Page 67 of Playing to Win

“Wait,” Colin said. “I’ll do the whole song, but pure quiet.” He put in his earphones, thumbed through his phone’s MP3 player, then tapped the screen. A moment later, his face went hyperanimated, and he began dancing in his seat, shoulders shimmying, fingers spread in hip-hop configuration.

When Colin lip-synched the lyrics in an exaggerated fashion, mouth wide and eyebrows popping, Andrew started laughing and couldn’t stop. But Colin kept a straight face, waving a dollar bill and throwing his hands in the air at the appropriate moments.

After the first chorus, Colin grabbed Andrew’s hand, and they danced together in their seats. Colin’s silent serenade and the freedom in his eyes told Andrew they were going to have the time of their lives tonight. Like the song said, the world didn’t matter. Their problems didn’t matter. Colin was going to live his fantasy.

= = =

“That was fucking immense!” Colin’s voice got lost in the bustle of Broadway. “The music, the choreography, the story, everything.” He spread his arms at Times Square’s bright-as-day radiance. “Thisplaceis immense!”

Stepping off the curb to hail a taxi, Andrew looked smug as ever. “Aren’t you glad you said yes?” he asked Colin.

“Oh aye.” Mouth hanging open like an eejit, Colin devoured his surroundings with all his senses, hoping the city’s blare and shine and reek would distract him from his emotions.

As they climbed into a taxi—a real New York City yellow cab!—songs fromAmerican Idiotwere still pumping through Colin’s mind. There’d been a few moments during the musical when he thought he’d lose it, thinking of Uncle James, who’d signed his last letter from Iraq “Saint Jimmy,” after the character in theAmerican Idiotalbum. James would have loved this show.

Now here Colin was, in the heart of the country that had started the war, pretending to have the night of his life. Andrew had been so generous in bringing him, Colin couldn’t ruin it by having a massive greet in the middle of Manhattan.No tears, he told himself.No fucking tears.

It really was that easy to stop himself crying. Years of practice.

“Whoa…” He gaped at the wee TV attached to the barrier between the taxi’s front and back seats. Its screen was currently dark, but it came alive when he pushed the power button. “Oh my God!”

“What’s wrong?” Andrew glanced up from his phone, which was illuminating his face with a soft glow.

“It’s a television.” Colin petted the screen. “In a taxi.”

Andrew looked like he was trying not to laugh. “Pretty cool, yeah?”

“Yeah.” Colin watched as the NBC news clip switched to an advert. “And look, here’s a credit-card machine on the side. You use that to pay fares?”

“Yes, or even to buy the stuff in the ads as they come on.”

“Oh.” Colin shut off the TV and sat back on the black vinyl seat. “That’s a bit creepy.”

Through the window he watched the city whiz by—or crawl by, when traffic was heavy. Colin still couldn’t believe he was actually here. He’d thought for sure he’d do something to fuck this up, that Andrew would to come to his senses and see that this was too generous a gift.

Colin remembered his extravagant birthday presents of the past—the bicycle, the roller blades, the X-box 360—all bought by his mother in a state of mania. Each one got returned the next day, when Mum would realize the family couldn’t afford it. “Look what you made me do!” she’d shriek at Colin, tears flooding her cheeks. “Now we can’t pay the electric!”

Traffic brought them to another standstill beside a small grassy area with trees and a wee fountain. Sitting on a bench near the edge of the park was a thirty-ish woman with long scraggly blond hair. Though the night was hot and humid, she wore fingerless gloves on her hands, which were currently wrapped around an empty vodka bottle. A worn army-green rucksack rested on the bench beside her.

Colin watched the apparently homeless woman tap the lip of the open bottle against her chin in a quick, steady rhythm as her knees bobbed up and down in double time. Even from within the taxi, he could feel restless energy streaming off of her. Perhaps the vodka had temporarily tamed it, kept what looked like a manic episode from boiling over. For now.

He turned his face forward as the cab inched ahead, and he didn’t glance back. Though the woman looked nothing like his mother, he couldn’t help thinking of last Saturday, when in his panic he’d pictured Mum wandering the streets of North Glasgow, lost and alone.

“How’s the kilt now?” Andrew asked him. “You comfortable?”

Colin looked over at Andrew’s serene face, then down at his bare knees. The sight of those beautiful legs beneath his kilt snapped him back to the present. He lifted his chin and answered Andrew’s question with a brilliant smile.

Thisis my birthday now, and it’ll more than make up for last week’s shite one.

He reminded himself to keep a vigilant watch out for anyone who seemed to be following them or overly interested in Andrew for any reason besides the obvious (that he was gorgeous). Reggie the bodyguard had briefed Colin on what to look for as he’d driven them to the airport this morning. Andrew swore that he felt safer here than back in the UK—“No one in the States cares about the independence referendum”—and that any stalker obsessed enough to follow him to New York was too formidable to be stopped by a mere footballer, “strapping and intense though he may be” (Andrew’s words).

It unnerved Colin that Reggie still didn’t know about the FASCIST FAGGOT rock. If Andrew’s safety were compromised on his account, Colin would never forgive himself.

They finally reached the Tribeca district in Lower Manhattan, where the cab dropped them off at Andrew’s current favorite club. The bouncer greeted him like an old friend and unhooked the red velvet rope to let them by. As Andrew and the bouncer chatted for a moment outside the entrance, Colin looked over his shoulder at the enormous queue of men waiting to enter.

He expected glares and pelters from the resentful crowd, but instead he saw gazes of naked hunger sweeping down his body, lingering on the hem of his kilt.

“Hiya,” he said to them. “Sorry about, ye know…” He gestured to Andrew. “I dinnae mind queuing mysel’, but this yin’s not keen to wait for any’hing.”

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