Chapter Ten
Giles
“I think you’re nearly ready for a posing lesson,” I say as I re-rack the bar and weights Marcello was just bench-pressing.
“I’m sorry, a posing lesson?”
I smile. “Yes, to really show off these new gains of yours.” I lightly squeeze Marcello’s biceps as he lies back looking up at me.
I pretend not to notice how warm and smooth the skin of his upper arms is.
I pretend not to marvel at how that little patch of hairless skin is just as tempting as the inches covered in dark hair.
Just like I pretend not to notice how much I like his eyes, his smile and the clench of his jaw when he’s mid-rep, despite my telling him to keep his jaw loose and teeth unclenched.
I’ve been doing a lot of pretending this last week.
Marcello sits up. “You know, I didn’t know if I was imagining it,” he stretches out his arms and twists them around, noticing the little dips of his triceps, “but if you’re saying you’ve noticed it then maybe there really is a bit more definition.”
“I am noticing it,” I say but deliberately take my eyes off him. “You’re making excellent progress.”
“I am with the gym. Shame I can’t say the same about running. Or swimming. And I don’t even have a bike yet so I can’t even claim to be making any progress there.”
“If you’ll excuse the pun, running is a marathon not a sprint. You’ll get there. You just need to stick to it. And swimming,” I wince, “that’s not my area of expertise, I’m afraid but I’m sure you could get a swimming coach to get you on the right track.”
“I think you mean, in the right lane.” Marcello winks at me. He drops his arms. “I really need to get that bike though and find out if I can still remember how to ride one.”
“Are you going to buy one?”
“Yeah. Second-hand. I’ve found a few online but I’m struggling to know what’s really worth it. Even used, they’re not cheap.”
“Are there any local to you? Maybe you could go test some out before you buy.”
“They’re all over the city. But I suppose I could get a shortlist together and try some out.”
“I could help. I mean, I could come with you,” I clarify. “I don’t know much about bikes but I like to think I have a good radar for when someone is trying to rip someone off. My dad always drove a hard bargain and would say that spotting tricksters a mile off is in my Scottish blood.”
“You’re Scottish?”
“Yes, on both sides. But I grew up in Reading where my parents met at university and settled.”
“That’s pretty romantic.”
“You’ve obviously never been to Reading,” I say and it feels like a reward when he laughs at my joke.
“That would be great. If you came with me,” Marcello stands and his expression changes. “But honestly, you don’t have to. You’re already doing so much. These training sessions. Running together at the weekend. You don’t have to do this as well.”
I’m about to tell him that I don’t mind. That I want to. But suddenly that feels like… too much. I’m being too much.
“Why don’t you set something up and let me know when you’re supposed to head there and if I can make it, I will.”
“Okay, sounds good.”
I glance at my watch, the silver one that used to belong to my dad, and note the time.
“I’m going to hit the showers and head back to work,” I say. “Can’t be late today.
“Same,” Marcello says with a firm nod.
I look at him. “You’re taking a shower? Normally you just say you’ll deodorant your way through the rest of the day and hope the smell of coffee covers up for you.
“And I stand by the power of both Lynx and freshly ground coffee beans, but today… er.” He pauses and looks at the floor as he fiddles with the knot of hair at the back of his head. “Today I have a date.”
My eyebrows shoot up. My hand extends to stop Marcello in his tracks too. “What?”
“Yeah, I have a date. After work. Well, it’s just a drink. Possibly not a date at all but—”
“Is this from the dating app?”
“Yeah,” Marcello says and we start walking towards the changing rooms. “Turns out I’m not a total turn-off to single women aged thirty-five to forty-nine living within a five-kilometre radius of Balham.”
“Forty-nine, hey?” I nudge him and I know what I’m doing. I’m choosing playful camaraderie and teasing over acknowledging the sick feeling in my stomach.
Marcello shrugs. “I’d go older, to be honest.”
“So, who’s the lucky lady?” I ask, and the sick feeling intensifies. What the fuck am I doing? I don’t want to know.
“Her name’s Daisy. Works in Marketing for a vegan smoothie brand.
Forty years old. Likes men with long hair, apparently.
” He imitates throwing his hair over his shoulder and I know it’s to try and make me laugh, but all it does is leave me wondering what exactly that would look like.
I’ve never seen him with his hair down. It’s always tied up high at the back of his head.
What does Marcello look like with his long, brown hair down?
What does he look like throwing that long brown mane over one shoulder?
What would his hair feel like to touch, to stroke, to grab at the roots? What does it smell like?
Oh, shit.
“Well, I’m happy for you, man,” I say and I lift a heavy hand to clap him on the back as he walks through the changing room door in front of me.
“Yeah, thanks.” Marcello walks to his locker and enters the code. There’s nobody else in the room although the space feels warm and stuffy with the smell of a hundred sweaty socks. “What about you and what was his name again? Jeremy? Any more texting?”
I try to hold back the grimace on my face before it shows itself. “Yeah, some texts,” I answer honestly. I don’t clarify that I’ve left the poor man on read for the last three days.
“Has he asked you out?”
“Not exactly,” I lie. Jeremy has suggested we meet up several times, I’ve just become an expert on replying in the most non-committal way. I stick my head in my locker and finally cringe like I feel the need to do.
“Well, maybe you should follow my lead and ask him to go out one day soon?”
“Maybe,” I say, still with my head in the locker as I reach around finding my towel and shower gel.
“I mean, what harm can it do?” Marcello continues as I lean back and close the locker again. Just as I hear the click of the lock slipping back into place, I turn my head and look at Marcello.
Marcello who is standing at another open locker, completely naked.
Marcello who is completely naked and hung like a prize-bred horse.
And I’m staring at, no, ogling his dick. His long, thick, full-headed dick.
“Well,” I cough and force my eyes away from his penis, “I see you’re ready for a shower.”
Marcello’s face falls. “Is this not what you’re supposed to do?”
“Get undressed? Well, I guess, yeah, that’s exactly what you’re supposed to do,” I say, feeling as foolish as I sound. “I just normally strip off once I’m at the showers.”
Marcello moves the towel that is hanging over his shoulder to cover his genitals. “Oh, sorry.”
I stretch my mouth into a smile. “Not a big deal. In fact, I’m being weird. I’m making this weird. Weird, weird, weird.” I hit my forehead with my fist three times before I can stop myself. “Sorry.”
Marcello gives me a concerned look and then blinks it away. He moves quickly, passing me with his towel back over his shoulder. Nudging into my side with his. “I’ll see you in the showers,” he says, and then he turns the corner and disappears.
I rest my head against the cool metal of the locker's door and scowl at myself so hard it hurts. “What the fuck is wrong with you!?” I call out in a silent scream and then I straighten my features, tap the locker door three times with my index finger and finally move away. Following Marcello’s footsteps, I head to the showers.
I’m relieved when there’s no sign of him in the communal shower area and that there is water running and steam emerging from one of the two cubicle showers opposite.
I’m not sure how well I could cope with seeing Marcello in the shower.
A picture-perfect image of him naked flashes behind my closed eyes as I quickly strip off my clothes and hang them up under my towel on one of the hooks on the wall.
My dick thickens at the memory, and I rush to get inside the other available private shower so I can hide my erection in peace.
Just before I turn the water on in the cubicle next to Marcello, I hear him start to sing. In Italian.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Does he have to?
I haven’t the slightest clue what the words he’s crooning mean but somehow I know it’s a love song.
And of course, that makes it all the more adorable.
I’m only partially disappointed when the sound of my water coming on doesn’t drown out his singing and I tilt my head back under the spray and smile as I listen to his voice drop with impressive pitch, before rising high a few beats later.
I no longer care that I’m now hard as a rock.
“You can really sing!” I call out.
That shuts him up, which disappoints me a lot more.
“Sorry,” he says. “I don’t get to sing in the shower much at home. Don’t like to wake my mum up. But I’ve always done it.”
“And always in Italian?”
“Sometimes, yeah,” he says, shyly.
“You can keep going,” I say, opening my shower gel and squirting out a generous amount onto the palm of my hand. “I like it.”
Those three words seem to linger in the air between us when Marcello doesn’t start singing again. They seem to stretch and echo and take on a life of their own, mischievously hinting too much about what I like.
I like it. I like you.
I’m cringing again as the silence continues and I wash myself roughly, counting my movements in threes as I do.
“Giles,” Marcello’s voice comes over the cubicle wall we share.
“Yeah?” I look towards his voice, at the top of the partition where my steam meets his.
“Can I ask you something?”
Oh God, he knows. He knows I like him and he’s going to confront me. He’s going to tell me he doesn’t feel the same way – because of course he doesn’t – and we therefore shouldn’t train together anymore. He’s going to tell me he doesn’t want to be friends. And I’m going to… I’m going to…
I’m going to get a grip.
“Sure,” I call back, and I impress myself with how calm I sound.
“Do you… Can I…” He pauses again and I hold my breath as I wait. “Can I borrow some shower gel? I forgot mine and the gym’s stuff is rancid.”
Relief washes over me, bringing my breath back and loosening my shoulders.
“Of course,” I say and I move to bend down and tuck the bottle under the partition but then I hear the click of Marcello’s lock opening and I realise he wants to meet outside the door.
I rush to open the door, forgetting all about the way my cock is thick and rock hard.
I only remember it when I open the door and Marcello’s eyes drop to between my legs.
I follow his gaze and feel my eyes widen in shock.
I squeeze them shut, count to three, and pray when I open them again, I’ve been sucked into the underworld, never to return and relive this embarrassing moment.
But that doesn’t happen. I open my eyes and look at Marcello and see him… smile.
He’s looking at me, with an easy grin on his face, and then he nods down at his own body.
“Snap,” he says before my gaze sees his long dick is fuller than it was a few minutes ago. Fuller, darker and with a number of veins zig-zagging up the shaft.
“Oh.” I say. It’s all I can say.
Suddenly the bottle of shower gel is yanked out of my hand and Marcello says “thanks” like I just held a door open for him, and then he’s gone. Him and his beautiful erection are both gone.