Page 99 of Playing to Win

“Slowly, that’s how.” Andrew pinched Colin’s waist. “Don’t worry, I won’t drown you. I’m not a kelpie.”

Colin gave a nervous laugh. “Well, I’ve heard kelpies don’t look like kelpies until it’s too late. Then their heads turn into horses’ heads and—”

“Colin.” Andrew kissed his nose. “You don’t have to. I won’t say, ‘Oh, just trust me’ and pressure you into it, because if you panic, you could drown us both.”

Colin looked past Andrew’s shoulder, out to the middle of the loch. He imagined what it would feel like to float amid the moonlit waves, held by this man. Then he imagined his own fear surging forth, dragging them down into the darkness forever.

“Nor e’er of me one hapless thought renew,” Andrew recited in a low, sonorous voice. “While I lie welt’ring on the ozier’d shore, drown’d by the kelpie’s wrath, nor e’er shall aid thee more!”

Colin stared at Andrew, his entire face tingling at this sudden appearance of a Scottish accent. “What was that?”

“‘An Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands.’ William Collins.”

“More. I want to hear more.”

Andrew looked pleased and surprised. He furrowed his brow. “Okay, er—”

“Tell me on the way.” He wrapped his arms around Andrew’s neck and his legs around his waist. “Take us out.”

At first Colin kept his eyes on Andrew’s face, upon the beauty mark in the center of his left dimple. But then, as Andrew stopped walking and started swimming backward with long, waving strokes, Colin let his gaze travel over the water rippling by. Its blackness was dotted with a million drops of moonlight, shimmering like liquid stars on an inverted sky.

Andrew recited poetry as he swam, his tongue caressing each lilting syllable.

“To his faint eye the grim and grisly shape,

In all its terrors clad, shall wild appear.

Meantime, the wat'ry surge shall round him rise,

Pour'd sudden forth from ev'ry swelling source.”

Colin could feel Andrew’s legs beneath them, folding and unfolding with a power unknown to a land-dwelling footballer like himself.

”What now remains but tears and hopeless sighs?

His fear-shook limbs have lost their youthly force,

And down the waves he floats, a pale and breathless corse.”

The last line sent a chill down Colin’s back, a chill that had nothing to do with the water temperature. He rarely considered his own death, as it seemed so distant in space and time. But here in the murky, now-possibly-bottomless loch, mortality felt a mere breath away.

Andrew stopped swimming. “That’s far enough,” he said in his usual accent.

“Far enough for what?”

“There’s a loon colony at that end of the loch. It’s easier to hear them out here.”

To Colin’s right, the loch showed itself to be crescent-shaped rather than round. It bent around its forested shores farther than he could see.

They waited, Andrew treading water with what seemed like little effort. Colin tried not to shiver in his embrace.

Then came a low moan that spiked higher, an eerie, unearthly sound that made every damp hair on Colin’s arms stand erect.

The call repeated, cracking at the end of the sustained note.

“That’s the loneliest sound I’ve ever heard,” Colin whispered. “What’s it mean?”

“It’s a pair wail.” Andrew blinked, shedding drops of loch water from his long lashes. “It means they’re searching for each other.”

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