I seized on this.
“How did you know I do ballet?” I knew full well how Miller knew I did ballet. My GayHoller profile had a photo of me taken backstage at last year’s Christmas show. This was the same GayHoller profile Miller appeared to have blocked within seconds of me sending him a message. OK, a few messages. OK, a barrage of messages. But that was accidental, and besides, I thought I’d been terribly cute.
Sunny visibly tensed in his seat as he realised what he’d let slip. I would have enjoyed his discomfort, but the tensing made his chest and his arms twitch under the damp fabric of his thin shirt, which was clinging to his body as tight as a kidnapper’s gag. As he tensed, his nipples bounced. Through his shirt I could see that the sexy rash of freckles on his face and neck continued down over his biceps and across his chest.
“I think someone might have shown me a picture,” he said. He had the good grace to blush. He was twisting in his seat like one of my ballet kids when they need the loo and have left it almost too late to ask to be excused. I put him out of his misery and apologised for the spray of messages on GayHoller.
“I didn’t mean for it to come off quite as intensely as it must have.”
He smiled sheepishly, and I waited for him to apologise for blocking me—or at least to explain it. He didn’t. I put the bottle of champagne back in the ice bucket. I lifted my glass.
“To otters,” I said. I’d crack this bugger one way or another. Sunny froze, his glass in mid-air.
“Have you been talking to Vladimir Popov?”
“No. Why?” I took a small sip. Sunny did the same.
“Never mind,” he said.
“You must tell me what happened when you went to see him. You’ve still got all your fingernails, I see. Was it just a bit of light waterboarding? Or is he holding your mother hostage until your glowing coverage of his political achievements gets him the knighthood he so richly deserves.”
“Remarkably close,” Sunny said. I waited for more, but no more information was forthcoming. If that’s the way he wanted to play it, I’d come right out with what I really wanted to know.
“Why did you block me on GayHoller?”
There was a beat while Sunny considered his answer.
“Not to be funny, but you’re the competition, mate,” he said. There was that hint of accent again.
“So, we can’t be friends?”
“We can be friends. We can’t bemorethan friends.”
That unexpectedly stung. This risked becoming more embarrassing than I’d thought. It was time to slip into self-preservation mode.
“What made you think I wanted to be more than friends?”
“You messaged me on a world-famous gay hook-up app. Forgive me for thinking your motives were clear.”
“My motivewasclear. I asked if I could buy you coffee to apologise.”
He shook his head.
“You went looking to see if I had a profile. Why did you do that if you weren’t interested in being more than friends?”
Now I was the one twisting uncomfortably in my seat. How had he done that? Sunny Miller would make an excellent television interviewer. My glasses pinched my nose. I pushed them back up into place. Both Sunny’s intense amber-green eyes and his blush-pink nipples glared at me accusingly.
“Idle curiosity, initially,” I said, hoping I sounded convincingly uninterested. “Are you telling me you don’t check GayHoller sometimes to see if someone has a profile?”
“If I want to shag them, sure.”
This fellow had so many tickets on himself that if he stood outside Wembley Stadium, he’d get arrested for touting.
“You think I want to shag you?” I asked.
Don’t look at his nipples. Don’t look at his nipples. Don’t look at his nipples.
“I don’t care whether you want to shag me or not,” Sunny said, seeming agitated. “It’s not going to happen.”
