Four #2
“No,” I said, managing to swallow a lump of unexpected grief. “It just . . . belongs to another time. To another me. To a Matteo Russo who didn’t have his whole life derailed. I imagine, unlike me, he went on to have a pretty nice career.”
I snatched up my beer and skulled what remained in the aftermath of those words, wishing them unsaid and not with equal fervour.
When I set the empty bottle down, I found Miles watching me.
He had an intent way of looking that held one present, like he was waiting, reading, studying, nothing else in the room as important as the problem in front of him.
“I don’t know what to say to that,” he said at last.
“Then don’t say anything. Just get me another of your terrible beers.”
He complied, cracking open another bottle for each of us.
Thankfully, I’d never been much of a drinker. So, by the end of the second beer, I’d lost the most overwhelming emotions to a pleasant buzz and the satisfying feeling of eating food that not only filled my body but fuelled it.
Despite the ridiculous size of our appetites, there was still leftovers when we slowed to picking at the last few bites. I nodded at the nearest plate. “Do you want any more capsicum? Or can I finish it?”
“Capsiwhat?” Miles said, his eyes widening.
“The capsicum. Oh, right, you call them bell peppers.”
“I call them bell peppers because they’re bell peppers. You don’t call them bell peppers?”
“Stop saying bell peppers. And no, we call them capsicums in Australia.”
He screwed up his nose. “That’s weird. But no, you can have them.”
I scooped up what remained of the finely-sliced capsicum and dropped it onto my plate. “Surely, you’ve travelled enough to notice that in other places some foods have different names.”
“Sure,” he said, “but no one has ever given me a weird look for ordering bell pepper.”
“What about if you ask someone in Europe or Australia to leave off the cilantro?”
Miles held up an admonishing finger. “Firstly, I would never ask anyone to leave off the cilantro. Secondly, what the fuck do you call cilantro if it’s not cilantro?”
“Coriander.”
“But coriander is the seed! Cilantro is the leaf.”
“All the same plant though, so we just call it coriander and coriander seed.”
He shook his head with a bemused smile. “Y’all sure like to make things difficult for yourselves.”
It was probably just the beer thinking, but his exasperation was cute, so I gestured to the container of salad on his side of the crowded table. “Pass the rocket.”
“Excuse me?” He followed the direction I was pointing. “The salad?”
“Yeah, the rocket salad.”
Though he picked it up, he held onto it like I had to earn it first. “You mean the arugula salad?”
“Nah, that green stuff is called rocket.”
His eyes narrowed, as though waiting for some flicker of my expression that would prove I was tricking him. Under such scrutiny, I couldn’t keep a straight face and grinned.
“I knew it,” he said, handing over the container. “You’re just bullshitting me.”
“I’m not, I’m dead serious.”
“Uh huh, sure.”
“Look it up, I’ll wait.”
“I am not typing rocket salad into my phone. It’s probably some secret Australian euphemism for group sex.”
I had been trying so hard not to laugh, but that was too much and I leaned back against the armchair, laughing until tears came to my eyes and my far too full stomach started to hurt.
“What?” Miles demanded, laughing too. “Tell me I’m wrong. Like an Australian sausage fest.”
“A snag do!”
“A what?” He uncrossed his legs to kick me under the table and I laughed even harder. “My god, how drunk are you? Are you allergic to beer or something?”
“Fuckin’ maggoted, mate,” I said with my broadest Australian accent. “I’m a two-pot screamer. Not good on the turps.”
Miles shook his head, his grin stretching ear to ear. “Now you’re just speaking a whole different language. Are you done? With the food, I mean. I’m fully expecting the weird Australian thing to keep going.”
“Yeah, I’m finished,” I said once I could draw breath. “Thank you. That was delicious.”
“There’s not some terrible Australian word for that?” he asked, gathering up the leftovers. “Don’t you just add an O to everything? Delisho.”
I froze in the act of snapping the lid back on the salad. “Please never say that again.”
“Why not?” He shot me a wicked grin. “What’s wrong with delisho?”
“Everything.”
With the remains of the meal collected into the containers, Miles shoved them in the fridge and took out the last two beers. “I think I need some of that to settle before we have dessert. Do you want this? Or are you drunk enough?”
“Why not,” I said, holding out my hand for it. It probably wasn’t wise, but I seemed to have stopped caring.
When he dropped onto the couch with his own, we sat drinking a few minutes in silence, weighed down by food coma.
Miles looked as satisfied as I felt, and I couldn’t but think of Arnaud saying he had come-fuck-me eyes.
I hadn’t been able to see it, but right now I could well imagine those eyes said you fucked me and it was great.
Miles lifted a brow and I realised too late that I’d been staring. “Yes?” he said.
“I was just wondering what the dessert is,” I replied because I had to say something.
He shook his head and set his empty bottle on the table. “Still a secret. Though you had better not be lactose intolerant or something. Forgot to ask.”
“So, it’s got cream in it. I’m not, but I might have another food intolerance. Like . . . fruit. Or chocolate. Or coffee.”
“Not going to work, Russo. You have to wait.” He nodded at the TV. “You can put that on if you like. If it works.”
“It works. What do you want to watch?”
“I don’t know. What do you like to watch?”
“Tennis?”
Miles groaned. “Oh my god, you’re so boring. You can’t only watch tennis.”
“I like tennis.”
“Yeah, but it’s also work, right? What about when you want to relax? Or when there’s no tennis?”
I sat my own empty bottle next to his with a shrug. “I don’t really watch anything.”
“What do you do then?”
Not a question I would normally risk answering, but with a full stomach and a light head, I said, “I read.”
“Read? Like . . . books?”
“Yes, like books,” I laughed. “What else?”
“I don’t know! That’s why I asked. What sort of books?”
Not even double the amount of alcohol could have loosened that answer from my tongue, but I made the mistake of glancing at where my e-reader sat charging beside the TV. In a heartbeat, Miles was up and lunging for it like someone had just spun a dropshot over the net.
“No!” I cried, the word torn from a deep, instinctive fear.
Unfortunately, it was also the word most likely to egg him on.
I leapt up after him, diving for the reader as he yanked it free, but he spun away, pulling it from my hands as he flipped open its worn cover.
Miles froze there a moment, staring at the screen, and I suddenly felt far less drunk than I had mere seconds before, breath crushed from my chest.
“Mat?” he said, turning a sparkling look at me over his shoulder. “Is this . . . romance?”
I snatched the reader from his slackened grip, cheeks heating. “If you tell a single fucking soul about this, I will murder you, Callahan.”
His grin broadened, warm amusement crinkling the corners of his eyes. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
“Fuck you.”
“Aww, come on, it’s fine, just surprising. Mostly because I don’t know many people who read.”
A sigh blew out as I dropped onto the couch. “I loved books as a kid, but I didn’t get back into them until after my accident.”
Miles stilled, his smile slipping a little.
“After it happened, I was just angry all the time, you know?” I went on, the sudden need to explain like a bursting dam.
“Everything had been so good. I’d been inside the top fifty.
Was beating seeded players. I’d stopped lying about who I was.
And then . . .” I pursed my lips, forcing back the emotions that were never far away whenever I talked about it.
“And then it was all gone and there was no one I could blame, not even myself, because accidents just happen and sometimes it’s you they happen to.
But without a target, the anger had nowhere to go. ”
I dared a glance up to find Miles watching me, all trace of his smile gone.
I should have stopped there, I knew, but the moment felt companionable enough that I said, “Mum had cancer when I was a kid and she’d been angry too.
So I asked her if anything had helped.” I tossed the e-reader onto the armchair beside him.
“Romance books. They always have a happy ending. And it turns out that once you start reading them, it’s hard to stop. ”
Perhaps so he had something to look at that wasn’t me, Miles picked up the reader again and started swiping absently through the book I had open. “You know, it’s all right to just like something because you like it. You don’t have to have a whole origin story for it.”
“It’s not an origin story,” I said, cheeks heating. “It’s just . . . never mind. Forget it.”
“No, Mat—” He closed his eyes a moment to gather himself, then heaved a sigh.
“I’m sorry, that was a dick thing to say.
Easier to be flippant than admit what I was really thinking.
Which was . . . thanks for telling me, I guess.
I didn’t know. I mean, I knew about the accident, just not what it was like beyond . . .”
“Beyond being the most fear and pain I’ve felt in my life?”
“Something like that, yeah.”
I shrugged like a turtle retreating into its shell. “There’s a reason I don’t talk about it much.”
In the hollow silence that fell, Miles went on swiping through the pages as one might flip through a book without really looking. Until he slowed to read, something capturing his interest.
A horrible sense of inevitability crawled panicky pinpricks over my skin.
“Mat,” he said, turning another page, that wicked smile dawning again. “Mat, this is dirty shit. They’re—”
“No, don’t tell me! I haven’t read that bit yet.”