I smile at it as my eyes get warm and wet.
“You happy with the placement?” he asks.
I don't look up. I don't want him to see the tears in my eyes. Which is pointless because he must hear them in my voice when I say, “It's perfect.”
“You okay?”
“Sorry.” I sniff and brave eye contact. His dark brown eyes are even bigger than I first thought and I’m close enough to see there are flecks of gold in them. “My mother...she passed away, just over a month ago.”
I brace myself for the condolences and the shaky attempts at comfort that I've endured again and again for the last few weeks, but it doesn't come. Instead, Dion’s mouth falls open, his eyes seem to widen still and he swallows so hard I see his throat work.
“Yourmaman,” he says in little more than a whisper. and I blink at him in shock.
He clears his throat and the gestures to my mother's writing on my arm. “Your mother, she was French I assume?”
Of course, he had the letter in his hand. You don't even need to speak the language to recognise how she signed off the letter.
“Yeah, mymaman,” I confirm.
“I'm very sorry to hear that,” he says, holding my gaze again and there's something about his tone that has me thinking he really means it, and that somehow, inexplicably counts for something.
“Thank you,” I say with a gravelly voice.
He wipes a glove-covered hand over my mother'swriting on my arm. Even through the latex I feel warmth, and embarrassingly, goose bumps rise in his path.
“Let's give you a piece of her you can keep forever,” he says, and, fuck me, if that isn't the most perfect thing anybody has said to me since the worst day of my life.
FOUR
BENJI
FIFTEEN YEARS AGO - OCTOBER
He slamsme against the lockers and it hurts more than I'll ever admit.
“What you looking at, Smith?” Miles demands, his arm across my chest. I brave another look...at it, but his broad body blocks my view.
“You know what I was looking at,” I say and then lick my lips.
It has the desired effect because less than a second later his mouth is pressed against mine.
God, I love kissing him.I like how big his body is, how rough his stubble is, I even like how clumsy he is with his teeth.
Kissing girls is great too, fantastic, but there's something about kissing Miles, aboy, that makes my toes curl in my trainers and has my body melting into his.
When we first kissed, after football training a few weeks ago, it had felt like finding the final missing piece of a puzzle I'd been working on for years. Probably because Ihad been battling with my attraction to boys for that long. In his own arrogant way, Miles helped me silence so much noise and confusion. I’m not gay. I’m not straight. I’m bisexual. He didn’t do it by kissing me but by grabbing me around the throat and practically shouting into my face. “I'm not gay, okay. I'm bi. Not that you're going to tell anyone, right?”
I wasn't. Of course I wasn't because then I'd be outing myself and I wasn't ready for that.
Now we both hang back after training every Tuesday and Thursday afternoons and as soon as the last person has left the changing room, we pounce on each other. Today was slightly different because he'd showered after training, and he caught me staring at his dick in his boxers even before our goalie Harry Tyman had left the room.
He's still in his boxers now and I slip my hands down to grab his tight arse and press his body and his cock harder against mine.
He bites my lip, which makes me pull back.
“Ow,” I say, bringing a hand up to check for blood.
“You're getting very handsy,” he tells me and walks away to put on more clothes.
