That’s why I’m considering texting him to cancel our session. I can go to the gym near my flat after work. It’s not like I’ll miss out on a workout, but Marcello will. I get this sense that if I didn’t go with him, he would struggle to keep up the routine and progress we’ve made together.
“Is it a guy?” Radia asks after hanging up another bagged suit on the pick-up rack. “Or a girl?”
“It’s a guy,” I admit and the relief I feel at saying that is greater than my worry she’ll somehow telepathically know who the guy is.
“That hypothetical guy who wanted you to hypothetically sleep with him?”
“No!” I say and then curse myself under my breath for sounding so startled. It’s a lie, of course, but the last thing I want is for Radia to know I’m still obsessing over the same guy. “That’s all… in the past. It’s someone else.”
She empties her hands and comes around the counter to stand next to me. Resting her hip on the side, she folds her arms and looks up at me, her grey eyes sparkling in the midday sunshine filtering in through the shop’s front windows.
“Talk to Aunty Radia about it.”
“I’m fine, Radia. It will all figure itself out.” I tuck my phone into my trouser pocket, tapping it three times before lifting my hand up. There’s still plenty of time to text him if I do decide to cancel our session.
“I don’t think so. You’ve had a face like a pickled onion all morning.” She points a finger at me. “Frankly, it’s ruining my current loved-up buzz.Andit’s bad for business.”
I roll my eyes and fold my arms, mimicking her stance. “I’m so sorry my less than perfect love life is putting a downer on your new relationship.”
“Love life?Love?” She bobs her eyebrows. “I thought this was just a Grindr hook-up gone wrong.”
“Jesus, I’m not that much of a cliché.”
Her brows stay high.
“Not anymore, anyway,” I add.
“Well, if this is a question of love.” She reaches under the counter and retrieves her wallet and keys, which she attaches to a belt loop with a carabiner. “Then I should go and get coffee. And chocolate croissants.”
“No!” It’s an outburst of a word and Radia is far too clever to not pick up on it, but still I try to explain it away. “No chocolate croissants today. I’m cutting.”
She pouts at me for a very long time and I can’t help thinking the longer I let it happen the more I reveal myself.
“It’s Marcello, isn’t it?” she finally says.
Suddenly, I don’t have the energy to lie or dispute or even try and minimise her discovery.
“Yeah, it’s Marcello,” I say and it feels like my whole body unleashes a not-insignificant fraction of the tension that has had me feeling uptight since Marcello left my flat after a barely audible and rushed goodbye yesterday evening.
“I knew it!” She claps her hands with more enthusiasm than I think I’ve ever seen her apply to anything. Other than Chloe, of course.
“How?” I ask, baffled.
“All those gym sessions. You going for runs with him. And Chloe told me you went with him to look at a second-hand bike. You’re like,reallyhelping him with his training. Not that that’s unusual. You’re a very generous and helpful guy, but you’ve just had this spring in your step since you’ve been doing it. Until this morning, that is. So what happened?”
“Nothing,” I say. I am not about to share the other side of Marcello and my arrangement. The sex lessons. “I just… I have feelings for him.”
Radia mulls this over. “And he’s straight,” she concludes.
“Yeah.” The word tastes bitter – another lie I’m telling Radia – but the very last thing I’m going to do is out Marcello.
“Bummer.”
“Yeah.”
“I hate it when that happens.”
“Me too,” I say without meeting her eye.
