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Ted had to face facts: it was now fully three weeks after the game in Sheffield, after the ice storm, and Trent Crimm had officially disappeared.
He hadn’t come to this conclusion hastily, either. He probably called Trent about 15 times and left him five voicemails, ten texts, three emails. He asked around, everybody from Higgins to Trent’s old chums in the press room. No one had seen him. Considering that Trent was an independent reporter writing a book on spec, he didn’t report to anyone, and so he’d apparently told no one where he’d gone.
Ted had a sinking feeling that somehow, the reporter’s disappearance was all his fault. “Do you think I should go to his house and see if he’s there?” He asked Keeley as they sat around a bunch of empty dishes at Ola’s one night with Rebecca, Sam, Beard, and Jane.
Keeley scrunched up her pretty face, thinking. “I dunno, Ted. Trent’s a private guy. I think you’d know if he’d want to be found.”
Ted thought he maybe saw her exchange a lickety-split glance with Rebecca, but he couldn’t be sure. “You’re right, K-dog,” he sighed. “I just hope he’s okay.”
“Is there any reason to suspect that he wouldn’t be?” Rebecca asked, subtly shifting her shoulder against Sam’s. “What happened in Sheffield, precisely?”
Ted snorted, and his face probably went red as a stoplight. “Honestly,” he said, “I haven’t got the foggiest little idea.”
~~~
What had happened, to start with, was that Ted had missed the team bus.
He was at Shannon’s bake sale, buying every last rice crispy treat in sight because he hadn’t had one in about two whole years. (Who told Shannon about rice crispy treats, anyway?) “Thanks for supporting the Robotics Club, Coach Ted!” She’d said, and he’d looked up from his horde of marshmallow treats and said, “Oh, right, you’re welcome.”
The consequences were that when he arrived at Nelson Road, the bus had gone, and he had multiple missed calls from Beard. Also, one text from Rebecca, which just said: “It’s not like you to be late for a match, Ted. Are you alright?”
Was he alright? He stood there in the car park for a moment and thought about it. He felt the creeping approach of his late forties in the ache between his shoulder blades (not to mention the way the marshmallows sat in his stomach). He was probably drinking a bit too much.
He hadn’t seen Henry in six months, and he was still getting over the idea that his ex-wife was dating their marriage counselor. He didn’t… it wasn’t that he wanted Michelle back anymore. He’d worked through a lot of that with Dr. Sharon. But still, the knowledge that she was moving on with someone, someone who could drive Henry to school and buy him his favorite dinners, rankled more than a bit.
He worried that the club’s success had more to do with Zava than it did with team mentality, or with cooperation, or with him.
He sometimes got a shooting pain in one thumb, so intense it took his breath away, that then quickly subsided. Was that something?
Barring two satisfying but emotionally empty encounters with the lovely Sassy, he hadn’t had sex in four years.
So maybe “are you alright?” was not particularly the question he wanted to be answering right now.
More like, “How are you going to get to Sheffield on short notice?”
He was standing in the copywriter pondering these questions when Trent Crimm came out of the office and began walking to his car. “Ted?” He said, surprised. “Oughtn’t you to be on the bus?”
“I oughta be doing a lot of things. Hi, Trent. I missed the bus. I don’t suppose I could hitch a ride with you?”
Trent’s eyebrows went up, his head to the side, in one of his signature mild expressions of interest. Ted had been seeing Trent a lot lately, what with him underfoot in the locker room. He was usually in his uniform of band T-shirt, blazer, and jeans, with tennis shoes and glasses completing the outfit. His hair just got taller and more impressive, Ted thought, but maybe he was just noticing it more, outside the glaring lights and pressure of the press room. Trent was a kinder, quieter presence in the office than Ted would have expected. He was a far cry from the is this a fucking joke? Trent Crimm that Ted had first met.
The other day, Ted had overheard him asking Keeley about her business. He was offering to ask around for some journalist friends to highlight KJPR in their publications, which made Keeley squeal with joy. And well, Ted could get behind just about anything that made Keeley happy like that, especially with the way things were with her and Roy.
However, Ted hadn’t had a chance to catch up with Trent, post panic attack exposé, post The Independent. They were rarely alone together in the office, and their few conversations tended to be interrupted by Beard, Roy, a player, or calls regarding each of their children. That was fine, but Ted thought that he wouldn’t mind getting to know Trent a little better.
“Well?” Ted prompted when the man didn’t answer.
“Of course,” Trent said affably, mostly focused on affixing his glasses to the front of his shirt. The two of them made their way over to his stylish little Mercedes. “I’m sure you’ll keep me awake a sight better than Danny Robbins’ preposterous ghost podcast.”
Ted swung his duffle bag into the backseat and got in. “Why do you listen to it if you think it’s preposterous?”
Trent thought about this for a minute. “That’s a good question,” he said at last, backing out of his parking space. “I think I’ve always been drawn to things I also find preposterous. It must be a personality flaw.”
“We should keep this vocab-word good vibes goin’,” Ted mused. “With so many preposterous things around, you must be downright flummoxed.”
Trent smiled faintly, but his eyes were on the road. “I suppose I am, a good deal of the time.”
“I know one thing that could make you absolutely…” He groped for the word. “Absolutely nonplussed!” He grabbed his phone and navigated to his music app.
“I’m impressed with the use of the word and a little trepidatious about what could be coming next,” Trent said in his driest voice.
The dulcet tones of Journey’s “Any Way You Want It” blasted through Trent’s excellent sound system, and he groaned. “I’ll say it right now, if it’s going to be classic rock, it has to be made in Manchester, not San Francisco. San Francisco is for… I don’t know, tourists and cable cars.”
“I only went there as a kid so my main memory is clam chowder in a bread bowl,” Ted said agreeably, but he turned the music down.
“What on earth—” Trent shuddered, but Ted got the impression he was trying not to smile. “Never mind, it’s a self explanatory concept, we don’t need to get into it.”
They squabbled about music for another half an hour, finally finding a happy medium in a mix of Bowie and Prince.
As they drove, however, the weather worsened. Earlier, a light snow had been forecasted, but the fluffy flakes were turning to sleet. Ted checked his phone and saw 60% chance of freezing rain, something he was familiar about from his life in Kansas. They didn’t speak about the weather for a long time, as if discussing it would make it worse, but Ted saw Trent’s hands tighten on the wheel.
“You gettin’ worried about the roads?” Ted asked finally.
“I’m a good driver,” Trent said, “but yes, if the sleet gets any worse…”
“Then we’ll be slip-sliding all the way to Sheffield and right onto the pitch. I know.” Ted tried to grab for the ceiling handle, but there wasn’t one. He settled for placing his elbow on the ridge below the window rather emphatically.
“If I were on my own, I’d probably turn around,” Trent said, voice absent as he focused on the road. “Or at least stop for the night. But the show can’t go on without the gaffer, I suppose.”
“Well that doesn’t matter if we’re driving on dangerous roads. Beard and Roy would be just about fine on their own, I’m sure.”
Trent huffed. “Must you be so good and self-effacing all the time?”
“Sorry.”
“Apology accepted.” They fell quiet again as Trent focused on the road. Ted felt little of the anxiety that he was sure he should be feeling. He was nervous about the roads becoming slick, of course, but at the thought of his lateness, the team playing without him, decisions to make about the journey… Much of his calculating brain, which often worked so feverishly, felt weirdly quiet. He wasn’t sure he liked it. He tried to reach for his impulse to coach, to pep talk and plan, but instead he just said, “Let me know if you want me to drive a ways.”
Trent bit his lip, considering. A shock of gray-streaked dark hair had fallen over one eye, but he seemed too nervous to take a hand off the wheel to tuck it back. It brushed over his cheek and eyebrow, getting in his way, and Ted had the strange, absentminded urge to tuck it back for him, as if that was something any obliging passenger would do. He suppressed it, obviously.
Trent gave off a strong message of Do Not Touch. He was prickly, even if he was nice about it. He’d been working at Nelson Road for six weeks, visiting it for Ted’s whole two years and change, but Ted hardly knew anything about him besides the existence of a young daughter, Charlie. Once Zoreaux had bumped into him while they tried to go through the door to the locker room, his side clipping Trent’s shoulder, and Ted had seen Trent flinch. He hadn’t quite forgotten about it.
So no, he wasn’t going to touch Trent’s hair for him, even if it was in the way.
After a long silence, Trent said, “We’re only an hour away now, but the visibility is getting worse.”
They pulled over and used a single bar of service to check their surroundings. They were in a remote part of the world, a lonely stretch of highway between northern cities. In another 30 miles, they’d be in Nottingham, but the rain was thick and freezing now. Ted called Beard and told him they’d have to chance the rest of the drive in the morning, once the sun was up and the roads had been thoroughly salted.
“I could probably push through it if there’s really no place to stay,” Trent said tentatively. Ted could tell the idea didn’t appeal to him.
“Don’t you worry your excellently coiffed head about it, Trent. It wouldn’t be safe. Better late for the match than dead in a ditch.”
Trent smiled wryly. “Is that one Samuel Johnson?”
“That one’s Theodore Lasso the first, although he wouldn’t call anything a match unless you could light a fire with it.”
Trent’s smile turned into a helpless chuckle, so breathless that he bowed his head over the steering wheel and laughed to himself. It ended with a long sigh, one Ted couldn’t quite interpret. “Very well then, Ted Lasso Junior,” he said, “Where on earth are we going to stay?”
The answer to that question, grimly enough, ended up being the only pub within a safe driving radius of their current location. When they arrived at The Seven Rams Public House and Inn, a few miles off the highway, it was covered in yellowed maps and rugby jerseys and penny farthings mounted to the wall. The locals were drinking in droves down in the restaurant, seemingly unconcerned about the raging storm inside.
And they only had one room available.
Ted glanced sideways at Trent, feeling strangely shy. “You’re sure?” He asked the clerk. “I really don’t mind if there’s a little alcove for me to tuck into. Or maybe the loft above a barn?” He could imagine the place in more detail, could imagine spinning a silly little story about a cozy hayloft with sheep getting friendly and munching on grains below, but he didn’t have the energy right now. This dimly lit pub, full of unfriendly British faces, loud rugby matches on the TV, and the smell of meat pie was much further from home than Richmond was. He was a stranger in a strange land, and he was inconveniencing Trent, Beard, Roy, the team, everybody.
“I don’t know what kind of place you think this is, sir, but we ain’t got a barn,” said the manager, a woman in her sixties wearing a hoodie that said BARCELONA on it. She had a pencil behind her ear and the face of a person who dealt with idiots all day long.
“It’s perfectly fine,” Trent said, putting up one hand to quiet Ted. “We’re simply grateful to you for getting us the room at all. It does have two beds, doesn’t it?”
The manager frowned. “No, of course not. This isn’t some standard big city hotel, fellas. You got that, right? This room is small as it is. Got eaves in it, you’re likely to hit your head if you’re not careful.” Under her breath she added, “Not sure where you think you are.”
Trent turned to look at Ted, a question in his eyes. He looked about as tired at Ted felt; with bags under his eyes and his famous hair uncharacteristically limp. He had the familiar frowning look between his brows that suggested a headache. And no wonder: he’d been driving in dangerous conditions for hours.
“I’ll sleep on the floor,” Ted said.
Trent scowled at him for a moment, a reaction that Ted couldn’t interpret. “What?” Ted asked.
“We’ll take the room, and whatever extra pillows and blankets you have,” Trent said to the manager. “You aren’t, by some miracle of God, still serving dinner, are you?”
In the first good news of the day, they were. Within fifteen minutes, Ted and Trent were sitting in a corner of the pub next to the fire with a big tankard of brown ale for each of them. The low lighting cast creepy Game of Thrones-style shadows over everything, including Trent’s face. He seemed cheered by the ale, however.
They both began speaking at once. Trent said, “Did you get in touch with the coaching staff?”
Ted said, “This isn’t the first time we’ve had dinner together.”
The disparity was more than a little embarrassing. “Um, you go,” Ted said. “What? Yes, I did. If the roads are better in the morning, we’re golden, if they’re not, we’re trapped in this ice rink and Rebecca Welton skins me like a monkey when we get back to Richmond.”
Trent smiled at him. “There are very few cultures that skin monkeys. Almost none, in fact.” He sipped his beer, eyes keen on Ted: not quite skeptical, not quite fond.
Ted thought on this. “How ‘bout, she’ll skin me like a human man who missed the bus to an important match?”
“That one I can imagine.” A teenaged waitress brought their food, which was, for some reason, delicious: pork loin and glazed carrots and tiny boiled potatoes, drowned in parsley. They ate quietly for several minutes, the silence peaceful and satisfied. Once Ted glanced up and caught Trent looking at him; when they made eye contact, Trent looked hastily back to his plate. Ted was confused. If Trent wanted to ask him something, he’d never shied away from doing so before. He couldn’t think of any other reason why the man would be studying him so intently while they both chowed down.
He decided to break the silence. “Where is Miss Charlie tonight?”
Trent looked up, a little disarmed. “With her father, as it happens.”
Ted was perplexed for a minute. “Her—father—.”
Trent was looking at him as if he beggared belief. Ted wished he was a little less familiar with that look being directed at him. “Yes, Ted,” Trent said, tired.
“Oh?” Ted said, still confused, but it was beginning to dawn on him when Trent spoke again, his voice dry and detached now.
“It’s just like that riddle about the car accident and the surgeon. ‘I can’t operate on this man, he’s my son! Although in this case, Charlie has two fathers. The answer to this, like so many riddles, is homosexuality.”
“I got there, yeah.” Ted cleared his throat. He felt awful. Far more awful than a simple misunderstanding would suggest. “It was more the way you phrased it—not that I’m blaming you! I’m sorry, Trent. I just didn’t know.”
Trent smiled, but he seemed a little more prickly than usual, narrow shoulders drawn up tight, stabbing at carrots with his fork. “Yes, yes, love wins and all that. It’s fine. I know you’re an open-minded person, Ted, it’s fine.”
“If I had any more feet in my mouth I’d have to open a Lady Foot Locker,” he said.
Trent laughed softly, shaking his head. His shoulders relaxed, just a fraction. “I am able to determine the difference between homophobia and mild cluelessness, I’m not a child. Calm down.” He delicately cut a piece of meat and ate it slowly, then swallowed. “I suppose, then, that I don’t need to offer to sleep on the floor myself, or get back on the road to find a place with two rooms available.” He glanced up, reading Ted’s face, with an expression that seemed to refuse to show nerves.
It made something in Ted’s stomach curdle. “Trent,” he said fervently, “of course not.”
Trent sniffed and straightened his back, as if casting off the concern entirely. “I figured as much. We don’t need to worry about it.”
Ted couldn’t let it go. “Has anybody at Nelson Road made you feel like—”
“No no no, not at all. Not in your tenure.” He flashed Ted a smile that said, rather apologetically: Long story. “So yes, Charlie is with her father. I’m sure I will find her hopped up on sugar and talking manically about slime influencers when I return, but that simply can’t be helped.”
Ted groaned. “I know what you mean. Every time I see Henry now, he’s talking about House MD.”
A loud clap of laughter emerged from Trent’s mouth before he could help it, it seemed, and he clamped his hand over it, continuing to giggle. “House MD?” He gasped. “That show from the early 2000s where Hugh Laurie plays American?”
Ted was laughing too, and he didn’t know why. Generally he got sad when he thought about Henry developing odd interests he didn’t know anything about, but suddenly the whole thing was ridiculous. “Yeah, I think so? Medical drama? Michelle musta put it on because she thought it’d be okay for kids, but he’s totally obsessed now. The other day on FaceTime he spent ten minutes talking about rare variations on Lupus.”
Trent was smiling broadly now, his dinner forgotten. “Well,” he said, “Maybe he’ll be a doctor.”
“Right now he claims it’s soccer player or nothing, but we’ll see how long that lasts.” As it always did when Ted thought about Henry for more than ten seconds, his chest hurt awfully.
Trent eyed him over his beer as he took a sip. “Did you ever play, as a kid?”
“No, I never did. It was flag football for me, then tackle. As you know. Did you play soccer? Football, I mean?”
Trent smiled. He pushed his empty plate away from him and propped both elbows on the tabletop, his chin in one hand. The firelight made his eyes look gold-then-dark-then-gold. “I did play football, as a matter of fact,” he said. “And here we are.”
~~~
After dinner they stumbled up the stairs with their overnight bags—stumbled not because they were drunk, but because the stairs were so narrow and crooked. The room, when Trent unlocked it with a comical iron skeleton key, was indeed small. In fact, it was so small that the double bed barely fit. It was pushed up against the far wall, which was adorned with a big wavy-paned window. On the other side of the bed was a tiny bedside table and about ten square feet of space for them to deposit their belongings and themselves. There was absolutely no space for anyone to sleep on the floor. Just closing the door put them close enough to kiss.
On top of that, the room was frigid. The wind battered the antique window, clearly seeping through the cracks. They could nearly see their breath. Trent and Ted looked at each other, not speaking. Ted went over to the toy-sized radiator and hovered his hand over it, then touched it. It was cold to the touch.
“Must be broken. This really is about the hayloft I was asking about. Got about the same level of insulation.”
Trent crossed his arms tightly over his chest, already looking chilled.
Something about seeing him so uncomfortable, getting the sense that it was somehow his fault, made Ted more anxious than he should have been. “Will you be okay for the night? I don’t see that we have any choice, really, but there’s no point to freezing to death.”
Trent smiled absently, taking off his glasses to survey the room properly. “I doubt we’ll freeze to death. We might get away with a little light frostbite on the toes.”
Ted swallowed. “I guess—I guess sharing a bed, would be the smart thing to do anyway… Sharing body heat, I mean. But if you don’t—”
Trent sighed, as if this was an argument they’d already been having for several hours, and he was tired of it. “It’s fine, Ted. We’ll make it work. I don’t see a conversation with the proprietor turning up a fixed radiator or a big two-bed suite, do you?”
“I’m afraid I do not.”
“Then this is our best option.” Trent yawned, seemed to contemplate stretching his arms over his head, and realized this was infeasible. He looked at Ted, and then his gaze skittered away, not for the first time that night. “Take turns in the bathroom?”
“I think if we wanted to share, I’d hav to give you a piggyback,” Ted said, pretty automatically, but he regretted it when Trent blinked hard and looked at the floor. It was pretty clear that Trent wasn’t cool with casual touch. He was probably dreading getting in bed with Ted, who probably smelled like lunch and tossed and turned in his sleep. He didn’t know why the idea of being a bad bed partner to Trent Crimm bothered him so much.
“You go first,” he said. “I’ll just get changed out here.”
Trent nodded, his eyes somewhere on the ceiling.
They got ready for bed in peaceful, slightly awkward silence. Ted texted Henry, who was just getting out of school, and he thought he heard Trent on the phone with Charlie in the bathroom. Through the garbling powers of the thick masonry wall and the shower spray, he was saying something that sounded like, “Sweet dreams, alright?”
For a moment Ted felt a black envy, that Trent was away from his kid for only one night, and at the same time a great, spreading tenderness, to hear the ironic Trent Crimm speak so softly to his daughter. It was way too many feelings to be having so close to bedtime.
That only got worse when Trent emerged in his pajamas: a thin, worn T-shirt advertising a 2006 journalism conference in Birmingham that hung loosely on his shoulders, and a pair of joggers. He had tied his hair back in a little bun, which Trent thought looked rather fetching on him, to be honest. He had his arms crossed against the cold, and he put on his discarded blazer over the T-shirt. “Would I have known, I would have worn the company pajamas,” he said dryly, “silk matching set.”
“Oh you didn’t bring yours?” Ted smiled as he got up.
When he came back from the bathroom, Trent was in the far corner of the bed, covers pulled up over his ears.
“How’s the water?” Ted asked.
Trent’s voice, when he answered, was small and chilly-sounding. “The draft is honestly pretty impressive,” he said through chattering teeth. “There might be a small icicle on the inside of the window.”
Ted grimaced. “Balmy.” He hesitated with his hand on the covers. “You should go on the other side, further from the window.”
With Trent’s hair pulled back, it was very easy to see the skeptical things his eyebrows did. Ted had to admit he was fond of them. His face was so expressive and yet gave so little away. “Are you particularly invested in a window seat? Closer view of the indoor icicle?”
“No, I just think…” Ted felt like his face was probably turning red, which it didn’t usually do. He was usually making all kinds of goofy jokes in front of big groups of people, but this felt different somehow. “I’m bigger, you know, so I won’t get as cold, and you’re… not as big, so the cold would bother you more, it stands to reason, so you should just let me go on the outside by the window.”
Trent frowned at him, as if he’d said something nasty. Maybe he had. Maybe you weren’t supposed to comment on other men’s bodies like that, in a way that had nothing to do with athletics or coaching. He wasn’t supposed to notice Trent’s slenderness or his shivering, but he had, so. Was he just supposed to keep quiet about it?
Trent said, “You have the gallantry of a big-jawed American film hero.”
His tone when saying it was such that Ted said, “Sorry.”
“Apology accepted.” He sat up in bed, keeping the blankets over him, and scooted toward the other side of the bed. “I refuse to get out in order to complete this maneuver. Bring that other blanket, too, this one’s fairly thin.”
Ted obeyed, then crawled into bed along the wall side. Trent pulled down the blankets so he could get in, teeth still chattering. The sheets were indeed cold to the touch, and Ted could feel the draft coming from gaps in the old window. For a second, Ted imagined being here with Michelle: giggling, making a fort under the blankets, wrapping his whole body around her smaller one to keep her warm. He felt a terrible wistfulness, but as he thought about it, he realized the feeling wasn’t about Michelle herself necessarily. Just the feeling of closeness.
He could feel Trent’s tension next to him, hear the slide of his clothes against the cold sheets. “Trent,” he whispered, because being in bed at night in an ice storm seemed to require whispering, “You know the international sanctions on friends cuddling under the blankets undergo total overhaul during ice storms, don’t you? It’s been recognized by the United Nations and they also did a real nice episode on it on Sesame Street.”
“Shut up,” Trent gritted out, and then he rolled his body toward Ted’s. Pressed his face into Ted’s shoulder. Ted could feel his shivering chin through the fabric of his sweatshirt. He wedged his freezing fingers between Ted’s shoulder blade and the mattress. “I am never returning to Nottinghamshire as long as I live,” Trent said. Ted could feel the warmth of his breath, smell his toothpaste. Don’t move, he thought. Don’t scare him away.
“Turn over,” Ted said, “I mean, feel free to kick me if I squash you, or anything, but in the meantime, I think it would be better to—”
“Oh, go ahead,” Trent said, sounding strangely angry, but Ted had to assume for his own sanity that the anger was for the situation, not for him.
Trent rolled onto his side, facing away from the window, and Ted did too. He was… spooning him, he guessed was the most accurate word, but only out of necessity. Getting their warm cores close together.
He pulled the blankets up to their ears. “You can put your feet on my shins if you want,” he said quietly. His mouth was about an inch from the little curl of Trent’s bun.
“I think our professional relationship has undergone enough strain today, don’t you?” Trent drawled, but he did press his back into Ted’s chest. “‘Go into football reporting,’ they said. ‘All the money and glamor are in sport journalism,’ they said.”
“Whoever they are, they steered you wrong,” Ted said. He could feel the heat start to built between their bodies, the tight, sore muscles in his back starting to loosen. Trent’s neck, or something about him, smelled like citrus. Ted thought: I haven’t laid down next to another person, not really, for four years. His eyelids were getting heavy.
“It must be an innumerable set of wrong turns that led me here, yes,” Trent said, but he sounded sleepy too. “Wake me if you’re too cold in the current position, Ted.”
“Mmhmm.” Ted knew that he wouldn’t wake Trent under any circumstances. He felt a vague, sleepy protectiveness that felt illicit for some reason, like he shouldn’t get to feel that way. Nobody needed his protection, anyway.
“Good night,” Trent mumbled, but Ted was asleep before he could answer.
~~~
For some reason, his sleep was deep and dreamless, like being turned off and then on again, hours later.
When he woke up, his face, toes, and fingers were freezing, and his back was sweaty. They’d rolled over during the night, Ted guessed, to face the window. He had his face mashed into a pillow that smelled like dusty potpourri. Trent was draped against his back, breath humid on the nape of his neck. Their legs were tangled; Ted could feel Trent’s sock foot against his calf where his sweatpants had ridden up. Trent’s hand was fisted in his sweatshirt.
Ted’s heart was in his throat, throbbing violently. It was too much, too close—he was terrified that Trent might wake up and pull away.
Trent must have sensed his wakefulness, though, because he stirred a tiny bit too, slow and sleepy. He shifted a little bit, his shin sliding against Ted’s calf, his hips coming forward, and—whoa—Ted felt a significant bulge pressing against his ass. Trent’s dick, hard and wanting, even through the layers of fabric, the cold morning.
Trent hmmed, a soft grunt of waking up, and his arm tightened over Ted’s waist. Then his mouth was against the back of Ted’s neck, a soft, sleepy kiss. Ted felt it like an electric shock, a hot sizzle of sensation. “You never said—” Trent mumbled, and then went absolutely rigid.
A second later Ted felt the unpleasant rush of cold as Trent jerked away from his body, taking the blankets with him, and nearly jumped out of bed. “I’m so sorry,” he gasped, forcing the words out. “Jesus Christ, I’m so—believe me, that was not intended or directed toward you, you have to know that—”
Ted put up his hand and interrupted. “Trent,” he said. “It’s fine. No, listen, do you hear me? It’s fine. I know you were thinking about somebody else. These things happen. Wouldn’t be the first time.”
Trent chuckled humorlessly. His blazer was drooping down his back, arms only partway in the sleeves. There was a pillow crease on his face—or probably a Ted’s-sweatshirt crease. His hair was mussed and frizzy on one side. The room was cold enough that Ted could see the poke of a tiny nipple through his worn T-shirt. He put his hands over his face and said, “I really am sorry. God, you’re aggravating.”
It hurts more than it should. Trent didn’t mean it, probably, he was embarrassed and half-asleep and frozen solid, and Ted was probably being annoying. It still hurt though. Ted couldn’t get out of bed. Was essentially trapped there, for two reasons. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean—”
Trent rubbed the heels of his hands over his eyes. “It’s fine,” he said. “Forget this ever happened.” He went into the bathroom and closed the door. Ted stayed in bed, just in case, until his own erection was totally gone.
~~~
They didn’t speak during breakfast or on the hour drive to the stadium, which was still nerve-wracking on the thick layer of re-melting, re-freezing ice. Trent was brittle, short, pulled in on himself. He’d done his hair, and it fell handsomely over his eye again. Ted wondered if he’d been finding it attractive all along.
He’d certainly picked the wrong time to realize that.
God, you’re aggravating.
He swallowed against the hurt of it. He’d spend the whole morning weathering the embarrassment of witnessing Trent’s embarrassment. The sudden whoa feeling of an erection against his body. The surge of heat, okay fine, the surge of blood, it had sent between his own legs. That was new. Somehow not entirely unexpected.
When they arrived at the stadium, they went in separate directions, and Ted didn’t see Trent again as he tried to summon the energy to coach a football game. He took the bus home, sitting next to Jamie Tartt, who was happy and stupid from a victory, and tried not to think about anything but the raucous silliness of the men in the bus with him.
~~~
But then three weeks went gone by and he hadn’t seen Trent since. He knew why. He wasn’t naive. It had occurred to him only after the first two weeks that Trent probably wouldn’t appreciate all the texts and calls if he was avoiding Ted. He should respect that. It’s just that he had an unrelenting itch—not just to make up, but to say, I miss you. The club is poorer when you’re not around.
He was thinking about this at Ola’s as he sat with Rebecca. Keeley had gone home, claiming an early morning meeting tomorrow, and Beard and Jane had left together with a deranged light in their eyes. As he circled back to the subject of Trent for the third time, Rebecca said, “Sam, why don’t you go and check on Simi in the kitchen?”
Sam smiled at her and nodded. He would probably follow her into the ocean if she asked, and Ted was happy for them. Rebecca hadn’t said anything to him about it, but it was clear by the way they so awkwardly orbited each other.
Ted suppressed a tiny surge of jealousy.
“Now, Ted,” Rebecca said, sipping from her glass of white wine. “You know Trent Crimm and I haven’t always gotten along in the past…”
He waited. “But?”
“Oh, that was all of it.” She straightened her elegant neck and sniffed dismissively. “I don’t trust him.”
He huffed. “Yeah, he dug himself into a pretty deep hole last season, I’ll admit that to you pretty quick. I do think he’s been digging himself out, though. Made up with Roy, gets along with Beard. I even heard him offering to help out Keeley a ways back.”
Rebecca looked up. Besides Rupert, Keeley Jones was her most pronounced weak spot. “Is that so?”
“He’s a really nice fella. I think he might hate me, now, it’s pointless.”
She smirked at him. “Ted, if you want me to weigh in on this little personnel problem you’re having, you are going to have to tell me what happened in Sheffield.”
He groaned. He wished there was more of that delicious crispy okra they made here, but Simi had closed up the kitchen ages ago. “Or out of Sheffield, more like. We never made it,” he said finally.
“Go on.”
“I was late, we were driving up together, the ice got too dangerous… You know all this. We found a pub to stay the night, and they only had one room, with one tiny bed in it.”
“Oh.” She sounded like she understood everything, down to the tiny sound Trent had made when he’d pressed his body along Ted’s back.
“What does that mean?”
She shook her head. She was awfully pretty. Not for the first time, Ted wished he could fall at least a little bit in love with her. “You tell me.”
He sat there, chewing over his words for a long minute. “Did you know that Trent is gay?”
She looked unimpressed. “I’ve met his ex-husband, so yes. Ted, he didn’t come onto you…?”
“No!” He insisted, rushing to answer, and then realized that that wasn’t strictly true. “And even if he had, he wouldn’t have been thinking about me.”
She sucked in a breath, studying him. She didn’t say what do you mean? Or any other confused question. She said, “Would you want him to be?”
He had been asking himself the same question for three weeks. It had been a mistake, Ted knew, that momentary embrace. A dream, or being sleepily confused for an ex. For a moment, though, it had felt real.
“I don’t know. I know I’ve been missing him around the clubhouse. I wish he’d come back.”
She considered this. “I assume you’ve tried to communicate that. Yes? Well. Ted, I’ll just say this: Trent Crimm has been through a painful divorce, and with a young child. He is one of very few gay people in this profession. He no longer works for The Independent, although he has no one to blame for that but himself. He has been through a lot. I may not be his biggest fan, but I will warn you: if you want to confront him about something, you should know the power you have, relative to his, and do it gently. Think about what it is you really want to say.”
Ted thought about lying next to Trent’s compact, shivering body in the bed, his scent of citrus, his rude comments and soft T-shirt. His stomach swooped. “I understand, boss,” he said.
But what did he really want to say?
In the end, he didn’t have to hound Trent to the end of the earth. He ran into him at the Crown and Anchor, Ted two beers deep, Trent just arriving. Trent was wearing a turtleneck under his blazer this time, his hair stylishly combed back, and Ted felt a thrum of attraction, simple like sugar on the tongue. His mind said: talk to him, and his body said, touch him.
Trent took one look at Ted and wheeled around for the exit, face blank.
Ted jumped off the barstool so fast it spun around. He got his footing and said, “Please, wait.” He followed—he would not calling it chasing—Trent outside, where, to his surprise, Trent was waiting for him.
It was much warmer than it had been three weeks ago in the north, and they couldn’t even see their breath. Still. Trent’s shoulders were tight when he said, “Ted, please, the irony of me running from you is not lost on me, so I’d rather be done with it.”
Ted tried not to think about the fact that he’d probably left his wallet on the bar. Mae would probably snatch it, help herself to his bill, and keep it safe. “Please just give me a minute, I promise I won’t bother you too much. I mean, I know I’m aggravating but I’ll try to keep the aggravating to a minimum.”
Trent’s face changed completely, every bit of resentment gone. He reached up to tuck his hair behind his ear and realized it was already combed back. “I regret saying that,” he said. “It’s not even true. I was—lashing out, I think. You have to understand.” He swallowed audibly. Ted couldn’t see his eyes in the dim light of the street lamps. “I have rarely been so embarrassed. I took it out on you, Ted, and I’m sorry. That’s all I can say.”
Ted waited for his knotted-up stomach to feel better, but it stayed right where it was. “If you don’t hate me,” he said, a little ragged, “then why have you been avoiding me like the Bubonic Plague itself for the last month?”
Trent muttered something to himself that sounded a little like “shit.” He sighed. “I cannot have this conversation on the street, in public. I hesitate to ask, but… if you really want to pull out my fingernails by the root like this, isn’t your flat in this neighborhood?”
Ted huffed. “It’s two blocks away, but I think I lended my fingernail pliers to my neighbor in exchange for a cup of sugar.”
They walked the two blocks in silence. Ted remembered Rebecca telling him, Think about what you really want to say. For the last few days he had been thinking about it, but he thought that whatever it was, it was shifting right now under his feet.
They went up to Ted’s flat, and Ted poured out two fingers of whiskey for each of them without asking. Trent took his gratefully, sipped it, and grimaced. “I forgot that I don’t care for whiskey,” he rasped.
The sound of his voice was really nice. Trent had a really nice voice. Ted was trying not to stare at the swoop of his hair, the intensity of his eyes. The place where his turtleneck met his tanned neck, which looked like it might be smooth.
Ted shook himself out of it. “I hope you know that I didn’t take it personally,” he said. “That whole day and night was a disaster and a half, and we were cuddlin’ just stay warm, and I know that you were confused and it wasn’t about me. So it’s really no biggie.”
Trent bowed his head and pinched the bridge of his nose between his forefinger and thumb. Then he said, “I take back my apology, because you are in fact the most aggravating man I have ever met in my entire life.”
Ted didn’t apologize this time. He threw his hands up in frustration. “What is it now? How was that wrong? I can’t ever get it right.”
Trent sighed, his chest in snug knitwear rising and falling. “Ted,” he said slowly, “I appreciate your kindness, but you are overlooking the obvious and most humiliating explanation for this whole situation, which is that it was about you, because I am terribly madly horribly attracted to you. I was mixed up. Half awake. Part dreaming.” His cheeks got strangely pink, and he ducked his head. “Dreaming, in the physiological sense, I mean. I took a liberty I should not have, and believe me, the humiliation will set me to rights for the rest of my life. I am trying to nurse that wound privately, so perhaps you can help me out with that by leaving me alone.”
Ted stared at him, open-mouthed. The last month of his life rearranged itself in his head. He thought of Trent wanting to rub up against him in a tiny inn bed. Trent dreaming about him. Trent’s rudeness being… not what it was. Ted was so honest a guy that he hadn’t understood. “I don’t want to leave you alone,” he blurted out.
Trent actually rolled his eyes. “I’ve gathered that, yes. I know it’s not your strong suit. But I’m—” he set his jaw. “I’m trying to set a boundary, for my own peace of mind, so you’ll have to respect it.”
Ted tried frantically to get his thoughts in order. He felt Rebecca Welton at the back of his brain demanding a certainty he didn’t feel. “No, it’s not—could I—” He almost fell forward, like a sophomore at another school’s prom, and basically knocked their faces together trying to kiss him.
Trent started to jump back, but Ted’s courage finally found him. He lifted one hand to the other man’s neck, holding him gently in place. The kiss settled and found its motion: a brush of lips against lips. After a moment, Trent kissed back. Oh no, Ted thought, feeling a hysterical giggle start in his chest, oh no, this was much, much too good. He was going to have to rearrange everything.
He licked at the seam of Trent’s mouth and felt him hitch a breath in through his nose in response, felt his mouth soften and open. The kiss got slow and hot and deep, and Ted’s arousal slithered down through his body and landed, vibrating, between his legs. He took a clumsy step forward, and the kiss broke.
When Trent spoke, his voice was ragged, barely audible. “What are you doing?”
Ted tried to say what he felt, without any artifice, without any jokes, “What I want to. Can’t stop thinking about it.”
“It’s not because you think that you need to—”
“Lordy, Trent, no.”
Trent sucked a slow, shuddering breath through his teeth. “I cannot be objective about this,” he said, almost to himself.
Ted wanted to touch his hair, so he did, just a soft sweep of fingers to feel the thickness of it. “I can’t claim I’ve, um, tried anything like this before.”
Trent shook his head. “No. I didn’t think so.”
“You didn’t think I’d want to.” Trent’s lack of reply seemed to suggest a confirmation. “And that’s why you were so…” Ted swiped his mouth over Trent’s neck, more a rub than a kiss, until his lips met the rolled edge of the turtleneck. “Hot Diggity. Trent.”
“What?” Trent snapped, but his voice was thready, his irritation was fake, and Ted could see that clearly now. He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t been able to see it before.
“Being in bed with—all that cuddling for warmth… It made me so happy. It made me feel so. When we woke up.” He swallowed, abruptly embarrassed. You never had to confess about a hard-on to women; they somehow always knew. “I was hard too, okay? I wanted you.”
Trent glared at him, but Ted could see him running calculations in his head: Ted’s honesty, Ted’s apparent straightness, the probability of attraction and the possibility of further humiliation. Then he closed his eyes, and an expression of bleakness came over his face. His tone was plaintive, even a little desperate. “Why are you telling me what I want to hear?”
Ted made a low, growly aggravated sound, the kind he almost never allowed himself. “Are you kidding me? Holy baloney, Trent, and you call me aggravating. Did you think—? Because it’s the truth, goddammit. I don’t go around claiming to have private shower feelings about my work colleagues for fun. Why on God’s green earth would I say that if it wasn’t true?”
Trent was staring at him now, his slender chest rising and falling. “Fine, then!” He spat. “Kiss me, then!”
“Fine!” Ted yelled, and they were on each other.
Their faces nearly collided, and Trent took control of the kiss, sucking furiously on his lower lip, his hands grabbing at Ted’s sides, his back, his ass.
Ted gasped into his mouth, kissed him back with teeth and tongue, thrusting his fingers into Trent’s gorgeous hair. He was instantly, madly hard. Their bodies crashed into the wall, Ted’s back up against it, and Ted held him there with his body. He pressed his hips forward so Trent could feel his cock hard in his pants. When he did, he felt Trent’s too, a now familiar sensation of firmness and warmth. He moaned.
Trent’s arms were draped on his shoulders like a romantic movie, his face tilted up to Ted’s. They were so close that Ted went cross-eyed looking back, but he did. Trent’s mouth was wet and kiss-swollen, his lips parted. Desire and disbelief warred in his face.
“Penny for your thoughts. Penny like a pence coin, I mean,” Ted whispered. He could hardly get the words out; his throat was dry and his lungs were fighting for air in the aftermath of the kiss.
Strangely, Trent chuckled. He ducked his head and pressed his forehead against Ted’s shoulder. His fingers were still tight in Ted’s sweater. “You make me crazy,” he said fiercely, quietly. “I can’t stop thinking about you. I want your head on a pike.”
Ted had been paying attention, and now he understood what such harsh words meant from Trent Crimm’s mouth. “Waking up with you is the happiest I’ve been in this silly country. Maybe longer,” he said, and kissed him again. Captured his mouth for a long, deep kiss, the kind that always works better than words.