I examine myself in the mirror, stripes of clean skin showing through the foam. “You know,” I find myself saying before thinking it through, “I’ve never told a woman ‘I love you.’”
Fuck… what have I done?
Sage falls silent. I hope it’s because she’s not heard me, but she peers around the frosted glass panel with a nervous amusement. “Well, don’t start now. I’m notthatgood in bed.”
She disappears again, and I return to scraping the line of my jaw, fretting over what I’ve said.
A minute later, she speaks up. “You mean not in a romantic sense, right? But you tell your mom and stuff? Because guys who are dicks to their moms are total walking red flags.”
I’m struck by two things: first, a dart of hope that she’s talking about “red flags,” since that denotes the possibility of examining my suitability for partnership; and second, whether I should lie, or try to explain why I haven’t said those words to my mother either.
I run my razor through a stream of water. “I’m British, darling.”
Her skeptical snort turns into a cough as if she’s got water up her nose. She leans to look at me again. “Oh, like, ‘Keep calm, and don’t bother telling Mum you love her’?”
“She knows, Salvi. Fuck’s sake.”
When I turn to make eye contact directly rather than through the mirror, Sage is scowling.
“So that’s a no?” she presses. “Because, I mean, I haven’t ever told someone I’ve had sex with ‘I love you’ either, but… I definitely say it to my family.”
“Nefeli Laskaris is not sentimental. Just last week she joked about selling my baby teeth.”
“Okay, so she’s a smartass like you,” Sage says a bit coldly.
I narrow my eyes. “She’d find it mawkish and embarrassing if I told her directly that I love her. Again, in my defense,she bloody knows.”
Sage’s only reply is an irritated growl, and she steps under the shower spray again.
A horrible sense that this conversation is about to go off the rails makes me feel like the ground is shaking under my feet. I’m about to redirect things and ask Sage if she’d like for me to make her some toast before she leaves, when instead I utterly shoot myself in the foot by saying, “Do you tell Julian you love him? Because he told me in Melbourne that you hate him.”
I see her freeze for a moment behind the glass divider, then turn the water off with a smack. Stepping into the shower doorway, she fixes me with a baleful look and swipes a towel off its peg.
In a mocking imitation of me, she repeats my words. “In my defense,he bloody knows.” She strides into the bedroom.
I towel my face off, imperfectly shaved, and follow. “Salvi.”
She ignores me, pawing through the chaos of her clothes until she finds a pair of jeans and steps into them. “Don’t talk to me. I’m annoyed at you.”
“I see that.” Rubbing my face, I add, “Can we not?” I open my arms in invitation for a hug, and after a pause she receives it woodenly.
“It’s hitting below the belt to bring Jules into it,” she mutters against my chest.
“I don’t know what I was thinking.” I kiss the damp top of her head, and she softens in my arms. “How is he? Have you got word of his progress?”
“I don’t wanna talk about it.”
I’m stung; it feels like the intimacy I thought we’d achieved might be one-sided. But I don’t dare push her, or I’ve no hope of seeing her in Barcelona next month.
“We needn’t, then.” I give Sage another kiss on the head, and as she draws away and dips to grab a T-shirt and pull it on, she looks distant. She’s already somewhere else, ahundredelsewheres. She’s at the paddock in a meeting, she’s in her car, she’s talking with the press, she’s worrying about Julian. It’s humbling to know I’m the least relevant of her concerns.
Gathering her things over the next few minutes, Sage reinstalls her carefree mask, cracking wise as if we didn’t very nearly quarrel. But I can tell there’s something fragile beneath it. I wish I could pull her back into bed and reset this all in the way we both know best.
When she grabs her mobile, the screen is crowded with messages. She focuses on them in a pointed way, as if needing me to understand that my usefulness has expired.
She declines an espresso, then toast. I offer to box up some of the baked pasta Cinzia made so Sage can have it later, and when she consents, I can’t be certain it isn’t out of pity. As Ipack up the lunch—my God, when have I ever packed a lunch for anyone?—I discreetly check my expression in the reflection of the microwave door to ensure I look appropriately detached and neither lovesick nor panicky.
Soon, the moment arrives when I walk her to the foyer. On the living room floor, just within my peripheral vision, I catch a smudge of pink—the absurd doughnut trousers. Last night seems a hundred years ago.
