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Nate can’t wear the same suit every game day.
He knows this intellectually, so when his first Ham paycheck clears, he heads to Oxford Street, where someone can point him to something appropriate to buy. He ends up not at the same boutique Keeley took him to—Nate wouldn’t be able to step in there again without combusting from humiliation—but it might as well be. These stores all feel identical: simpering staff offering overpriced champagne, horrid neon printed jackets that are apparently the latest style, shoes that cost more than Nate-the-kit man made in a month. Nate reminds himself that he has every right to be here—he is the manager of a top Premier League team, the wunderkind—but he still fiddles with the edge of his sleeves as the fit shop attendant tilts her head at the suit Nate’s trying on.
And of course, in walks Jamie Tartt, like he owns the place. The attendant hurries off to get champagne in a way she hadn’t for Nate.
Nate’s first thought is to slip out the emergency door in the back before Jamie can see him. But he clenches his fist—he is the wunderkind. Jamie Tartt is a once potential star who got blunted by Ted Lasso’s shitty nice guy act. This could be an opportunity, Nate thinks as he shoves his shaking hands into his pockets; like Nate, Jamie could be brilliant if he was just under better management.
Jamie finally spots Nate, turning towards Nate with a big smile. Nate reconsiders his plan to stay put, memories of having his face shoved in this twat’s dirty underwear flashing across his mind.
Jamie’s smile dims a little as Nate flinches, but it’s still there. “Oi, Nate! How you been, mate? Congrats on the West Ham gig; sorry you left before we could see you off.” He says it like it was an accident of bad timing, and that Nate didn’t intentionally leave like a thief in the night before Ted could try to rope him back in with his mind games.
“Yeah, well.” Nate demurs, hating himself a little at how quiet he sounds. He’s no longer the sniveling weakling that Jamie Tartt used to push around, he reminds himself, even as his hands shake in his pockets. “There wasn’t much for me at Richmond, was there? No one’s locked me in a supply closet at West Ham yet,” he adds, wanting to twist the knife a little. He is the wunderkind now, not a faceless kit man. He is better than Jamie Tartt now.
Jamie grimaces, absentmindedly fiddling with a purple leopard print jumper, “Yeah, I . . . guess I never really apologized to you like I did the team, did I? I’m sorry, mate,” he says, and Nate could almost think Jamie actually means it. “My Dad, he—well, that’s not an excuse, Dr. Sharon would say, but I learned from him how to be a man, didn’t I?”
“Yeah,” Nate says, cringing at how quiet he sounds again. “I understand that.” He feels the need to commiserate with Jamie, even though Nate has never treated anyone like Jamie had, has never made them feel like a worthless bug underneath someone’s shoe.
“Yeah?” Jamie asks, raising an eyebrow. “Your Dad a piece of shit too?”
“I mean, my Dad never hit me,” Nate hurries to say, because he’d seen the way Jamie had leaned into his father’s shove like it was a well worn routine. Jamie hadn’t looked shocked until after his fist had swung, when he was still standing in his dirty socks, staring down at his father on the floor of the muddy locker room. Nate has never been enough for his father, but at least he doesn’t have any physical scars for it.
Jamie chews the inside of his cheek. “I—it fucking sucked. When he’d—you know,” Jamie grimaces, waving an arm to encompass everything his Dad had done. “But, all the times he called me a pussy, a little bitch, a fa—a pansy—that shit messed me up too, ya know? That was what I heard in my head. And it made me act like a shit.”
“That’s oddly insightful,” Nate says, unable to keep the scorn out of his voice. Who knew Jamie Tart could have thoughts more complex than that of a dog.
“I’ve been talking to Dr. Sharon,” Jamie says. “It’s like, tantric masculinity, innit? When lads can’t cry and emote and shit, so they act tough instead.”
Nate opens his mouth and then immediately closes it, unsure of how to respond.
“Anyway,” Jamie says, breaking the moment. He gives Nate an unsubtle look up and down. “You look fit as fuck, mate.” Unlike with Keeley, Nate doesn’t feel the urge to kiss him. But he also doesn’t feel the urge to punch him either, which is a new emotion in regards to Jamie. “I gotta run, gotta meet a mate for coffee, but it was good to see you.” He holds out a hand, and Nate, to his surprise, finds himself taking it.
It isn’t until a minute or two later, when Jamie has scampered off, that Nate realizes Jamie had put something in his hand when they’d shaken hands. Nate grimaces, expecting a chewed up wad of gum or something, but it’s just a receipt—for, Nate squints, laser tag. Nate recognizes Jamie’s incomprehensible script from years of mediating between autograph seekers and the team trying to board the coach. Dr. Sharon, shrink lady it says, followed by a number.
Nate thinks about throwing it in the obnoxious gilded trash can in the corner.
He puts it in his pocket instead, and goes to pay for the suit.