“Really, you don’t have to. I—”
“And watch you two fall in love while I kill myself on a Stairmaster? I don’t think so. I’m not paying 99 quid a month for that.
He storms off, brushing past my shoulder hard enough to move me a little and I don’t say or do anything. I deserved it.
“So,” Marcello says.
“So,” I say.
“You ready?”
“Yeah,” I say. I really, finally am.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Marcello
We don’t talk much on the Tube home. We’re travelling at rush hour so we’re squashed into a carriage together, surrounded by harried-looking strangers who are also making their way home. I don’t mind it. It forces me to press up to Giles, close enough I can smell his leafy, fresh scent and feel the warmth of his body adding to the heat already in the stuffy train.
Even though we don’t speak, I feel like we communicate. There are long, questioning looks. There are small smiles that grow in sync when neither of us drop eye contact. And when the Tube comes to a sudden stop at Warren Street, Giles jolts forward and reaches for the bar above our heads, pressing his groin against my thigh. I could be imagining it but he feels hard, which, of course, makesmehard.
I could say I have no clue what Giles wants to say to me. I could say that I’m nervous and anxious that it will be bad. I could say that I’ve rethought telling him how I feel already. But that would all be a lie.
By the time I’m walking through the door to his flat, my whole body is a mass of nervous energy. The kind that lights up my nerve endings and feels like electricity is soaring through my veins. It feels like a big surge of dopamine mixed with the joy of a new hyperfixation, and yet I know there is so much more to what I’m feeling than this. Because when Giles moves silently into the kitchen and goes about filling the kettle, I watch him and feel that charged anticipation, yes, but I also feel an overwhelming sense of calm grounding me. I feel like a kite flying high but with its string tethered to something strong and safe.
I bathe in that calm as I kick off my shoes, dump my bag and watch him finish making our tea from the sofa. He brings the mugs over and then sits next to me.
“Thank you,” I say as I take my drink. I look at it. “You didn’t even ask me how I like it?”
“I have eyes,” he says with a smile that seems a little tense.
“Giles, I know you wanted to talk but I need to tell you something too.”
He puts his mug down on a coaster and then turns his body towards me. “No, Marcello. Let me talk, please.”
“If you’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Okay.”
But he doesn’t talk. Not immediately. There’s a silence that stretches out for so long I start to wonder if maybe he’ll change his mind, that telling me about his feelings – if that is indeed what he wants to share – is just too much.
And then I tell myself to just sit and wait. To try to empty my head as much as I possibly can. To be patient, even though that’s sometimes an impossible task for me.
So I try. And eventually, he speaks. “I’ve been very stupid.”
“Giles, no—”
“Please, just let me talk.”
“Okay,” I say and sit back.
“I should never have gone on a date with Tony. And honestly, I should never have agreed to do the sex lessons with you.” His gaze drops to his hands and I don’t know if it’s that or what he just said that makes me feel so inexplicably sad. “I knew when you asked me that it would end up like this.”
When he doesn’t elaborate, I risk a question. “Like what?”
His ocean eyes are back on me, swirling with sky blues and grass greens and an indescribable shade of something else.
