One evening, over dinner at a local restaurant, I watch him suck up a piece of linguine and I’m grateful for the napkin in my lap that just about disguises how hard I get. I feel like a teenage boy. By the time we get to dessert, my ankle happens to rest against his, and the merest slither of skin-to-skin contact has me on the edge of my seat, all my nerve endings sizzling away. It’s torture, but the delicious kind, and I don’t pull away. Neither does he. He must know it’s my ankle. He must know. He can’t not know. I feel like I’ve been branded and the creeping lush on his cheeks tells me I’m not alone. It makes me feel reckless.
Everyone’s buzzed when we get back to the apartment, but one by one the others call it a night or slink off to call wives, girlfriends and husbands.
When Harper plants a kiss on my cheek and tells me he’s going to call Kian, I am the only one left. Of course I am.
I carry the glasses and empty bottles into the kitchen and start loading the dishwasher. It’s like living with teenagers. I crash about resentfully, making no attempt to hide my frustration. I’m not really mad at them. I just wish I had someone of my own to call.
Once it’s all done, I slope off to bed, but find myself pausing outside Caleb’s bedroom. I contemplate knocking. No one would know. The guys are all busy on the phone or already passed out.
It doesn’t have to mean anything. Just like the ankle graze at dinner didn’t mean anything. Or the way Caleb clenched his thighs around my ears the other day when we partnered up in a game of shoulder wars in the pool. And of course I had to hold on to him, tightly, otherwise he’d have fallen off as soon as Ash made contact. It’s not like I threw my head back to feel his dick against the back of my neck– at least, I did, but it doesn’t have to mean anything, right?
Sun plus booze plus Caleb is a dangerous combination. I’m already hard and all I’m doing is standing like a creep outside his door.
I don’t want to ruin the friendship we’ve built. The team’s success is important to us both, but I’m desperate to get my hands on him again.
I raise my fist about to knock. Drop it down, then raise it again, and pause.
Make good choices, Johannes.
‘I can hear you breathing,’ says Caleb.
Well, shit.
‘And I can see your toes.’
‘Oh,’ is all I manage to say.
I shift my toes back from the crack under his door.
‘Sorry, I was… contemplating whether this was a good idea,’ I whisper into the space between us.
‘It’s not,’ he says, but it comes out strangled, which at least strokes my ego a little.
‘I can’t stop thinking about you.’ I sound ridiculous, desperate even, but I am a weak man.
‘I…’ He barely makes a sound, but I catch it all the same.
‘I’m glad you’re here, Caleb. I’m glad you came.’
‘Me, too,’ he says in a soft voice.
‘The guys love you and I know they appreciate that you’ve got me cooking again.’
I didn’t even realise how much I’d missed cooking, until I had someone to do it for.
‘Thanks Jo. That means a lot.’ He’s started calling me Jo on this trip, and I love hearing it. ‘I’ve not been very good at connecting with people in this world, but I’m grateful you introduced me to your friends.’
‘You’re welcome,’ I say. They’ve all raved about him to me at one point during this trip. Cole and Ash have set up a padel game with him and Elijah tomorrow, and Harper’s been picking his brain about a trip he and Kian are taking to America this winter.
‘It’s been nice to be included. And even nicer to have a break from work.’ He did seem to be fully switching off. He even left his laptop behind so he couldn’t work on his PhD.
‘It looks good on you,’ I say.
I hear a noise, but I can’t make out whether it’s a word, a movement or a choked swallow.
Eventually he says, ‘So, I should probably get some sleep. Cole’s booked the court for nine.’
He’s right. Of course he’s right. And he’s right not to have opened the door. But there’s something about talking softly to each other from either side of a closed door that makes this conversation intensely intimate.
