“But you don’t want to be that man?” I ask, because I have to. I have to know for certain that he’s absolutely not interested.
Giles drops his hand and that should be answer enough but it doesn’t stop him from delivering a final blow. “No, Marcello, I don’t think it’s right I’m that man.”
I push a long breath through my lips. “Okay,” I say and I nod. “Are things… are we going to have to stop training together now?”
Giles looks almost as shocked as when I suggested we fuck. “Why would we do that?”
“Because I went and made things weird by saying we should fuck?”
It could be my imagination but Giles blinks the beat after I say “fuck” and then swallows while his jaw is tense. “You didn’t make things weird. I mean, I don’t want to stop training together. Do you?”
“No!” I say quickly. “God, no.”
“Then we’ll keep training together.” Giles smiles, looking pleased. “And you still want to grab lunch together now?”
“Sure,” I say, hoping that the nausea I feel at his rejection will pass in time for me to eat solid food.
I expect Giles to turn and walk on but he pauses before he does, looking up at me. “You know, any man would be lucky to be your first,” he says and then he smiles again, this time with a look of slight preoccupation, before walking on.
*****
“I think I’m going to get you to make all my decisions for me in life,” I say, swallowing yet another delicious mouthful of begun bhorta, an aubergine dish the smiling man behind the counter recommended. “You know where to buy the best sports clothes. You know where to find the best food. You even knew all the right questions to ask about a second-hand bike. Can I just hire you to live my life for me? I think you’d make me very successful.”
Giles wipes his mouth with a napkin and there’s a small grin once the paper towel has swiped over his lips. “I happen to think you’re already very successful.”
I snort. “You’d be the only one.” I deflect his praise. I also feel stupid for previously thinking these little compliments he gives me now and then were anything other than Giles being what he is, a bloody nice human.
“Also, don’t let my suits fool you. I do not have my shit together.” Giles takes another big bite of rice and I have to look away when I find my eyes pinned on the working of his jaw. I have no idea how I’m going to get over this ridiculous crush of mine but I have to at least try.
“You’re not wearing a suit now and I still think you have your shit together. The successful owner of a prestigious men’s tailors. The body of a twenty-something Arnold Schwarzenegger. A work-of-art moustache. The kind of man people pick-up on the street. You are the definition of having your shit together.”
It could be my imagination, but I’m pretty sure Giles is blushing as he finishes his mouthful. “Like I say, you can’t always believe what you see.”
I wipe my mouth and sit back in my chair. “Go on then, surprise me. Make me feel better about my living-at-home, working-in-a-café, can’t-run-more-than-six-kilometres-without-getting-a-stitch life.”
Giles mirrors my position, pressing his shoulders back against the chair. “I’m actually a bit of a shitty person. I ghosted Jeremy.”
I’m not sure what I expected Giles to say but it wasn’t that.
“Why?”
“I wasn’t… feeling it.”
“Okay, but how is that evidence that you don’t have your shit together. On the contrary, the fact that you know what you don’t want has to be a good thing, right?”
“I…” he begins. “I don’t know how to have relationships.”
I blink, a few times. “That’s your thing? You don’t know how to have relationships?Idon’t know how to have a relationship!”
“Yes you do!” Giles says, meeting my volume. “You told me how you were with Kris for like four years.”
“In my twenties!”
“But it still happened,” he points out.
“Are you saying you’ve never had a relationship?”
Giles looks down at his empty plate. “Not like how I want, no.”
