Chapter Thirty-Five
Giles
I can’t get the way he looked at me out of my head.
I can’t seem to erase the narrow-eyed glare he gave the three drinks I placed on the table.
I can’t forget the elongated ‘Okay’ he gave in response to me explaining that I couldn’t choose between two smoothies which is why I ordered two for me as well as the one for him.
Which is a lie. Because it had nothing to do with choice.
In fact, the very opposite. I felt compelled to order two drinks so that we would have three drinks in total on our table.
I told myself if I had three drinks on the table, then this date would start to feel a bit more comfortable than how it is very predictably starting to play out.
Because I don’t want to be here.
There really is nothing wrong with Tony. Sure, he’s a little camp and has made a few scathing comments about the teenage employee’s style choices but I’ve gone out with more annoying and much ruder men in my time. And I’ve been able to ignore it in order to have some often fun and meaningless sex.
And that’s the goal of today’s date. That’s why I’m here doing my very best to not wrinkle my nose as Tony flirts with me very blatantly.
“So why the juice bar at the gym?” He crosses his legs in my direction. “Aside from the fact the menu is so good you have to order two drinks.”
I clamp my mouth shut because part of me, the counting obsessed part of me, wants to tell him that actually I ordered three drinks. Three is the important detail. A detail he would never understand.
I don’t know if Marcello understands, but he seems to want to.
Marcello. Marcello. Marcello.
I shouldn’t be thinking about him.
“Is it because you want to be sober enough to remember every single second with me?” He blinks in rapid succession and I realise he’s actually trying to flutter his eyelashes at me.
My stomach flips and doesn’t quite settle.
“I just thought it would be neutral territory,” I say, honestly. Too honestly perhaps when I see Tony’s pout slip from his lips.
“Afraid I’m going to corrupt or kidnap you?” He forces a smile.
“No, nothing like that.”
“I mean, I could if you wanted.” He blinks rapidly again. Doesn’t that make him feel dizzy?
I take a sip from one of my smoothies, then the other, and finally a third sip from the first.
Tony watches me the whole time and squints at me. “Are you… nervous or something?”
“Nervous? No. Why?”
“I don’t know,” he says still looking at me with a thin stare. “I see you in the gym all focused and in the zone. I’ve been flirting with you for the best part of four months and you have batted away all my approaches until this last week and now you just seem… very distracted or, yeah, nervous.”
“I’m not nervous,” I clarify and I know I probably owe him more than that but I close my lips.
“So you’re distracted then?” One of Tony’s eyebrows arches. “Is it another man?”
I choke on air. “No, of course not. I’m not going to ask you out for a drink and then spend the whole time thinking about someone else.”
Except that’s exactly what I’ve done.
Suddenly, I’m flooded with guilt. Tony may not be the kindest man in the universe but he doesn’t deserve being treated this way.
If I can just focus on him. If I can maybe find out more about him. If I can just remember that this is what needs to happen for me to put an end to the torment that is having Marcello and yet not having him at all.
I take three more sips from my drinks, starting with the one I drank in the middle again. Once more, Tony studies me with a glare that is more concerned than curious.
“I promise I’m not distracted,” I say and I shift forward in my chair to try and prove it. “Tell me about yourself, Tony. What’s it like being cabin crew these days?”
“Same as it always is,” he says with a close-lipped smile that I choose to interpret as proud rather than arrogant. “Love the job and the benefits, hate the schedule and the customers. Although I’m probably not supposed to say that.
I know I’m supposed to laugh or at least smile with him, but it’s too much effort. “Do you do short-haul or long-haul?
“Long-haul, of course.”
“That’s… awesome,” I try. I honestly couldn’t imagine doing that job. The shift work. The jet-lag. The lack of regular routine and absence of control over my food. But I can’t say that. “So you’ve seen a lot of the world then?”
“Yeah, most of South America and Asia, half of Africa, and more North American cities than I can count,” he says it like it’s both a boring fact and also his whole personality.
“Where… What’s your favourite place?” It’s a terrible question and by the look on Tony’s face, he knows it. I take another three sips of my drinks.
“If I say the Maldives, does that make me a cliché?” he finally replies after watching me carefully again. I start counting in threes to try and not worry what he’s thinking about me.
“I don’t think so. It’s one of the most unique places in the world. I’d love to go one day.”
With Marcello. I’d love to go with Marcello.
“Play your cards right today and maybe I’ll take you with me.
” He winks and it prompts another physical reaction, this time making the air I breathe in thin and sparse.
My chest tightens and I resist the urge to rub at my sternum to loosen things up.
I have to get over this. I’m stronger than this, aren’t I?
“Well, I did buy you a smoothie,” I say and I swear in my head it sounded like flirting but Tony’s slightly wrinkled upper lip tells me it didn’t land. At all.
I take three more sips and continue counting in my head.
“So, I have to ask.” Tony pushes his smoothie out of his way, as if it’s a barrier between him and me. “What’s with the three thing? The three drinks and three sips thing?”
I don’t even try to breathe. I’m not entirely sure my lungs can still work like they’re supposed to. Nobody’s ever noticed my ‘three thing’ before, or if they have, they’ve never challenged me on it.
Except that’s a lie. Marcello noticed and Marcello asked me about it.
But while it wasn’t comfortable, it was nothing like this.
When Marcello talked about it, it was like he held a mirror up to my face and held my hand while I glanced in it.
And then when that got too much for me, he let me look away and he still kept my hand in his.
But Tony’s crafty smile and accusing glare feels like it’s completely void of gentleness or even care.
And by the way his foot swings as he waits for my reply, he’s not going to let me avoid answering.
“I mean, it’s clearly a thing.” Tony is talking again and I grip the sides of my chair to try and squeeze out some of the tension in my body. “All these threes. Is it like some neurotic OCD habit or something?”
I open my mouth to say something, although I have no clue what, but words from somewhere behind me stop me.
“What if it is?” A baritone of a voice pulls Tony’s gaze above my head.
I turn slowly, because I know whose voice that is and yet I also can’t believe that it is him. That he’s here.
But he is. I see Marcello standing behind me, his gym bag on his shoulder and fuck me, his hair is down, hanging down his back.
He looks like Jesus. That’s literally the first thought I have as I take him in, and then I recall what he just said.
“I’m sorry, Giles,” he says eventually taking one step closer to us. “I shouldn’t have overheard you or interrupted but… Well, I did it anyway, so yeah, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I mumble still trying to figure out if this is really happening.
“No, it’s not,” Tony says, a lot louder than my response. So loud I turn my head back to him. “We’re having a private conversation and you just butt in. And I wasn’t being judgemental about Giles’ three thing. I was just… curious.”
I don’t believe him. Not in the slightest.
“It’s okay,” I say again before looking back at Marcello.
“Right, well, if you’re okay,” Marcello says and he scratches at the back of his neck like he often does but this time there’s all this hair there and his bicep bunches under his shirt and the movement makes his T-shirt ride up revealing the curve of his stomach and the hair that covers it…
I never did get a chance to lay my head down on it and find out if it was as soft a pillow as I imagine it to be.
Because I fucked it up.
But what if I can unfuck it up?
“No, what I mean is,” I say and I finally feel like my chest has relaxed and my tongue has found its purpose in my mouth again. “It’s okay, we’re done here.”
I stand up.
“What?” Tony asks, mouth agape as he looks up at me.
“I didn’t want to go on this date, Tony. I’m sorry I set it up and strung you along. I’m sorry I lied and was pretty awful for the majority of the time we just spent together. But I felt like I had to do it. I had to try…”
I drift off. I want to say more. I finally, finally feel ready to say more. But I don’t want to say it to Tony. I need to say it to Marcello.
Even if he doesn’t feel the same way. Even if he doesn’t want to be my friend or train with me anymore after I confess my feelings for him. Even if this blows up in my face just as terribly as I have spent too many hours imagining, I have to tell him.
I have to be honest with him. And myself.
“I’m sorry, Tony,” I say once more, then turn to face Marcello. “Can we go somewhere and talk?”
“I was just about to go to the gym.” He points in the direction of the changing rooms. “You got your gear here?”
I do. I could walk through there with him and work out and maybe that will help dilute the impact of what I want to say to him, but that doesn’t feel right. I’ve come this far. I want to go all the way. I want to do this right.
“Actually, would you like to come back to my place?”
Marcello’s shoulders drop. “Yeah, I would,” he says with a small smile.
“Ugh,” Tony makes a loud noise and his chair screeches as he pushes it back when he stands. “I’m going to have to change gyms now.”
“No, you don’t,” I say. “I promise to not be… weird.”
“It’s already very weird.” His eyes ping-pong between me and Marcello. “All I did was ask an innocent question—”
“It didn’t sound innocent,” Marcello says and he crosses his arms.
“No, it didn’t,” I agree. “But I will answer it. Yes, I have OCD. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. And I have an obsession with the number three. It’s debilitating and exhausting and makes me feel like I’m losing my mind half of the time.
But I’m pretty sure it’s something I developed as a result of losing my parents at a young age, and for that reason I have this strange, if also totally fucked up, fondness for it.
I know I need help. I think I will get it too.
I just… I just need to do so in my own time. ”
I don’t know when it happened but part way through my little speech, my body has moved from facing Tony to turning to Marcello who is smiling at me like a proud parent. No, not a proud parent. A proud friend. Possibly, a proud boyfriend.
“Ugh,” Tony says again. “Definitely changing gyms.”
“Really, you don’t have to. I—”
“And watch you two fall in love while I kill myself on a Stairmaster? I don’t think so. I’m not paying 99 quid a month for that.
He storms off, brushing past my shoulder hard enough to move me a little and I don’t say or do anything. I deserved it.
“So,” Marcello says.
“So,” I say.
“You ready?”
“Yeah,” I say. I really, finally am.