Summary:
In a sport where Murphy’s Law rules supreme, one slip can mean falling behind—or falling in love.
Oliver Doyle needs to win. After his reign as one of Canada’s top curlers is cut short by scandal, he arrives in Glasgow to coach Scotland’s next big team to a national championship. All that stands in the way of Oliver’s redemption is a band of upstarts led by an infuriatingly cute skip.
Luca Riley needs to chill. Or so he’s always believed, crafting a Zen-like serenity to carry his underdog curlers to the edge of greatness. To reach Nationals, Team Riley just have to keep calm and beat their arch-rivals—and their hot new Canadian coach—in one final bonspiel.
Luca and Oliver form an instant, irresistible bond. For the first time, Oliver shares the secret shame that’s kept him off the ice for years, and Luca finds true acceptance for who he is. As the tournament races toward a nail-biting climax, Oliver must face his past before it consumes him again. And Luca must choose between the dream he can taste and the man he could love.
Garen McLaren is a bit of a mess. But so what? His curling teammates adore his manic energy, and so do the kids he teaches. And nobody does Christmas like Garen. (Snow globes in October? Why not?) He’s vowed to make this year’s holiday the best ever, despite his hot but Scrooge-y new flatmate.
Simon Andreou is a bit of a control freak. The pressures of a new job in a new city are making his head spin. The last thing he needs is an agent of chaos like Garen for a flatmate—much less the memory of their single naked night together.
Just as this odd couple are fumbling toward friendship, a debilitating setback steals Simon’s precious control over life and limb. To be there for Simon, Garen must learn to stop running away when things get tough. And Simon must learn that accepting kindness can be a gift in itself—at Christmas and all year through.
This holiday season, treat yourself to this heartwarming stand-alone novel where love defies fear and gingerbread defies gravity!
Throwing Stones #1
1
Skip
Skip: Leader of a four-person curling team. A skip devises the strategy, calls the shots, and usually throws the last two stones in each scoring period or “end.” The team bears the skip’s name, providing the thrilling yet existentially unsettling feeling of being referred to as a collective noun.
Luca Riley had thrown roughly a hundred thousand stones in the two decades since his parents had dragged him to his big sister’s first curling match. He’d been five at the time, still blithely convinced that despite his short stature and inability to kick a ball without falling down, he would someday grow up to be a famous footballer—or at least famousish, probably playing for a lower-league Scottish team rather than his beloved Partick Thistle FC, much less Glasgow giants Rangers or Celtic, and much much less the world-renowned Arsenal or Manchester United.
He’d raged all the way to the curling rink, kicking the back of his mum’s seat and moaning about the imminent boredom about to swallow him whole. Miraculously, his parents had not honored his sister’s request to leave Luca by the side of the road to find a new home, but rather continued their journey as though their younger child had not combusted in the back seat.
That Saturday afternoon could have changed Luca’s life then and there. He could have fallen in love with the idea of sliding hunks of granite down a slab of pebbled ice, could have traded his precious football boots for a pair of shoes with mismatched soles, could have fallen asleep that night dreaming of concentric circles.
But only one of those things happened.
The dream repeated itself in some form for three years, until Luca accepted his tragic footballing deficiencies and joined his sister at Shawlands Ice Rink, where he showed immediate promise and was soon promoted from the “Wee Rockers” kids program up to the juniors league.
After that he mostly dreamed about Pokémon—and, eventually, other lads.
Now, as he stood inside the warm room at that same Southside Glasgow rink, watching through the glass as the ice-maintenance crew scraped the six curling sheets before the Friday night league games, Luca felt utterly at home.
Two of his three teammates stood near him, leaving him out of their banter. They thought Luca needed these pre-game moments to concoct elaborate strategies, but in fact, he just really liked watching the ice prep. It was a time to center himself, to rid his mind of workday irritations and focus on nothing but what was in front of him.
“I should’ve given myself a head start on not shaving,” said Ross, the Team Riley second. “It’s been five days and I’ve barely got stubble.”
“The curse of blondness,” replied David, their lead. “We gingers are swimming in testosterone. I plan to look like Tormund from Game of Thrones by the time the tournament starts. Psychological intimidation, you know. Of course, it’d be more effective if curling wasn’t already a beard-y sport.”
“It is that,” Ross said. “I wonder why?”
There was a pause. “Do you?” David asked.
“Do I what?”
“Do you wonder why curling is a beard-y sport?”
There was a longer pause, then Ross snapped his fingers. “Because it’s cold.”
“Clever lad.” David lowered his voice. “We’ll need all the beard luck we can get, now that Team Boyd’s got their fancy Canadian coach.”
Luca ripped his gaze from the ice to face his teammates. “What did you say?”
“We’ll not be shaving until after next weekend’s bonspiel, remember? For luck.” David patted his own cheek, where the hair was an even brighter red than that on his head. “Tell me you didn’t forget.”
“Does it look like I forgot?” Luca scratched his jaw, which already itched like a beast after five days’ growth (though he rather fancied the dark, rugged look). The stubble was a constant reminder that the Glasgow Open, the most important tournament of his life, started in less than a week. “I meant, what did you say about a Canadian coach?”
“You’ve not heard?” asked Ross. “How could you not hear?”
A fair question. Luca’s own brother-in-law was the Team Boyd skip. “I guess Jack forgot to mention it at dinner last Sunday.” That seemed unlikely. “Or maybe he didn’t want to brag.”
His teammates laughed, and for good reason. Jack Boyd was the antithesis of the extreme good sportsmanship known as “The Spirit of Curling.” Luca often thought his sister’s husband had missed his calling as a professional wrestling promoter.
“Jack probably thought the surprise would rattle us.” David hugged himself in a mock shudder. “Ooh, I’m pure intimidated.”
“Where’d they get the money to hire an imported coach?” Ross asked. “We can’t even afford a domestic one.”
Luca gave the curling broom tucked under his arm a pensive twist. “What I want to know is, why would someone fly all the way across the pond to coach here when Canada’s got the world’s best curlers?”
“Maybe he can’t get a coaching job there,” David said. “Maybe he’s a washed-up old has-been.”
“Actually,” Ross said, “he’s—”
“Or a washed-up old never-was.” Luca snickered. “He’ll spend the bonspiel sitting in the back of the stand drinking a bottle of Buckie in a paper sack. With a pocketful of gum to cover the stench of his own despair.”
“Have they got Buckfast in Canada?” David asked.
“No, but we have Brights Pale Dry,” came a voice behind them, a voice with a distinct North American accent. “Very popular with all levels of washed-ups.”
Luca spun around so fast, he whacked Ross in the gut with his broom. He could only stammer a quick “Sorry, mate” before his tongue was paralyzed by the sight in front of him.
“You want to know why I left Canada?” asked the tall man with wavy nut-brown hair and green-apple eyes, a man who was definitely neither old nor washed-up. “You really want to know?”
His question seemed a warning, as though Luca would regret hearing the answer. But it would be twice as awkward to back down.
“Okay.” Luca gave a wee cough to clear the squeak from his voice. “Spill.”
The man leaned over, so slowly that time itself seemed to pause. Luca held back a shiver, at once wanting to lean into and away from this encroachment.
A warm breath delivered five whispered words:
“None of your fucking business.”
Then the man turned and walked away, leaving Luca wearing what felt like the goofiest smile of his life—which was saying a lot.
As he watched the coach join Team Boyd at the warm-room bar, Luca felt his teammates move forward to flank him.
“His name’s Oliver Doyle,” Ross said, “and he’s a former junior world champion. That’s what I was trying to tell youse before.” He nudged Luca. “Also totally gay and single, according to the internet.”
Luca looked at his second. “Ross, you gathered intel on behalf of my love life? Pure sweet of you.”
“It’d better work,” David said. “I’m sick of our girlfriends moaning about you being ‘uncoupled’ when we all go out after games.”
“Claire says, ‘There’s no symmetry.’” Ross pitched up his voice to mimic his girlfriend. “‘He’s so cute, how can he be alone?’”
“I’m not alone, I’m elusive.” Luca lifted his chin, feigning indignation. “Like a member of an endangered species.”
“A celibate twenty-five-year-old definitely counts as that,” David said.
Luca’s smile faded. Had he been single so long his mates thought of him as celibate? When had he last even kissed a guy? “I can’t afford the distraction.” He rotated his broom handle against his palm. “Not with the tournament and all.”
David snorted. “Och, there’s that excuse again.”
“Excuse for what?” Garen, the Team Riley vice-skip and Luca’s flatmate, was approaching them with his kit bag. “Sorry I’m late, by the way. The bus was…” He trailed off as he followed their eyelines. “What’s everyone looking at?”
“Nothing much,” David said. “Just the guy who’s gonnae make this bonspiel a lot more interesting than we ever dreamed.”
“Interesting” indeed. Luca turned back to the rink to ponder this development. His gaze settled on an ice technician showering the surface with water droplets, which would freeze into the all-important pebbles that let the stones glide. But his mind was far from the here-and-now.
Six weeks had passed since Team Riley had shocked Team Boyd by beating them at the Aberdeen Curl Fest in mid-December. That win had left the two rivals tied atop the leaderboard of this season’s Scottish Challenger Tour, a series of competitions offering second-tier teams a chance to qualify for the national championship. Whoever finished higher at next weekend’s Glasgow Open would likely win the Challenger Tour and thus be bound for Nationals. That would mean TV exposure, invitations to events with bigger cash prizes—and most of all, sponsorships that could transform Luca’s obsession from a financial drain into a boon.
Since Aberdeen, Luca had noticed a sudden surge in Team Boyd’s level of play. The whole rink had been talking about it. Had this hot young coach been working with them remotely? If Oliver could raise their game by sitting at a computer across the Atlantic, what would they become with him here in person? Had Team Riley’s small chance at Nationals just become microscopic?
Enough of that. With a single deep breath, Luca brought his attention back to the present. Next week would see to itself. In the meantime, he’d keep his curlers focused on each shot, always remaining in the moment—and above all, having fun.
His mind calmed, Luca allowed himself another look at Oliver Doyle, just to confirm his initial fleeting impression. He could count on a single hand the number of men he’d wanted at first sight—enough to pursue rather than simply admire.
The coach was holding court at the warm room’s far table, his four curlers nodding along with every word and gesture. Though he appeared younger than his thirty-year-old skip, Oliver had an air of authority that even the imperious Jack Boyd seemed to respect.
And yet…Luca sensed another layer beneath that veil of confidence and competence. There was an awkwardness infusing Oliver’s robust good looks, and a kernel of uncertainty to his swagger, that made Luca need to know him better.
How would it feel, he wondered, to steady that restive spirit, if only for a moment, and to chase the shadows from those green-apple eyes?
Oliver Doyle could finally breathe.
He’d spent the last month holed up in his apartment in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, studying film of Team Boyd and their rivals, then running that film through video-analysis software and combining the results with a dozen shot-selection spreadsheets. He’d Skyped with the entire team twice a week—and nearly every night with skip Jack Boyd—offering feedback, brainstorming strategy, and assigning drills to improve their performance.
Now here he was, standing beside them in their home rink on the southern edge of the city his hometown had been named after.
Holy jeez, this is really happening.
“Watch Ian’s delivery,” Jack said as he tapped his broom a few inches in front of the bullseye-shaped house, showing where he wanted the stone to stop. “It’s pure straight now.” He crouched near the left edge of the house and placed his brush head on the ice for his lead curler to aim at.
Oliver moved behind Jack to get a better look. At the other end of the sheet, Ian placed his right foot into the black-rubber hack, then pointed his toes, hips, and shoulders toward the head of Jack’s broom.
It was the essential first step in a good delivery, but even the best curlers sometimes struggled to maintain that perfect line—to “stay on broom”—after launching themselves out of the hack. Maybe a knee would hit the ice and twist the thrower’s body, or an anxious hand would push or pull the stone upon release.
Curling is the hardest easy-looking sport in the world, Oliver used to tell his students back home when they shed tears of frustration and threatened to chuck their brooms into the East River of Pictou. Then he’d work with them for hours on practice drills, cultivating one technique after another until their entire delivery was second nature.
Now, he hoped like hell that Team Boyd had been working on their drills since hiring him. Otherwise he was in for a short stay.
Ian drew back slightly, then pushed out of the hack with a controlled thrust from his powerful right leg. The sturdy young lead glided forward over the ice, his path straight and smooth, his eyes fixed on Jack’s broom. Then he released the rock, its red handle whispering out of his hand with the perfect amount of rotation.
“Nice…” Oliver said. “Real nice.”
“Line’s good, lads!” Jack called out to Bruce and Alistair, the Team Boyd second and vice-skip, who accompanied the red rock as it made its way down the sheet. He wanted the stone to land just in front of the house to sit as a guard. If this were an actual game instead of mere practice, that guard would make it harder for their opponent to score.
It just needed a little help getting there.
“Wee bit light,” Bruce called out.
“Sweep!” Jack yelled. “Hard!”
Bruce and Alistair leapt into action, furiously brushing the sheet in front of the stone, melting the pebbled-ice surface enough to reduce the friction and let the rock travel farther.
“Up!” Jack called out, and the two sweepers lifted their brooms so the stone could stop exactly where their skip had asked for it. “Brilliant, Ian!” Jack beamed up at Oliver. “Seems daft to be chuffed over such a basic thing, but Christ, I was gonnae have his head if he didn’t start placing guards where I wanted them.”
“Not daft at all,” Oliver said. “When a lead makes his shots, you can spend the end executing your plan instead of putting out fires.”
“Jack fancies fires.” Alistair glided over to them, pushing his mop of blond curls away from his rimless glasses. “Then he can have me save the day with a double takeout.”
“That’s why you’re here, mate.” Jack grinned as he said this, but Oliver saw him glance over at Sheet B, where Team Riley were warming up.
As with so many other rivalries, Luca had been Jack’s vice before leaving to start his own team. After a crucial tournament loss to Team Riley last month, the ambitious Jack had sought a coach who could turn Boyd into an elite squad able to compete against the best in Scotland—and crush Luca’s band of upstarts in the bargain.
We’ll do anything you ask, Jack’s email had read. Please come and change our lives the way you did Team Patterson’s.
After watching one bonspiel webcast of Team Boyd, Oliver had signed on as their coach, unable to resist their mix of raw talent and relentless drive.
Patterson, the women’s team Oliver had taken from small-town obscurity to provincial champions in a single season, had just been accepted into Canada’s high-performance program. The four ladies were now in the hands of the country’s best coaches, fitness experts, and sports psychologists; while Oliver had been left behind, searching for his next challenge.
Jack’s P.S. had sealed the deal:
We don’t care about your past.
An hour later, Oliver sat in the warm room watching Team Boyd’s first game of the night, which they were winning handily. But during every break between ends, he kept his eye on Team Riley—especially their skip, who was way hotter in real life than in those grainy tournament webcasts.
On the ice, Luca looked utterly focused, yet he lacked the permanent frown worn by so many skips. Even when he shouted commands at the sweepers, his voice held a strangely sweet serenity.
And when it came to throwing his own stones, Luca was downright mesmerizing. The broom and rock seemed like extensions of his own lithe frame. Though his flexible legs let his body sink low to the ice, he held his head high and shoulders square, arching his back like a swan. As his slender fingers rotated and released the handle, it was like witnessing a fond farewell. If curling were judged on artistic content, Luca would get a perfect score.
Oliver flipped to a blank page in his sketchbook. It was the only paper he carried, now that all his curling stuff was on his omnipresent tablet. For some reason, he did his best thinking while drawing.
Luca was giving him a lot to think about.
It was obvious how Team Riley had earned the nickname “Team Smiley.” The four men had an enviable looseness about them, with nearly every interaction ending in laughter. Their front end consisted of an equally brawny ginger and blond who looked like they’d strolled in off the old Glasgow shipbuilding docks: Lead David Moffat seemed as stolid and stalwart as the guards he placed, while Ross Buchanan was a force of nature throwing second, wielding a takeout stone like the hammer of Thor. Team Riley’s vice, Garen McLaren, exuded more energy than the rest of them put together, his mania complementing his teammates’ poise rather than clashing with it.
Currently Garen was using his broom as a cane to perform a “Puttin’ on the Ritz”-style number as he waited to sweep Ross’s next throw, his shaggy mane of sandy hair swaying over his shoulders as he danced.
Behind Oliver, a single sleigh bell jingled, a signal the front door had opened. He turned to see a tall, dark-skinned woman in her early thirties enter the warm room from the foyer. After a pause at the threshold, she spied him and headed over wearing a wide smile.
“If I’m not mistaken, you’re Oliver Doyle!” She extended a hand as he stood to greet her. “I’m Heather Wek, from Wek Sight and Sound. I’ve been hired to do a documentary of sorts on the two Shawlands teams trying to make Nationals.”
He froze mid-handshake. “A documentary?” The last thing he needed was someone digging into his past—not that one would need to dig very hard. But if she’d recognized him on sight, she must have already looked him up online.
“Aye, to promote the sport and their club in particular.” She reached back and freed her long black ponytail from the hood of her rain-spattered jacket. “Tonight I’m just here to observe and get some background info, as I’m still pretty new to curling.”
“Oh, good—I mean, it’s always nice to get a fresh perspective on the sport. Helps make it accessible to the public.” And the more time Heather spent learning the basics, the less time she’d spend learning his personal history.
He noticed her violet-and-white jacket. “Warriors FC…where have I heard of them?”
“It’s an all-LGBT football team.” Heather stroked the sword-and-soccer-ball crest on her shoulder. “I’m the starting goalkeeper—and one of the Ts, obviously.”
It wasn’t obvious, but Oliver didn’t say so, as his mind was still chasing the question of why the Warriors were familiar. “I don’t follow the sport, so where have I seen you guys?”
“Maybe you watched our ‘Football Crazy’ video last summer? It went viral.”
Oliver remembered now. The Warriors had been every LGBT athlete’s heroes of the month. “That must be it. It was fantastic, by the way.”
“Thanks.” She gave a demure head tilt. “My company made the video, of course.”
“I’ve got my own digital arts business, so I know good stuff when I see it. My work is nowhere near yours.” He offered an I’m-not-worthy bowing gesture, which made her laugh.
They were joined then by Craig and Anya Sinclair, presidents of the men’s and women’s competitive curling clubs that had hired Heather. After a bit of small talk, Oliver excused himself to return to work.
Out on the ice, Jack was preparing to attempt a runback double takeout, a shot in which he would hit a guard hard enough to knock two of their opponents’ rocks out of the house. It was a big crowd-pleaser when it worked, but when it didn’t, they risked giving up a lot of points.
Oliver could see three wiser options available. Had the Boyd skip even considered them?
Ten seconds later, Jack made that question irrelevant. His shooter smashed into his own red guard, which in turn hit one yellow stone, then the other, finally spinning to a stop in the back of the four-foot ring.
“Yaaaas!” Jack pumped his fist, then shared a hearty high-five with his sweepers. Finally he looked at the warm-room window, maybe hoping for applause from his coach.
Oliver gave him a thumbs up, then made a note to work with his skip on shot selection. While he didn’t want to discourage Jack’s natural intensity, he was hoping to temper it with more…well, thinking.
Heather and Anya came to stand behind him, chatting about the basics of the game. To ward off the distraction of their presence, he shifted back and forth between his sketchbook and score sheet.
“A curling game is divided into eight periods called ‘ends,’” Anya said. “In each end, all four players on both teams take turns throwing two stones each.” She chuckled. “They don’t literally throw them, obviously, as they weigh over forty pounds. Anyway, after all eight stones are thrown, whoever’s stones are closest to the center of those rings—which we call the ‘house’—wins points.”
Oliver smiled at Anya’s pronunciation, hoose. It reminded him of his late grandmother, who’d moved to Nova Scotia from Orkney when she was twelve and never lost the accent.
“So there’s a point for each stone in the house?” Heather asked Anya.
“No, only the team with the closest stone can score, and only with the stones which are closer than their opponent’s closest stone.”
“Ah, I remember now,” Heather said. “I was obsessed with curling during last year’s Olympics. It’s so addictive.”
Olympics. Oliver took a deep breath to ease the ache in his chest that always arose when he heard that word.
Soon Anya and Heather headed to the bar to join Craig for a drink, and Oliver returned to his spreadsheet. Within minutes he was fighting off yawns as the jet lag began to wrap around his brain like a wet woolen blanket. He hadn’t slept on last night’s red-eye flight from Toronto or on the turbulent jump from Halifax before that. As he watched his team take a four-point lead into the eighth and final end, his sandbag-heavy eyelids threatened to turn each blink into a nap.
“Hiya!”
Oliver started at the voice close to his ear. He looked up to see Luca Riley grinning at him around the lollipop in his mouth.
“Hi.” Oliver glanced toward the rink. “You finished early,” he added, as if Luca hadn’t noticed.
“They conceded after six ends. So I’m having a wee recovery snack before we play your lads.” Luca sank into the chair beside him, then held up a trio of lollipops: two purple, one green. “Some glucose for your jet lag?”
“Thanks.” Oliver snatched the green lollipop, unable to hide his desperate need for a sugar boost.
“I hoped you’d choose that one. It matches your eyes.” He smoothed a flop of dark-brown hair off his forehead. “It’s apple-flavored, by the way, not lime.”
“Good to know.” Oliver noticed Luca’s own lollipop had turned his lips a rich crimson.
“It’s also the closest color to an olive branch.”
Oliver hesitated, wondering whether that was a play on his name.
“A peace offering,” Luca said, “because I slagged you behind your back earlier. I was still reeling from the fact Team Boyd had hired a coach, but that’s no excuse for being a gossipy wee prick.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Okay.” Luca stuffed the purple lollipops into his shirt pocket and the red one back into his mouth. “As you were.” He pulled his feet onto the chair to sit in a lotus position, apparently settling in for a while.
Turning back to the table, Oliver spied his open sketchbook, which still displayed his attempt to capture Luca’s graceful delivery. He flipped it over quickly, hoping the sketch was too rough to reveal the subject. Then he moved his tablet’s cover to block its screen. “Are you spying on us?”
“Don’t need to. Jack and I know each other’s curling by heart.” Luca’s words were slurred by the lollipop. “Until lately, that is. You’ve changed him this last month—for the better, obviously.”
“So…what is it you want?”
“Nothing.” Luca folded his hands in his lap, gazing out over the ice with such tranquility, Oliver actually believed him.
He remembered the lollipop in his hand and started to tear off the wrapper. Under the rustle of plastic he heard Luca murmur, “Nova Scotia.”
“Sorry?”
Luca pointed to the emblem on the bag beside Oliver’s chair. “It means ‘New Scotland,’ aye?”
“Aye. I mean, yeah.” Oliver sucked his lollipop and kicked his tired brain into banter mode. “New and improved.”
Luca gasped. “Ooh, sassy. I thought Canadians were meant to be nice.”
“And I thought Glaswegians were meant to be obnoxious. Oh, wait.”
“Hah! At least one of us is upholding his reputation.” Luca held out a hand. “I’m Luca Riley, by the way. Since you asked.”
“Oliver Doyle.” He shook Luca’s hand, which was surprisingly warm considering he’d recently come off the ice. “Jack’s told me a lot about you.”
“Oh dear. Say, are you doing the no-shaving thing for the tournament? Seems almost every team does it, so what’s the point if we’re all equally lucky, right?”
“I’m not growing a beard. I—” Oliver stopped, since sometimes people were weirded out by the reason he needed to shave. “Luca: Isn’t that Italian?”
“It is, but I’m not, though some say I look it. It’s actually short for Lucas. When I was six, I went to the seashore with my family and refused to come out of the water at the end of the day because I wanted to ‘swim with the fishes.’ My granddad made a Luca Brasi Godfather joke—I know, it’s actually ‘sleep with the fishes’ in the film—and the nickname stuck.”
Oliver pulled the lollipop from his mouth, trying not to let it paint his lips green. “Do you like it?”
“I love it. My mission in life is to redeem ‘Luca’ from its links to a murdered mobster and that poor lad from the Suzanne Vega song. It’s now in the top 100 names for Scottish baby boys, so I’ll soon have help there. Do you like your name?”
“It’s all right,” Oliver said, his head spinning from Luca’s heavily accented, rapid-fire monologues. “Except for the orphan jokes.”
“Orphan?”
“You know. Oliver Twist.”
Luca cocked his head. “Who’s he?”
“From the Charles Dickens novel.”
“Which one?”
“From—” He stopped when he saw the slow grin spread across Luca’s face. “Are you always this annoying?”
“Hmmm.” Luca pressed a fingertip to his chin. “I don’t think so, but I’ll ask around.”
Holy shit, this guy was cute, in that weird way Oliver really liked. He wished Jack had warned him about his rival’s quirky charms.
He saw the rest of Team Riley gathered at the other side of the warm room. “Why aren’t you broomstacking with the team you just beat?” he asked Luca. “Is that not a tradition here?”
“It is, and we offered them drinks, but they needed to be up the road. Something about a kidney transplant.”
Oliver laughed, hoping Luca was still joking. “And where’s your coach?”
“Haven’t got one.” Luca examined his remaining nub of lollipop, then put the stick back into his mouth. “Are they necessary?”
“It helps, if you want to go far.”
“Well, I’m pretty happy where I am just now.” He looked down at the space between them, then up into Oliver’s eyes.
The bottom dropped out of Oliver’s stomach, as if he were descending the first hill of a rollercoaster.
“Desire is a dangerous thing, see.” Luca blinked. “In sport, I mean.” He broke their gaze and looked out over the ice. “Obviously one should try one’s best, but blasting that ‘gotta win, gotta win’ recording in your head over and over just creates tension. Then you can’t perform to your potential.”
“For sure,” was all Oliver could think to say.
“I teach meditation when I’m not curling or working my inconsequential day job, so I know of what I speak.” Luca brightened. “Talking of which, I’m starting a class in meditation for athletes, next Tuesday at the well-being center in Hillhead.” He leaned over to give Oliver’s arm a fleeting touch. “Beginners welcome.”
Oliver tried not to react to this brief brush of Luca’s hand. “How do you know I’m a beginner?”
Luca laughed, then pulled the lollipop from his mouth and looked at its naked stick. “Ah, that’s my time up. See you at our broomstacking, mate.” He clapped Oliver’s shoulder as he stood, then crossed the warm room to join his team at their table.
Oliver turned back to the ice sheet in front of him, where Team Boyd were nailing down a victory in the final end of play. Sucking the sweet-tart lollipop, he took a few last notes about their shot choices, but his thoughts kept scurrying back to Luca.
Had he been cozying up to Oliver to distract him from his job, hoping to whittle away Team Boyd’s edge? Or maybe Luca was trying to piss off Jack—brothers-in-law were often at odds under the best of circumstances.
Both possibilities seemed contrary to the spirit of curling. And Oliver’s gut told him that Luca’s flirtation had been genuine.
Unfortunately, Oliver had learned long ago that his gut was a worthless guide to life.
Must Love Christmas #2
Chapter 1
71 Days Until Christmas
Garen McLaren was being abandoned.
He tried to look cheery as he carried his best friend’s final box of belongings out of their flat—which, in a few minutes, would simply be Garen’s flat.
Outside, Luca was waiting beside the open removal van with his boyfriend, Oliver, both of them rosy-cheeked from the effort of moving Luca’s possessions amid the brisk autumn Scottish wind.
When Luca saw Garen approaching with the box, he turned to examine the overloaded van. “Och, that’ll never fit,” Luca said, rubbing his dark, neatly trimmed beard with both hands.
“Sorry.” Oliver sighed and leaned his sturdy frame against the side of the van. “We should’ve moved stuff from our places separately instead of trying to cram it all into one big trip.”
Garen shifted the box in his aching arms. “Is there room for this in your car?” he asked Luca.
“There’s barely room for me in my car.” Luca took the box and set it on the ramp with a thud. “Shall we rearrange things to make this fit?”
The thought of reloading the van made Garen want to curl up on the pavement for a nap. “Wouldn’t it take less time to drive back tomorrow for the last box? You’re only moving one postal code away.”
“He’s right,” Oliver told Luca. “Unless you can’t survive one night without your…” He angled his head to read the words written on the box in Luca’s neat print. “…Curling mementos, 2010-2016,” he finished with his deadpan Canadian inflection.
Luca chuckled. “Maybe just one night.” He picked up the box with a grunt of effort. “Wait here,” he told Oliver. “I won’t be long.”
Garen followed Luca back up to the flat. As they entered the living room, the place suddenly seemed an empty cavern, though all the furniture remained.
Luca set the box on the dining table and let out a sharp breath, pausing before turning to Garen. “This is so much harder than I thought it would be.”
“Why? You’ll be living with the love of your life. You should be happy.”
“I am.” Luca’s dark, lively eyes had begun to glisten. “But I’ll miss you.”
“Pish. We’ll still see each other twice a week at the curling.”
“It won’t be the same.”
“How different can it be? You already spend most nights at Oliver’s. I’ll barely notice you’re gone.”
Luca must have heard Garen’s voice catching on that final word, because he stepped forward and pulled him into a hug. Garen’s arms hung at his side before wrapping round Luca’s back and holding him tight. He squeezed his eyes shut as reality sank in: After five years of seeing his best mate nearly every day, he was about to live alone.
Finally Luca let go and stepped back, wiping his face just as Garen wiped his own. They laughed together at the mirrored motion.
Garen patted Luca’s box of curling mementos. “Must be some interesting items in here.”
Luca smirked. “Yes, you can have a look if you like.”
“Cool.” As usual, Luca had read his mind. “You sure you don’t need me to help you unload stuff at your new place?”
“You’ve already helped so much.” Luca brushed a streak of dust off the sleeve of his blue wool pullover. “I feel horrible leaving without knowing how you’ll pay November’s rent.”
“It’s my own fault for procrastinating.” Luca had given him three months’ notice to find a new flatmate, but Garen hadn’t placed an ad until two weeks ago.
“Any new inquiries?” Luca asked.
“Not since I checked the app ten minutes ago.”
“I really think you should consider changing the ad wording.”
Garen shook his head. “I want people to know what they’re getting with me. I can’t live with a homophobic neat freak.”
“Maybe upload some new photos, then? The place’ll look bigger now without my stuff.”
“Good idea.” The task would give him something to do tonight instead of lying on the couch feeling sorry for himself—or at least something in addition to lying on the couch feeling sorry for himself. “Away and start your happy-ever-after already.”
His eyes sparking with glee, Luca gave Garen one last quick hug…and then he was gone.
Garen locked the door, then returned to the living room. The afternoon sunlight was angling through the floor-to-ceiling bay window, so the place appeared warm and welcoming. To make the room look even more civilized, he cleared all of his random crap from the coffee table, leaving only the carved wooden bear statue his sister had brought him from Bulgaria.
He took new photos of the living room, then did the same with Luca’s bedroom and the kitchen. Feeling accomplished and also thirsty, he opened the fridge.
There on the top shelf was a brand-new four-pack of his favorite IPA—a red ribbon tied round the handle—and a note in Luca’s handwriting. Two hearts flanked the word Enjoy!
Luca had also left behind the rest of his takeaway pad Thai from the previous night. That was Garen’s next meal sorted, then.
He brought the food and a beer to the dining table in the living room, intending to choose new photos to upload to his Flatmate Wanted ad.
But Luca’s Curling Mementos 2010-2016 box beckoned him. Garen unsealed the packing tape, then flipped back the flaps.
At the top of the box was a framed photo of Team Riley—or “Team Smiley,” as their fans called them—taken just before the start of the Scottish Men’s Curling Championship. Garen and Luca stood in the center, flanked and dwarfed by their brawny front-end curlers, David and Ross. A grinning Oliver stood beside them as their coach.
Garen dug deeper into the box, traveling back in time. Here were Luca’s three consecutive Curler of the Year awards from Shawlands Rink, where Team Riley were based. Last year, Garen himself had won the honor in a shocking upset. He’d often wondered if Luca had asked the awards committee to give it to Garen. That was the sort of friend he was.
Arriving at the bottom of the box—the early days of Team Riley—Garen found a photo of himself, Luca, David, and Ross after they’d placed third in the national university championship.
He pulled out the photo and examined the space between his body and Luca’s, mere days before their breakup. On the ice, their chemistry had never faltered, but here on the podium, holding up their bronze medals, there was the hint of a disconnect. In the photo, Garen was beaming at Luca while Luca beamed at the camera. Awkward, that.
He let out a long, slow sigh as he began putting the items back in the box. Like most of Garen’s relationships, his affair with Luca had lasted roughly three months. Since then, Luca had dated sporadically before falling in love with Oliver two years ago. Meanwhile, Garen had continued his rollercoaster routine of diving into relationships hard and fast, then scrambling out of them even faster when things got difficult. Now he was nearly twenty-six and no closer to long-term love than he’d been at nineteen.
At least he’d found a true friend—and the world’s best flatmate—in Luca Riley. Who else would put up with Garen’s literal and metaphorical rubbish?
He had to find somebody. He couldn’t afford this place alone.
Garen opened the Gumtree app and replaced several photos with the ones he’d just taken. Then he examined the text:
Slobby gay curler seeks flatmate who’s not fussed about any of those things. I’m not perfect, but this flat in Glasgow’s West End certainly is. Fully furnished with most mod cons, including dishwasher. Gorgeous view of Kelvingrove Park. Secure entry, lift, central heating, free use of launderette in building. Pets welcome!
As Garen ate his pad Thai, he considered removing the bit about his lack of tidiness. But surely some people preferred a laid-back flatmate who understood that a dish could sit unwashed in a sink overnight without spawning the apocalypse.
Maybe that wasn’t the problem. Maybe it was the ad’s final line:
PS: Must love Christmas.
He could easily delete that bit. But it would be hell to live with someone who would bah-humbug his annual merrymaking. Garen needed Christmas more than ever this year—the whole country needed it, what with the doom of Brexit now hanging over their heads. For just one month out of twelve—or maybe a bit longer—he needed to believe wishes could come true.
Wishes. “Ooh, that’s it.” Garen jumped up from the table, dropping his fork into the takeaway container. As he hurried toward his bedroom, he heard the fork clatter to the floor behind him.
He yanked open the bottom drawer of his bedside table, his “repository of randomness,” as Luca called it. He shoved aside three pairs of semi-broken earphones—their wires locked in a strangle-fight—half a dozen ticket stubs, a long-expired tube of mentholated pain-relief gel, and several random bits of plastic and metal that probably belonged to something important.
Finally he spied his lucky penny, the one he’d picked up on the subway last month—facing heads up, of course, because the opposite was bad luck.
Garen slipped the penny into his front jeans pocket, then put on his jacket and went out into the crisp October evening. Tugging up his hood to keep his hair from blowing into his eyes, he crossed the narrow street into Kelvingrove Park, where the low rays of sunshine glowed against the autumn foliage. Within a few minutes he arrived at the grand old Stewart Memorial Fountain and its four soaring spires of water.
Garen nodded a greeting to the Lady of the Lake, whose statue stood atop the towering round fountain. Arranged below the Lady at various levels were statues of unicorns and lions, carvings of coats of arms, and bronze plaques representing each sign of the zodiac. The whole structure was a bit over-the-top, like a comic book in fountain form, but Garen rather fancied it.
As the wind blew harder, sprinkling him with cold drops of dancing water, Garen circled the fountain clockwise, touching each of the bronze cherub statues on its shiny wee head. Finally he stopped in front of the plaque featuring a centaur for Sagittarius, his own zodiacal sign.
Garen pulled the 1p coin from his pocket and closed his eyes. I wish for a good flatmate before the end of the month. He opened his eyes, then added, Preferably not a morning person.
He tossed the penny into the fountain so it would plop into the water beneath the centaur. But as he let go, a gust of wind blew the coin leftward. Drawing an imaginary line toward the fountain, he discovered the penny had landed in the section belonging to the goat of Capricorn.
Garen searched his pockets for another coin, but unsurprisingly there were none.
“Close enough,” he told the Lady of the Lake, then turned for home with hope in his heart.
Author Note on Goodreads: A few of the regular Glasgow Lads characters--including many readers' favorites Colin and Lord Andrew--make significant appearances in Throwing Stones. Chronologically, this takes place after Colin and Andrew's novella, Play Dead, and before Playing in the Dark (Evan and Ben's novel).
The Glasgow Lads series contains dirty talk with a Scottish accent, naughty bits of a gay nature, and characters who call soccer “football.”
Each installment in the series can be read as a stand-alone.
Hiya, I’m Avery Cockburn (rhymes with Savory Slow Churn). My days are filled with beautiful men who play beautiful games in the most beautiful place in the world. Being an author is pretty much the best job ever.
I live in the United States with one infinitely patient man and two infinitely impatient cats. Readers make my day, so email me at avery@averycockburn.com, or sign up for my readers group at newsletter to get a FREE book plus loads of exclusive Glasgow Lads bonus material. Cheers!
EMAIL: avery@averycockburn.com
Throwing Stones #1
Must Love Christmas #2
🥌Glasgow Lads on Ice🥌
Glasgow Lads
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