Page 42 of Brat on the Ball

“Did you come straight from training?” I asked.

“Yeah. I…I spoke about all this with Tim and then spent a couple of hours trying to figure out what to do. I couldn’t figure it out, so I hoped coming here would help.”

“Then let me take care of you.” I leaned forward to take the wineglass from his hand and put it on the coffee table. “We’re going to clean you up, and then we’re going to bed. You can show me stupid dog TikToks for hours until your heart slows enough for you to fall asleep, and then in the morning we can both call in sick and figure it out together. OK?”

“OK,” said Ollie. I took his hand, pulled him off the sofa, and to my little en-suite shower. Ollie let me take his clothes off, and then watched as I took mine off. As soon as the water was warm enough, I took him into the shower and helped him to wash the difficulties of the day away. And if we both got a little hard, who could blame me for indulging a little more?

Once we’d dried and gotten into bed, and I’d realised that he had absolutely no spare clean clothes, we spooned, and watched silly videos, and then kissed until I could feel the earlier tension flowing out of his body. And then I lazily pushed into him and stroked him slowly until we both came. When I came back with a towel to clean him off, he was already snoring gently. And I was sure that everything was going to be OK for my little Ollie.

* * *

I woke up to my phone buzzing insistently, and blearily reached over to turn off my alarm. But it wasn’t my alarm, it was Elsie. I was vaguely aware of Ollie’s phone buzzing too as I flicked the button to answer. “Hey,” I said.

“Wasgoingon?” grumbled Ollie. I smirked at the way his hair stuck up every which way.

“What’s up, Els?” I asked.

“Do you want me to take it down?” she asked.

“Take what down?” I asked, but was drowned out by Ollie’s groan next to me as he checked his phone.

“The post! I didn’t even know it was in the drafts, but it was the first thing that was posted on my schedule. It went up at midnight!”

“What post, Elsie?” I asked. It felt like my brain still hadn’t caught up in the morning, and that I was missing something obvious.

“The one where you out your boyfriend, you knob!” Elsie shouted down the phone.

Shit. I put the phone down without giving her an answer, expecting Ollie to meet my eyes with terror in his. But he was on his phone, already scrolling through page after page of notifications. “Shit, Ol, I’m so sorry. I will fix this, I promise. I can work this out. This is not your burden to…” I didn’t know what to say. I had outed him with my own negligence and stupidity. And Ollie still wasn’t looking at me. “Do you want me to take it down?”

It was a few seconds before he answered, so quietly. “What’s the point? It’s out there now.”

“Are you OK?” I asked.

He hesitated. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Look at this.”

He had held out his phone so that I could see what he was looking at. The screen showed a post from some faceless account.Fags in football? I wouldn’t wanna be the poor cunt bending over to pick up the soap in that changing room.

“Shit, Ol.”

“But look,” he said, scrolling down further. Another post.My son has been bullied in school for being gay and wanting to play football. I hope this brings him hope, and shows him there’s a place in the world for boys like him.

“I…don’t know how I feel,” Ollie said. “Some people are awful, and some aren’t. And I just don’t know what to listen to.”

“Never listen to hate,” I reached over and clicked his screen off. “There’s no need to listen to wankers like that.”

“Some of the posts…they mentioned we were together. How did they know that?” he asked. “How has this all…?”

“It was me. I wrote the post you wanted, about coming out. I saved it in the drafts to show you later…and completely forgot it would post under Elsie’s scheduling system.” I faltered, realising exactly what I’d put out into the world.

“Read it to me,” said Ollie. “I want to hear it from you, not some journalist with an axe to grind or a football fan who can’t tell his arse from his elbow.”

I grabbed my phone. I remembered lots of what I’d written, but not exactly. So I typed in the blog address and clicked on the post. There were already three hundred comments.

“Ollie Gunnerson. The Soccer Star Who Loved Me,”I started, already faltering over the title. I knew there was much worse to come, so I refused to look up at Ollie as I spoke.

“Ollie Gunnerson, 25, is making history as the first professional football player in the English division to come out since Justin Fashanu, thirty years ago. But Ollie doesn’t aim to make history. He told me that ultimately, he would like to be known for his skills on the pitch, and his commitment to the game he loves so much.

“Ollie Gunnerson is an enigma. A soccer star who avoids the limelight, though the limelight obviously loves him. With his charm and his skills on the field, he’s fast on his way to becoming one of the greats. But in a sport where homophobia is rife and so many players have felt the need to end their careers just to come out, he has reason to fear that who he is could impact his career. Ollie could be one of Wales’ picks for future Euro and World Cups, and the fear that coming out could impact that trajectory is palpable.

---