
Jamie’s smirk morphs into a devious grin. “Oh, I’m a great tennis player, mate.”
Before Colin can ask where he finds the time to be great at another sport, Jamie grabs him by the sleeve and hauls him further into the shadows, pressing him against a back wall and dragging him into a kiss that knocks the air out of his lungs. Colin grapples for purchase, fisting his hands in the lapels of Jamie’s jacket, tugging him closer as if closer were possible. He breathes in the sharp scent of his aftershave, and a hint of spearmint, and all Jamie. Just Jamie.
They pull apart, panting, Jamie’s proud smile against his jaw. “See? Fifteen-love,” he whispers, voice breathy.
Colin swats his chest and lets his hand linger, fingers toying with the buttons on his shirt.
“Wish I wasn’t wearing a shirt now, eh?”
Jamie manages to catch his hand before Colin can smack his chest again, and uses it to reel him back in.
“Oi!”
They spring apart at the sudden intrusion, a bark they’re more than familiar with.
“Will you two stop dicking around?” Neither of them are able to see Roy, hidden as they are with their backs to a wall, but his frustration at being the fetching boy is evident in his growling tone. “Tartt, you’re on deck. Get a move on.”
After a brief second spared to straighten themselves out, Colin and Jamie emerge from the shadows to see Roy waiting, his jaw clenched. He doesn’t seem that surprised to find them together in a rather compromising position, just unimpressed. He shoots Colin a flat look. “Tartt?” he questions. “You sure?”
“Hey!” Jamie protests. He runs a hand through his hair, styled to look a little messy, and puffs out his chest. “BuzzFeed named me ‘The One that Got Away’ and now he’s got me. Plus, I won the official Twitter poll for Best Hair and—”
“The fuck you do. Danthony had the best hair on the show and you know it.”
Colin feels his own jaw drop. Jamie has the look of a child entering Hamleys for the very first time, told he has his pick of any toy his heart desires. Roy’s eyes widen a fraction, his lips pressing into a line so tight that his lips disappear.
“Roy,” Colin says in a whisper, afraid for his life, but not enough to give up the chance of asking, “Did you…”
“If either of you repeat a word of this, I will kill the both of you," Roy avows darkly. "I don't give a shit if it fucks our chances winning the league. They will never find your bodies. You hear me?”
He and Jamie nod quickly and watch Roy stalk back towards the ballroom. They exchange a glance, though as they do, Rebecca calls out Jamie’s name for his turn on the auction block.
“Don’t tell the boys without me,” Jamie says, holding out his pinkie to promise on it.
Colin links his and kisses his fist. “Deal.”