Page 80 of Playing the Field
‘It’s not a problem. I won’t invite you in though, if that’s okay. It’s the first time I’ve seen my boyfriend as an openly gay man, and Mum and Dad are away so we’ve been celebrating rather heavily.’
‘You can spare me the details. Just send Ben a text, will you? He thought you might have stopped answering calls because you were being hounded by the press.’
‘We’ve just been a bit busy, that’s all, but I promise I’ll call him back later.’
I think he’s about to head back inside, but then he pauses and says, ‘I did it for you as well, you know.’
A frown creases my brow. ‘What do you mean?’
‘All this stuff with Georgina, it’s my fault it had to happen. But Ben won’t need to keep it up now everyone can see him for who he really is.’
‘Oh, Bailey. You didn’t have to do that.’
‘Didn’t have to, but I wanted to. Seeing how miserable you both were got me thinking about how I’d feel if I were in either of your shoes. It would break my heart if I was forced apart from Jasper. He makes me happy every single day. He’s shown me how amazing it feels to be in love. I want you and Ben to be able to have that again.’
I look down, too choked up to speak.
‘Just talk to him, will you?’ he says. ‘If you’ve got even the slightest chance at happiness, it would be such a shame to waste it.’
I tell him I’ll give it some thought as I turn away.
His words don’t stop swirling round my head on the drive back to Dad’s. Could I get past the hurt of the last few weeks and start over with Ben if he was no longer with Georgina? Or are we too detached now? Is it simply too late? What I conclude is that while I do want to speak to Ben to let him know his brother is fine– because I’d be willing to bet Bailey will be too distracted to do it himself for a while yet– I need more time to work out exactly how I feel about the prospect of a reconciliation before I’m ready for a more emotional conversation.
Ben appears to have other ideas, though. ‘I’ve finished with Georgie,’ he blurts out straight after thanking me for looking in on Bailey.
It sends a shiver right through me. ‘Already?’ It’s like he could read his brother’s mind.
‘I didn’t want to mislead her for another minute,’ he says. ‘You know how much I hated the dishonesty.’
‘Did she take it okay?’ I don’t know why I feel the need to check.
‘She was just a bit worried about how it would make her look. But I told her she can frame it however she likes. I’m not concerned if people think it was her who ended it.’
I listen as he takes a deep breath, then he asks the one question I think I’m craving and dreading in equal measure. ‘So do you think there’s any chance you and I could get back together?’ When I don’t answer immediately, he adds, ‘I know some crappy things have happened, but I miss you, Lily. I miss our banter. I don’t want us to not be in each other’s lives.’
But still I hesitate, because as much as it’s killed me, I’ve spent days trying to convince myself I’m better off out of this. And while I might once have wished things could be different, can I honestly say being with Ben would make me happy now I have a clearer picture of what our future would look like? Occasional days snatched together when our schedules align, a few weeks of quality time in the summer, but having to survive with just video calls the rest of the time. Would that ever feel like enough?
‘Is that a no?’ he asks when I’ve been silent for too long.
I close my eyes and sigh. ‘You are, hands down, the most amazing guy I’ve ever met, Ben. Your sense of humour, your kindness...’ I laugh softly before I add, ‘Your body. But we can’t get away from the one thing that’s always going to stop this from being perfect– the distance. So we’ve got to be realistic, no matter how much it hurts. If you were here, it would be a different story, but I just don’t know that it could ever work while you’re up in Millford.’
‘I don’t think we should write it off before we’ve properly tried,’ he says. ‘We were so determined to keep it going before Georgina became an issue. I still believe we can make a go of it, especially now we won’t have to hide it.’
The reminder of how optimistic we both were before he left brings a tear to my eye. It seems impossible that we could get so quickly from there to here, but I’m still not sure there’s anything he can say that will change my mind.
‘Can we at least keep the conversation open?’ he asks. ‘Maybe talk about it again when everything’s had a chance to settle down?’
And I agree that’s the best way to leave things for now, because it wouldn’t be so hard to let him go if a small part of me didn’t still wish things could be like they were before.
44
I try not to spend all my time thinking about him after that. I need to give myself the space to work out if I feel better off without him. Luckily, there’s plenty to keep my mind occupied– there’s all the Crawford paperwork to keep on top of, I’m with the team on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, and I hang out with Phoebs on the nights when she’s not seeing Craig.
I still watchTop Goalsthough, to see how he’s doing. He scores a goal just three minutes into his second game and another the week after. I’m pleased for him. What better way to show the Millford fans he’s back and he means business.
Crawford United, meanwhile, lose their next home game against Portleigh and suffer yet another defeat when they face Southmoor away, leaving us goal-less now with six matches played. We do our best to keep everyone believing our time will come. It has to, we’ve worked too hard to watch our dream slip away.
In a bid to give the team an extra boost, I finally get round to running the competition Dad, Cassie and I discussed a few weeks ago, asking our fans to come up with a Crawford team song. And the three of us have a giggle-filled night with Bob, Marge, Barbour and his wife, taking it in turns to try and sing the entries that have been submitted on our website. It confirms what I suspected all along– that football lyrics are a lot harder to write than you might think. Why else would people still be singing the anthem from the 1996 Euros?
