Page 95 of Playing for Keeps
“Says who?” Udo asked. “You?”
“Yeah.”
“Well that means precisely fuck all to me. Thanks for letting me know.”
Shaun puffed his chest out. “You let me feel like shit for calling out yourspecial friendship.”
“I did nothing of the sort,” Udo replied. “You shouted your mouth off to a shitty website like the cry-baby bitch you are.”
He’d had enough. If Shaun thought he was going to take yet another verbal assault, he was wrong. Everything was out in the open now.
Ewen burst out laughing. “Fucking hell, Holtmann.”
Goran and Adam joined him.
This had evidently not been Shaun’s intention. He went an interesting shade of red. Udo looked at the rest of his teammates. The hostility was unmistakable. Udo had suffered the same at school when he’d been caught with another student behind the sports block.
He’d survived that too.
“Is that it?” Shaun said, holding his hands up. “One catty comment and you’re all fawning over him. He’s been shagging Steven, for fuck’s sake.”
“And?” Ingvar asked.
“He’s brought shame on the club,” Colin said.
That one hurt. Udo simply stared at the young man who blushed.
Ewen stood forward. “Haven’t we all at one time or another? Adam when Jen walked out on him twice.”
“Yeah. All right, Ewen,” Adam said.
“Alain. When you had a threeway with those singers in Ibiza.”
Alain smiled at the memory. “I’d forgotten about that. Happy days.”
The others all found that highly amusing.
“So that’s funny to you. But Udo actually caring for someone is shit?” Ewen continued. “Have a word with yourselves.”
Shaun shook his head. “The locker room is a sacred space. Where we’re allowed to be comfortable.”
Udo opened his mouth. This time Adam stepped in.
“Don’t give me that homophobic bullshit, Riggs,” he said.
“I didn’t mean that,” Shaun replied, sharply. “Although now you come to mention it.”
As touched as he was that Ewen and Adam had come to his defence, Udo wanted to face this for himself.
“What did you mean then, Shaun?”
“We need to be able to talk freely without it being pillow talk that night.”
Interesting. His main worry was Udo might tell Steven how much of an arsehole he was.
“We don’t do that,” Udo said. “Didn’t you see how furious I was at being on the bench last Saturday? Did I look as though Steven had given me a heads-up?”
Edi nodded. “That’s a fair point. You were pretty pissed.”
