Twelve Dates of Christmas by Marina Ford

Author:Marina Ford [Ford, Marina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: JMS Books LLC
Published: 2018-11-24T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 5: December 25th

I don’t register Owen almost at all. He seems nice, I think. He says he’s from Birmingham originally. We drink coffee, and he tells me about the best gay club in London, which I will never go to. When we say goodbye, I start walking away and five minutes later don’t remember whether I promised to call, and whether we made another date.

It’s 4:00 P.M., and I realise that what I have been thinking about for the past hour is the route from my current location to Phoenix Garden. Not directly. I go to a few stores first. I’m nervous about it. There’s a queasy feeling in my stomach—that’s how I know I’m doing something stupid that will probably bite me in the ass later. I don’t care, I do it anyway. It’s Christmas, after all.

When I arrive at Phoenix Garden, the waiters are already in their sports clothes. The Circus people are in black, the Da Mario ones are in clothes of various colors, other than black. The field looks muddy even before they started playing. The goal posts are marked by two ropes connecting two pairs of trees on the opposite sides of the lawn. I see Tom with his hands on his hips talking to some girl, who is bouncing the ball like it’s a basketball. I sit down on a bench and feel conspicuous. Maybe Tom forgot he invited me?

But when he turns around, he notices me, and comes over in a jog.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hi.”

“How was your date?” he asks. I told him about it this morning, when he came to the kitchen as I was trying to connect with Michelle.

“It was okay,” I shrug.

“Not shitty?”

“No. Just okay.”

He eyes me for a second, and then nods.

“Okay, so it is getting better, yes?”

“Yes,” I smile.

“Wait,” he says. He runs off somewhere, while the other players start getting into position on the field. Someone calls his name, and he raises his hand to signal ‘one moment.’ He comes running back to me with his winter coat.

“You will be cold,” he says, giving it to me. Then he immediately runs off to join the rest of his team. I realise I’m smiling, and I stop it. I put his coat over my shoulders. It’s warm and smells of him.

This morning I asked Michelle how you know a boy likes you, and all she could do in response is laugh at me. So that’s how I get to sit in a guy’s coat, watching him play soccer, unable to decide whether this is the sort of thing two straight dudes would do together. On the bright side, watching him play soccer is no chore. He seems to be with the ball a lot, which I’m assuming is something good players do. Once he high-fives someone, so I think something good happened, but I miss what it was.

I know there are goal posts, and I know that the ball has to go through those for one or the

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