“ARE YOU TWO GOING TO help me unpack, or are you just here for wanker-colour commentary?” I drop a huge box of pots and pans on the French oak flooring in the kitchen of my new flat. It’s not the biggest flat in the neighbourhood, but it’s situated in the heart of Shoreditch Triangle, London, which is a great spot to be. Plus, it’s been completely renovated and updated with modern finishings, so I really like it.
My brother Camden drops down off the counter he was perched upon. “Booker! Did you see your kitchen has two ovens?”
“Not that the prat can actually cook.” My other brother, Tanner, adds as he opens and closes the oven doors like they’re objects from outer space. “Living with Dad for twenty-five years has spoiled the child.”
“You guys lived with him just as long as I did!” I argue.
Camden ignores my completely valid point as he hitches his voice to do his imitation of the Queen that he thinks is so hilarious. “My Baby Booker gets a cook and a housekeeper for as long as he likes.”
“And Baby Book will never touch a dirty laundry item. We have people for that!” Tanner chirps, mimicking the same pitch.
Camden shakes his finger. “Baby Book shan’t drive himself to practice.”
“Or wipe his own arse after a code brown round.” Tanner’s last jab sends Cam into a fit of laughter, and the two high five like the tossers they are.
I roll my eyes and ignore them like I have for most of my life. There’s no use fighting with these two. Firstly, they are twins, so they will always gang up on me. Secondly, my brothers and I know that living at home with Dad had major perks.
Our family home is on the outskirts of London in Chigwell. It’s a large, brown brick mansion that was quite sparse most of our lives. But when our dad, Vaughn Harris, took the managing job with Bethnal Green F.C. and my three brothers and I started playing for him, he did some renovations. Now it’s kitted out like a footballer’s dream come true, complete with an in-home gym and stationary goals outside. Our sister had no interest in playing, so she got her restaurant-quality kitchen, where she was happy to work her way through our mum’s old cookbooks and support all our football endeavours.
Growing up was all about hat-tricks, penalties, and the full-time whistle. We were a football family. End of.
As adults, we’re more the same. Camden plays for Arsenal while Tanner and I continue to bleed green and white for our dad’s team. Our older brother, Gareth, is a defender for Man U, and Vi is currently enjoying the life of being a new mummy to her six-month-old surprise baby she had last year.
However, being surrounded by footy fanatics isn’t easy. I have to work harder than all of them to keep from embarrassing the Harris name. My whole life, my brothers have seemed bigger and stronger than me, drilling balls at me between the posts at superhuman speeds. But, despite my meek size as a child, I learned to appear larger than life in front of the net. It was survival.
Over the last few years, my body has finally caught up with my mind. At six-foot-one, I may still sit an inch or two shorter than my twin brothers, but I’m more than equipped for the position of goalkeeper now that I’m nearing thirteen stone.
“All right, where do you want me?” Camden groans amongst the sea of boxes.
I do a rapid survey of the space. Vi found me a fully furnished flat, which is nice because we didn’t have to haul a ton of items up two floors. It also meant I didn’t have to go shopping. “If we can get the kitchen sorted, that would be grand.”
Tanner rips into a box and starts dropping spoons into a cutlery sorter. “I’ll gladly get your kitchen sorted, broseph. Anything to get you to stop sofa-surfing at my place.”
“I hardly sofa-surf,” I argue half-heartedly. “I merely crash there on nights I don’t feel like driving twenty minutes back to Dad’s. And excuse me for wanting to spend some time with you guys.”
“You cock-block, baby bro,” Tanner retorts. “Morning sex with Belle is a lot harder when I can hear you through the walls taking a leak.”
Camden flings a kitchen towel at my scowling face, but I catch it easily before it hits me. “Specs and I are actually trying to work our way through every room in the new house, and you are hindering that epic goal.”
I shake my head. “It’s still mind-boggling that you two managed to land girlfriends at all. The fact that they are both doctors makes me feel like at any minute, someone is going to come out and tell me I’ve been punk’d.”
“Specs is very real.” The lewd smirk on Camden’s face forces me to look away.
Indie—or “Specs” as Cam calls her because of her love for funky eyewear—was a surgical resident at the Royal London Hospital when Camden tore his ACL last year. They fell hard and fast. Then somehow, Tanner ended up with Indie’s best friend, whom is also a surgeon. Now, Indie is the Bethnal Green assistant team doctor, and Belle is working under some famous feotal surgeon and preparing to wed herself to Tanner Sleazeball Harris. How these two knobheads ended up dating best friends who are as close as sisters is disturbing. These days, so much is changing in our family.
So yeah, I guess the sofa-surfing is a bit intentional. I don’t want the fact that they’re all starting families to change what makes the Harris family, the Harris family. We’re Harrises. We’re close. End of. I refuse to lose them.
Tanner drops a box by Camden and adds, “He’ll stop inserting himself in our love lives now that he’s going to be living with his girlfriend.”
“Poppy is not my girlfriend,” I deny as anxiety creeps up my shoulders over his words. “She’s just…Poppy.”
Getting her to agree to stay with me took some major convincing, but I’m nothing if not persistent. And selfishly, her living with me will help me worry about her a lot less.
“Your childhood best friend whom you’ve slept in the same bed with, created a secret love shack in the woods with, and still claim to have never shagged?” Tanner pins me with a look that says he wasn’t born yesterday.
“It was a fort,” I defend. “And she’s only staying here until her lease opens up.”
“Famous last words, baby bro,” Tanner says. “Things can change quickly with girls. Look at me and Belle. I wanted to marry her after one month of being with her. She’s the one who made us wait.” He crosses his arms and leans back against the counter. “You’d be surprised how much fun sex with the right person can be.”
I roll my eyes. “Just because you prats don’t know how to have platonic relationships with women doesn’t mean I don’t.” I get back to work on the remaining boxes.
Poppy has always just been Poppy. Despite what Camden and Tanner think, we never crossed that line of friendship and that has a lot to do with them. When I was little, I watched them break countless girls’ hearts. Every time I started to get used to one of their girlfriends, they disappeared, never to be seen again. Then of course, I watched our dad mourn the death of our mum for years. It was brutal. So I learned that caring for someone romantically eventually meant losing them. And fuck me, I want to avoid that like the plague.
Poppy is too good of a friend for me to ever risk losing her. Truthfully, she’s the only real friend I have who isn’t family or teammates. When she up and moved away to Germany, I was gutted. We were best friends with plans to live in London and take the city by storm. Her with her infectious personality, me with my footy skills. It killed me when she said she was leaving, and I wasn’t even in love with her. Imagine how bad it would have been if I had loved her.
After she left, I threw myself into football and did everything I could to shift my position from reserve keeper to first. I was consumed with ending that inferiority I felt in my life. It worked, too. Not long after her departure, my football career started taking off.
But all those experiences are why I keep the circle of people whom I truly care about small. Caring about too many people increases the chance of suffering that gut-aching loss.
Now, Poppy is back. Sure it’s been six years since I’ve laid eyes on her. We also didn’t part on the best of terms, but we’ve gradually started emailing and texting more over the years. Phone calls occasionally. We’ve been slowly getting back to Booker and Poppy, which is good because it’s always felt completely mental that we haven’t seen each other in all this time. I suppose I could have visited her in Germany, but she was so closed off about her life over there, I could tell she didn’t want me to. Even her timing when she came home for Christmas seemed intentional because I always happened to be playing elsewhere. It felt like the Great Wall of China was separating us instead of a two-hour plane ride. I hated it.
I’m practically vibrating from the anticipation of wrapping my arms around her again. In the flesh. My best mate. She’s coming back at the perfect time, too. My family is rapidly changing all around me, making me feel unsteady. I’ve never been good with change, so I’m chuffed to bits to have my best friend by my side again.
I still remember the exact day I met her. It was such a tense time for my family. Dad was emotionally AWOL after Mum died. Vi was merely a kid herself and trying to take care of everyone. Gareth was a moody sod. We were all so alone in that house and, being the youngest, I felt like no one ever heard me.
When I look back, I realise it was Poppy that helped me find my voice, even if it was because she asked me to sing with her every single day.
7 Years Old
“I hate you, Tanner! I hate you!” I scream as I run out the back gate of our garden and into the woods behind our house. My big sister, Vi, is screaming for me to come back. The way her voice sounds makes my chest hurt, but I don’t stop. I can’t stop. I want to run until I disappear from the whole world.
After I run for a long time, the pain from my bloody nose starts to make me cough, so I stop and rest. I sit on a large tree I find that’s tipped over. I wipe my nose off with my sleeve. It hurts so much that my eyes water, but I’m not crying. I’m too mad to cry.
Tanner always makes me be the goalie. Then he waits until Vi’s not looking to kick the ball at me as hard as he can. I hate him! One day, I’m going to be as big as Tanner and Camden, and I’m going to stop all their stupid balls from getting in the net so they never score a goal ever again. Then they won’t be able to cheer like stupid monkeys.
“Stupid bloody Tanner,” I grind through my teeth.
“Bloody better describes that crud on your face.”
I jump up to my feet when I see a girl I know from school standing in front of me with a black dog next to her.
“What are you doing here?” I moan, out of breath from my run. I look all around to make sure no one else is here with her. If there are more girls from my class here, I’m going to kill Tanner.
“I could ask you the same thing.” She crosses her bony arms and wrinkles her nose at me. She’s dressed in a bright yellow sundress that’s covered in mud, and her long blonde hair is dirty and full of sticks and tangles. “You’re sitting on my stage.” She points to the tipped over tree.
“I’m not sitting anywhere.” I look behind me.
“Well, you were sitting on my singing stage.” She reaches down to pet her dog. “Me and Pink were getting ready to perform our third act of the day, but I had to take a piddle break.”
“What are you talking about? Who’s Pink?”
She rolls her eyes. “My dog. Duh.”
I look down at the black dog. “Your dog is black.”
Her eyes pop out of her head. Then she kneels down to cover the dog’s ears. He licks her cheek when she whispers loud enough for me to hear, “He doesn’t need to know that!”
I frown and start to walk away because this girl is weird.
“You’re in my class,” she says with a scratchy voice. I roll my eyes and keep walking. “We’re also neighbours,” she adds, and I stop to look at her again. “My house is on the other side of this park. Your house is right there.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
She shrugs. “We could be mates.”
“But you’re a girl.”
She squeals and quickly covers her own ears. “You’re spoiling all the best secrets today!”
Her funny face makes me laugh. It feels good to laugh. Tanner and Camden only make me mad. They always play too rough, and they are so fast that I can never catch them. Why do they always run from me?
This girl’s not running from me. She’s standing really still. I think I like her. I feel different around her, that’s for sure. She looks at me like she likes me, too. Not like I’m an annoying little brother.
“We could sing together,” she says, letting go of her ears and petting her dog with one hand.
“I don’t sing,” I grumble.
Her lips pucker like a fish. “Well, what do you like to do?”
I kick at a stick. “I like to build things sometimes.”
“Want to build a fort? I’ve been wanting to build a backstage, and you look like you’d be a very strong stagehand!”
I shrug my shoulders because she’s so annoying. “I am pretty strong.”
She smiles really big. “It shows. But first, do you mind if I sing while we build? I find singing soothes Pink’s troubled soul.”
“Erm…sure, fine.”
She hands me a stick. “I’m Poppy McAdams. It’s nice to meet you, Booker Harris.”
Just as I finish unloading the dishes into the cupboard, a loud crash rips me out of my walk down memory lane.
“Oh, cockwomble! What have I smashed?” A husky female voice comes from the hallway on the other side of my flat door. Camden, Tanner, and I stare at each other for a brief second before rushing toward the door to see what all the commotion is about.
My brothers get there first, blocking my view with their giant frames. I see a couple boxes tipped over on the landing—one open with the contents spilled out all over the place, including marbles that are rolling our way.
“Nobody move!” She sings the last word on a high note. “We have marbles on the floor and professional athletes at bay. Save yourselves. I can handle—” Her scream echoes off the brick walls as another crash happens, followed by a small yelp of pain. I can’t take another second of this, so I shove Camden and Tanner aside and walk out to see the mess.
Poppy McAdams is sprawled out on the tiled hallway floor, her legs at an angle that makes me cringe and her arms clutching a tackle box of some sort. My eyes move up her body because I haven’t seen her in so long. I have to do a double take to make sure it’s actually her.
“Help her up, Book,” Camden urges.
I quickly shake the stupor off my face and reach out to give her a hand. She stands slowly, avoiding my eyes as she surveys the mess and brushes the dirt off her cropped trousers.
Finally, with an exasperated sigh, she looks at me.
And even though I’m looking at her and I know she’s Poppy, she seems completely different.
Gone is her long, stringy blonde hair. Her silky, platinum blonde locks are now short on the back and sides but still have length on the top that sweeps stunningly across her forehead. Never have I seen a short haircut make a girl look more feminine, but that’s exactly what this haircut has done. Her cropped hair highlights her full lips and the arch of her cheekbones perfectly. She looks like a model.
My gaze drops to her body—once skinny and gangly and usually covered in dirt—and finds curves and angles where they’d never been before. And her eyes…Even her eyes are different. They’ve always been pretty, but somehow they grew into huge doe eyes. They’re framed by impossibly long lashes, accentuating the green of them so much that they look almost inhuman.
“Booker!” She sings my name and reaches for me, nearly slipping again on a loose marble. I catch her in my arms and try to ignore the fact that she smells different as her hands wrap tightly behind my neck. “I can’t believe it’s been six years!”
My throat feels tight as I huff out an incredulous laugh. “Hiya, Poppy. I erm…hardly recognise you.”
“Oh, Book, it’s only a haircut.” She pulls back much too soon and whacks me on the chest like we see each other every day and the earth isn’t spinning off its axis right now. “I’m the same old blundering mess I’ve always been.” She looks past me, still gripping my arms for balance as she skates her way to the doorway. “Well knock me over with a feather, look at the Harris Twins! All grown up and STD-free I assume since I hear you’re both off the market?”
Cam and Tan chortle like morons. When she exchanges hugs with them, I take the opportunity to check out her backside because, well, I can’t help it, I’m still floored. She never had an arse like that in secondary school.
“You’ve come a long way from singing show tunes in the park, Pop,” Tanner says playfully as he ruffles her hair.
She beams. “Well, as you can see from the mess I’ve made, some things never change.” She looks Tanner up and down and gives his beard a tug. “I’d say you’ve come a long way from shagging girls that snuck in through the conservatory.”
“Camden did that, too!” Tanner defends, his hand against his chest in mock insult.
Camden’s got his flirty voice on thick when he adds, “Had we known you’d grow up to be such a fox, we would have kept a closer watch on you.”
He winks and Poppy’s throaty laugh pierces through my chest. Annoyance creeps over me as I watch my two brothers blatantly flirt with her. It reminds me of all the other times in my life when they took the spotlight and left me in the shadows.
My voice is gruff when I interrupt. “If you two are done sexually harassing Poppy, maybe you could grab me a broom to clean up this mess.”
Poppy’s big round eyes slant in sympathy. “Sorry about all this, Booker. I guess it’s good I leave the fancy footwork to you guys.”
Camden returns and hands a broom over to me. “No worries, Pop. It’s the strikers who have the golden feet, not the keeper. We’ll let Booker clean this up while Tan and I help you with the rest of your stuff.”
Poppy tries to argue, but the two idiots are already ushering her carefully over the marbles and down the stairs before I have a chance to catch a second glance of her.
That reunion did not go at all as I expected.