Six
WITH BOTH MILES and Katie playing the following afternoon, I trained early.
Katie received a good luck message, yet although it was surely nothing to wish Miles the best before his match, doubt stayed my hand.
I had been on the verge of messaging him half a dozen times the previous afternoon, too, but he’d been at an event and I had nothing to say, just a compelling urge to be sure he really existed.
Be sure I hadn’t imagined what had happened in that bathroom.
I hadn’t messaged. However, because I was an idiot, I had checked his socials and been assailed with photos of scones and tiny teacups, and a selfie Miles had taken in a soft, linen button-up and sunglasses, his smile broad and his wavy blond hair sun-kissed.
The comments were full of heart-eye emojis and hot-face emojis and people offering themselves as tribute next time he needed a partner for such an event.
Or just offering themselves as tribute period.
He’d replied to a few, thanking them for their compliments and recommending the Queen’s Club, though the more I read the more convinced I was that Tina was the one replying.
Miles’s corporate tennis speak wasn’t that good.
He’d posted other photos later, but I’d kept flicking back to that selfie on the balcony, drawn to the way it seemed to show two different people layered atop one another.
There was Miles Callahan the brand, done up by a stylist, and Miles Callahan the man, his smile genuine and the soft waves of his hair so real I could almost reach out and touch them.
That I could have touched them while he knelt sucking my dick only made the picture that much stranger.
While the BBC presenters waffled about who might win Queen’s this year, I ate lunch and watched Katie on my laptop. She was playing well, holding serve and pressuring her opponent, and soon took the first set.
“—current world number four, from the United States of America, Miles Callahan!”
My head snapped up as Miles stepped onto the court, lifting a hand to acknowledge the cheering crowd.
Queen’s didn’t have an all-white dress code, but he’d chosen white all the same: white shorts, white shirt, white shoes, even a white sweatband keeping the hair from his eyes, which in the bright sunshine looked like spun gold.
He wore his headphones and his faintly bored look too – both uneasy reminders of the man I had played at the French Open.
The man whose press conferences I had rolled my eyes at.
Who had been, until three days before, my unspoken nemesis.
Then we’d hung out and he’d kissed me, and now I wasn’t sure who he was anymore.
Like the selfie on the balcony, it left me with the feeling that two different people were making their way to his chair.
I had never before struggled to fully associate playing-tennis-on-TV Miles with being-an-arsehole-off-court Miles, but then he’d never deep-throated me to oblivion before either.
While I had a small existential crisis, the commentators chimed in to talk about his run the previous year. He’d made the semi-finals, disappointing the Brits by defeating their highest-ranked player along the way, before being knocked out by Ryo Uchimura on his dream run to the title.
“Made the quarters at Roland Garros,” one of them said. “Yet to win a major, the American, but has eight career titles. And at twenty-five, he’s not exactly running out of time.”
“No, certainly not, Tim, although many expected him to have done so by now. Made the semis at the US Open last year, of course. A bitter loss that one, on home soil after taking the opening set.”
I winced, recalling how pleased I’d been when Bicchieri came from a set down to tear Miles apart. He’d looked stunned afterward, his face blank as he left the court.
While they spoke, the camera shifted to his opponent—Alexander Dimitriou—hastily setting out his water bottles, before flicking back to Miles’s rather calmer preparations. He’d taken off his headphones but hadn’t yet risen from his chair, one knee bouncing as he taped up a finger.
“Something interesting I’ve noticed, is that Callahan’s box is empty,” one of the commentators said. “Don’t think I’ve ever seen an empty player’s box at Queen’s.”
“Very unusual, especially since Callahan normally travels with quite a large team. We’ll have to see if we can find out what’s going on there.”
A panicked laugh escaped me. When Miles had shown up at my door with his laundry, I’d thought only that travelling without his team would affect his game.
It hadn’t occurred to me that anyone else would find out, that this dare wasn’t just our little secret like the kiss and the blowjob.
Stupid, since the media took great interest in player boxes, with cameras often fixed on coaches and family members.
That Miles Callahan had no one with him was almost scandalous.
If he kept it up throughout Wimbledon, no one would talk about anything else.
I forced my attention back to Katie while Miles ran through the opening formalities, but once he’d begun and was serving—ripping every ball into the service box at over 200km/hr like it was as easy as breathing—I couldn’t keep myself from glancing up.
I’d watched him play many times. Resentfully and always hoping he would lose, but often enough that it should have been an unremarkable experience.
Yet as the match went on, it felt like I was watching him for the first time, perhaps because for the first time I was genuinely watching him.
The Miles Callahan I’d discovered was more than the relentless game style and the facade he played up for the cameras, and he was there in the quiet way he centred himself before each serve, in the way his dark gaze fixed on the man across the net and threw out challenge after challenge daring him to keep up.
In my peripheral vision, I noticed that Katie had won, but I couldn’t drag my gaze from the TV.
Miles had taken the first set with ease and wasn’t letting up.
He was a man with no chinks in his armour today, no doubts.
It didn’t seem to matter what Dimitriou threw at him, he just adjusted and absorbed and played on, and I thought of what he’d said to me at the laundromat – even when you were beating me, the sight of Matteo Russo in top form was a thing to behold.
Not a courtesy I’d ever granted him in return.
Not faltering once, Miles served for the match, finishing Dimitriou off with a final ace for the road and a huge cheer from the crowd.
He lifted triumphant hands, and where I would usually have turned the TV off with an annoyed huff, a small smile tugged at the corners of my mouth.
No doubt I would go back to being annoyed once yesterday’s shock wore off, but for now, I couldn’t help but appreciate the skill it had taken to make it look so easy.
“It’s been said before and will be again that Callahan is like a freight train,” one of the commentators said while Miles pulled the sweatband from his head and ran a hand through damp hair.
“If you let him get up to speed, he’s almost impossible to stop and Dimitriou couldn’t find a way to rock him today. ”
“Did well though, the American was just unplayable. Let’s hear what he made of it. He’s on court now with Leah Bern.”
Having gathered his bags, Miles had joined the waiting interviewer.
With his hair damp and his smile triumphant, he looked all too much like the Miles Callahan who had left me barely standing in the bathroom the previous day, a memory I’d been repeatedly trying and failing not to think about, as I’d been trying and failing not to think about what the fuck it meant.
“Miles,” Leah Bern said. “First, congratulations, that was a commanding performance . . .”
“It sure was,” I muttered, adjusting myself in my shorts.
“. . .great to see you back here again. Tell us how that match felt for you.”
She held out the microphone as Miles nodded.
“Yeah, it’s really nice to be back,” he said, the drawl of his accent more pronounced when he was playing the part.
“I’ve always enjoyed Queen’s. It’s great to be part of our sport’s long tradition by coming to such a historic tournament.
As for today’s match, it felt really good.
I played well, I thought, especially since Alex is always a challenge.
Great to be off to such a positive start. ”
“Well, you certainly made it look easy. Though it’s never easy, is it? Why don’t you talk us through your preparations for a match like this?”
“Such a useless question,” I said with a sigh as Miles launched into full-on tennis speak.
Most players tended to ramble slightly off topic for such questions, but Miles was always polished and to the point, and as he talked about resting and training and taking every match seriously, I wondered if this was Tina again, his ease in front of the camera something that had been schooled into him.
As with all the finest tennis speak, he managed to say something that sounded meaningful but gave nothing away, ending on a smile that looked equally coached.
“Now,” the interviewer said, “we’ve noticed your player box is empty today.”
The words were barely out before a broad, sheepish smile lit Miles’s features, and he said something the microphone didn’t catch.
“What was that?” the interviewer asked, holding it out.
“I thought you might,” Miles repeated for all to hear.
I found myself grinning, though my stomach flip-flopped as I waited to see how honest he meant to be.
“Yes, it didn’t take very keen eyes,” Leah Bern said as the camera cut briefly to footage of the empty seats. “Will your team be with you for your next match?”
“No, they won’t be joining me. Nor at Wimbledon.”
“Not even for Wimbledon? Did someone book out all the flights from America for the next three weeks?”