Must Love Christmas (Glasgow Lads on Ice)

by Avery Cockburn

  He retreated into his bedroom across the hall and shut the door behind him.

  Shit. Simon went to Garen’s door and raised his hand to knock. Then he stopped. Maybe he’d done enough damage for one day. Maybe he should just leave Garen alone.

  But why did everything have to be about Garen’s feelings? Simon had a right to be comfortable here too. If he had to put up with snow globes in October, the least Garen could do was disinfect the bathroom without whingeing about it.

  “Simon, I can hear you breathing.”

  “Sorry.” He rested his hand on the doorpost of Garen’s room. “I’m still getting accustomed to…everything. I don’t know how to live with anyone but my family.” Simon winced at how pathetic that sounded. He was twenty-five years old, for God’s sake. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

  There was a squeak of mattress, then Garen spoke again, this time close to the door. “I’ll do better with the cleaning next time. And don’t worry about being pushy just now. The bright side to living with someone who forgets everything is that by the morning, I’ll have forgotten this thing, too.”

  “Okay, sound.” Simon started to move away, feeling somewhat reassured.

  Garen chuckled. “Until I see your sticky note. Then it’ll all come rushing back.”

  57 Days Until Christmas

  “Did you lads know that plastic is meant to go on the top rack of the dishwasher?” Garen asked his teammates gathered in the warm room of the Edinburgh ice rink Saturday night.

  “Of course.” Luca shook pepper over his steaming plate of pasta. “It might melt if you put it in the bottom. That’s where the heating elements are.”

  “Apparently so. Why did you never tell me this when we lived together?”

  “I did tell you, several times.” Luca shrugged. “Then I gave up and just started moving it myself.”

  Garen joined the others’ laughter. It was easy to pretend his “issues” amused him, because most of the time they did. Only since Simon had arrived had it occurred to him to get defensive.

  All week, Garen had walked on eggshells, making every effort to be clean and quiet, never to forget things or say anything stupid in front of Simon. Life at home had become exhausting.

  So it was a relief to be here in Edinburgh for this weekend’s tournament. Out on the curling ice, Garen was rarely a disappointment.

  “Such posh pals of ours,” said David Moffat, the Team Riley lead curler. “The only dishwasher I’ve ever owned are these magnificent hands.” He stretched out his meaty freckled fingers for display.

  “You washing dishes? That’d be news to your wife,” said Ross Buchanan. The rest of the table erupted in hoots, and Ross’s fair skin blushed up into his blond hairline. Usually it was David having a go at Ross, but lately the Team Riley second had started giving as good as he got.

  “How’s the love nest?” Garen asked Luca and Oliver. “Is it pure exhilarating having sex in every room without me walking in?”

  “No comment.” Luca rubbed his cheek, where his dark beard couldn’t hide the flush of embarrassment. “You’re one to talk, anyway. How many of your lads paraded through our flat in various states of undress?”

  “Dunno.”

  “Nine,” Luca said.

  Only nine in five years? It seemed like more.

  “How’s your new flatmate?” Oliver asked Garen.

  “Simon is…” Garen sliced his remaining meatball in half, searching for a kind but accurate word. “Tidy.” He described the cleaning-versus-disinfecting issue, acting out the minor stooshie with his flatmate. “For a minute, I thought he might actually move out to escape the squalor.”

  “You said you didn’t want to live with a ‘neat freak.’” Luca twirled his linguine around his fork. “Weren’t you trying to screen out people like that with your ad?”

  “Aye, but when we met, we got on all right.” Garen thought wistfully of the night they’d spent in his bed. “More than all right, in fact.”

  “Ah.” Oliver’s bright green eyes gave a knowing twinkle.

  “And now you’re not getting on?” Luca asked, oblivious to Garen’s hint.

  “It’s a bit awkward.”

  “Of course it is at first,” Luca said. “You’re two strangers living under the same roof.”

  “Is your flatmate a curler?” David asked Garen, motioning to the bread basket in front of him.

  Garen handed him the basket. “He runs marathons.”

  “Too bad,” David said. “We could use some new faces at the rink.”

  This was true. Public interest in curling tended to swing in four-year cycles, peaking after every Winter Olympic Games, the next one of which was more than a year hence.

  “Bring him on a Saturday,” said Ross. “To one of the try-curling events.”

  It wasn’t a bad idea. Simon could make some new friends at Shawlands Rink. Maybe he’d even meet a guy he fancied, which might lessen the lingering awkwardness between him and Garen—not that Garen relished the thought of Simon’s attention on some other lucky lad.

  When dinner ended, Garen noticed his throat still felt raw from all the yelling during the day’s first two games. As the team’s third/vice-skip, Garen relayed messages between their skip, Luca, and their front-end curlers, Ross and David. When Luca threw his stones, Garen had to “call the line” to tell Ross and David when to sweep. At big tournaments like this, a curling rink could get head-splittingly loud, between the roar of granite stones against ice and the shouts of excited curlers and their fans.

  The day’s final game began, with Team Riley matched against one of their main rivals, Team MacDougall, who famously played in kilts despite the rink’s chill. The two teams were currently tied atop the tournament table, both having won all four preceding games.

  Half of the seats overlooking the ice were filled with Team Riley’s fans, most of them waving rainbow flags and Team Smiley signs. One of Garen and Luca’s uni pals, Ben Reid, waved down at them from where he sat at the end of the row with his boyfriend, Evan.

  Garen waved back, then held up his palms in a questioning manner. Ben picked up his Riley Rocks sign and brandished it above his head, his glasses reflecting the rink’s bright fluorescent light. The sign was looking a bit battered, but Garen had insisted Ben keep bringing it for good luck after they’d won their first Scottish Challenger Tour event two years ago.

  Garen gave his friend a wide grin and a fist pump. To this day, Riley had yet to lose when Ben brought his sign.

  At the beginning of the third end, Garen noticed he still hadn’t removed his lightweight thermal curling jacket. Usually the sweeping warmed him up fast, and by the second end, he’d be down to his short-sleeved black-and-midnight-blue Team Riley shirt.

  He unzipped his jacket, then promptly zipped it again. Maybe the temperature was unusually low in the rink tonight. A quick scan of his fellow curlers suggested he was the only one feeling the chill.

  Despite being out of sorts, Garen played well, as did the rest of the team, and by the eighth and final end, Riley were up 6-4 without the hammer. But Team MacDougall began with a pair of perfectly placed corner guards, the necessary setup for scoring two to tie the game.

  Ross took out one of the corner guards on his next shot, and immediately MacDougall replaced it. So Garen took out that one on his next shot. Immediately MacDougall replaced it. If they kept up this pattern, eventually MacDougall would score only one point and Riley would win. MacDougall needed a Riley miss.

  Luca signaled for Garen to take out the second corner guard again. His voice now hoarse, Garen replied with an emphatic thumbs-up. Every muscle ached as he got into the hack and crouched down to throw the next red stone.

  He shook his head to clear it, but that only made it feel floaty, like it wasn’t securely attached to his body.

  “Just hang in there,” he murmured to himself. If he could last another ten minutes, he could retire to his hotel room for a restorative sleep. He’d feel better tom
orrow, and they’d win this tournament to take the lead in the season-long Scottish Challenger Tour.

  Garen shot out of the hack. As he glided forward at full speed, his balance wavered—not enough to topple him, but enough to throw off his momentum and aim. He tried to compensate by giving an extra push as he released the stone, but his fingers seemed to stick to the handle.

  “Light out of hand!” Garen croaked as his stone drifted away at half the necessary speed.

  Ross and David leapt into action, furiously sweeping the ice sheet in front of the stone to keep it going straight and quick.

  Garen’s stone knocked out MacDougall’s yellow corner guard, then listlessly rolled a few inches toward the center, basically taking the place of the stone it had just removed.

  “Sorry, lads,” Garen told his front end. “That was some heroic sweeping.”

  “Nae bother,” David wheezed, his face now even redder than his bushy hair and beard.

  Ross panted, his breath steaming in the cold air. “We’ll sort it with…Luca’s stones. Not…end of the world.”

  Garen joined Luca just in time to see the Team MacDougall vice-skip land a stone in the house behind Garen’s generously placed corner guard.

  “Double takeout,” Luca said. “Yours and his.” He glided down to the hack, where David and Ross were waiting to sweep. With supreme calm, Luca went through his pre-throw routine, then slid out and released the stone.

  As Garen bent to examine Luca’s aim, a wave of heat swept over his body. He needed out of this jacket, pronto.

  “Weight’s good!” Ross called. “How’s the line?”

  Garen tried to gauge the trajectory and consider the ice conditions at the same time, but his brain felt on fire. He blinked hard to clear his blurry vision.

  Ah hell. Luca’s stone was too far inside. “Line’s narrow. Sweep! Hard, lads! Haaaaaar—” Garen’s voice gave out.

  Luca took over the call, gliding up behind David and Ross. “Hard, lads! Sweep! Yes! All the way!”

  Luca’s stone swiped Garen’s red stone on the edge, removing it, but then missed Team MacDougall’s yellow one.

  Garen squeezed his own head, which felt like it could burst. “I’m so sorry,” he told Luca as they moved behind the house. “I ruined that shot.”

  “It wasn’t my best,” Luca said.

  “It was my job to salvage it with the call to sweep.”

  “We’ll have another chance.” Luca nudged Garen with his elbow. “What’s wrong? You seem off.”

  “Think I’m getting a cold. So don’t lick any of the stones I’ve touched.”

  They watched as skip Cameron MacDougall drew his first stone deep into the house, leaving Luca with an even more difficult double takeout than the previous one. “If I make this shot,” Luca told Garen, “we win, and you’re away to bed.”

  But he didn’t make it. Luca removed only one of the yellow stones, and Cameron finished by drawing another into the house, tying the score and sending the game into an extra end.

  Garen sat on a bench at the end of the sheet to rest for a moment. Instantly his body begged him never to get back up. He put his hands to his flaming cheeks. “Ugh…”

  “Mate, you sure this is just a cold?” Luca asked.

  “You look pure peely-wally,” Ross added.

  “It’s just the lights in here.” Garen struggled to keep his eyes open against the bright fluorescent glow. “They’ve got them turned up too high.”

  His teammates examined the ceiling, then him, this time with more concern. Luca removed his glove and placed the back of his hand on Garen’s forehead. “Christ, you’re burning up. Get out of here.”

  “I can power through for one more end. Just give me another energy drink and—whoa.” He nearly toppled off the bench as the world swooped in front of his eyes.

  “Are you gonnae boak?” David picked up the nearest rubbish bin. “Here, use this.”

  “I’m not that kind of ill.” Garen put a hand to his burning throat. “But I need to go home before I give everyone the flu.”

  “Sorry I lost us that lead,” Garen told his curling coach as Oliver pulled out of the hotel’s carpark onto the busy Edinburgh street.

  “It’s not your fault you’re sick,” Oliver said. “And Team Riley can still win the tournament tomorrow. They’ll just have a slightly more difficult path through the playoffs. It’s because of you that our record was so strong going into that last game.”

  “If only I’d been able to keep my concentration a wee bit longer.” Garen leaned the side of his head against the blessedly cool window. “Focusing is enough of a battle on my best days, what with my leaky brain.”

  “As someone with ADHD, I can definitely relate.” Oliver stopped the car at the traffic light, murmuring directions to himself as he examined the satnav on the dashboard. “You know, you might want to look into that for yourself. We have a lot of the same, uh, issues.”

  “Yeah, maybe I should do,” Garen said, though he dreaded the waiting list to get evaluated. “Especially now I’ve got a flatmate who won’t tolerate my disorderly nature.”

  When the light turned green, Oliver pulled into the junction and cleared his throat. “So, um…I’ve actually been wanting to talk to you alone for a while.”

  Garen jerked his head to look at his coach, imagining the worst. “What did I do? Whatever it was, I’ll fix it.”

  “It has nothing to do with you,” Oliver said, exhibiting more calm than most people showed in response to Garen’s insecurities. “I was wondering…what do you think would happen if I asked Luca to marry me?”

  Garen blinked several times, wondering whether the fever was producing auditory hallucinations. “Your work visa’s running out in a few months, isn’t it?”

  “No!” Oliver gripped the steering wheel. “I mean, yeah, but that’s not why I want to marry him. Jeez, you’re cynical.”

  “Am I? You cannae renew your two-year visa. You’ll have to go back to Canada in February. I’ve looked it up.”

  “I might be able to get a six-year visa, but I’d have to be sponsored by a bigger organization than Shawlands Rink.” He slowed at the next junction and put on his turn indicator.

  As the car turned right, Garen’s head pounded harder, so he closed his eyes. “So where will you—”

  “Shit!” Oliver slammed on the brakes as a car horn blared. Garen felt the jolt of safety belt clutching his chest. He shielded his eyes against the glare of headlights and squinted through the windscreen.

  “Mate,” was all Garen could say. They’d nearly collided head-on with a lorry—a lorry that was on the left side of the road, unlike Oliver’s car. Another few feet and the flu would’ve been the least of Garen’s worries.

  “Sorry. Sorry!” Oliver called out, waving to the lorry driver. Then he wrenched the steering wheel to take the car into the correct lane. “This hardly ever happens anymore. Just sometimes when I’m in a new city at night.”

  “It’s okay.” Garen put a palm over his own stuttering heart. “We got lucky. No harm—”

  “Can we just not talk until we get on the highway? I need to focus.”

  “Sure.” Garen raised his seat-back, the better to see the road and potentially stop Oliver from repeating his mistake.

  In a few minutes, they were on the M8. Oliver let out a hard breath and ran a hand through his thick brown waves of hair. “Sorry again.”

  “Nae bother.” Garen’s pulse had finally slowed, now pounding the inside of his skull at a normal speed. “You said something about a sponsorship for your visa?”

  “Right. I’m applying for a coaching position at Scottish Curling.”

  Garen considered this. As a curler, Oliver had won the Junior World Championship twice, the Canadian men’s championship twice, and scored a bronze medal at Men’s Worlds. As a coach he’d taken Team Riley and Team Hamilton—Shawlands Rink’s top women’s team—to national championships. He’d be a shoo-in for this job at the national curling a
ssociation.

  “Aren’t their headquarters in Stirling?” Garen asked.

  “It’s only forty minutes’ drive from Glasgow, an hour with traffic. Where I’m from, that’s nothing.”

  “Good.” Garen couldn’t handle another important person exiting his life. “Luca would say yes in a heartbeat, by the way.”

  Oliver grinned. “You think so?”

  “Fuck yeah,” Garen murmured as his head lolled back, too heavy for his neck to hold up any longer.

  Next thing Garen knew, Oliver was gently shaking his shoulder. “Dude, wake up. You’re home.”

  As they came out of the lift on the top floor, Oliver asked. “You need anything from the shops? Paracetamol, Lucozade, throat drops, tissues?”

  “I just want my bed.” He unlocked his front door and stumbled through. “Anyway, Simon’s here, and he can—”

  He stopped at the entrance to the darkened living room. The TV was on, and his flatmate was huddled on one of the couches under a pile of blankets. Scattered on the coffee table was a half-full jug of Lucozade, a bottle of paracetamol, two bags of throat drops, and a large box of tissues.

  Simon lifted his head. “Home early?” he croaked.

  “Yeah, I’ve taken ill.” And now I know why. Garen jutted his thumb over his shoulder. “This is my curling coach, Oliver. Oliver, this is Simon.”

  Oliver gave a friendly wave. “Don’t get up.”

  “Ta.” Simon nestled his face against his pillow. “Garen, there’s more Lucozade in the fridge if you need it.”

  Garen said goodbye to Oliver, then dragged his bags to his room. The effort to wrestle off his skin-tight thermal shirt sapped the rest of his strength, so he tumbled into bed still wearing his curling trousers.

  After an hour of sleepless, sweaty rolling about in bed, Garen took his pillow and duvet to the living room. He settled onto the couch across the room from Simon, who was staring blankly at the telly, tuned to BBC Alba. On the screen, a man and a woman were having an intense conversation amongst what looked like the dunes of the Outer Hebrides.