Glory Of The Football Manager System

The drive back was the drive out, slower.

Her hand in mine on the gearstick this time. Fingers laced. Thumb on the back of my knuckles. The window down on her side. The CD on its second loop because neither of us had thought to change it.

Somewhere outside Croydon she moved her other hand off her lap and put it flat over the front of my jacket on the left side. Just where the box was.

She did not say anything. She held it there.

I do not know to this day whether she could feel the small hard shape of it under her palm or whether she had clocked something three days ago and was letting me know she had. I have never asked. Asking would have been cheating.

The hand stayed all the way to the underground car park.

We came up in the lift in silence at quarter past six. Her face against the front of my jacket on the left side where her hand had been.

I put the key in our door. Click.

The flat was empty. Jessica had been and gone like weather. The chef she had hired had been and gone with her. They had taken the van and left everything else.

Lamps on. A line of candles down the kitchen island. The salt-bake in the oven on a timer with four minutes left, smelling of the lemon Emma had written eight hundred words about last May.

The wine she had ordered the second glass of at the Ivy in March open and breathing on the side. Two glasses out. The song she had played me on a Friday night two years ago and had thought I had not noticed she had played me, going low on the speaker.

Nobody at the stove. Nobody on the terrace. Just us.

Emma stopped in the doorway.

She looked at the candles. The wine. The music. The oven timer.

Her jaw did the thing it does before she tells a press officer no.

”Danny.”

”Em.”

”What is this?”

I could have lied. I had a half-second where dinner was right there.

”It’s not a thing, Em. I promise you it’s not a thing. No song. Nobody’s filming. Your dad’s not in the bathroom. It is the food off your column and the wine you liked and our kitchen, because I know you, and I did not want it to be at you, I wanted it to be just us with the door shut.”

She had gone very still.

”I had a whole plan to do it this morning in here, Em. And the vans came on the road and I bottled it, and I drove you round a field for ten hours instead, and I have started about forty sentences today and not finished one of them and you said I was working up to confessing an affair.”

”Daniel.”

”It’s not an affair.”

”I know what it’s not.” Her voice had gone somewhere I have only heard it go two or three times. ”I think I know what it is.”

I stopped talking, because the talking was the performance and she does not want the performance.

I got the box out of the left side of my jacket where it had lived for a fortnight and in my safe for 3 months.

I did not get down on one knee in the middle of the floor like a man in an advert.

I opened it where I stood. In the doorway. In the lamplight. The understated old thing Jessica had walked half of London to find because it was the only one quiet enough to be her.

”You sat down on the wrong end of a freezing bench next to a bloke with nothing, Em. Eight pound fifteen. A notebook. No badge, no money, no nothing.”

I had to stop a second.

”And you stayed. You have never once wanted the boat. You picked me before there was anything to pick.”

My voice went. I let it. It was only her.

”I’m asking you with no song and nobody watching, Em. Will you marry me?”

She did not squeal.

She did not put a hand over her mouth.

That is not her. If she had, I would have known I had got the whole thing wrong.

She looked at the ring.

Then she looked at me. The green of her eyes went bright and did not spill.

”Took you three years and a European Cup, you absolute, ”

She did not finish.

The laugh came up the wrong way in her throat and went into a small wrecked breath and she put her free hand over her own mouth and laughed at herself with the eyes going bright.

”Em.”

”Of course it is yes, Daniel.”

”Em.”

”Of course it is yes, you idiot, of course it is. Put it on my hand before you drop it; your hands are shaking.”

My hands were shaking.

I took her left hand in both of mine. She had reported from a riot in Athens with that hand and she could not hold it still long enough for me to get the ring on her, and I have never seen her hand shake in three years.

I put it on her.

It fit. Jessica thinks of everything. It sat on her hand like it had always been somebody’s and was now hers.

She looked at it. A long second.

She took my face in both her hands the way she did on a bench three years ago when she decided.

She put her forehead on mine.

”I would have said yes on the bench I met you, you know.”

”I know.”

”You did not have to win Europe, Daniel.”

”I know.”

”I know you know. That is why I am marrying you.”

And then she kissed me.

Properly. Mouth open. Both her hands on the sides of my face. The new ring cold on the side of my jaw for half a second and then warm.

She moaned into my mouth. Mmh. Low. Warm. Not stopping.

My hand went into the heavy red of her hair where it lives. My other hand left the small of her back and went under the back of the hoodie.

Ten hours of having my hand on the outside of that hoodie. The whole of Sunday with the warm of her against the front of me through the thick grey wool and the world looking at the wool and not at her, and Christ I had wanted the inside of it since the bridleway.

Thin white T-shirt against my palm. The warm bare strip of her back under it where it had ridden up off the jeans.

I got my hand up under the T-shirt to the bare warm of her side. Up.

The full warm soft weight of her breast in my hand. No bra. Just her. The small hard point of her nipple against the centre of my palm.

She moaned into my mouth properly this time. Mmh, Danny.

I closed the hand on her. She gasped into the kiss. Ah. Sharper.

”Daniel, God, ”

I moved my other hand down onto the back of her. Full hand, the whole soft heavy shape of her in the jeans, and I pulled her in against me.

She made the wrecked sound into the side of my throat.

”Ah, Danny.”

I got my fingers into the waistband of the jeans at the back and went under. Warm soft cotton against my palm. The thin knickers she had pulled on at eight this morning. The lace of the waistband against the side of my wrist. The whole working curve of her ass through the cotton, full in my hand.

Her free hand had come up under the back of my own hoodie, nails into the bare skin of my back.

She whispered the next bit into my ear. Hot. Just for me.

”I love you, Daniel Walsh.”

I had to stop a second.

She had said it before. About a hundred times in three years. It had never landed like that.

I put my mouth at her ear.

”I love you, Em.”

”Say it again.”

”I love you.”

She kissed me. Slower this time. Her hand on the side of my face moving across my cheekbone. The new ring cool against my temple.

Beep, beep, beep.

The oven timer.

She laughed into the side of my neck. Properly. Shoulders going. My hand still where my hand was, on the warm cotton curve of her under the jeans.

”Daniel.”

”Mm.”

”The salt-bake.”

”Let it burn, Em.”

”I have been hungry for three hours, you proposed to me, I have got a fiancé and a ring and a salt-bake and I am eating the bake, Daniel Walsh. Bedroom later.”

”Em.”

”Hand.”

I moved the hand.

She did not step back straight away. She put her face in the side of my neck. Breathed there.

”God, you are trouble, Daniel.”

”Mm.”

***

Thank you to Sir nameyelus for the support.