Page 14 of Be My Endgame

Lee didn’t look any more enlightened. “I did?”

“Yeah, you—” Alex cut himself off and shook his head. If Lee either honestly didn’t get it or insisted on faking ignorance, this wasn’t a constructive direction to pursue, so, moving on. “Never mind. What was that undereducated pleb thing all about?”

Lee leaned forward, frowning, and seemed about to respond. Then he abruptly closed his mouth again.

“What?” Alex said after a couple of seconds had passed.

“Just reassessing. Give me a sec.” Lee’s attention didn’t waver from Alex, and Alex forced himself not to look away. He wasn’t eighteen anymore. “So,” Lee said slowly. “After I called you pretty boy—when you were all ‘oh, screw you, I had my Premier League debut at eighteen and you were nineteen when you had yours, and also, unlikesomepeople, I take my A levels seriously’—”

“I said that?” Alex asked.

“Sure did.” Lee raised his brows. “Except now I think it wasn’t actually personal. Or it was, but not… You reacted to what you thought was an insult. It was ‘I work hard for stuff’ and not ‘I’m better than you, so fuck off.’”

“I—what?” That was rather a lot. “Why would I…You thought I was reacting like that to a joke because… I don’t know. I had no sense of humour? That doesn’t even makesense.” Alex shook his head. “I mean, no one reacts like that to a joke.”

A small smirk twisted Lee’s mouth. “That’s what I thought at the time.”

Nope, still didn’t make sense.

Alex sat up a little, spreading his hands. “Come on, you must have realised that I didn’t think you were joking.”

Lee’s gaze slid to the England flag the hotel people had put up above the door to the bathroom, a nice effort given that most of the staff would be cheering for their home country. Good thing that England and Spain were in different groups. “I probably should have,” Lee admitted, much to Alex’s surprise. “Would have, I guess, if not for—” He cut Alex a sharp look. “I’m a bit sensitive about not doing all that well in school, only just managed to finish my A levels. So.”

What was it Jeff had hinted at—Lee coming from a tough family background? The way Lee held himself suggested he expected Alex to jump at the chance to get a jab in, and Alex considered it for all of a second. It wasn’t the point of this conversation, though, and maybe there was some common ground to be found between them yet.

“Well, in all honesty…” Alex leaned back on his hands. “It wasn’t some deep intellectual curiosity that had me acing mine. Quite simply, if I hadn’t, my parents would have put an end to my unfortunate interest in football faster than you can say ‘FIFA is a mafia’.”

“Well, maybe they were right to push you on the education front.” There was a weird tinge to Lee’s voice. “Shows they care, right?”

Alex would have framed it more in the context of asset management, but potato, potahto. “Uh,” he said carefully. “Sure.”

Lee’s eyes narrowed. “What?”

“My parents aren’t exactly the caring types.” Alex hadn’t planned to say that, but then, it wasn’t a secret he guarded close to his chest either. Clearly it wasn’t something Lee had expected because he took a moment to respond.

“They might get along with my mum.”

Ha. “Only if your mum can easily recite her place in the line of succession.”

“Astronomically far away wouldn’t cut it, I suppose?” A smile tugged at the corners of Lee’s mouth, and Alex let his own lips curve upwards.

“I’m afraid not.”

They weresmilingat each other.

It was weird. And there was still the small matter of why Lee had been a bit of a prick almost from the moment they’d met, hardly responding to Alex’s attempts at starting conversations when Alex had tried so hard to fit in as a new arrival to the Under 21s. Surely that hadn’t been all in Alex’s mind? Especially not Lee suddenly shutting down, which had come right after Alex had mentioned that his promotion to Liverpool’s first team hadn’t stopped his father from insisting on an arrangement that would allow Alex to finish his A levels at Harrow School.

Honestly, Lee’s claim that he’d been kidding about the pretty boy thing still didn’t sit entirely right with Alex. A joke? Hard to reconcile that claim with Lee’s cool stance towards Alex from the moment they’d met. Oh, and also,also, Alex would very much like Lee to acknowledge that the penalty call at their last match against each other could have gone either way.

But okay, Alex could park all that until further notice. He and Lee didn’t need to become great mates—Alex would happily settle for peaceful coexistence.

If that required putting aside old grievances? Well, fine. Alex could do that.

For the team.

Lee didn’tfleethe room. He just happened to feel a tad antsy after being cooped up for the duration of the trip, and hitting the gym was the ideal remedy. It seemed like Alex agreed because he left right after Lee got back, giving Lee a chance to unpack without having to navigate their forced proximity.

How was he supposed to act around Alex now? In a way, it had been easy when he’d been able to simply dismiss Alex as a homophobic snob. This, now, was unfamiliar territory, and while it was better than rooming with a bigot, Lee liked things to be predictable.

---