“I ran into your mother again the other day,” I said, because even if I had to drag him all the way, we were going to fucking talk about it. “She was looking for you.”
Miles snorted. “Don’t worry, she called.”
“It wasn’t her I was worried about.”
Leaving my bag sitting on the floor, he went into the large kitchen with its glossy white cupboards and black stone benchtops. Glass bottles clinked as he pulled open the fridge and took out two beers – Budweiser, I noted with a smothered smile.
“I was feeling nostalgic,” he said, handing one over. “For our first date.”
“Is that what that was?” I asked, enjoying those words much more than the prospect of unexciting beer.
He shrugged with that rueful little smile of his. “Not at the time, but in hindsight . . .”
Almost I tugged on that thread because we also needed to talk about what we were, but not while his smile was fading and he’d just downed half a bottle in one go.
“I know what you think,” he said, folding his arms and leaning back against the bench, his hair lit to brilliant gold by the pendant lights overhead. “About my parents. And you’re right. I know what they do, though it’s taken me a few years to really see it. They’re like good cop, bad cop, right? Dad calls and berates me, then Mom calls with reassurances that he just wants the best for me because he knows I can do better. God, it’s exhausting. You heard him after Queen’s.”
“Yeah, I did.”
“I wasn’t sure why I let you in at the time, but in hindsight Ithink I wanted you to know, like maybe if you saw what he was like you wouldn’t think so poorly of me for not coming out. Or perhaps it was just a pathetic cry for help, I don’t know. What-ever it was,” he hurried on so I couldn’t reply, “it helped having you there. I’d never heard the way he sounded to other people before. He’s always been like that, so it was just normal – not good, I knew that, but fine, whatever, the kind of shit I could let slide off my back to keep the peace like a coward. Until you were standing there listening, and I didn’t want to anymore.”
“You’re not a coward, Miles,” I said, and because I could still remember how the words had felt to hear, I added, “That’s a trauma response.”
His eyes widened, and I hoped he felt the words carving space in his chest as his had carved space in mine. He swallowed another gulp of beer. “That makes sense, I guess. Dad caught me with a guy once, only once, when I was sixteen. ‘Not my son,’ he said, like a command to the universe that had to be obeyed. Mom gave me the talk, said it would be fine if he didn’t have to see it, didn’t have to know, after which even she acted like it was something I could just . . . wash off. That’s when Tina earned her stripes as the family peacekeeper. The shield behind which everything I did got hidden from them. God only knows how I would have survived without her.”
He was spilling words now, letting out hurts as they bubbled to the surface. Any questions I had could wait because he was finally letting me in, and the best thing I could do was drink the bad beer and let him talk.
“You know, after you came out, I listened to those early press conferences you gave at least half a dozen times,” he said then, shocking me enough that I almost choked on my drink. “They used to piss me off so much. Not just because some ofthe reporters were weird about it, but because at nineteen you were everything I wanted to be and wasn’t. You were already going deep at big tournaments, you seemed so sure of yourself, and now here you were being eloquent and honest about something I was hiding. I couldn’t come out and I wasn’t winning big matches. Back then, even my confidence was all show. I had to grow into myself, while you came out already fucking swinging.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him it wasn’t all true, but Ihadbeen stupidly sure of myself once. Besides, how he’d experienced it was more important than any truth.
“You came out to be honest to yourself and because you owed it to others,” he went on. “I knew our situations were different, but I felt like a coward all the same. So, when you called me a coward after that match in Paris,youwere talking about privilege, but you didn’t just sting my tennis pride, because in another way you were entirely right.”
“Fuck,” I breathed. “I’m sorry.”
“You weren’t to know.” He shook his head. “You thought you were alone and I’d never given you reason to think otherwise. I’m not trying to make you feel bad, just being honest because that’s a thing I do now, apparently. So, yeah, while we’re at it, finding out my whole team had passed around pictures of me giving head and were all homophobic shits was a punch to the gut and I’m not okay, but I will be because fuck them. That I’m pretty sure I know how they got those pictures only makes it worse. As does the length of time I’ve been trusting them with my career and my body. It’s so fucking embarrassing.”
Miles downed the last of his beer and all but slammed the bottle onto the bench. “There. Is that enough not being all right for you? Will you fuck me now?”
I set my unfinished beer beside his and slid my arms gently around him. He stiffened, bristling like my softness was too much to bear in the wake of such honesty. For a moment, I thought he would pull away, until he sank his chin onto my shoulder and, like a man letting go a breath so large it had been doing the work of his bones, slowly wilted into my arms.
Twenty-Two
WAKING IN STRANGE places had always been part of life on tour, but waking in Miles’s house was a whole new experience. The usual moment of disorientation remained, only to melt into sunlight and soft sheets and the faint scent of lilies. This was his actual honest-to-god bed in his actual honest-to-god room in his actual honest-to-god house – a space that was entirely his and entirely him, and he had invited me into it.
Miles lay comfortably sprawled, one arm draped across his bare chest and his legs tangled in the sheet. He was endlessly beautiful, with those long legs and broad shoulders, and the fine wrists about which his collection of woven bracelets sat like slashes across his skin. I wanted to touch him as the sunlight did, falling upon his shoulder, and because neither of us had anywhere else to be that day, I surrendered to the impulse.
I slid a hand up his arm, his skin warm and inviting. Just like the smile that slowly turned his lips though his eyes stayed closed.
“Morning,” he murmured. “Are you staring at me?”
“Maybe.”
Still with his eyes closed, he rolled toward me and planted sleepy kisses along my jaw before pulling me against his soft, warm skin. God, I could get used to this. I couldreallyget used to this. To him and this space and this ease – a thought as hastily followed by the knowledge that I had no right to it. Yet.
The need to tell him how I felt was like a bowstring pulling taut, but I had to be sure Miles was all right first. The previous night he’d clung to me for a long time. Slow, silent tears had fallen to dampen my shoulder and I had let him keep his privacy as he let them go. Much later we had ended up in bed, the encounter far gentler than the one Miles had initially demanded to bury his hurt in. Instead, I had softly made love to him, leaving his face turned on the pillow and his eyes squeezed shut like he needed to be alone as his body gave in to mine.
Now, he nuzzled my jaw, pressing sleepily against me without any heat. “How’d you sleep?”
