Chapter Text
Jamie wrote his first book when he was 21 years old. On paper, he was living his childhood dream, but in reality he barely getting any minutes in and to make matters worse his father constantly bearing down on him. One night after training, when his dad had thankfully buggered off to the pub with his mates, Jamie sat alone in his flat, thinking of his mum like he always did. It had been far too long since he’d spoken to her. The thought made him sick with guilt, but he didn’t think he could bear seeing her, hearing her kind words and feeling her warm hugs and bright smiles all while his father’s voice shouted in the back of his head calling him a soft pathetic little bitch.
He remembered when he was little and it was just him and Mummy, when he used to write stories. At first most of them were about himself being a Premier League footballer, playing for England, getting to meet the great Roy Kent and being friends with him. He’d shown them to Mummy, and she’d read each and every one of them with rapt enthusiasm, told him all her favourite bits, helped him to spell all the words he struggled with. He’d branched out into writing some fantasy stuff too, characters going on magical adventures, saving the world and all that, but he’d always come back to writing about football. He loved writing, inventing all these characters and stories, getting to make them come to life with his words, but his first love was always football. He remembered his mum telling him one day he could be a professional author, and he’d insisted that no, he was going to be a footballer. He remembered her simple reply of “Why not both?”
His dad was the reason why it could never be both. Jamie’s sure if his dad ever got a hold of any of the stories he’d written, he’d find a hundred reasons to call him soft or a pussy or a little bitch or whatever insult he was feeling that day. Still, Jamie couldn’t help wondering who he might be without his dad. What if he was brave enough to tell his dad to fuck off and let him be the person his mum would be proud of instead?
That’s how most of his stories started: what if?
What if he was a Premier League football player?
What if he met Roy Kent?
What if he had magical powers that he needed to use to save the world?
Some of the scenarios were a little daft, but they all started with the same question. And so, one night, Jamie started to write again.
He created a character, Oliver Moore. Oliver was everything Jamie didn’t let himself be. Oliver was kind, loving, he was an incredible player but didn’t have to dominate every game he played to prove it. He started by writing Oliver’s Premier League debut, pouring onto the page every feeling he remembered from his own: the pride, the fear and the ways that that all faded away the moment he was tearing down the pitch after the ball, that focus and clarity he couldn’t get anywhere else but playing.
It’s something he keeps coming back to when he knows his dad won’t be around. He writes about Oliver finding his footing, going from being the best on every team he plays on to suddenly being thrown into a world that is far bigger than him. He writes about Oliver meeting a girl who sees him for more than just a footballer and falling in love, and some nights when the hookups he picks up from a random bar just don’t seem to do it for him, he writes some spicier scenes of an entirely different kind of sex, of something more gentle and tender. Where Oliver doesn’t have to perform, he just gets to be and gets to feel warm and loved.
And of course, he can’t escape his childhood dreams of meeting Roy Kent, so he writes about Oliver meeting his childhood hero: Robert Danvers. Oliver gets to play against him and later spots him at a party, share a beer and tell him how much he’d admired him growing up. Danvers, in return, praises Oliver’s own talent. Jamie stares at that scene for ages when he finished it, his gut telling him to delete the whole thing—it felt far too self-indulgent. He doesn’t, though. No one’s ever going to read it anyway.
Writing makes him feel closer to his mum again, even though he still hasn’t worked up the courage to call to her. Every additional day he goes without speaking to her the guilt crawls further into him, but at the same time it becomes harder to go back. Sure, she said she’d be proud of him no matter what, but what kind of son goes over a year without speaking to his mother?
Meanwhile his dad is always around plenty and some days Jamie wonders how much more of it he can take. There’s days when his whole body aches, the bruises from his dad’s beatings made worse by pushing through and still going to training – it’d only make things worse if he tried to take time off anyway. He stands in front of the bathroom mirror with his ribs coloured in purple and wonders if football is even worth it. He remembers when Mummy had told him he could be a professional author, and he wonders whether that was true, if anyone other than his mum would ever give a shit about his writing.
So, being careful not to jostle his body around too much, he puts a t-shirt on and sits at his desk and opens up the story he’s been writing. It’s nearing fifty thousand words by now and it’s reaching the end of Oliver’s season, just one more match to go and his team is fighting for the top spot in the Premier League. He hasn’t written in a while; he hasn’t been able to figure out how to end it, but now sitting with the physical reminders of his Dad’s anger at his fumbled pass in last match he’d played, he knows what to write.
Oliver doesn’t win the game. He tries his best but it’s not enough, after an early goal from the other team they just can’t get past their defence to equalise. They lose and with that loss they lose the Premier League title. Oliver is devastated of course, but he’s ok, because Oliver doesn’t have a piece of shit father who would beat him black and blue the moment he got home. Instead Oliver gets to go home to his girlfriend who takes him into her arms and tells him how brilliantly he played, how proud she is of his progress over the last year. She reminds him this is only the start, that one match doesn’t define a career. Oliver gets to believe her.
Jamie sits back from the desk, staring at the screen through the ache in his ribs. He’s written an ending. It’s not a perfect fairytale ending where Oliver gets everything he ever wanted, but it’s a happy ending all the same.
The next month is brutal. He reads back through his words, editing line by line. He hates it. It’s nothing like the rush of spilling a story out, but he forces himself through. He thinks of his mum’s voice, her faith in him, and he keeps going. In the meantime, he still trains with City. He still takes bruises for every mistake. But for the first time, determination he feels on the pitch is matched by a second kind of determination burning in him: the will to finish this book.
When he’s done he sets up an email under a new name: A. J. Simmons, using his mum’s maiden name and his initials swapped round. He find an agent who’s willing to help get his manuscript out to publishers. After that it’s just a waiting game.
The email comes after a match where he’s subbed on in the second half. He plays well, feels good, even before he checks his phone in the locker room. The email sits at the top of his inbox: one of the publishers wants his book. His grin spreads so wide he has to pretend it’s about the win, and luckily no one notices. He feels a high unlike anything else. The first thing he wants to do is tell his mum. For once, he’s sure he will. He wants to show her that her belief in him wasn’t misplaced, at least not in this.
He plans to when he gets home, except his father beats him there. Already pissed off his arse, he bellows Jamie’s name as he steps through the door. All things considered, it’s not the worst visit. He’s happy about the win. He still rants about Jamie not playing enough, calls him soft, but doesn’t throw punches. Jamie doesn’t get any more bruises that night, but he doesn’t get any peace until his dad finally passes out on the sofa. Jamie carefully positions him so he won’t choke on his own vomit overnight. By then he’s too tired to do anything else and he really doesn’t feel like talking to his mum anymore, so he just decides to go to bed and deal with everything else in the morning.
In the morning, once he’s got his dad out of the house, all he manages is to respond to the publisher.
The process of getting his book published is a bit more involved than Jamie imagined. Despite all the time he spent editing himself, his editor sends back page after page of notes. His publisher talks about titles, covers, promotion, even social media accounts under his pseudonym. He hasn’t even thought of a title, so he goes with the publisher’s suggestion: Get the Goal. A stupidly cheesy play on words, but apparently it works for the genre and Jamie figures his publisher knows far better than he does.
They set the release date for the middle of the off-season. The timing works out well considering the final few matches of the season are shit, and the last thing Jamie wants it to have another thing he need to worry about. Despite being pushed harder than ever in training, he barely gets any minutes and without the distraction of writing he’d become accustomed to over the last few months all he can focus on are his father’s cutting remarks, tearing apart every kick Jamie takes, blaming Jamie for any goal they concede while he’s on the pitch and sometimes even the ones while he’s on the bench. For a while, it’s only words. Jamie dares to think maybe he’s finally doing well enough to stave off the violence.
That notion only lasts until the end of the season. They lose their last game and finish second in the league, a part of Jamie wonders if it’s somehow karma for choosing to end his book in the very same way. Jamie’s dad is of course pissed and this time it’s not just words. The blows come fast, and this time Jamie realises something with startling clarity: the punches had only stopped because his dad didn’t want to wreck his body before City’s matches. Now, with the season over, there’s nothing holding him back.
Between the end of the season and the release of the book he doesn’t see his father at all, it seems he’s given up pretending to give a fuck about his son for anything other than football. Some part of Jamie wonders if he should be upset about that, but mostly he’s grateful, and without any other distractions his entire focus is on his book. He throws himself into being A. J. Simmons, posting on his accounts, snippets of the book, bits about the story, even stilly Q&As his publisher sends him to fill out. Followers start to trickle in. He even gets some commentors saying they’re excited for the book.
A week before release date he gets a box of advanced copies of the book along with a note telling him he can share with friends and family if he wishes. He thinks of his mum, about how he still hasn’t told her any of this. He wants to, she deserves to know, but now the anticipation is building for release he can’t bring himself to send it to her. He’s still terrified it will fail and that this will all just be an embarrassing mess.
He takes out one of the copies and just holds it in his hands, taking it in. The cover is nice. It shows Oliver taking a shot at a goal, but his eyes aren’t following the ball and are instead gazing at his love interest standing off to the side. It’s not exactly realistic, but it gets the idea of the book across well. He spends a while longer just running his fingers through the pages, just to prove to himself that its real before putting it back in the box and shoving the box into the back of a cupboard where his dad will never find them.
Then release day comes and Jamie feels sick. Of course, nothing really happens immediately, it takes people time to read books after all, but his publisher sends him a list of stores stocking the book. There’s one in Manchester, so he puts on his most low-key outfit and ruffles up his hair, then heads out to see it.
Seeing the physical copies of his book for the first time was one thing, seeing it on the shelf of a bookshop is an entire other thing. He wonders what his mum would think if she saw it on the shelf, whether she would realise the Simmons came from her last name, whether she might guess that it’s his.
He forces himself to not stare at it for too long, worried about being recognised, then picks a completely random book off the shelf nearby and buys it so he doesn’t look like a complete weirdo, coming into the bookshop just to stare at a book for a while then leave.
Over the next couple of weeks, the response start trickling in. His publisher tells him the novel is a hit with middle-aged women, exactly as she predicted. Jamie’s baffled. He never thought middle-aged women cared much about football, but maybe that’s sexist of him.
The Guardian gives it a four star review, calling it ‘More than just a romance novel’ and ‘A surprisingly evocative story about expectations, identity and love’. Jamie reads it over and over, hardly able to believe it.
As his book grows in popularity, the speculation grows too. People notice how accurate the football is, how real it feels. They start guessing that A. J. Simmons must be a player writing under a fake name. That scares Jamie at first, the idea of people figuring out it’s him, but it turns out he doesn’t need to be scared as his name doesn’t appear once amongst all the speculation. He’s not famous enough for that and even for those who do know who he is, he’s not exactly known for his eloquence so no, not a single person suspects that Jamie Tartt is secretly an author on the side.
Most the speculation makes Jamie just roll his eyes, but there’s one comment that digs right under his skin, just a random comment on one of his Instagram posts: is it just me or are oliver’s feelings towards robert a bit more than just athletic admiration?
Jamie scrolls past it like he hasn’t seen it. He doesn’t want to think about it, doesn’t want to remember all the times he stared at his Roy Kent poster with his dick in his hand and shame burning in his gut. He moves on to the next comment, pretending he’d never seen it.
The off season, which usually feels like a miserable slog for Jamie, flies by. Until he’s called into Pep’s office. They’re sending him away, a loan to a team lower in the league so that he can get proper minutes in. His dad is livid, shouting a lot of shit about not being good enough, about Jamie betraying City and his roots. He doesn’t hold back on punches; apparently only Man City is worth doing that for.
Pep gives him a few options of teams which are interested, asks him where he’d like to go. Jamie chooses Richmond. A team far enough away from Manchester that his dad won’t be popping around regularly, and Roy Kent is there. Roy fucking Kent. Jamie thinks of all the stories he wrote, all the conversations he imagined, all the chances to show off to his hero. He’s actually excited.
Then he arrives. Roy Kent refuses to acknowledge him and the manager, Cartrick, reminds him far too much of his dad. So, Richmond is shit. He’s not sure why he expected anything better.
It’s there that he starts writing his second book. Fans have been calling for a sequel, especially with how the first ended with a loss for Oliver. Jamie’s frozen for a while, unsure of what to write. It’s harder now than the first book was, knowing that people are actually going to read it, that there’s expectations now.
The idea comes to him one night as he stares at his phone which is completely devoid of notifications, and he wishes desperately that there was someone who missed him enough to reach out. The book sees Oliver send out on loan just like him, it's a good move for his career but means leaving his girlfriend behind. The story revolves around his difficulty adjusting to a long-distance relationship (featuring a lot of phone sex – his publisher tells him those kind of scenes sell), and finding his place in a new team, struggling with making friends in a place he knows is only temporary.
This book ends on a greater high that the last, with Oliver’s leading his new team through a winning streak, the team outperforming all expectations set for them at the beginning of the season. There’s a tearful goodbye with his new friends and promises to see them again and then an equally tearful reunion with his girlfriend and a return to where he started.
As Jamie writes he aches for kind of love in his life. Then he meets Keeley. Things feel different with her. He starts to feel like he could have what Oliver has, but then he goes and fucks that up like he does everything else and is once again alone, only a laptop full of writing for company.
He fucks up Richmond too and even Ted Lasso who seems to have endless amounts of optimism and forgiveness doesn’t seem to have enough for him.
Despite all of that, and with plenty of pushes from his publisher and editor, he gets the book written.
Across the Field, is released in the off season, same as his last one. It sells well enough but the reviews are mixed, some call it sweet and heartwarming, others call it dull and lacking any real conflict. Jamie can’t argue. His editor warned him, told him the story needed more tension, but he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t tear Oliver and his girlfriend apart, not when his own life already feels like it’s splintering. Still, the criticism stings.
His father doesn’t seem content to leave him alone either. Unlike the previous year, he’s is constantly on Jamie’s back, making sure he isn’t slacking, making sure he doesn’t give Man City a reason to send him away again. The worst part is that his father’s shouting is the only thing that gets Jamie up in the morning. On days when he’s father’s too hungover or still too pissed to show up, he just lies in bed, letting the hours waste away. On days when his father is around, all he feels is anger.
One night when he’s particularly pissed off, Jamie goes out to the clubs, gets absolutely hammered and makes out with a random bloke on the dance floor. When he wakes up in the morning and remembers the man’s mouth on his as they grinded together he throws up, not even making it to the toilet.
He’s really fucked it this time. He’s certain pictures will be popping up on the internet and that will be the end of his career, and he’ll have to fucking run if he doesn’t want his father to end his life too.
The pictures never surface. Somehow that disappoints him. Maybe he’s searching for an excuse to leave it all behind, to run away and start fresh.
He gets an email from his agent, a joke about some offer from a reality TV show. He takes it immediately.
It works for a bit, mindless sex that stops him thinking of anything else, But he misses football. He misses it like a phantom limb. So he does the only thing he knows how to do when he wants something he can’t have: he writes.
He finds a corner of the villa tucked away with no cameras and gets a fucking notepad and pen because he’s not allowed his laptop and writes. This time the character isn’t Oliver. It’s Daniel Cooper, still a footballer, but while Oliver was a representation of everything Jamie wishes he could be, Daniel is the opposite. Daniel is all the things he hates about himself, the things he’d never been brave enough to say - his sexuality, his dad, the times he just wants to give up and end it all.
He writes without thinking, just getting it all out there. By the time he’s booted off the island he’s filled multiple notebooks.
He's back home and Man City won’t take him. He speaks to Ted and Ted won’t take him either. He gets an email from his publisher, asking if he’s working on anything new. All he has are those notebooks. He’s already trashed his football career, what’s one more thing to risk? He spends a full day transcribing, typing through the night. It’s messy, painful, but cathartic. He gets to read back what he’s written, seeing his own life from the outside, all those emotions sill present and raw, but not so all consuming as he’d felt at the time. He knows it’s a mess of a draft, but he sends it anyway.
Ted takes him back after all. The team still hates him though.
He gets a response from his publisher a few days later and as soon as he sees the email notification he wishes he’d never sent it. He’d never meant to share anything he’d written and now his publisher knows it all. With shaking hands, he opens the email.
Jamie,
I’m not going to lie to you this book is bleak, but there’s something there, something powerful. I think it’s exactly what was missing from your last book. There’s a lot of refinements and edits to make and I think the ending needs some major changes, but I think this book could change lives. If you’re willing, I’d like to pass it to the editor and work on it with you.
-Angela
Honestly, he’d been half expecting her to tell him he needs shipping off to a mental hospital so really the response is a lot better than he anticipated. He skips over the phrase this book could change lives not really ready to process what she means by that and instead thinks about the ending.
He remembers writing it - Daniel quitting football, running away, just like Jamie did. He’d even tried tacking on a happy ending once, Daniel coming out, living openly, finally free of his dad. But it didn’t feel right, after everything he’d written about with Daniel to write something that felt so fake, that felt so far out of the realm of possibility that it stuck out like a sore thumb against the rest of the book. So he scrapped it.
Maybe Angela wants him to have Daniel stay in football, push through and bear it where Jamie couldn’t. He’s not really sure. But he emails back: Go ahead. Send it to the editors. There’s no taking it back now.
The weeks that follow are gruelling. He’s doing everything he can to get the team to like him again – though the protest helps a lot, and he’s in a constant back and forth with his editor. She shreds the draft, pages covered in red. Whole sections need rewrites. But slowly, painfully, the story takes shape. The ending still eludes him though, Angela wants it to end happily, tells him if any book deserves a happy ending it’s this one, but Jamie still can’t imagine a happy ending for Daniel, still can’t imagine a happy ending for himself.
Everything starts to change when Roy Kent comes back.
At first, it’s shit. Roy ignores him no matter what he does and it’s like when he was first at Richmond all over again. But then it all comes to head Roy tells him he needs to be a prick again, but only on Roy’s command. When Roy gives him the signal, Jamie feels more alive than he has in years.
Richmond fighter their way into the FA cup semi-final. In the dressing room afterwards, Jamie looks around as the team cheer and hug and the joy spreads throughout the whole room, something cracks open inside him. Jamie is happy, maybe even loved.
Suddenly it occurs to him. If Oliver was always braver than Jamie, so why couldn’t Daniel be too?
As soon as he gets home, he starts writing. It takes him longer than he expected, he has to go through the whole back half of the book weaving in the seeds of the ending so it doesn’t come out of nowhere but eventually he gets there. Daniel comes out to his team, and they welcome him with open arms. It’s not a fairytale happy ending where everything is fixed and they all live happily ever after – Daniel still has to hide his sexuality from the public, still can’t fully break free from his father, but he gets to share his true self with the people he loves most and that’s enough.
His publisher loves it, and the words Jamie never thought would see the light of day have been transformed into something publishable. The release date is set for the end of the season, giving them a few months for final edits, marketing and promotion. Jamie feels ready.
Then Wembley happens Jamie almost loses his nerve, it’s humiliating enough to have his teammates witness his father’s actions in the locker room. What was he thinking airing out that and more to the entire world, even hiding behind a pseudonym?
But then Roy’s there and he wraps his arms around him, holds onto him like he never means to let go, takes him home, cooks him dinner, and Jamie starts to feel safe again. They don’t talk about it afterwards, but something shifts in their relationship after that.
The rest of the season is a whirlwind of emotion, but they make it pack into the Premier League by the skin of their teeth and Jamie has never felt this happy as he cheers and dances amongst his teammates and even gets another hug from Roy, albeit with a headbutt first. The celebrations continue late into the night, including an impromptu sleepover on Isaac’s living room floor, so by the time Jamie stumbles back to his house late the next morning there is a parcel on his doorstep.
He carries it inside and wastes no time tearing it open, revealing a box containing the advanced copies of his book. He picks one up reverently and scans it over, just like he had the first time. The cover has the title Man On written in bold letters across the top and the art below shows Daniel standing solitary under a spotlight on and otherwise dark pitch. The artist has absolutely nailed it. At first glance, Daniel’s stand looks confident and strong, but upon further inspection the anxiety is written all over his body.
Jamie turns the book over and reads the blurb:
Daniel Cooper has wanted to be a Premier League footballer for as long as he can remember. He has the talent, there’s no doubt about that, but the journey there is a constant uphill battle. With his father constantly bearing down on him and a secret that could ruin him, he wonders if he can find his place in the world of football or whether he was doomed to fail from the start.
They’d decided to keep the sexuality element of the story under wraps for now. That would come after the release, where hopefully the book would speak for itself and Jamie wouldn’t have to make any grand statement about it.
Jamie had never given one of his advanced copies to anyone before, but this time he knows he has to. He packs one of the books in a rucksack, along with the bare minimum of clothes and toiletries he needs and drive straight to Manchester, not stopping until he reaches his destination.
He freezes on the doorstep of the old council house, taking deep breaths as he psyched himself up to knock.
His mum opens the door, and he can hardly breath.
“Mummy,” he says. “Mummy, I’m so sorry.” Her arms wrap around him before he even finishes his sentence.
“Jamie, baby. I’m so happy to see you” He feels like he’s going to cry.
“I’m sorry I’ve been gone for so long.” He chokes up as he says it. Mummy’s grip on him tightens.
“That doesn’t matter. None of it matters now. You’re here. You’re here right now and that’s all that matters to me.” Jamie doesn’t know what to say to that, doesn’t know what to do with such generosity, so he doesn’t say anything, just tucks his head into her shoulder and cries. She doesn’t complain one bit, just guides him into the house and sits them both down on the sofa.
Eventually the tears stop coming. Eventually Jamie is able to lift his head up and look his mummy in the eye for the first time in years. There’s so much he wants to say. He decides to start with the reason he’s here.
“I have something to show you,” he tells her. With shaking hands, he pulls the book out of his bag and hands it over to her. She holds it reverently, looks over the cover, then turns to the back and reads the blurb. Without warning, she pulls him back into a hug.
“I knew it was you,” she whispers “As soon as I picked up that first book and read the first page, I knew it was you.” If Jamie had any tears left, he would have started crying all over again. “I’m so proud of you my sexy little baby. Reading those books, you won’t believe how proud I was.”
Jamie had known Mummy reading his books was a possibility, and even that she might realise it was him, but he can’t help but blush at the idea of her reading what he’d written, especially the sex scenes.
The new book is worse though. There’s so much about his dad that he never told her. He’d been so desperate to have his father back in his life, he didn’t want to say anything that might make him leave again. The book isn’t an autobiography, Daniel’s life doesn’t follow Jamie’s exactly, but there’s sill a lot of Jamie in there, still a lot of his dad.
“That’s my new book,” he says pointing at the book in her hand as if it wasn’t already obvious. “It comes out in a couple of weeks, but I wanted to give you one of my advanced copies. And umm… I wanted to talk to you about some things in the book, things about me I guess.”
She nods and cups his hands in hers. “I’m here, whatever you want to tell me.”
“Dad hurt me.” The words scrape feel rough and unfamiliar. He’s never said them aloud. Not once. His eyes drop to their entwined hands, he can’t bear to see her face, can’t bear to see her reaction. He continues speaking. “I didn’t tell you ‘cause I still wanted him to love me. I thought that maybe if I was good enough he would, that he’d stop hurting me… I don’t think anything I ever did could have been.”
That’s something he’d realised between sessions with Dr Fieldstone and writing his book. That his father’s actions were always a reflection of his father and not him. Even after he’d realised it wasn’t normal for people’s dads to beat them up, he’d still spend a long time believing that if he’d just been able to be the son his father wanted none of it would have happened. Realising that there was nothing he could have done was oddly freeing.
“Baby I’m so sorry.” Mummy’s voice is wavering, and Jamie realises with horror that she’s trying to hold back tears. He’d known this was going to hurt her, but facing the reality of it is so much worse. He feels guilt clawing up at him. He never should have written this book. “I knew that man was bad news, but I was scared that if I didn’t let you see him, you’d hate me for the rest of your life. I convinced myself it wasn’t that bad, that you were his son, and he’d never hurt you. I should have never let that bastard near you, even if it meant you hated me.”
“It’s not your fault Mummy. I’m the one who chose to keep seeing him.”
“Baby,” she squeezes his hands tighter, “it’s not your fault either. Alright? You should have been safe with your father, that’s all on him, not you.” Jamie nods barely tipping his head forwards.
“Still, I’m sorry I chose him over you.”
“None of that. You’re here now and I’m so incredibly grateful for that.”
The rest of the conversation is easier. He tells her all about Richmond, about the friends he’s made there, and he tells her about writing his books, about the pride he’d felt when he got the news his book would be published, about how he never would have been able to do it without her support. She cries again but she assures him they’re happy tears this time. She tells him how proud she is and that she can’t wait to read his new book and that’s when he realises, he still has one more thing to tell her.
“Mummy I’m bisexual.”
Immediately she pulls him into a tight hug.
“Thank you so much for telling me. I love you so much and your sexuality doesn’t change that in the slightest.” And that’s it. After all this time agonising over his sexuality, the guilt and the shame, the fear and the hiding, she just accepts him with no hesitation.
He’s exhausted, between the drive and the difficult conversation, but tucked up in her arms, he feels the most comfortable he has in years.
He stays with her until the book releases, finds out she’s still with Simon, the man she’d started seeing a few months before Jamie had drifted away from her. Jamie had hated him back then, saw him as a threat, another man coming into their lives. But now without that fear gnawing at him Simon seems good, kind. He’s glad Mummy had him, had someone to support her while Jamie was off being a dickhead.
Simon is incredibly welcoming to Jamie’s unplanned presence in their house, all smiles and compliments and asking Jamie about his meal plan so he can make something appropriate. Jamie almost wishes he wasn’t, wishes that Simon would yell at him for the way he’d hurt Mummy. Maybe he’d feel less guilty that way.
When the release day comes, his mum is there with him the whole day. She’d already taken the day off work so she could read the new book as soon as possible. Upon Jamie’s request they hadn’t discussed the exact contents of the book yet, but he knows she’s read it. They go out into the Peak District for the day. Jamie’s never really been one for going out on long walks, he finds them slow and boring, but he can’t deny that it’s nice to be away from everything for the day. With only Mummy at his side and surrounded by beautiful views.
By the time he gets back he has a message from the publisher telling him the online sales are looking great so far, though it will be a few more days before they can get the full picture. His socials are already blowing up with comments on just the first chapter, people cursing him out for breaking their hearts on the first page. His stomach still twists, there’s still a whole lot more to come from his book being out there in the world, but for now everything is good. He’s speaking to his mum again properly, not hiding anything from her for the first time in as long as he can remember, and he feels like he can finally breath again.
That night he drifts of to sleep on the sofa, with his head tucked into Mummy’s lap, just like he used to as a child, and sleeps soundly.