Three #2
oh you’re in? good. be right there
My heart leapt into my throat. What do you mean?
Seconds stretched by containing only the rapid tattoo of my heart and the hum of the terrible fridge struggling to do its job.
Miles? Wtf are you talking about?
Nothing. And as I stared at the picture he’d sent, I realised I had not only told him where he could stay for cheap, but that the carpet beneath the grey cat looked suspiciously like the hideous beige pile in which my bare feet were currently planted.
“Fuck!”
I sped to my room and threw off my towel. Deodorant, underwear, shorts – god, there had to be a pair that weren’t in the laundry pile. A knock sounded on the apartment door and I spun, panic mounting, and had to give myself a mental shake. He could wait until I’d found clothes.
A second knock came as I rifled through my stack of T-shirts.
“Hold on, I’m coming!” I called out, snatching one up.
I opened the door as I pulled it on, and there in the narrow, badly-lit hallway, stood Miles Callahan, managing to look both thoroughly out of place and perfectly confident at the same time.
He had a bag slung over one shoulder and a grin that wasn’t entirely friendly.
“What are you doing here?” I said, not inviting him in.
“Nice to see you too, Matteo.” He hoisted the bag off his shoulder and dropped it at my feet. “There’s no laundry service. What am I supposed to do with this?”
It was a stupid question, the answer both obvious and also not my problem, yet a different kind of shock sped its response to my tongue. “Are you seriously staying here?”
Miles frowned, his shoulders slightly hunched as though his six-foot-five frame took him uncomfortably close to the ceiling.
“Yes?” he said, the word a snap. “I thought maybe you’d figured that out.
It seemed a waste of time to look for somewhere better for the same price, since if there was such a place, you’d be there. ”
Before I could articulate my next question, he gestured to the bag. “I know the answer is find a laundromat, but I’ve never used a washing machine in my life.” He folded his arms on the words, the stance defensive behind the scowl.
“And this is my problem how?”
“Because you’re the one making me do this.”
“I never—”
“Please just shut up and help me, Mat. There’s no room in your budget for me to replace my gear if I fuck it up.”
I stared at the bag rather than him, and forced myself to swallow the disbelief that kept leaping to my tongue. It had seemed impossible he would even consider doing without his entourage, yet here the impossible stood before me and I had to admit it had taken balls.
“All right,” I said. “I was going tomorrow, but if you wait a sec, I’ll get mine and we can go together.”
He leaned against the doorframe, his dark-blond hair sweep-ing across his brow. “I can wait.”
Still not entirely convinced he was real, I headed for my room to gather my loose laundry. I more than half expected him to have vanished by the time I was done, yet having pulled on jacket and shoes, I returned to find Miles hadn’t moved.
“No Katie?” he asked, pushing off the doorframe as I approached.
“No, she’s in Ilkley.”
“Ilkley!” A faint, reminiscent smile briefly broke through his frown. “I remember playing there. Not a bad little clubhouse. Didn’t win, but I did beat Hashim Sartini and that was good enough for me at the time.”
I pulled the door closed behind us and locked it before testing the rickety handle. The damn thing always felt like I could just rip it out of the frame.
“Why aren’t you in Ilkley then?” Miles asked as I led the way along the narrow, creaking corridor to the equally narrow, creaking stairs.
“I wanted time to rest and prepare before qualifying starts.”
He grunted, a sound that was neither approval nor disapproval, and silence fell as we made our way to the street door and out into London’s early-afternoon haze. I gestured to show the direction we were going, and caught a hint of slightly floral cologne as he fell in beside me on the footpath.
“So, you’re playing Queen’s?” I said, sure I ought to ask a question in return.
“Yup. I got close last time. Maybe this’ll be my year.”
If he wanted to win a tournament, he probably shouldn’t have let me bait him into giving up his team – an observation I bit back, leaving traffic noise to fill the yawning silence between us.
This was all too strange. I’d woken expecting a normal day, yet somehow I’d ended up walking to a laundromat with Miles Callahan while he hid behind a pair of sunglasses and eyed everyone we passed.
No one ever recognised me, but I’d never been on magazine covers.
Thankfully, the nearest laundromat wasn’t busy, and we took a pair of machines well away from the front window.
And there, while people walked past outside and a man in the corner listened to music without headphones, I showed Miles fucking Callahan how to use a coin-operated washing machine.
Except, of course he hadn’t brought any coins, so I also paid for Miles fucking Callahan to use a coin-operated washing machine.
And once the machines were running, their timers ticking down all too slowly, I realised I was now stuck hanging out in awkward silence with the man who had knocked me out of the French Open.
“So,” Miles said, leaning on the chipped melamine bench with folded arms. “What do you do while you wait?”
Without a sweatband to keep it back, the soft waves of his dark-blond hair tumbled about his face, tips caressing those sharp cheekbones. All slightly tousled intensity, he looked enough like his GQ cover to be unnerving, like I was hanging out with a glossy pinup ripped from a magazine.
“Depends what time it is back home,” I said, trying for a light answer. “If it’s evening, I usually call Mum. Otherwise, I flirt with cute locals, read, or just sit and panic about my next match. You know, whatever I’m in the mood for.”
“Panic? You?”
It took me a moment to realise his surprise was genuine. “Yeah, I’m quite good at it.”
His features did the equivalent of a shrug. “That’s news to me. You always look so confident. Fierce even. Like you’re ready to chew the world up and spit it out if it does you dirty.”
“Ah, no,” I said. “The world has done me plenty dirty, I assure you, and I’m just panic all the way down.”
Before I could regret admitting as much, my phone buzzed. “Coach,” I said, noting the name on the screen, and lifted it to my ear. The call connected with a faint hum. “Evening, Danny. How’re you doing?”
“Good, good,” Danny said with what sounded like a stretch. “Freezing my arse off but such is life in the southern hemisphere right now.”
While Danny spoke, Miles pushed off the bench and app-roached with long strides, and before I could guess what he meant to do, he had leaned close enough that his breath danced over my fingertips.
“Good afternoon, Mr Lovett,” he said into the phone, his tone so mockingly demure that I wanted to hit him.
Shocked silence hung a moment on the other end, while Miles retreated to lean against a nearby machine, all shit-eating grin.
“Was that . . . Callahan?” Danny said, voice pitching up in confusion.
I glared at Miles. “Yes, yes it was.”
“Oh. I can call back if I’m interrupting something.”
“Not interrupting anything,” I said, and able to guess from my tone in what manner Danny had asked that loaded question, Miles laughed. “I’m just doing my laundry,” I added, trying not to grit my teeth.
“Right,” Danny said, and I hated how my cheeks heated at the hint of disbelief in his voice. “Well. I got your videos.”
“I figured.” I turned around so I didn’t have to look at Callahan while my coach detailed my failings. “Tell me the worst.”
“Hey now, don’t say it like that. You’re doing great. I’ve been rewatching your Nottingham matches too and when you’re flying, you’re really flying. It’s good to see. I’ll send you notes when we finish up, but as usual its mostly about your point planning.”
For the next ten minutes, I stood amid the droning hum of tumble dryers and tried to focus on Danny’s words like a sponge absorbing wisdom.
Unfortunately, even on my best days, his wisdom tended to leak straight out and today was no different, so I was soon just nodding along, knowing I could catch up when he sent it in writing.
“And if you’ve got Callahan there,” he finished. “He’d make a great hitting partner.”
“He just happens to be here,” I said, rubbing my brow.
“Doing his laundry too?”
“Believe it or not.”
Danny huffed a laugh. “Ah well, it’s a hard one to believe, that’s for sure. But give him my best. Was a good time when he was out here for that training camp. Pissed him off no end that he couldn’t beat you though.”
“Yeah.” I gave a non-committal shrug.
“Ah well,” he said again after a pause. “I’d better go, it’s late. I’ll send those notes tomorrow.”
He hung up, and feeling like I’d been put through the wringer, I had all but forgotten Miles was actually present until I turned back to find him watching me. His grin was gone, replaced with a frown. Behind him, our washing machines rumbled on.
“What?” I said.
Throwing a glance toward the front window, he seemed to consider whether or not to answer, before fixing me with a determined stare that made me squirm. “You need a new coach.”
I snorted. “Yeah, right, thanks.”
“I mean it, Mat. You don’t need to do any of those things.”
“You were listening?”
Miles gave a careless shrug. “He was loud and I’m nosy. And I’m telling you that you should ignore all his suggestions.”
“Right. Sure.”
I dropped my phone onto my empty laundry bag and glared at the timer on the washing machine, willing it to go faster.
“The only thing he got right was at the end,” Miles went on, though he was speaking to my turned shoulder now. “I was hella pissed that I couldn’t beat you.”
“You beat me two weeks ago.”
“Yeah, but that wasn’t the Russo who used to blitz my game like it was a stroll in the fucking park.”
“No shit. I can’t do that anymore.”