21. TIAGO
TIAGO
Ican’t believe I slept with Jules.
I can’t believe I slept with Jules four times.
Actually, I can. I was a goner the moment she went to get that box – my new favourite box.
What does this mean for the contract? She’ll still help me, right?
The initiating kiss was mutual, if I remember correctly.
I didn’t make her get the box. And you can’t get one of those out in front of a guy – not to mention a highly sensitive guy who hasn’t had sex in a lifetime – and expect it not to be used.
Even if it jeopardises our alliance, it was worth it.
I’d do it ten times over. Girl’s got serious skills.
I nearly cried when she lay down and opened her mouth.
I had to recite all the American presidents to help me hold it together, and squeeze my shaft so hard I got a headache.
I’ve never drilled a chick’s mouth upside down on a first night. I thought I was going to die.
And her noises – gasping, sighing, moaning. I thought I needed wanton screaming, whimpered ‘Papi’, but whatever Jules did topped it. I’ve never been so turned on in my life. It took superhuman strength not to come in thirty seconds.
It might’ve had something to do with being a monk for 118 days, but I wholeheartedly believe it had more to do with that body.
She’s missing the curves I’m used to, and her ass is firm and round instead of jiggling with every step, but I didn’t miss any of it.
She takes care of her shit. And they’re the best implants I’ve ever seen.
They’re like damn pillows. I want to get lost in there and never come out.
And to see her so unrestrained? Thank Christ she’s not like that all the time.
Hold up, what does this mean for going cold turkey?
I was doing so well. This was the first race weekend I wasn’t this close to unarchiving certain Whatsapp chats.
What’s stopping me returning to old patterns and damaging my reputation even more?
I’ve told everyone I’ve changed, and in a lot of ways, I have.
If I start sleeping around again, my siblings were right, the critics were right, Volare was right.
It’s not like I’m a junkie. One lapse doesn’t make me that guy again. There was no flirtation, no pursuit, no conquest, and that didn’t feel like just any one-night stand. I don’t know what the hell it was, but I do know it was the exception.
I head to the bathroom after Jules, perusing Spotify on my phone while I piss. ‘We Rock’ rings out in all its tinny glory. I wash my hands and dance my way back to my confused bedfellow. Her hair’s a knotted mess and my balls stir knowing I did that to her.
That I could do it again.
‘What are you doing?’ She wearily sits up, laying her phone on the bed. It’s open on her home screen and I glimpse dozens of tracking apps – sleep, nutrition, hydration, running, even injury. Am I surprised? Actually no.
‘This is a stone-cold classic,’ I say. ‘What’s that good one from The Cheetah Girls?’
She looks dumbfounded. ‘You jizzed in my mouth five minutes ago. How can you now be talking about The Cheetah Girls?’
‘I’m a man of many flavours.’ I scroll through their discography. ‘C’mon, Butler, focus. Which one is it?’
She picks sleep out of her eye. ‘Try ‘The Party’s Just Begun’.’
I play it and she’s right: it slaps hard. ‘Yesssss. Dance with me, Julie B.’
‘No, you’re naked,’ she says, but she’s laughing. She doesn’t laugh enough. It’s a very pretty sound.
‘So are you.’ I take her hand and gently pull her from the bed. She makes a tired grunt but lets me.
‘It’s nearly midnight.’
‘Don’t care.’
‘You should. You have qualifying tomorrow.’
‘That’s tomorrow’s problem.’
‘This is so stupid and random,’ she whines, but she starts dancing. She’s good, especially considering a couple of hours ago I thought she was too rigid to do the Macarena.
I tilt my chin up. ‘You want to sing along, don’t you?’
She fights a smile. ‘No.’ With one hand, she grabs my face and smushes my cheeks. ‘You’re annoying.’
When we’re back in bed, I promise I’ll go in five minutes.
Jules takes a drink of water and my eyes follow her every move.
How much do I really know this woman I spend so much time with?
Who just deep throated my cock like a champ.
Who doesn’t have a stick up her ass after all – I can say that with confidence because my thumb was just there.
‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ I say.
I half expect her to kick me out for overstepping, but she settles back down and pulls the duvet up to her neck. ‘I’m an introvert.’
I blink slowly at her. ‘Wow, never guessed that one.’
She huffs. ‘You saw mine. You go first.’
‘I saw a whole lotta things. Which are you referring to?’
She slaps my arm through the sheets. ‘The mug.’
‘Sure, sure,’ I say around a laugh. ‘Alright…’ I stick my hands behind my head. What to choose. Wait, I got it. ‘We came to the States when I was eight. My dad and his brother wanted to expand the family business into North America.’
When I glance over at her, I have her full attention. Smudged eye makeup, dishevelled hair, naked collarbone. A man could get used to a sight like that.
‘Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise: being an immigrant kid sucks balls.’ I tuck my arms under the sheets too. ‘We did it legally and with money, and it still sucked balls. My dad didn’t know rich areas were white, and moved us to White Street USA: Newport Beach.
‘Everyone thought we were Mexican. I knew three phrases in English on my first day of school. A teacher asked if I was from the barrio. Some kid wanted my dad to mow his lawn.’ She lets out a little gasp. ‘I didn’t know what any of it meant. In Colombia, even racism’s different.
‘I’d always been the joker, popular, and suddenly I didn’t feel funny, I didn’t feel cool. I felt… like everything I said came out wrong.’
This is harder than I thought. I haven’t dug up that period of my life in years, and it’s not like we talk about it honestly as a family because everyone dealt with the move differently.
Isa was four and seemed to learn English overnight.
My older sisters dove head-first into Heelys and Club Penguin and Pinkberry.
I felt alone for the first time in my life, which totally blindsided me.
Being one of twelve, the only thing you can count on is always having mi gente.
That, and personal space is a fun fantasy.
I felt like I’d moved to another planet.
All the buildings were beige and white, so planned, so organised, so sterile.
Cartagena’s nothing but colour. Old, walled, cobbled, and loud.
Shrieking food vendors; warm Caribbean water; chaotic traffic; life spilling into the streets.
I couldn’t make sense of muted California, where everyone jogs and your neighbours are strangers.
‘My eldest brother took me karting one weekend,’ I continue. ‘Figured I needed to get out of the house.’
I catch her nodding slowly out the corner of my eye. ‘And an F1 driver was born,’ she murmurs.
‘We used to love quad biking through the forest and beaches back home, so it wasn’t that different. I couldn’t get enough of it. I felt like I belonged for the first time in months. It gave me my confidence back.’
‘It’s hard to imagine you not having confidence,’ she says lightly.
I nudge her. ‘It’s because I’m so sexy.’
She rolls her eyes but her mouth kicks up. We lapse into comfortable silence. It’s crazy to think how far I’ve come from that lonely little boy. I wish I could give him a Pinkberry and tell him to chill out. We’d move to Miami in a year and it’d feel more like home than Colombia even did.
‘You should go,’ Jules whispers.
‘Nuh-uh. Not without hearing yours.’
She flops her head to the side with a rough exhale. This chick does not like opening up.
I think about what Isa said about Jules being sad.
At the time, I didn’t know where she got that from.
Overbearing, stressed out, a pain in my ass, sure.
But now? I see it. It’s quiet, in the heaviness in her eyes, in the way she keeps a tight rein on herself, in how she seems to reveal everything to her followers but reveals nothing.
Even lying here, the brightest I’ve seen her, it looms over her like a shadow.
I don’t know where it comes from. She’s not my girlfriend, but fuck, if I were Tom, I’d make it my full-time job to take her pain away.
‘Come here.’ I cock my head and she hesitates before slowly leaning into my open arms. She feels smaller than she looks. Fragile, even. I run my hand down her warm back, fingertips dancing over impossibly soft skin.
Her swallow’s audible. ‘You asked about my dating history on the flight. It started with Damian. He was my only real relationship; my dad was his coach and I’d known him for a million years. I loved—at least, I thought I loved him. Then he dumped me.’
There’s a lot more to it – I picked up on that salty comment in Martinelli’s hospitality – but I know better than to press the issue. It’s a gift she’s sharing anything at all.
‘I wanted revenge,’ she says carefully, like she’s choosing how much to disclose.
‘I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to show him he was wrong. So I set out to be the biggest WAG in the world. The most coveted bachelors, the highest follower count, the most devoted fans, the shiniest sponsorships, the most exclusive brand trips.’
Most dumped girls get drunk and shack up with some dude who takes gym selfies. She’s original, I’ll give her that.
‘That’s why you hop from sport to sport,’ I say.
‘I’d date the biggest sharks in the world and make that cunty twelfth seed look like plankton.’
‘I can’t see you going for him now,’ I muse.
I can feel her smile against my chest. ‘Exactly.’
‘So, what? You keep cycling through sports until you’re seventy?’