I thought back to those days on the practice court in London and couldn’t but wonder whether it had occurred to Miles then that helping me find my game again might one day backfire in his face. Hopefully, it wouldn’t be this time, and maybe it never would, but the possibility hung heavy as I messaged him.
Boyfriend
Hey, you seen the draw?
yeah, i’ve seen it
lucky you not having to face the third seed until the SECOND round this time
Assuming I get through the first
i believe in you
I wish you didn’t. I wish we’d been in different halves again
can’t avoid each other forever
Are you ok?
about probably having to play you?
That, and whatever is going on with your parents. Everything really
promise i’m gooddon’t stress, love
. . .
I like that name
and i like you
WHEN MILES ARRIVED, he sent me his room number and I reached his door as a pair of porters finished hauling his luggage inside. They seemed to have gone to the trouble of lining thesuitcases up neatly the way he liked and he thanked them with one of his easy smiles and a sizeable tip. He caught sight of me as he did so and his smile widened.
“And then you have to meet with Carney tomorrow,” Tina was saying, scrolling through something on her phone. “That’s at ten and then—” She seemed to notice Miles wasn’t listening and looked up as the porters departed. “Oh, hi Matteo.”
“Yeah, hi,” Miles said, barely suppressing a grin. And heedless of his sister’s presence, he added, “I missed you,” and held out his arms. A tiny part of me had worried that the Miles who loved me only existed in San Diego, and it was a huge relief to be wrong.
“I missed you too,” I said and went to him, his arms closing possessively around me something I would never tire of.
As Miles kissed my forehead, Tina said, “Don’t forget I’m here! Or that we hadn’t finished your schedule.”
“Just send it to me, Tee,” he laughed. “We aren’t going to get a lot of time together with all the media shit, so I would rather not waste what little we have going through a schedule I’m just going to forget. Oh, and you should probably know,” he added, squeezing me tighter, “Mat and I are together now.”
Tina’s eyes widened and she looked from Miles to me and back. “What do you meannow? I assumed that when you introduced him to me! Were you not . . .?”
“Oh, we weretogether, but I mean he’s my boyfriend now.”
“That’s what I meant too!” She threw up her arms in defeat. “If that’s what you were like when you weren’t dating then we’re in trouble.”
A knock sounded on the door and Miles went to open it for a middle-aged man with long hair pulled back into a tidy ponytail. He entered carrying a folded massage table in its carry bag, with another bag slung over his shoulder. “Ah, yeah you can just set them downthrough there,” Miles said, “but first let me introduce you to Matteo Russo.” He gestured to me, the smile he threw me one that spoke of shared strangeness and delight. “My boyfriend. Mat, this is Cam Michaels, my new physio and for now theentiretyof my team.”
Michaels held out a hand with a little difficulty, balancing his bags. “Hey, great to meet you.”
“You too,” I said. “My physio says he’s the most important member of the team anyway – more important even than me.”
The man grinned. “We are the oil that keeps the machine running, but we aren’t very useful without the machine.”
“I don’t know,” Miles said. “I bet you could do a pretty good job out there. Better than Macca at least. I’ve seen the way he holds a racquet and it’s not good.”
