Page 196 of Men in Shorts

“Nothing!” Brodie said, then huffed out a sigh. He wasn’t convincing anyone, least of all himself. “It’s just been a bit weird between us these last three months. We’ve been arguing ever since I extended my internship.”

John’s dark eyes widened. “Oh, no.” He looked at Fergus. “Did you know about this? Has Duncan mentioned them falling out?”

“We’ve not fallen out,” Brodie said. “Not exactly.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to fend off an oncoming stress headache. “I’d planned to surprise him tomorrow after work with dinner and a hotel—in other words, several hours alone to sort things between us. Being thrown together at a massive bonspiel will not help.”

“Sorry, I’d no idea,” John said, “though I wondered why you seemed so nervous about seeing him again.” He brightened. “Sometimes it’s better just to go with the flow rather than plan everything. Gives you less time to put pressure on yourself.”

“Talking of time.” Brodie checked the clock, then cursed. “I need to shower and shave if Duncan’s to be there. Why didn’t you wake me earlier?”

“You needed your rest for the curling,” John said. “Jet lag and all.”

“I’ve been home three days. The jet lag is gone.” Brodie crossed the kitchen, taking a last gulp of tea and spilling half of it down his shirt. “Mostly.” He poured the rest of the tea into the sink, then headed for the hallway.

“You’ll be late if you shave that beard off,” John called after him. “Besides, I bet Duncan will pure fancy it!”

Brodie hurried into the bathroom, shutting the door against John’s unsolicited advice.

So much for tomorrow’s perfect reunion. So much for time alone to discuss their feelings about Brodie’s unexpectedly long absence. Between John, the curling event, and Duncan’s sweet-but-overbearing parents, there’d be no peace or quiet in which to hash things out.

His reunion with Duncan, perfect or not, would come today.

* * *

Legs aren’t meantto bend like this, Duncan Harris thought as he slid out of the hack to throw his first curling stone of the day.

The moment he let go of the rock’s red handle, it was clear he’d thrown too hard. Again.

At the other end of the long, fifteen-foot-wide sheet, Mum stood in the “house,” a bullseye-looking area where Duncan’s stones were meant to stop but always seemed to sail on through.

“No!” she called to their team’s sweepers—Duncan’s father, plus Ellie, the manager of Harris’s Fine Interiors. Since sweeping made the stones travel farther and straighter, their services weren’t needed at the moment.

With a whooshing sigh, Duncan removed the Teflon slidey thing from under his left foot before standing up. He scanned the rest of the rink, where the six sheets—A through F—were lined up lengthways side by side, separated by thick blue lines painted on the ice. Each sheet was occupied by two four-player teams, plus volunteer coaches, which all added up to a shitload of yelling, not to mention the incessant roar of granite over ice.

Fittingly, his team were playing on Sheet F, as in Fuck this Fucking Sport.

“It’s for a good cause,” he muttered to himself. “It’s meant to be fun.”

He checked the clock. Quarter past ten. If Mum and Dad hadn’t badgered him into doing this charity event with them, he’d be en route to Greenock for the Warriors’ away match.

Scoring goals—nowthatwas fun. Being the most rubbish curler on a team that included his fifty-year-old parents? Humiliating.

Duncan headed back to the hack to join his coach, Luca, who’d twice competed in the national curling championships.

“I know it’s frustrating at the start,” Luca said as Duncan stepped up onto the golf-green, indoor/outdoor–carpeted catwalk behind the sheet. “Mind, you’ve had but one training session. By the end of today you’ll be miles better.”

“I keep overthrowing because it feels like I’m going so slowly.” Duncan tugged down his Santa hat to shield his ears against the rink’s frosty air. “I forget I’m on ice instead of dry land.”

“It’s a whole different physics.” Luca pointed at the lead curler for their opponents, We Four Kings, as he prepared to throw. “See how he’s orientated a wee bit to the left, in the direction his skip is indicating with his broom? That stone will travel straight for a while, but as it slows down, its spinning motion will carry it back to the right. That’s what puts the curl in curling.”

We Four Kings’ lead curler had the opposite problem to Duncan—he threw too softly. The sweepers started madly brushing the ice in front of the traveling stone, one of them losing his elf hat with the golden crown affixed to it.

“Where are you now, mate?”

Duncan turned to see John Burns pacing the carpet behind the adjacent sheet, holding his phone with one hand and plugging his ear with the other. His voice was even louder than usual, which was saying a lot. Like his teammates on Hard the Herald Angels Sing, John wore a sparkly gold headband with a wobbly silver halo attached.

“Brilliant. I’ll tell them.” John pocketed his phone and beckoned to Heather, the Warriors goalkeeper and Herald Angels coach. “He’s in the building now,” he told her. “We can wait to start.”

Heather nodded, then spied Duncan over John’s shoulder. “Good luck, Harris!”

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