Lucky

by Garrett Leigh

  “As if, and I only did that when you were using really bad—because I was worried you’d die somewhere and no one would know.”

  “So how did you get it? I don’t even know where I lost it.”

  “You left it in a hotel room.”

  “A hotel—” I stopped, my brain tripping over itself as I tried to make sense of what she was saying. “How do you know that? Did someone find it and call you, or something?”

  “Not exactly. I called you, and someone answered.”

  “Who?”

  Jamila bristled as my tone sharpened. “Well…I don’t know who he is to you, but I’m pretty sure the sweet bloke who rocked up in Dalston last night and asked me to return this to you was Dominic Ramos.”

  White noise crackled in my head. Distantly, I knew she was talking about Dom, but his full name seemed familiar too, even though I’d never known it. “I don’t understand.”

  Jamila lit another smoke. “Basically, I finally caved a couple of days ago and started calling your phone to see where the hell you were. Your Grindr sugar daddy answered it and brought it to me so I could give it back to you. I didn’t place him until he was gone, but unless he’s got an identical twin, you, my friend, have been banging a Premiership footballer.”

  I stared blankly, and it wasn’t until she pulled out her own phone and googled Dom that what she was saying sunk in. Dom—Dominic Ramos—was the lead defender for the football team my father and brother had worshipped for as long as I’d been alive.

  Fuck.

  Fuck my life.

  Jamila grilled me for details over kung-po chicken, but loyalty to Dom kept me quiet on everything except that I wasn’t banging him, and he sure as shit wasn’t my sugar daddy.

  “He only paid me twice. After that, we sort of became friends, I guess.”

  “So you stopped hooking up?”

  “Not exactly.” I searched for a way to explain me and Dom that would make sense to anyone but us. “Other stuff happened, but it was natural, you know?”

  “But you’re not banging him.”

  “No.”

  Jamila stuck a plastic fork in a soggy ball of sweet-hot deep-fried chicken. “Good. Because otherwise I’d think he was ripping you off.”

  “I thought you said he was sweet?”

  “He was…and he seemed pretty concerned about you, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t just as worried that you’d pop up somewhere and out him. Man, I googled gay football players. I could only find three, none of them play anymore, and one of them committed suicide.”

  “Justin Fashanu.” I knew about him, of course I did. How many times had I heard his name thrown around changing rooms and terraces as the worst kind of insult?

  Too many.

  “Fuck.” I pushed my dinner away, despite it being the only non-cereal based food I’d had since I’d last seen Dom. “This is really bad for him. No wonder he was always so cagey. I pegged him as married at first, and then I thought he was maybe an actor or something.”

  “He’s definitely hot enough,” Jamila agreed. “And I reckon he’s lucky he’s a defender. If he was scoring goals every weekend he’d have no chance of ever walking down the street unrecognised.”

  “I didn’t recognise him.”

  “That’s because your old man messed you up so much you hide every time a game comes on the telly. And you walk around with your head in the clouds. You could’ve been shagging Liam Hemsworth and I doubt you’d have noticed.”

  “Who? And I told you, I’m not shagging him. It never got that far.”

  And now it never would.

  The realisation hit me like a stone dropping through my body, breaking chips off my heart as it sank through my stomach and into my cold, wet feet. It didn’t matter who Dom was—who I was—we’d already figured out that he didn’t want me for anything more than an occasional bath-time blowjob, and I was too extra to maintain that shit.

  And too hung up on a man who had everything in the world to lose. Dom’s obvious fear when he’d talked about the so-called friend who’d figured him out now made sickening sense. I tipped my can of warm Lilt down my throat and swallowed noisily. My life was a bag of dicks, but at least it was my own. No one cared if I was queer as fuck—not anymore.

  Jamila kicked me under the table. “What are you going to do?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Are you going to call him?”

  I shook my head. “What’s the point? I’ll only make things worse for him.”

  “That’s his choice. Look, he didn’t say much when I saw him, but he cares about you, Lucky, I could tell. And he said he was sorry, too.”

  “Sorry? What for?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know, but whatever it was, I got the feeling he was pretty desperate to tell you in person.”

  Her words gave me a hope I didn’t quite understand. I walked her back to Dalston, bought some credit for my phone, and then reluctantly meandered home.

  Locked in my room, I brewed tea in the tiny fake kitchen, and took it to the single bed in the corner. Hard and lumpy, it was nothing like the squishy cloud in the hotel room, but it was better than a box behind a skip, so I couldn’t complain.

  I made a nest in the blankets and pillows the wardens had given me and typed Dom’s name into Google. His face instantly filled the screen with stats and a vast playing history for several big-name clubs, including the one he was at now. Fuck, he’d even played for England, though he’d apparently retired from international duty.

  That nugget took me to his personal information. He’d never revealed his age, but after a while, I’d pegged him as nearly thirty. I was surprised to learn he was only twenty-six, not because he looked old—fuck, no—but because he felt it…I’d seen it in his eyes. The rest of his info made sense: single, fierce, and half Portuguese. The football sites made him sound like a gladiator, the fan pages like some kind of god. It was only when I clicked on the tabloids and saw pictures of him in a club with a woman on his lap, holding her hips, her breasts pressed tight against him, kissing her, that I figured out how he’d kept his secret for so fucking long.

  And the pictures were three days old.

  Sixteen

  Dom

  The first clue I had that Lucky had his phone back was WhatsApp telling me he’d been online overnight.

  My fingers flew over my phone screen.

  Perignon55: hi

  The message was delivered, which told me his phone was on, but remained unread for a full half hour before I was forced to abandon my staring and go to work.

  At the club, I trained hard, and despite worrying that my recent diet of booze and bad food would fuck me up, it was obvious to me—and the coaching staff—that I was playing better than ever.

  Fernando called me aside during set piece drills. “Manchester agrees with you.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “Problems?”

  “I don’t like being away from home.”

  “Tell me that when you’ve been stuck in a foreign country for the last seven years, boy.” He slapped me on the back, and then dragged me to the dugout to go over his plans for the big game coming up, and to ask what I thought about him making a play to sign Micah when the next transfer window came around. “You’ve been working with him in Manchester, yes?”

  I shrugged. “A bit, but you know what it’s like when you get players from rival teams together. No one shows their teeth completely.”

  Fernando nodded. “I understand that, so I’ve been watching his games with the team. We like what we see, but there’s some rumours we’d like to investigate before we take things further.”

  “Rumours?”

  “Yes, about his personal life. I don’t want him—or the team—distracted by goings on like that.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about, but that wasn’t unusual when it came to player gossip. I didn’t talk to many people, and I didn’t read the papers or fuck around on social media. They d
idn’t call me old man Dom for nothing, and I escaped the dugout, eager to get back to the only thing in my life that made sense—kicking seven bells out of a ball of stitched leather.

  After training, I went home. My apartment was as cold and empty as it had always been, but Constance had stocked my fridge with custom-made meals from the team’s nutritionist, so at least there was dinner.

  I picked at the high-protein low-fat bowl of virtue while slumped on a stool at the breakfast bar. My body craved the salt, fat, and sugar Lucky had brought to my life, but the yearning ran far deeper than that, made worse when I checked my phone to find he’d been online, but had left my message unread.

  There were a million reasons why he might not have opened my message, but the obvious one seemed most likely: he didn’t want to.

  Because he didn’t want to talk.

  Because he didn’t want to talk to me.

  It cut deep, but I forced myself to finish my dinner, take my third shower of the day, and call it a night.

  Alone in my bed, I tossed and turned, alternating between hiding under the duvet with a pillow on my head, and throwing it all aside to face the night naked. It was a weird metaphor for my life in general, but I tried hiding from that too, in-between checking my phone every ten seconds.

  It was the early hours when I admitted defeat and abandoned my bed, left my phone buried under a pillow, and decamped to the couch. The living room was a space I rarely used since I didn’t watch TV and didn’t like enough people to invite them over, so I remained antsy even when I did doze off.

  I woke at dawn. The sun filtered through my heavy curtains and bothered me enough to drive me up and into the shower.

  Scrubbed of whatever I’d dreamed about to make me sweat like a beast, I returned to my bedroom and dug my phone out from under my pillow. I expected a blank screen, but the single word text message lighting it up brought life back to my cold dead heart.

  Lucky: hi

  It was three days before I could escape to meet Lucky, and even then I wasn’t convinced he’d show up. We’d never shared much via text anyway, but something had changed now, and I sensed a shift in him. The humour and banter was gone, and his demeanour—gauged from monosyllabic messages—seemed cold…business-like, almost. I tried not to fret over why, though. My angst levels were already sky high and the prospect of seeing him again, even if he lumped me one, was the only thing keeping me going.

  On the night I was due to meet Lucky, I came out of training in Manchester to find Isha waiting by my car. Despite wanting to chin him for various reasons, I was actually relieved to see him, but his timing pissed me off enough for him to spread his hands in surrender the moment we locked eyes.

  “Hear me out, Dom. I don’t want a row.”

  I threw my bag in the back of my car. “Where’ve you been?”

  “Away. I turned my phone off and took my kids to Disneyland.”

  “Nice.”

  “Yeah, it was, as it goes. Put some things in perspective.”

  I shot him a flat stare. “If you’ve come here to tell me all about it, you’ve picked the wrong day. I haven’t got time for your bullshit right now.”

  Isha sighed. “You still think I’ve been protecting you all this time for my own gain, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know what to think. And I really haven’t got time to dissect it—I told you—I’ve got somewhere to be.”

  “So when can we talk? I don’t want to inconvenience you, but there’s some stuff you really should know before you shut me out.”

  “Who said I was shutting you out?”

  Isha gave me a weary grin that in the past I’d have found attractive enough to look away. Now I just glowered at him, which earned me another heavy sigh. “Christ’s sake, Dom. You haven’t answered my calls in weeks, and now I find out Fernando has farmed you out to some fucked-up training franchise without adjusting your contract. Whatever’s going on between us, you can’t let it mess with business.”

  “It’s all about business, Isha.”

  “No, it isn’t. What I did, and why I did it, was personal. When we sit down and talk properly, I hope you’ll see that.”

  He walked away before I found the words to respond.

  I pulled my cap lower over my face and slipped into the hotel. Thankfully, the lobby was busy enough for an extra body to squeeze through without most people noticing, and I took the stairs to avoid unwelcome scrutiny in the lift.

  Our room was on the twelfth floor this time, the highest I’d been since the team had played in a showcase tournament in Dubai. That weekend, with a bedroom window obscured by clouds, had been hell on earth—or on the fucking moon, depending on how you looked at it. The one time I’d braved a glance down I’d felt like I was falling off the edge of the world. I fucking hate heights.

  I didn’t repeat the mistake when I reached the right floor this time around. My irrational fear of heights seemed a million miles away, and finding room 1235 was the only thing on my mind.

  It appeared in front of me, black and shiny. I knocked, and the door was pulled open before I’d reclaimed my hand. Lucky. Relief left me dizzy. I stumbled through the door, wrenched it from his hands, and kicked it shut behind me. My gaze found his and I nearly melted to the floor. “Hi.”

  “Hey.” He didn’t move. Just stared from his position a foot away from me, still wearing his coat and boots, eyes blank…carefully blank.

  My heart lurched. Something had changed. “What is it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re different.”

  “How so?”

  As if I could explain it. As if I could explain anything that had happened in my life in the last few months.

  As if I could ever explain him.

  It was my turn to stare, but Lucky was more stoic than me. Or maybe he wasn’t, and the emptiness in his gaze was real. Pain lanced my chest again. I brought my hand up to rub it away, like I could force it from my body and everything would be okay, but futileness hit me hard, and a low sound escaped me. I can’t keep doing this—

  “Fuck it.” Lucky closed the distance between us and ripped my hand away from my chest. He claimed the other too, and then pinned my arms above my head with strength that belied his slender arms.

  He kissed me fiercely, silencing another moan that had built in my throat as he’d stared me down. For a moment, I had no response, but then weeks of heartache and tension spilled out of me, and I threw myself at him with enough desperate force to tear my arms from his tight grip.

  Lucky stumbled, but my hold on him was absolute—I’d die before I let him fall.

  Before I let his lips leave mine.

  I guided him to the bed and lowered us down, letting go of him only to help him push my coat over my shoulders while I kicked off my trainers.

  His coat followed mine to the floor, and my hands were instantly beneath his trademark torn vest. Lucky gasped into my mouth and thrust his body up from the bed, arching against me, the bulge in his sinfully tight jeans scraping my own hard dick.

  I went for the buttons keeping him prisoner and undid his jeans, yanking them over his hips and down his thighs, taking his underwear with them. His cock sprang free and I closed my fist around it, squeezing it, and rubbing my thumb over the already-sticky head.

  “Shit.” Lucky broke our kiss, and his head hit the bed with a dull thud. “I’m so into you, Dom. You make me fucking insane.”

  I had more sympathy than ability to articulate it. My jeans were uncomfortably tight, and Lucky was apparently too distracted to help me out.

  Still working his dick with my hand, I undid my belt with the other, and kicked my jeans away.

  “My boots.” Lucky squirmed beneath me. “Get my boots off.”

  Wrestling his grungy boots from his feet required two hands, but if it got him naked faster, I was happy to oblige.

  I slid off him and into a crouch. His boots were perfectly worn and smelled of old leather. One day I wanted
him on his back, wearing just them, but right now I wanted nothing but him.

  His boots hit the floor, followed closely by his jeans, and by the time I returned to the bed, his vest was gone too.

  I hooked my hands under his arms and dragged him further up the bed, and then I kissed him again, over and over, until only the need to breathe made me stop.

  “What do you want?” Lucky whispered. “Anything. Just say it.”

  “I—”

  Lucky took my face in his hands and unwrapped his legs from around my waist. “Fine. I’ll say it. Fuck me, Dom. Please?”

  Lucky

  Dom’s scramble for the condoms and lube I always had in my bag was almost funny, but when he came back to bed, the look on his face eclipsed the mirth bubbling in my chest.

  Nerves replaced it. I was willing to bet I’d had more sex than him in the last few years, but this was Dom. Something—everything—about him was different.

  Dom shed his underwear, sheathed himself, and lubed up like a pro—like he fucked people all the time, but even with the image of him and the hot red-haired woman carved into my brain, I knew he didn’t. He was probably just really fucking good at it.

  Anticipation took over my nerves. I licked my lips as Dom approached me, but he didn’t go straight for me with his dick. Instead, he swooped down at the last moment and sucked my cock into his mouth, deep-throating me even better than he had that very first night.

  His gargled, choking sounds shot straight through me, like I’d emptied a syringe of him into my favourite vein. My hands flew to his hair—which was longer now than when we’d met—and I fisted his soft locks, as though they could save me from the mind-blowing oblivion we were heading for. Please god, don’t ever stop.

  Dom pulled off my dick, leaving it wet and shiny. He crawled up and over me, and kissed me into another pleasure-hot trance before I could mourn the loss of his lips elsewhere. His cock pressed against me, lube mixing with the saliva dripping down my balls. I widened my legs, wrapping them once again around Dom’s waist, and arched to meet him as his tongue drove into my mouth.