by Alison Ryan
It took place on the basketball court at Berkeley County High School when Patrick was a mere seventh-grader. In South Carolina, an athlete doesn’t have to enroll in high school to play a varsity sport. If you’re in the school system, no matter how young, if you’re good enough, you can suit up with the varsity. Patrick Sievert began his seventh-grade season playing on the freshman team, but it soon became apparent that he wasn’t going to get any better dominating clumsy ninth-graders. He was bumped up to the junior varsity team and, eventually, the varsity. Late in the season, in a game against rival Goose Creek High, the skinny thirteen-year-old Patrick hit four three-pointers in the fourth quarter alone to help his team to an upset victory. The final long-range bomb was the game-winner, and as it dropped through the net, the youngster shimmied and danced before being mobbed by teammates and carried off the floor.
After a wild locker room celebration, Patrick was excited to jump into the arms of his parents and receive their love and praise, but he emerged onto the court to find no sign of his father, and his mother waiting quietly by the side door to the gymnasium.
“Daddy’s waiting in the truck, Pat,” said his mother, quietly, leading him outside. Dumbfounded, but not wanting to raise the ire of his notoriously short-tempered dad, the budding star nodded and followed his mother to the truck, where the ride home was completely silent.
Once inside the house, the explosion occurred.
As Patrick walked in and set his backpack and gym bag on the kitchen table, his father grabbed him by the arm, spun him around, and backed him against the wall, nose to nose with him.
“What the hell was the little dance at the end, Mr. Big Time? Huh?” Benjamin Sievert slapped the wall next to Patrick’s head violently to emphasize his rage. “Dancin’, hootin’, and hollerin’, eh? Big man! Big time! Fucking big time.”
Patrick was terrified, tears welling up in his eyes.
“I don’t care if you hit a three every time you touch the ball, do you hear me? You don’t ever big-time the other team like that. That dancing is bullshit, that celebrating is bullshit, your game is bullshit, you’re lucky one of those big Goose Creek boys didn’t coldcock you for that horseshit. Mr. Big Time. We’ll see how fucking big-time you are tomorrow morning. Forget sleeping in. I’m taking you over to the farm before the chickens are up. You’re gonna bust your ass all weekend. See how big-time you are after that.” Ben Sievert walked away shaking his head, leaving Patrick slumped on the floor, destroyed.
He’d done his best, won the game, announced himself as somebody for college coaches to monitor, but all of that was erased by a single moment of what his dad called “big-timing” the opponent.
This would become a common refrain through Patrick’s high school career, no matter the sport. Modesty was fairly beaten into him. Anytime Patrick received special treatment, deserved or no, his father was there to express his disgust. “Big time, big time, big time.” By the time he left for Furman, he’d heard his father utter those two words more than any other pair he could think of.
The last time he heard them from Benjamin Sievert was on a blustery evening in Chicago.
Patrick’s early success playing in England earned him the opportunity to dress for the United States National Team in a World Cup qualifier against Trinidad and Tobago, his college buddy Shelton’s team. Shelton was dressed for the match as well, although neither of them figured to see any time on the field.
Late in the match, with the US team clinging to a 1–0 lead, an American defender came up limping after a challenge, and word was sent down the bench: “Tell Sievert to get up and get loose.”
With only scant moments remaining, Patrick entered the game, helping to preserve the win, despite never touching the ball.
After the game, chatting with Shelton as the players milled around the field, Patrick heard his name being called and turned to see a sight that made his heart fall through his chest right to the field. His mother, pushing his cancer-ravaged father, a ghost of the burly marine he’d been in Vietnam, in a wheelchair across the track surrounding the field.
Ben Sievert had been advised by his doctor that any travel more strenuous than to the hospital or church was out of the question at such a late stage of his illness. He told his doctor that missing his son playing for the national team was even more out of the question. He’d make it to the game, or die trying. Eighteen hours in the passenger seat, stretched over two and half days in the family’s old van almost did him in, but he willed his way to the match.
Patrick embraced his mother, and reached down to shake his father’s withered hand. With perhaps his final burst of strength, Ben Sievert pulled his son down for a hug, one of the few Patrick could remember ever receiving from his dad. With one knee on the grass, Patrick began to thank his dad for coming, to ask how he’d managed, to say one hundred things at once.
Benjamin Sievert quieted his son with a wave of his hand, summoned his own raspy voice, and looked Patrick in the eyes. “Big time, son. Now this,” a bony finger jabbed at the USMNT crest on Patrick’s jersey, “is big time.”
Tears filled both men’s eyes, as well as Shelton’s, as he watched from beside Patrick’s weeping mother.
Benjamin Sievert, age fifty-five, went to sleep that night in a Chicago hotel room and woke up in heaven.
********
On his team’s dime, flights and accommodations were nearly always top shelf, the players pampered like royalty. To beg off, even out of respect to his late father, would be disrespectful to the team. On his own time, however, Patrick left the Ferraris and private jets to others and lived a life with more in common with the blue collar folk he grew up with than the ostentatious playboy he could have been.
Patrick watched the luggage cart drivers dodging raindrops outside and spent a few moments longer recalling his career in the game, a career marked by compliments on his unflappable stoicism and discipline on the field, traits he’d carried with him into the relationships with women he hadn’t allowed himself to enjoy.
All of which made the effect the chance encounter with Ellie Peavey had on him all the more inexplicable.
“Fate.” He said quietly, raising his bottle of water in a toast. “Good on ya, fate.”
CHAPTER SIX
Ellie waited and waited at the gate, but there was no sign of the dashing Patrick Sievert. Stupid, Ellie. He probably jumped on the next flight returning to Atlanta, just so he wouldn’t have to share the same continent with you. So stupid. Ugh!!!, Ellie thought to herself, trying not to let the devastation of the obvious, and predictable, betrayal show as she approached the gate attendant who’d just sent out the call for final boarding.
Scanning her ticket, the stern-looking redhead looked up in surprise, “Oh, it’s you. Sorry, there’s been a change in your seat, let me have that boarding pass. OK, ah, here it is, yes, OK here’s your new pass. Sorry, I was expecting somebody, well, somebody else.” The ticketing agent looked Ellie up and down and did nothing to hide her disapproving frown. “Enjoy your flight to Glasgow. Hurry now, they’re ready to shut the doors.” The attendant handed Ellie a new slip of paper and the confused American girl made her way down the jet bridge and onto the waiting jet.
“What’s kept you, love? I feared I’d lost you!” It was the unmistakable voice of Patrick, welcoming her to the flight, welcoming her to the window seat next to him, welcoming him, in her hopes and dreams, into his life. Forever.
Modifying it to fit the circumstance, Ellie paraphrased her side of a conversation she’d been rehearsing for the past thirty minutes while waiting at the gate, “Well, Patrick, I’ve got bad news. It turns out the team in Scotland doesn’t want you after all. But teams all over the southeastern United States are falling all over themselves to sign you. So your agent and I were going over your suitors and coming up with an appropriate plan of action.”
Ellie prayed she hadn’t been too forward, hadn’t overplayed her hand, but Patrick’s easy smile allayed her fears. “Is tha
t so, Ellie? That’s very interesting. Did any of those teams happen to be in Atlanta?”
“Sadly, no. Not Atlanta. But there was tremendous interest from a little town, east of Atlanta, called Conyers. I don’t know much about this Conyers place other than the fact that a very cuddly beagle named Maisie lives there,” replied Ellie.
“Hmm,” Patrick furrowed his brow, “I think I’ve heard tell of that beagle. Runs around with a bonnie lass who’s into footballers. Is that the one?”
“I love my niece, but if you’re calling her a ‘bonnie lass,’ I’ll jump out of this plane as soon as we reach cruising altitude,” replied an exaggeratedly pouty Ellie.
Patrick laughed, buckling his seatbelt before the flight attendant spotted his transgression. “No, that’s not the bonnie lass I had in mind. Although since you’re a Scottish virgin I should warn you that the whole ‘lass’ thing is more for movies and tourists than locals. Expect to be called a ‘hen’ by the Scots. It’s not an insult, it’s a term of endearment. A ‘bonnie hen’ in your case.”
The flight to Glasgow lifted off as the sun set, and the conversation continued to be easy for both of them, filled with laughter and flirting. As the announcement came over that they’d begun their approach to Glasgow, Patrick finally steered things in the direction Ellie hoped he would since they first met. “Celtic have me staying at the Grand Central, probably in a suite large enough to fit my entire flat inside. Which hotel are you booked at, Ellie?”
“I’m staying at the Marriott, here for four days. They have most of a floor reserved for our people. They’ve got me pretty tightly scheduled. I’m probably expected to have my meals with coworkers. I think they’ve given us a little free time Wednesday afternoon. I was hoping to see Glasgow Cathedral and the art museum, the Klev-something; I have it all in my planner.” Ellie prayed he’d take the hint and offer to join her.
“The Kelvingrove,” Patrick gently corrected her. “It’s fantastic. I haven’t spent as much time in Scotland as I’d have liked, just a handful of visits. Never been on holiday, always work-related. But I don’t have much of an itinerary this time. Tomorrow I’ll have breakfast with my agent before we go over to Parkhead, Celtic Park, the team’s stadium. I’ll be kept busy all day with a tour and a physical, regular stuff.”
Giving Patrick a physical sounds like all my birthdays and Christmases wrapped up in one, Ellie thought to herself.
“Would it be too forward to ask for your number? I mean to exchange numbers? I don’t see any reason I couldn’t spend a few extra days in Glasgow, maybe we could have a spot of tea or take in the Kelvingrove together?”
If the plane had crashed at that moment, exploded into a million billion pieces, Ellie wouldn’t have noticed. She couldn’t remember ever feeling so perfectly happy, so filled with giddy anticipation of what the future held for her. Even if it was just for a couple of days. The tiny voice of doubt in the back of her head, the one that kept insisting that Patrick Sievert was all some silly schoolgirl crush, had gone silent. She was all in. She couldn’t think of a request he could make to her at this point that she could possibly decline.
“Well, I’m sorry, but I don’t usually give out my number to guys I’ve just met,” Ellie apologized facetiously. “But since I’m a stranger here, it would be nice to know a quasi-local to help me out of a jam. If I need bail money, that sort of thing.”
As the plane touched down, they plugged each other’s numbers into their respective phones.
“My agent, Tom, will be picking me up outside, I haven’t any luggage. Are you taken care of, Ellie?” Patrick queried.
“I have a checked bag, and there’s supposed to be a car waiting to take me to the hotel.” Ellie looked up at him sweetly.
This time, they walked into the terminal side by side, a step nearer to the holding hands Patrick was now longing for, secretly, every bit as much as Ellie.
Managing to elude his adoring public in a foreign land where his presence was unexpected, Patrick walked with Ellie until he reached the escalator to curbside pickup, while she had farther to go to reach baggage claim.
Setting his bag down on a bench, Patrick turned to Ellie. “Well, this seems to be the end of our journey, love.”
Kissmekissmekissmekissmekissmekissme, Ellie thought.
“Thank you for everything, flying with you has been absolutely delightful. Enjoy Glasgow, avoid haggis, hopefully we’ll be able to get together in a day or two, your schedule permitting.” Patrick winked at her and Ellie about fell over. She was as pathetic as a lovesick teenager next to her favorite boy-band member.
Kissmekissmekissmekissmekissmekissme. (Did he really just say ‘shed-jule’??? Could he be any more adorable?) Please kiss me. Ellie thought that if she wished for it hard enough, it had to come true. It just had to.
I could just grab her and kiss her. I really could. I should. Do I even remember how? Who’s the last person I kiss kissed? If she isn’t into it, do I want to get arrested on the eve of signing with Celtic? Patrick struggled with the decision, the awkwardness of the situation much more difficult for him to navigate than defending a Manchester United corner kick.
He decided to take her hands and do what felt natural.
As Patrick reached down and took Ellie’s hands in his, and she stared into those bluer than blue eyes, she froze. Her nervous system wasn’t in sync with the messages her eyes were sending to her brain. Something must be wrong, a man this gorgeous couldn’t possibly be holding her hands and moving in to kiss her?
Patrick loved the softness of her skin in his hands, but the way she jerked when he lifted her hands into his . . . what did it mean? Had he misread the entire situation? He decided to tap the brakes. He wanted to get close enough to smell her hair again, but her reaction meant a “movie-style,” romantic good-bye kiss might not be received well.
He leaned in, instead, and kissed her softly on the forehead, lingering long enough to inhale her floral scent. As he withdrew, he lifted her hands and kissed the back of each, giving them a squeeze and breaking into a toothy grin as he bid her farewell, “Good evening, Ellie Peavey.”
“Good-bye, Patrick; good luck tomorrow!” Ellie replied, disappointed by her reaction to Patrick and by Patrick choosing to kiss her where he did. She could think of several other places that she needed his lips more desperately than her forehead, but she also realized that there must be about ten zillion girls out there who’d kill to be standing in her shoes. Her sensible, comfortable flats, purchased on sale at The Shoe Barn, now the envy of every girl in the world.
Ellie watched Patrick as he descended on the escalator, glancing at his mobile phone before turning back for one last look at her.
He smiled.
And winked.
And Ellie’s heart melted into a puddle in those Shoe Barn flats.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Tom and Patrick exchanged small talk in the car, going over some of the particulars of Celtic’s offer and the planned events of the next day.
The Grand Central was much more opulent than Patrick would have picked for himself, but a touch of luxury now and then wasn’t such a bad thing.
Having already been checked in by his agent, Patrick entered his lavish suite and tossed his bag on the bed. He’d looked at his phone half a dozen times just from the lobby to his room, all in hopes of a call or text from Ellie. Nothing, but he didn’t dare make contact so soon. Christ, he thought, they’d been apart for only half an hour. Had she cast a spell on him?
********
Waiting for her bag to arrive on the luggage carousel, Ellie was approached by a man about her age with a shaved head and who was short several teeth, wearing a crisp, green T-shirt. “Oi! Was that the Mad Monk I saw you wif?”
Taken aback by the brusque stranger, Ellie clutched her laptop bag and purse tightly. “Mad what? Who? I’m sorry, I don’t . . .”
“American? Ha! Sorry, sorry, didn’t mean to startle ya, was just askin’ if that was Paddy Sievert I saw yo
u with. Upstairs, I mean. The footballer.”
“Oh, oh, yes, Patrick, yes he plays soccer,” Ellie explained.
“Aye, he plays a wee bit of football,” the man said, laughing, “He’s not coming to sign with one of the sisters, is he? Fucking Bears, sorry, pardon my language. Better not be the Bears, is it?” The man’s Glaswegian was nearly unintelligible.
“I haven’t . . . the ‘Bears?’ I don’t know, I’m sorry, I just got here,” explained Ellie.
“Sod off, mate, can’t you see she’s knackered? You’re Amanda Peavey, eh? I’m to take you to your hotel.” A man in a suit interrupted the conversation.
“Yes, yes thank you, I’m Amanda, please, call me Ellie.” She noticed the sign hanging at the man’s side, “Peavey.” He ushered her out to the car, lugging her bags, and delivered her to the Glasgow Marriott without further incident.
********
Patrick thought he ought to be hungry, but, more than that, he found his appetite again shifting away from food.
He started the shower, a space in itself that could rival his bedroom back in London, he thought. There were double shower heads and a long marble bench for sitting.
Peeling off his dressy travel clothes, he stepped in and under the scalding hot water, lathering up with a bar of honeycombed soap that the wrapper had promised contained goat’s milk and oatmeal.
Relaxing in a steam-filled world of just barely tolerable hot water and soap suds straight from the farm, Patrick’s mind wandered back to Ellie. Her lips, her neck, the bulge of her breasts, the softness of her hands, her voice. Before he knew it, he’d reached down and taken his swollen cock in his hand and set up a steady rhythm.
********
Ellie got settled into her room, appreciating the view of Glasgow’s lights sparkling on the River Clyde.
