Four #3
Miles looked up, the laughter back in his eyes. “You need your porn to be a surprise?”
“Fuck you, that’s literature.”
“‘He forgot what he’d been going to say, letting out a groan as Daniel lowered his head, taking his cock wholly inside his mouth, lips—’”
I snatched the reader from his hands for the second time. “Excuse you, but a book having blowjobs is not a drawback.”
“Surely, real-life ones are better.”
With a snort, I set the reader back beside the TV. “I don’t have time for those.”
“You and Katie never . . .?”
“What? No! First openly gay tennis player, remember?”
“Yeah, but . . .” He shrugged. “Seems you spend a lot of time together. Besides, you might have a bit of bi in you for all I know.”
I settled back on the couch with a sigh.
“Not a single iota I’m afraid. Though in juniors, I once talked myself into believing I liked Ana Murchison, since no one would shut up about how hot she was.
Impressive work on my part considering at that age, I could barely leave a locker room without a raging hard-on. ”
“So, you’ve never been with a woman?”
“No. Never.” I looked up and found him steadily regarding me. Heat flooded my cheeks. “Oh god, why am I telling you this shit? What was in those terrible beers?”
“Just terrible beer, I’m afraid,” he laughed. “Here, let’s have dessert to make up for it.”
The secret dessert turned out to be the most decadent choco-late mousse cake I had ever seen.
Miles groaned as the box lid yawned open.
“Oh god, they sent a whole fucking cake,” he said.
“Usually, they just serve a slice. This is going to kill me. I won’t be able to play on Monday because I’ll be in a chocolate coma. ”
“Well, you had better not eat any then.” I pulled the box toward myself. “I’ll protect you.”
“Oh no, you won’t.”
We scuffled amicably over the box before cutting two slices and settling back on the couch, where I threw Miles the TV remote. “Here, you’re the guest, you can choose.”
“There’s probably nothing decent on without streaming,” he said, but turned it on anyway to find the movie Wimbledon about halfway through.
I groaned. “I really wish they wouldn’t run this every year, it’s so awful.”
Miles turned a look of shocked innocence my way, belied only by the hint of that wicked gleam in his eyes. “But Matteo, it’s tennis! You like watching tennis. It’s also a romance and you love romances.”
“Bad tennis.” I pulled a face. “And a straight romance.”
“Wow, that’s discrimination.”
“It very much is not. Oh my god, he’s not even holding the racquet properly. Please change the channel.”
He lifted his feet onto the coffee table, crossing his ankles like a man settling in for the night. “Nope. You said I could choose and I choose to torture you for the rest of the evening.”
“Even if it means torturing yourself?”
“Even if it means torturing myself.”
And so for the next hour, we sat side by side on the saggy old couch eating the most expensively procured chocolate mousse cake in all of London, while laughing and groaning over the movie’s inaccuracies.
It wasn’t the first time I’d seen it, but it was the first time I actually enjoyed myself to the point of being almost sorry when it was over.
“I’d better go,” Miles said, turning the TV off and sitting up. “I still have some shit to do.”
“I’m sure I had things to do,” I said, remaining slumped. “But after all that food, I think I’ll just sleep.”
“Hope none if it was important then.”
“Probably not.”
He shifted to face me. “Hey. Thanks for being my pity friend.”
“You’re welcome.” I turned my head against the couch. “It was actually fun, though I hate to admit it.”
“Yeah, it was. Turns out you’re . . . not exactly what I expected.”
“Unclear if that’s an insult or a compliment.”
Miles gave a half shrug, his smile coy.
“Well, for the record, you’re not exactly what I expected either,” I said, shifting forward to lever myself out of the black hole that was the old couch. “And that’s definitely a compliment.”
The corner of his lips smirked up. And in a waft of that subtle cologne, he leaned in and kissed me.
Not a passionate kiss, just the press of his lips softly parted against mine, yet the sensation shrank the rest of the world to nothing.
It was a kiss begun only to stop as though someone had hit pause, but what ought to have felt hesitant and awkward without movement, without deepening, was instead all the more intimate for its stillness.
My heartbeat sped, the beginnings of both panic and something far worse leaking through the shock.
But before I could decide what to do, Miles drew a breath as though for courage and broke away, slowly enough that our lips stuck a moment in the aftermath.
He remained close—too tantalisingly close in truth—his gaze fixed on my lips.
“I should go,” he murmured.
To my surprise, what I really wanted to say was ‘you don’t have to’, but I’d lived this moment too many times to be that stupid. “Yeah,” I said instead. “You should go.”
“Yeah.” A small laugh huffed out, and he drew back. His gaze flicked to my eyes and away, his expression hard to read. “Goodnight, Matteo.”
He was up and striding for the door before I could reply, the firm thump of it closing behind him his final punctuation.
As his footsteps faded away along the corridor, I threw myself down on the couch with a groan, my frustration worsened by the semi swelling in my shorts.
And the sure knowledge he absolutely wouldn’t be back.