“Whatever it is, the answer’s no.”

“Just hear me out.” Evan stood on the pitch in front of his old nemesis Martin Gibson, hoping today’s victory had put the Glasgow Greens manager in a receptive mood. Thom and Allan—currently lurking in the stand ten feet away, glaring down like ravenous seagulls—had scoffed at Ben’s brilliant idea, but it had kept them from outing Evan and Jamie to the rest of the fans.

“You’ve got ten seconds,” Gibson said.

Evan put on his warmest tone. “I’d like to invite you to play a friendly match with the Warriors.”

The manager gaped at him. “Why?”

“For charity,” Evan said. “And for a chance to spotlight the gay football league. A lot of people think Warriors are the only LGBT team in the country, and we’d like to correct that misconception.”

Gibson started to nod, then looked away, scratching at his red-blond stubble. “Why isn’t your manager asking me herself?”

Because Charlotte didn’t know about it until I phoned her ten minutes ago with Ben’s idea, and then she was too furious to speak at all. “She wanted to,” Evan said, “but I asked her to let me come.” He took off his cap in a gesture of humility. “It should be me offering the olive branch, since I harmed you in past seasons.”

The manager squinted at Evan’s face, then at the hat he was symbolically clutching. “Why the disguises?”

“I wanted to be sure your lads were good enough to play us,” Evan said, figuring a bit of infamous Hollister arrogance would lend some authenticity. “They definitely are.”

“Thanks,” Gibson said with heavy sarcasm. “We’re pure honored.”

“We should’ve reached out sooner, but our team has been in disarray after Colin MacDuff was nearly killed.”

The manager’s face softened. “Poor lad. He was our best player by a million miles.”

“Ours, too.” Evan took a step away, wanting to leave the discussion on a note of connection. “I’ll let you think it over, talk to your team.”

“Tell Charlotte I’ll phone her when we decide.” Gibson made a shooing motion toward the park exit. “Now gonnae get out of my sight.”

Evan made his way back to Jamie and Ben. “A solid maybe,” he told them.

“I’m so, so sorry for blowing your cover,” Ben said as they made a hasty exit from the park. “I ruined everything.”

“‘Ruined’?” Jamie said with a laugh. “Seeing their faces when Thom and Allen recognized us was the best part of the day. That’s how boring that match was.”

Ben goggled at him. “But they said mean things about you.”

“Nothing that wasnae true.” Jamie shrugged. “Footballers get slagged off all the time. It’s worth it for the extra sex—I mean, for the love of the fans.”

On the drive back to Glasgow, Evan did his best to keep up with Ben and Jamie’s road-trip banter, even getting in a few pelters himself at his own expense. But most of his mind was working over what had just happened in Edinburgh.

His primary concern wasn’t Ben’s big mouth. Robert had already warned him about that. If anything, Evan was in awe of Ben’s ability to think on his feet. Though his bright idea would complicate the Warriors’ lives, a charity friendly match with the Greens was long overdue.

What bothered Evan most were the things Thom and Allan had said about him and the Warriors. Were they beacons of hope or exploiters of their own sexualities? Had their high standards become a form of snobbery? Evan had always thought he was supporting equality by making the Warriors successful, but maybe he’d sacrificed other values on the altar of excellence.

Perhaps his attitude from work had carried over into football. If things went wrong in his job, people died. Compared to that, relegation to a lower league hardly seemed worth worrying about.

He pulled out his phone to review the text conversation with Jordan he’d held during the match:

Gunnar: Back in Glasgow now. Any work for me?

Jordan: sorry M8 not now

Jordan: looked at other places but their not so easy

Evan interpreted that to mean it would be harder to carry out an attack against a same-sex wedding at a venue where Jordan didn’t work. Hopefully that difficulty would put him off the whole business for good.

Gunnar: Moving on to other projects?

Jordan: lol yeah check this

Attached to that message was a BVP flyer for an anti-immigration rally in Glasgow next Saturday, the same one Kay had asked Evan to attend as Gunnar.

Gunnar: Cool. Might have work that day but will try to come.

Jordan: thx going back to our roots gotta mind the real enemy

At the end of the message he’d included a string of emojis: a mosque, a red circle with a line through it, then several downward-pointing arrows.

Evan frowned, wondering whether he was ready for this hate rally. Until now, his undercover work had mostly been one-on-one with a single target. Fitting in with a crowd of suspicious-minded folk required a whole other level of craftiness than being one gullible person’s fake friend.

Glancing up from his phone, Evan noticed they were entering Glasgow and the car had fallen silent. He checked the backseat to see Jamie with his head drooped forward, mouth slack, strands of sandy hair dangling over his cheeks.

“When did he fall asleep?” Evan whispered.

“About a minute after you checked out of the conversation.” Ben’s voice was as tight as his grip on the steering wheel. “I can’t believe you’re not raging. I convinced you to trust me, and I wasn’t worthy of that trust. I’ll never forgive myself, and I totally understand if you never want to see me again.”

Evan snorted. “Is this your way of never seeing me again?”

“What? No! Why would I want that?”

“After what those lads said at the park, about me being a snob and a poacher—”

“They were full of pish. Look, I meant what I said to those judgmental knobs. What you’re doing is important because it’s different, because it’s harder. Your job isn’t to make bad players good, it’s to make good players great. Never apologize for that.” Ben tilted his head. “Unless you were an arse about it, in which case I don’t approve.”

Evan didn’t laugh. “I tried not to be. When I rejected players, I told them face to face. I gave feedback on how they could improve and encouraged them to try again. Like Colin—he didn’t pass his first Warriors trial, but he worked hard with the Greens, then came back to us and got in the team.”

“See? You’re a good guy. In fact, in this scenario you’re a good guy pretending to be a bad guy for a great cause.”

The thought made Evan’s head reel. It bothered him that Ben was so determined to see the best in him. Then it bothered him that it bothered him. What was he afraid of?

Being found out, of course. Evan may not be the villain most people thought him to be, but he was certainly no hero either.

“What if, at each place setting, we use a different color ribbon to tie the menu to the napkin?”

“It would reinforce the rainbow theme.” Ben switched on his kitchen kettle, glad that Candice couldn’t see the look on his face. He was used to clients coming up with new ideas mere days before the wedding, but his schedule between now and Saturday was tighter than the jeans he’d worn to the Grand Ole Opry.

“Ooh, we could use those fancy curly ribbons!” Candice’s tone verged on manic, and Ben worried she was suffering prenuptial insomnia.

Ribbons don’t come in “curly,” he thought with a frown. They have to be made that way by hand. By my hands. “I’ll phone the venue and see if I can get napkins and menus after Friday night’s rehearsal.”

“Brilliant! It won’t be a bother?”

“Of course not.” Folding 126 napkins, tying them to 126 menus, then curling 126 ribbons should keep him up only until…och, one or two a.m. He really needed an assistant, but as this was his last wedding, what was the point?

After contacting the venue, Ben sat before his computer with a fresh cup of tea, almost relieved to focus on uni work instead of work-work. Each was a means of procrastination for the other.

For his dissertation he’d downloaded a new program called WhoWhatWhere. The software supposedly used basic identifiers like name and number to produce a report delineating the last few months of someone’s life. Ben thought it would be illustrative to compare the profile of a social-media butterfly like himself to that of a hermit like Evan.

He entered his name and number, then clicked retrieve. “Wow.”

On the screen before him was a dispassionate display of Ben’s gallivanting about Glasgow: posting pics of himself here, rendezvousing with a hottie there, checking in here and there, and basically advertising his whereabouts nearly every moment of every day. In other words, having a life.

The first tab showed a map, which shaded the most common destinations. There was nothing unexpected there, so he clicked on the Interests tab:

- Education

- Formal events

- Curling

- Gay nightlife

- Country and Western music

“Where you go is who you are,” his advisor had once said. This theory was basically the foundation of Ben’s entire field.

He’d known his phone was a massive repository of open-source intelligence, and that his number linked to his email and social-media usernames. This program had simply gathered the data Ben had put into the world, turning it into an elegant report that any intelligence agency or marketing firm would kill for. Though not a surprise, it still felt a bit creepy.

What bothered him most wasn’t what was included, but rather what was missing: his faith. The report contained no record of him attending a Bahá’í devotional meeting or even a study circle to discuss the words of the prophet Bahá’u’lláh. The Glasgow Bahá’í community numbered only in the dozens, so he’d been close to several members. Like Mum, they didn’t condemn his sexuality per se, but they were definitely not chuffed about his wedding activities.

What would they think of this…thing he had with Evan? Would they be sad like his mum? Would they cite their leaders in the Universal House of Justice, who claimed that support for same-sex relationships was a symptom of society’s degradation?

Ben switched programs and brought up his copy of the letter the UHJ had released last year on the matter. It had so outraged him he’d read it only once—skimmed it, really, to keep his eyes from burning—and never opened it again. Looking back, he realized it was this edict that had led him to stop going to prayer group and eventually to stop praying at all.

He read it again now, feeling the urge to look through his fingers like a kid watching a scary movie.

Of course it emphasized how wrong it was to persecute or discriminate against people of a “homosexual orientation” and said that gay Bahá’ís shouldn’t withdraw from the community but rather should be supported by it. But it also reminded Bahá’ís that premarital sex and same-sex acts were strictly forbidden.

And then there was this, in case Ben might hope for some wriggle room:

To accept Bahá’u’lláh is to accept His Teachings, including those that pertain to personal morality, even if one must struggle to live up to His standard. It would be a profound contradiction for someone to profess to be a Bahá’í, yet reject, disregard, or contend with aspects of belief or practice He ordained.

Ben read those lines five times, then reread the entire letter twice before closing the document and leaping up from his chair, as though he could somehow escape the truth by walking away from the computer.

According to his mum, he’d been allowed to stay in the Faith despite all of his Grindr hookups, because those encounters had been “discreet.” Yet now that he might have found something real and powerful, that could get him chucked out of their community? It made no sense.

As he heated more water for tea, a new and horrible thought occurred to him: Perhaps he’d lied to Evan. Perhaps Ben’s anonymous hookups had felt okay not because he was helping those lads find peace, but because they were secret. They hadn’t forced him to choose between his faith and his sexuality.

Evan was anything but secret. They’d slow-danced together in public, an act that had terrified and thrilled Ben to his core.

Could Evan be the one to take him into the light? Was Evan worth it? After two dates, Ben had no way to know.

The kettle dinged, and just like that, it came to him: He did have a way to know more about Evan, a way to take a wee peek at the mysterious book of that man’s life.

Ben went back to his computer and reopened the WhoWhatWhere software. Then he reconsidered. This data was all open-source and therefore publicly available, but he felt like a stalker checking up on Evan’s activities.

He reviewed their private communications—what there was of them. Though Evan had accepted Ben’s Facebook friend request, he never seemed available to chat there, and he’d still not added a new post since Christmas.

Their text conversations were a bit more fruitful, like this one from the previous week:

Ben: Fave band?

Evan: Franz Ferdinand

Ben: !?! I expected something less bouncy. Something darker.

Evan: FF have their dark moments. Some lyrics are pure Glaswegian despair.

Ben: But they’re darkness you can dance to.

Evan: Darkness you MUST dance to.

Evan had gone on to explain how when he was a teenager, growing up different to everyone around him, Franz Ferdinand had made him feel less alone, less weird, less afraid to come out and be himself: Their music was sorta gay when I was accepting being totally gay.

So Evan wasn’t paranoid about opening up. Perhaps his barely-there social-media presence was down to his demanding schedule.

Ben decided on a compromise, setting the report to its most basic output: simple location tracking. He wouldn’t delve into Evan’s interests or other personal information.

I just want to see where he goes every day. I deserve to know what the man I’m dating does for a living, right?

Ben entered Evan’s name and number and hit search. The hourglass on the screen flipped over once, then twice, then a third time. Then a fourth time.

Finally the results page came up. The map was much emptier than his own. There were gaps in coverage every weekday between seven a.m., when Evan left his flat near George Square, and four-thirty p.m., when he reappeared either there or at a gym in the Merchant City area.

His workday—the very thing Ben wanted to explore—was completely blacked out.

Where do you go? Ben wondered. And what do you do when you get there?