Chapter Twenty-Nine
Giles
“A watched phone never rings,” Radia says from somewhere behind me. I drop the device on the counter and turn to her. She’s hanging up suits and putting them in travel bags for a pick-up.
“I wasn’t waiting for it to ring. I…” I stop. I don’t know how to explain what I was debating doing because Radia would think it completely ridiculous.
Because it is completely ridiculous. Cancelling my gym session with Marcello later is petty and selfish and rude. All the more so because my reason for doing so is because he knows my secret. A secret I’ve kept hidden and guarded for my whole adult life.
Sure, people have picked up on it. Friends, lovers, even men I’ve dated for a few months or more, but nobody has approached it the way Marcello did.
Until him, there were jokes and confused comments, a couple of derisive comments, and I laughed them all off.
I told them what I first told Marcello. That three is my lucky number.
And that seemed to be enough. It didn’t silence the comments or the teasing but it didn’t prompt further interrogation like it did yesterday with Marcello.
Yet it wasn’t an interrogation. Not really. Marcello spoke more about his own experience than anything and he didn’t push me to go any deeper than I wanted to, and yet I felt like he was asking me to excavate my soul. And I didn’t want to do that. That was why I asked him to leave when I did.
And I don’t want to do it later today in the gym.
Not that I expect Marcello to pick up that conversation where we left off. When we’re in the gym we focus on training. Apart from that one – fucking glorious – tryst in the shower, we’ve managed to keep our workout sessions strictly focused on the task in hand.
But today, I’m not sure I can.
My counting is off the charts, to the point where earlier I was watching Radia do alterations and became obsessed with the number of pins she was using.
I’m still not over the fact she used a number that isn’t divisible by three, especially after I convinced myself that this will mean that Marcello doesn’t want to see me again after I was so rude to him yesterday.
That’s why I’m considering texting him to cancel our session. I can go to the gym near my flat after work. It’s not like I’ll miss out on a workout, but Marcello will. I get this sense that if I didn’t go with him, he would struggle to keep up the routine and progress we’ve made together.
“Is it a guy?” Radia asks after hanging up another bagged suit on the pick-up rack. “Or a girl?”
“It’s a guy,” I admit and the relief I feel at saying that is greater than my worry she’ll somehow telepathically know who the guy is.
“That hypothetical guy who wanted you to hypothetically sleep with him?”
“No!” I say and then curse myself under my breath for sounding so startled. It’s a lie, of course, but the last thing I want is for Radia to know I’m still obsessing over the same guy. “That’s all… in the past. It’s someone else.”
She empties her hands and comes around the counter to stand next to me. Resting her hip on the side, she folds her arms and looks up at me, her grey eyes sparkling in the midday sunshine filtering in through the shop’s front windows.
“Talk to Aunty Radia about it.”
“I’m fine, Radia. It will all figure itself out.” I tuck my phone into my trouser pocket, tapping it three times before lifting my hand up. There’s still plenty of time to text him if I do decide to cancel our session.
“I don’t think so. You’ve had a face like a pickled onion all morning.” She points a finger at me. “Frankly, it’s ruining my current loved-up buzz. And it’s bad for business.”
I roll my eyes and fold my arms, mimicking her stance. “I’m so sorry my less than perfect love life is putting a downer on your new relationship.”
“Love life? Love?” She bobs her eyebrows. “I thought this was just a Grindr hook-up gone wrong.”
“Jesus, I’m not that much of a cliché.”
Her brows stay high.
“Not anymore, anyway,” I add.
“Well, if this is a question of love.” She reaches under the counter and retrieves her wallet and keys, which she attaches to a belt loop with a carabiner. “Then I should go and get coffee. And chocolate croissants.”
“No!” It’s an outburst of a word and Radia is far too clever to not pick up on it, but still I try to explain it away. “No chocolate croissants today. I’m cutting.”
She pouts at me for a very long time and I can’t help thinking the longer I let it happen the more I reveal myself.
“It’s Marcello, isn’t it?” she finally says.
Suddenly, I don’t have the energy to lie or dispute or even try and minimise her discovery.
“Yeah, it’s Marcello,” I say and it feels like my whole body unleashes a not-insignificant fraction of the tension that has had me feeling uptight since Marcello left my flat after a barely audible and rushed goodbye yesterday evening.
“I knew it!” She claps her hands with more enthusiasm than I think I’ve ever seen her apply to anything. Other than Chloe, of course.
“How?” I ask, baffled.
“All those gym sessions. You going for runs with him. And Chloe told me you went with him to look at a second-hand bike. You’re like, really helping him with his training.
Not that that’s unusual. You’re a very generous and helpful guy, but you’ve just had this spring in your step since you’ve been doing it.
Until this morning, that is. So what happened? ”
“Nothing,” I say. I am not about to share the other side of Marcello and my arrangement. The sex lessons. “I just… I have feelings for him.”
Radia mulls this over. “And he’s straight,” she concludes.
“Yeah.” The word tastes bitter – another lie I’m telling Radia – but the very last thing I’m going to do is out Marcello.
“Bummer.”
“Yeah.”
“I hate it when that happens.”
“Me too,” I say without meeting her eye.
“When’s his triathlon?”
“Beginning of October. It’s the last triathlon of the season, apparently.”
“So nearly two more months of close proximity with someone you have feelings for and can’t do anything about. Sounds like hell.”
“I don’t know.” I shrug. “You did it for a year.”
“Yeah, but I knew Chloe was queer. There was at least a slither of hope, even if it felt miniscule most days.”
“So, are you saying that if Marcello was queer, I would have a chance?”
“Are you kidding me?” She swipes my upper arm with the back of her hand. “You’d be top of his list, I’m sure.”
“Why do you say that?” I ask because I’m clueless, not because I want my ego stroking. Okay, maybe a little stroke wouldn’t hurt.
“Because you’re kind and considerate and loyal and fun to be around.
Because you have minimal emotional baggage and a very successful career.
Because you are independent and focused and hard-working.
Because you would never screw him around.
Which is kind of important because I need to be able to always get my coffee there. ”
I fight a losing battle with the blush on my cheeks. I never knew Radia thought so highly of me.
“Well, the good news is that you’ll likely always be able to get your coffee there because nothing romantic will ever happen between us.”
“Hmm,” Radia says mouth closed. “That doesn’t make me feel as good as it should. I’m sorry he’s not queer, Giles. And not just because I feel sorry for anybody who is not queer, but because I actually think you’d be really good together.”
“You do?”
“Yeah, he would match your energy really well. Chloe and I were talking about it the other day actually.”
“My energy? And wait, you were?”
“Yeah, she’s also noticed how much time you’ve been spending together. We were saying how fun it would be if we could go on double dates together. But then we forgot that Marcello is hetero.” She laughs loudly.
I laugh softly. “It’s not his fault.”
“Isn’t it?” she teases.
“But what do you mean, my energy?”
“Look,” her hand lands on my arm again, but this time it stays there, “don’t take this the wrong way, but you do live quite a rigid life.
You have your routines and your rules and that’s great.
I mean, it’s totally paid off but I have often wondered how much time it leaves for spontaneity and that isn’t necessarily a good thing. ”
“I’m spontaneous!” I protest.
“Okay, Giles.” She lowers her chin and pins me with a stare. “When was the last time you were spontaneous?”
I think about the time in the shower with Marcello but I know I can’t say that.
“I bought a different kind of shower gel the other day,” I say but very deliberately don’t add that it was the brand Marcello buys and that’s why I bought it. Three bottles of it, of course.
“Shower gel. Really?” Radia rolls her eyes so emphatically it moves her forehead and her hijab.
“Not everybody has to be spontaneous.”
“No, you’re right. But Chloe was saying how you would compliment Marcello well too. You already have, in fact.”
“I have?”
“Yes, she says he eats healthier now. Doesn’t snack as much and he has better energy for it.”
“Well, that’s… good.”
“And I’ve noticed a difference in him. He’s always been very friendly and smiley, but recently I feel like it’s not a front. It’s actually coming from a place inside him that’s genuinely happy and almost proud of himself.”
My ribs stretch to accommodate a sudden swelling of my heart. I really do hope Marcello feels that way about himself.
“I know it sucks having unrequited feelings for him.” She lifts her hand, palm flat in front of me.
“Been there, done that. But I hope you can figure out a way to keep being friends with each other. Because of course you can both be good influences on each other as mates. You don’t need to shag each other’s brains out. ”
She says it so casually and yet it conjures up one hundred delicious images from our time together yesterday. Before I went and ruined it all.
“I hope so too,” I say quietly.