where are you
mat?
mat!
fuck you’re so bad at this
Chest tightening, I typed back,I was in the shower! What do you want?
oh you’re in? good. be right there
My heart leapt into my throat.What do you mean?
Seconds stretched by containing only the rapid tattoo of my heart and the hum of the terrible fridge struggling to do its job.
Miles? Wtf are you talking about?
Nothing. And as I stared at the picture he’d sent, I realised I had not only told him where he could stay for cheap, but that the carpet beneath the grey cat looked suspiciously like the hideous beige pile in which my bare feet were currently planted.
“Fuck!”
I sped to my room and threw off my towel. Deodorant, underwear, shorts – god, there had to be a pair that weren’t in the laundry pile. A knock sounded on the apartment door and I spun, panic mounting, and had to give myself a mental shake. He could wait until I’d found clothes.
A second knock came as I rifled through my stack of T-shirts. “Hold on, I’m coming!” I called out, snatching one up. I opened the door as I pulled it on, and there in the narrow, badly-lit hallway, stood Miles Callahan, managing to look both thoroughly out of place and perfectly confident at the same time. He had a bag slung over one shoulder and a grin that wasn’t entirely friendly.
“What are you doing here?” I said, not inviting him in.
“Nice to see you too, Matteo.” He hoisted the bag off his shoulder and dropped it at my feet. “There’s no laundry service. What am I supposed to do with this?”
It was a stupid question, the answer both obvious and also not my problem, yet a different kind of shock sped its response to my tongue. “Are you seriously staying here?”
Miles frowned, his shoulders slightly hunched as though hissix-foot-five frame took him uncomfortably close to the ceiling. “Yes?” he said, the word a snap. “I thought maybe you’d figured that out. It seemed a waste of time to look for somewhere better for the same price, since if there was such a place, you’d be there.”
Before I could articulate my next question, he gestured to the bag. “I know the answer is find a laundromat, but I’ve never used a washing machine in my life.” He folded his arms on the words, the stance defensive behind the scowl.
“And this is my problem how?”
“Because you’re the one making me do this.”
“I never—”
“Please just shut up and help me, Mat. There’s no room in your budget for me to replace my gear if I fuck it up.”
I stared at the bag rather than him, and forced myself to swallow the disbelief that kept leaping to my tongue. It had seemed impossible he would even consider doing without his entourage, yet here the impossible stood before me and I had to admit it had taken balls.
“All right,” I said. “I was going tomorrow, but if you wait a sec, I’ll get mine and we can go together.”
He leaned against the doorframe, his dark-blond hair sweep-ing across his brow. “I can wait.”
Still not entirely convinced he was real, I headed for my room to gather my loose laundry. I more than half expected him to have vanished by the time I was done, yet having pulled on jacket and shoes, I returned to find Miles hadn’t moved.
“No Katie?” he asked, pushing off the doorframe as I approached.
“No, she’s in Ilkley.”
“Ilkley!” A faint, reminiscent smile briefly broke through hisfrown. “I remember playing there. Not a bad little clubhouse. Didn’t win, but I did beat Hashim Sartini and that was good enough for me at the time.”
I pulled the door closed behind us and locked it before testing the rickety handle. The damn thing always felt like I could just rip it out of the frame.
