“Hey, you two!” the familiar voice of Fleur cracks through the silence.
“Heya, Fleur!” Riley greets.
“Hey, have you been doing a bit of shopping?” I ask when I find my voice and the blood has returned to my head, so I’m not dizzy anymore.
“Yeah, I needed a few things I can’t get online. We still good for Friday? Girls’ pre-drinks before the club?” Fleur asks.
“Hell yeah! But now I'm thinking I need to go get something nicer to wear. I didn’t expect to be going to a nightclub when I packed at the start of the season,” I offer.
“Sophia and I were thinking of hitting some shops tomorrow, if you want to come along?” Fleur offers.
“Sure, that sounds great! Thanks.”
“Sweet. I am going to get these back to the hotel. I need a break.” Fleur waves with her arms weighed down with bags.
“Aww, I would have loved to go shopping with you,” Riley teases once Fleur is out of earshot.
“I don’t think so. You know you can’t go into the fitting rooms with me?”
“Well, that’s disappointing.” He pretends to sulk.
“This isn’t the movies. Get that right out of your head,” I tease to his pouty face.
“Fine.” He feigns upset and shakes his empty ice cream cup. “Refill or done?”
I glance into my half-finished one and cannot fit another bite in. “Done, but do you want the rest of mine?” I ask, presenting the rest of the choc mint to him.
“Sure, sling it over here,” he replies, and outstretches his hand to mine, sending sparks up my arm as his fingers graze mine around the cup.
I lift my knees to my chest on the bench, my stomach doing flips, and my breathing all over the place. Surprised at the ease. He disarms me so well with just a smile and a touch.
“Are you cold? Do you want to start walking back? No hoodie to offer you.” He notices the move, and I play it off as that.
“Yeah, let’s go.”
He easily finishes my leftover ice cream in a few mouthfuls, binning both ice cream cups. We walk back to the hotel, his arm around me, keeping me close to him to keep me warm, but I am on fire.
20
Riley
The last few days have been a treat chilling with Mabel. We’ve mixed up our outings and gone out with the crew, but also been able to spend time together. I know she said this was casual, but it’s been four months of enjoying each other’s company and bodies. We have fallen into familiar and intimate routines. But I don’t want to bring anything up because I don’t want her to shut this off and push me away. I want to stay connected to her on this level, even if it means we're a secret and not official.
Tonight is going to be hard. We're all going out for a night in the city. I’m going to struggle to keep putting distance between us. I’m not a huge drinker that I’ll get pissed and be all over her and disregard her boundaries—none of us are huge drinkers. We can’t do anything on the sly and hope they will chalk it up to booze goggles. They will see and ask questions I know Mabel doesn’t want to address and, again, risking her putting a stop to us hanging out.
Javi, Cole, and I are sitting around Cole’s pet-friendly city rental. Otto sits at my feet, waiting patiently for a head scratch. The all-black Staffordshire Terrier’s gigantic eyes look up at me, pleading. Feels like how I look at Mabel. I shake my headand have a silent laugh to myself, reaching down to give him a thorough patting, to which he leans into my legs and waggles his tail.
Cole and Javi are arguing about something. I kind of tuned them out, instead looking at my phone and how long until we were meeting up with the girls. I check the time again and realise it's only been twenty minutes since I've been in my own Mabel-thought world.
I listen in on the conversation, waiting for my brain to catch onto what they are talking about, and slip in as if I have been listening all along. Like conversational double Dutch.
I realise they're talking about some TV show I haven’t been interested in watching, and I'm saved from contributing further to that conversation and go back to patting Otto. Lost in my thoughts.
Cole gets up to use the bathroom, and Javi looks over at me. “How you going? You’re scarily quiet.”
“Not that quiet. I haven’t watched that show yet. Nothing to contribute to that convo.”
“We haven’t been talking about that for the last hour straight. We were talking about training, the track schedule, and then this TV show,” he replies.
