‘You can get that back to me whenever,’ he says. ‘Let me know if you change your mind about the film, I’ve already bought the tickets.’
‘Okay,’ I reply, still staring. ‘I will.’
And I don’t start crying until he closes the door behind him.
45
Ethan
‘If you’re going to get the academy spot, you’ll have to do better than that,’ Assad shouts as he tackles me cleanly, stealing the ball and racing away down the pitch.
‘And you’re gonna have to do better than that,’ I say when he pegs the ball at the net, right into Michael’s open arms. ‘Good try though, another six or seven years’ practice and you’ll get there.’
‘Ah, fuck off.’ Doubled over, digging his hands into his side, he jerks his chin behind me. ‘Isn’t that the fabled roommate? Did you leave your dishes in the sink again, you filthy hound?’
‘Mia!’
Spinning on the studs in my boots, my heart jumps when I see her, ripped jeans, blue button-down, hair pulled back. But something’s wrong. She doesn’t return my smile.
‘Is it true?’ she demands, walking right up to me, knuckles white on both hands.
‘Hey,’ I start to say, but the ground is already out from underneath me.
Unless she found out about that time I broke into my high school coach’s house and took photos in his wife’s wedding dress on a dare, there’s only one thing she could be talking about.
‘Is it true?’ she asks again, yelling this time.
The world slants to one side and it’s a struggle to stay on myfeet as everything I thought I had a hold of slides out of reach and straight into the trash. The look on her face is agonizing. There’s no point asking, no point trying to defend myself. She knows.
It’s all over.
‘Depends what you’ve heard,’ I say coolly. ‘But yeah, I’m guessing it is.’
46
Mia
‘What’s going on over here?’
Assad, one of Ethan’s teammates, jogs over to where we stand, Ethan staring at me with cool detachment. I want to shake him. I want him to deny it all. I know he isn’t going to.
‘Everything all right?’ Michael runs up behind Assad and offers me a downturned smile. I nod, yes, even though it’s a lie.
‘Shout if you need us,’ he says to me, not his captain. ‘Az, let’s give them a bit of space.’
He grabs the other player by the scruff of the neck and half drags him off the field, over to a bench outside the entrance to the locker room, not watching but aware as he takes off his padded gloves.
Ethan gazes at me, completely impassive. ‘Who told you?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘I guess not.’
His entire body has set like cement, solid and unmoving, but I can see the muscle in his jaw ticking and his top lip twitches into a momentary snarl. Blink and you’d miss it but it was there.
‘I want you to tell me what happened. I want to hear it from you.’
I’m still clinging to the tiniest shred of hope, that things aren’tthe way Oliver painted them. But he drops his head, shaking it like I’m asking a stupid question.
