Chapter 3 #2
“Okay.” Alex turned to lead the way back into the room—into their room, and bloody hell, that would take some getting used to. Lee followed and closed the balcony door, leaving the heat outside. Blessedly, he put his jersey back on before sitting down on the edge of his mattress.
Alex mirrored him, tucking his hands between his thighs, and silence descended once more as they studied each other across the divide between their beds.
“Go ahead,” Lee said with a small wave. Alex resisted arguing because that would have thrown them right back into a passive-aggressive two-step of faux politeness about who’d go first—not productive.
So. Where to start?
One of Kieran’s handouts had talked about how openly addressing negative emotions and biases could reduce their power and move a conversation forward. Huh—which had been part of how he’d announced the rooming assignments to them earlier in the lobby. Cheeky bastard.
Well, never let it be said that Alex wasn’t willing to learn from his elders.
“Right. So.” He strove for a neutral tone. “Since we’ll be sharing a room for the foreseeable future, we should probably clear the air, right? Get it all out.”
“Out, huh?” Dark humor edged Lee’s voice. “By all means.”
Right, then. Alex spread his hands. “Okay, so as far as I can tell, you see me as some posh aristocratic airhead who doesn’t actually deserve to be here.”
Lee paused before he answered, his eyebrows drawing together. “Taking a leaf out of Kieran’s book, are you?”
“You noticed?” Alex wasn’t sure why he was surprised—maybe because Jeff considered Kieran’s pre-training conversations an unwelcome delay to one of the few things he truly cared about, namely playing soccer.
“Yeah, well.” A second as Lee appeared to weigh Alex. “I know you think I’m some dumb, undereducated pleb—”
“Hang on,” Alex interrupted. “What? I don’t think that.”
“Well, I don’t think you’re a posh airhead,” Lee said slowly. The calculating edge to the way he watched Alex persisted, as though he was trying to work something out.
“You don’t?” Alex didn’t quite buy what Lee was selling. “Could have fooled me, what with the whole pretty boy thing.”
“The whole…” Lee trailed off, and for once, the silence that followed didn’t seem heavy, just thoughtful.
Alex let it sit for a few moments before he shifted, and the movement seemed to startle Lee out of whatever it was he’d been contemplating.
“So you thought…” Lee paused just long enough that it registered.
“When I called you pretty boy, you thought I meant, like…”
“That a pretty face was all I had to offer to the team?” Alex finished. “Well, yeah.”
“Bloody Oliver,” Lee muttered for no reason at all.
A slow grin took over his face and changed it from attractive to breathtaking.
“Mate, I was teasing. Just quoting some FourFourTwo article I barely remember. Think it mentioned your jersey was very popular among female Liverpool fans even though you’d only just been promoted to the first team. ”
“Like you have room to talk,” Alex shot back, and Lee shrugged one shoulder.
“I kind of stopped listening to anything other than myself, the coach, and my goal tally, to be honest.”
Lucky you.
Since Alex didn’t care to be quite that honest with Lee, he didn’t say it. Instead, he opted for a shrug of his own. “Okay, so maybe you were teasing about the pretty boy thing. But what’s your problem with my family background?”
“My problem with your family background?” Lee looked genuinely baffled.
“I mean, your father comes across as a conservative prick, not gonna lie—probably thinks even the Middle Ages were far too liberal for his taste. Guess that’s part of the job description when you’re in the House of Lords, though, so—”
“You seemed quite put off by the idea that I grew up in that environment,” Alex clarified. “As in aristocracy, Harrow School, all that.”
Lee didn’t look any more enlightened. “I did?”
“Yeah, you—” Alex cut himself off and shook his head. If Lee either honestly didn’t get it or insisted on faking ignorance, this wasn’t a constructive direction to pursue, so, moving on. “Never mind. What was that undereducated pleb thing all about?”
Lee leaned forward, frowning, and seemed about to respond. Then he abruptly closed his mouth again.
“What?” Alex said after a couple of seconds had passed.
“Just reassessing. Give me a sec.” Lee’s attention didn’t waver from Alex, and Alex forced himself not to look away.
He wasn’t eighteen anymore. “So,” Lee said slowly.
“After I called you pretty boy—when you were all ‘oh, screw you, I had my Premier League debut at eighteen and you were nineteen when you had yours, and also, unlike some people, I take my A levels seriously—’”
“I said that?” Alex asked.
“Sure did.” Lee raised his brows. “Except now I think it wasn’t actually personal. Or it was, but not… You reacted to what you thought was an insult. It was ‘I work hard for stuff’ and not ‘I’m better than you, so fuck off.’”
“I… what?” That was rather a lot. “Why would I…You thought I was reacting like that to a joke because… I don’t know. I had no sense of humor? That doesn’t even make sense.” Alex shook his head. “I mean, no one reacts like that to a joke.”
A small smirk twisted Lee’s mouth. “That’s what I thought at the time.”
Nope, still didn’t make sense.
Alex sat up a little, spreading his hands. “Come on, you must have realized that I didn’t think you were joking.”
Lee’s gaze slid to the England flag the hotel people had put up above the door to the bathroom, a nice effort given that most of the staff would be cheering for their home country.
Good thing that England and Spain were in different groups.
“I probably should have,” Lee admitted, much to Alex’s surprise.
“Would have, I guess, if not for…” He cut Alex a sharp look.
“I’m a bit sensitive about not doing all that well in school, only just managed to finish my A levels. So.”
What was it Jeff had hinted at—Lee coming from a tough family background?
The way Lee held himself suggested he expected Alex to jump at the chance to get a jab in, and Alex considered it for all of a second.
It wasn’t the point of this conversation, though, and maybe there was some common ground to be found between them yet.
“Well, in all honesty…” Alex leaned back on his hands. “It wasn’t some deep intellectual curiosity that had me acing mine. Quite simply, if I hadn’t, my parents would have put an end to my unfortunate interest in soccer faster than you can say ‘The Soccer Association is a mafia’.”
“Well, maybe they were right to push you on the education front.” There was a weird tinge to Lee’s voice. “Shows they care, right?”
Alex would have framed it more in the context of asset management, but potato, potahto. “Uh,” he said carefully. “Sure.”
Lee’s eyes narrowed. “What?”
“My parents aren’t exactly the caring types.” Alex hadn’t planned to say that, but then, it wasn’t a secret he guarded close to his chest either. Clearly it wasn’t something Lee had expected because he took a moment to respond.
“They might get along with my mum.”
Ha. “Only if your mum can easily recite her place in the line of succession.”
“Astronomically far away wouldn’t cut it, I suppose?” A smile tugged at the corners of Lee’s mouth, and Alex let his own lips curve upwards.
“I’m afraid not.”
They were smiling at each other.
It was weird. And there was still the small matter of why Lee had been a bit of a prick almost from the moment they’d met, hardly responding to Alex’s attempts at starting conversations when he’d been trying so hard to fit in as a new arrival to the Under 21s.
Surely that hadn’t been all in his mind?
Especially not Lee suddenly shutting down, which had come right after Alex had mentioned that his promotion to Liverpool’s first team hadn’t stopped his father from insisting on an arrangement that would allow him to finish his A levels at Harrow School.
Honestly, Lee’s claim that he’d been kidding about the pretty boy thing still didn’t sit entirely right with Alex.
A joke? Hard to reconcile that claim with Lee’s cool stance towards Alex from the moment they’d met.
Oh, and also, also, Alex would very much like Lee to acknowledge that the penalty call at their last match against each other could have gone either way.
But okay, Alex could park all that until further notice. He and Lee didn’t need to become great mates—Alex would happily settle for peaceful coexistence.
If that required putting aside old grievances? Well, fine. Alex could do that.
For the team.
Lee didn’t flee the room. He just happened to feel a tad antsy after being cooped up for the duration of the trip, and hitting the gym was the ideal remedy.
It seemed like Alex agreed because he left right after Lee got back, giving Lee a chance to unpack without having to navigate their forced proximity.
How was he supposed to act around Alex now? In a way, it had been easy when he’d been able to simply dismiss Alex as a homophobic snob. This, now, was unfamiliar territory, and while it was better than rooming with a bigot, Lee liked things to be predictable.
Alex didn’t know. It still hadn’t quite sunk in.
All this time, Lee had been waiting for the other shoe to drop—a pointed comment, just enough to start a rumor, or a joke that would dare him to react.
He’d pictured Alex luxuriating in how Lee couldn’t be certain of what Alex did and didn’t know, what Alex would and wouldn’t do.
Instead, Alex had mistaken Lee’s poor attempt at flirting for an insult, and Lee wasn’t sure whether that said more about him or Alex.