“Uh, yeah,” Tomas said, turning to Tina. “A drink sounds great. I think we might just leave our bags right here inside the door and deal with them later.”
“Definitely,” Macca agreed. “Who needs another shower? We freshened up during the stopover anyway.”
“Hey, guys, it’s fine,” I said, dragging my gaze from Miles. “You really don’t need to rush off. We’re good.”
Despite this protest, Tina soon had everyone filing out into the street. Macca slapped my back, Cam Michaels nodded, even the man who had opened the door winked as he strolled out. As the last to leave, Tina squeezed my arm, bid Miles farewell, and firmly shut the door behind her. Their chatter and laughter faded away into the evening.
Miles hadn’t moved, just leant there watching me, wariness in the slight hunch of his shoulders. Leaving my racquet bag with our abandoned suitcases, I went to him, but my instincts were all snarled up. I’d thought through this moment a hundred times—what would I do? What would I say? What would make him want to keep me?—only to realise this had to be on his terms and his terms alone. So, I halted a step before him, letting my eyes drink their fill from the soft waves of his hair to the bare tips of his toes.
“Anklet,” I said, pointing to the leather band caught around his ankle. “That’s new.”
A smile twitched. “Yeah, it is. Do you like it?”
“Yes.”
Miles pushed off the wall, straightening to his full height. “Oh, good. It’s nice to know that sometimes you are, actually, entirely predictable.” The last word became a murmur as he bent his lips to mine in a kiss I’d feared a thousand times I would never taste again. It was soft and hesitant like a question, seeming to ask:Are we all right?And as I kissed back, I begged:Please tell me we’re okay.
Not a question I dared ask aloud. Neither could I ask what I was to him now, nor whether he’d forgiven me, but he cupped my face so tenderly that I let myself be carried upon this current to wherever we might end.
As our kiss lost its hesitance, Miles slid an arm around my waist and I threaded my hands into his hair, and then I was pressing him against the wall, our mouths hungry as we began tugging at clothes that had no business still existing. He tore my shirt off as he had after the match in New York, but while that night had been intense and strange, this owned the fragility of a spring frost, as though a single word or touch out of place and everything would crumble.
Having stripped to the familiarity of our skins, he backed me hastily into a bedroom, while I doubted every impulse. It felt right to get our physical needs out of the way, but last time had been all wrong. Was I making the same mistake again by not forcing him to talk? But how could I when he would forgive me only when he was ready? He’d been different that night though, while at least this felt like the old Miles, rapidly becoming a needy creature who pressed against me, begging.
I let myself get swept up in the dream that we were all right, determined to be everything he needed, and when he clung to me as he came, I could believe for a moment that it was true. Yet in the aftermath I wanted to say ‘I hope you don’t plan to skip out on me this time’ and didn’t, because I could go another day without an apology for that if it meant keeping us together.
Once we lay sated in the fast-darkening room, he made no move to shift from the circle of my arm – a good sign, I told myself, like I was chalking up a tally. How many suggestions that he still loved me would be enough, I wondered, but didn’t like the answer.
“I think we both needed that,” he said, nuzzling against my chest and drawing a deep breath there as though he’d missed my scent.
“Definitely,” I agreed, adding another mark to my tally.
We’d made a mess of the neat bed, but the rest of the room still had Miles’s touch all over it – a vase of flowers on the dresser, his suitcases stacked neatly in one corner, his e-reader beside the bed. His private spaces were so him that I felt like a sorry creature allowed to slink back inside a warm house I wasn’t sure I’d earned.
“Hey,” he said, looking around at me in the gloom. “You all right?”
“Very,” I replied, determined to be all right. “At least I am now I’m here.”
Though I could barely make out the details of his face, I knew that frown.
“I just missed you. A lot,” I added.
“I missed you too,” he said, and lay his head back on my shoulder. Another mark for the tally, and as I mentally chalked it up, other words pooled in my mouth – desperate, pathetic words that would force him to reassure and console me, each a disastrous impulse I kept swallowing because this wasn’t about me.
Out in the lounge, the front door opened spilling footsteps and chatter in from the street, and for once I was glad for the interruption, for the safety of other people. “Are we sure it’s safe?” came Macca’s voice over the rest. “We’ve only been gone an hour.”
“It’s safe!” I called as Miles laughed into the side of my neck.
“Thank fuck! I’ve been forever scarred by that story Katie told me!” Macca called back, so cheerfully relaxed that I breathed a little easier despite the sound of Tina asking what story he meant. “We brought food if you want to join us before it gets cold!” he added.
Miles had to dress first and go rescue my discarded clothing before we could join them, by which time they’d lain plates on the long dining table and opened a dozen different containers ofnoodles and dumplings and rice. It smelled delicious, and the dining space was full of laughter and talk as they passed flimsy plastic tubs spilling with food up and down the table. Space had been left for us on one side, but first Miles gripped my hand and led me toward the two members of his team I didn’t recognise – one the softly-spoken Frenchman who’d opened the door, the other a woman with Bantu knots and a broad, infectious smile.
“Marcel! Jada!” he said, grinning ear to ear. “Mat, this is Marcel Fournier, my new coach, and Jada Williams, my fitness trainer.”
There had been no opportunity to ask whether he’d chosen them himself, but since Miles’s parents struck me as the kind of people who would never hire a woman, let alone a black woman, Jada’s existence answered that question for me.
“And this,” Miles went on, gesturing to me. “Is Matteo Russo. My boyfriend.”
“We guessed that!” Jada laughed, adding, “nice to meet you,” as she shook my free hand. “We’ve sure heard plenty about you.”
