Twenty-Six #3
Eyes widening in surprise, Miles lifted his hands. “That wasn’t an accusation! Sorry, love,” he added, a gentle reassurance that was like a whole handful of chalk marks added to the tally I absolutely wasn’t still keeping. “I was just surprised.”
He looked upset with himself, scowling at the dining table, and I pulled myself off the fancy leather couch to go to him. “I didn’t want to give you anything new to worry about,” I said.
“And I don’t want to keep giving you things to worry about.” He sighed, and kissed my forehead. “I promise I wasn’t mad at you, only at Emily. I should break things off with her.”
“No, you can’t!” Tina cried. “We have to be careful, remember? She knows too much to just cut her loose.”
“Fine, then what am I supposed to do about this?” he asked, gesturing at his phone.
“Well, maybe we should just go out and—”
Miles interrupted her with a groan. “I don’t have time for this, Tee! I have a lot of points to defend here or I’ll drop further down the rankings, and when I’m not playing, I’d rather be spending time with my actual boyfriend.”
There was no possible world in which I could ever get sick of those words.
“Surely, she’s the last person who would tell the world Miles is gay,” I said instead of admitting that. “Since that would mean acknowledging her relationship with him is a lie.”
“That’s true,” Miles said, grabbing his phone off the table. “Can’t argue with that. I’m going to break things off.”
“Miles, wait!” Tina closed her laptop with a snap and set her fingers to her brows. “That’s true, but her parents know ours, and if she complains to them, it will absolutely get back to Mom and Dad.”
“So? They won’t care that I broke up with someone.”
“They will when she tells them it’s because you have a boyfriend now! We need to keep things peaceful or they won’t come to the table, remember?”
With a frustrated growl, Miles threw up his hands. “Fuck! God, I should just let them take half the damn money if they’ll leave me alone. Maybe I should rip off the Band-Aid and let things fall where they will. If they want to make news by suing me for everything I’ve got, let them.”
“Look, I know this is hard,” she said, reaching out a hand toward him, “but I’m working on it. They still trust me and they are listening, we just have to keep up the appearance of being dutiful children a bit longer, even if it’s like walking on eggshells all the time.”
I couldn’t but think of everything Miles had said about their manipulations and their cruelties. People who would even consider suing their own son weren’t the sort to give up just because the fish they were reeling in stopped struggling.
“Do you really think you can talk them into letting Miles go?” I asked.
“No, probably not, but if we move slowly, I can talk them down from making it worse. From lashing out at—”
“They’re already lashing out!” I said, throwing out an arm in the vague direction of everything Miles had told me that day beside the pool.
“They aren’t going to change, so tiptoeing around them only keeps Miles the victim.
He doesn’t need softly, softly, Tina, he needs you to go in to fucking bat for him. ”
Tina’s cheeks heated and she set her jaw, looking all too like Miles as she did so. “I know you warned me you would fight for him and I appreciate that, but this is not the time, Matteo.”
“Well, when is the time, if not when he’s under attack?”
“Standing up to them at this point would make it worse!”
“And letting them trample him will make it better?”
“What else can I do?” she wailed. “I have only ever tried to do my best for him.” And dropping her head into her hands, Tina burst into tears.
All instinctive empathy, Miles reached out, but she waved him off.
And with a mutter about needing some air, she hurried out, leaving us in silence but for the tennis match still playing on the TV.
I watched her go, guilt twisting my stomach.
I’d meant what I said, but she was the protective big sister and I’d as good as accused her of failing him.
With a heavy sigh, Miles leaned against the dining table, his shoulders slumped.
He pulled me close, and not for the first time I found myself standing between his legs to wrap my arms around him, letting him rest his chin on my shoulder while he was hurting.
I wondered if it was deliberate or subconscious, that when he needed comfort, he didn’t want to feel his extra height.
That he made himself small to be enveloped in my arms.
“You’re so fierce,” he murmured into my hoodie.
I huffed a laugh, able to remember when, not so long ago, he’d been the fierce one tearing into the comfortable ruts of my life. “You were the same for me.”
“Yeah, I guess I was.”
“We show up for each other.”
He hummed agreement, sliding his arms around me. “Because sometimes it’s hard to show up for ourselves. It’s not as easy as you make it sound though, this stuff with my parents.”
“I didn’t mean to make it sound easy. I’m sure it’s not. I just think placating bullies never gets anyone anywhere.”
Miles gently shook his head, his hair tickling my cheek. “Real life isn’t like your romance books, Mat.”
“How do you mean?”
“Happy endings that are neat and simple. There’s no neat and simple way this ends.
Not with my family, not even with us. We are a mess and we always will be because we can’t just be this—” He slid his hands to my waist as though to indicate us here, our togetherness—“we also have to be that.” He gestured behind me, surely at the tennis on the TV, and I could feel the fragility in his words, like we were standing on cracking ice.
One wrong move and it would shatter beneath us, plunging us into the frigid water where maybe he was never going to forgive me for New York, where maybe he was going to say he couldn’t keep doing this and leave me.
Despite everything, the fear I had fucked it all up that night lived in my skin now, every day since nothing but a brief stay of execution I was somehow still clinging to.
And I’d go on desperately clinging as long as my fingers would hold, no matter how much my arms were aching.
“Everything else might be hard and messy,” I said, the words thickening in my throat. “But loving you has always been easy. Looking at you and knowing you are my everything is the easiest thing I do every day.”
His arms tightened around me. “I don’t know what I did to deserve you,” he mumbled into my shoulder.
And I breathed out. Perhaps, I could cling on a little longer.