Page 105 of Playing to Win

Oh, my beautiful city, I am so in love with you just now.

Andrew jumped to his feet. “Let’s follow.” He grabbed his coffee cup with one hand and thumbed in the password to his phone screen with his other. “This needs Instagramming.”

“What about ‘consequences’?”

“Right.” Andrew gave a brief frown as he tucked his phone away. “Let’s just enjoy it live, then. This is history.”

They hurried down the street to catch up to the rickshaw, now surrounded by a parade of onlookers, many of them recording the event with their phones.

“It’s like the anti-Palm Sunday,” Andrew said, his eyes alight with glee.

The rickshaw rider was now bantering with one of the Members of Parliament, a lady who’d just urged him to take his magnificent guerrilla theater elsewhere. “Have you not got a wee sense of humor?” he asked her.

“Not really,” she said. “Not with you.”

“Aw, that’s a shame.” The rider raised his megaphone again. “People of Glasgow, bow down to your imperial masters! They’ve used your tax dollars to come all the way from London. So appreciate them!” He pointed to Colin. “Get on your knees! Get on your knees and bow down to the Labour Party.”

The swelling crowd progressed up Buchanan Street, singing along with the rickshaw guy’s unofficial lyrics to the Imperial March (“Dah-dah-daaaah-dah-dah-daaaah-dah-dah-daaaah”). As Colin marched and sang, each step felt lighter than the last. Perhaps Scotland was done being pushed around. Perhaps thingscouldchange, and change utterly.

The impromptu parade finally ended at Royal Concert Hall, the steps of which were flanked with people holding VOTE NO signs. The rickshaw driver stopped at the bottom of the stairs, but the music continued to play as the politicians filed into the building.

Andrew tossed his empty coffee cup in a bin and turned to Colin.

“I’ve traveled all around this planet. I’ve swum the Great Barrier Reef, hiked the Grand Canyon, watched the sun rise over Machu Picchu. Yet that”—he pointed to the rickshaw—“may be the single greatest thing I have seen in my entire life.” He took Colin’s hand. “Perhaps there is a new world on the way.”

Colin grinned. “Does this mean you’ll vote Yes?”

Andrew laughed and wagged his finger. “I put my ballot in the post this morning. It’s too late to convince me.”

“Och, then away to London with your useless self,” Colin said.

Then, because he couldn’t help it, he kissed Andrew in the middle of the Buchanan Street shopping district. In the middle of a revolution.

= = =

As his train pulled out of Glasgow Central, Andrew felt his gut tugging him back. Gazing at the fan-shaped, glass-and-steel patterns of the station’s grand concourse windows, he told himself he was bound for a vastly more important city. But right now, the universe seemed to revolve around Scotland.

London Fashion Show notwithstanding.

Thinking of that event reminded Andrew he had studying to do. He needed to catch up on not only fashion, but the latest gossip outside of “North Britain,” as his London mates referred to Scotland, a joke that got less funny every time they said it.

With a reluctant sigh, he wrested the stack of unreadTatlers from his rucksack, then dropped them on the table with a thud.

“I wondered why your bag was so heavy,” said Reggie, sitting diagonally across from Andrew, tapping away on his laptop.

“Sorry about that. You didn’t need to bring my luggage from the flat. You’re my bodyguard, not my valet.”

Reggie shrugged his broad shoulders. “You’d a breakfast date, and I didn’t like the idea of you leaving your bags at the station. Anyone could put anything into them.”

Andrew didn’t bother arguing that the Virgin Trains staff were paid to ensure baggage security. Reggie’s hyper-vigilance had saved his neck more than once. Andrew would be eternally grateful to him—and to Jeremy for referring Reggie after the sacking of the homophobic Wallace.

And yet…Andrew had never told Reggie about the FASCIST FAGGOT rock through his window. Some deep instinct urged him to keep that secret, to protect Colin from suspicion.

If Colin had agreed to move to America, Andrew would be applying to universities there at this very moment. But he rather admired Colin for saying no. He admired him even more for not giving up on them. All this time, Andrew had been the doggedly determined one, but today, at Andrew’s moment of wavering, Colin had kept them together. Apparently once he was in, he was all in.

Andrew plugged his earphones into his phone and watched a video he’d made this morning at the break of dawn. Then, he used the train’s Wifi to upload the video to his YouTube account and set it to private. He had no idea when, or if, he would share it with his boyfriend and/or the world, but the words had needed saying. Thinking of those words made his stomach flutter and his skin sing, like he was standing on the edge of a ten-meter-high diving board.

Setting aside his phone, he picked up the newest issue ofTatler, telling himself he should enjoy leisure reading now before university began again. This issue had a decent fashion spread, but his eyes glazed over atHow to gate-crash the smartest partiesandQuestions headmasters don’t want you to ask.

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