Playing for Keeps (Glasgow Lads Book 2) Read Free Page B

pie was vaguely warm inside, though its crust had gone all cold and soggy. “I went to see about the charity match,” he said with a full mouth.
    “Oh?” Dad finally looked at him. Behind his gold-rimmed glasses, his eyes were bloodshot, cradled by dark semi-circles. “Did they say yes?”
    “The manager did, but the captain, he needs convincing. I give it a fifty-fifty chance.”
    His father waved his hand. “Och, you underestimate your charm. So was he cute?”
    “Dad…”
    “What? If you were straight and just met a new lass, I’d ask if she was cute.”
    It embarrassed John to discuss his social life with his parents, but he felt lucky to be accepted. Besides, he couldn’t hide his grin at the memory of that delicious footballer. “Aye, Fergus is cute. And an architect.”
    The ends of Dad’s thick gray mustache turned down. “Fergus what?”
    “Taylor.” John stuffed a pair of cold chips into his mouth, not needing to ask why the second name of someone as Irish-sounding as “Fergus” was important.
    His father nodded in approval at the English surname. “An architect, you say?” He gave a bitter chuckle. “Maybe he can build us a new house. This one’s too big now.”
    John’s heart sank. Was it only a year ago there were four people living here?
    “When you finish uni one day, it’ll be just me.” Dad shifted the newspaper aside, revealing a smooth wooden box. “An old man, tottering about alone in a three-bedroom terrace house.”
    “Dad, look at it this way—once I’m gone, you’ll be free to throw massive bashes. Loose women, the edgiest DJs, champagne fountains—this house’ll be Party Central.”
    “John—”
    “You could install a hot tub right there.” He pointed out the kitchen window to the weed-riddled rear garden. “Tear out Mum’s perennials. They’ve looked pure shite since she left.”
    “Son.” His father crossed his arms on the table in front of him, hunching his shoulders. “Have I told you lately how proud I am of you?”
    To John, the words sounded less like praise than a declaration of defeat. “You don’t need to say it.”
    “I do. Because it’s true.” Putting his head in his hands, Dad drew his fingertips back and forth over the top of his scalp, as if searching for the hair that had once grown there. “Whatever else you are, John, you’re not stupid. Not like your brother.”
    John took another bite of pie to stop himself replying. But he struggled to swallow the beef, his throat closing up in the rush of emotion.
    Dad thought Keith’s worst sin was getting caught, letting witnesses hear him shout anti-Catholic slurs as he pummeled that lad in the green-and-white scarf. Slurs their father had taught them:
    Tim.
    Paddy.
    Taig.
    Papist.
    Fenian.
    “Right.” John picked up his leftovers, the polystyrene container squeaking in his grip. “Need to change my clothes. Cannae breathe in this tie.”
    “Think I’ll do the same. Just one other thing?”
    John paused at the kitchen threshold, almost free. “Yeah?”
    “At the pub, the Brothers and I were talking about this year’s Orange Walk. The big one before the Twelfth.”
    John’s jaw tightened. Dad didn’t need to specify the month. Among hardcore Protestants, there was only one Twelfth—in July, commemorating the day in 1696 when William of Orange’s defeat of King James liberated the British Isles from Catholic rule. Some of John’s earliest memories were of the Glasgow Orange Walks, parades culminating on the Saturday before the Twelfth. Parades that saw counter-protests from Catholics and hand-wringing from progressives who wished the city would leave its sectarianism in the past where it belonged.
    John himself had marched in those parades for over a dozen years. With pride as a child. With shame as a teen.
    But this year would be different. At university he’d met too many Catholics— befriended too many Catholics—to stomach another daylong Protestant gloatfest. No matter how