Eleven #3
“God that’s depressing.” I laughed, though it soon faded, dragged down by the day’s strange sadness and the knowledge that I hadn’t yet answered his question.
“Well, the short version,” I said, glad I could look at the shadows inking his flowers rather than at him.
“Is that a car came out of nowhere, mounted the curb and . . . hit me. The driver, she hadn’t been drinking, wasn’t speeding – there was literally nothing anyone did wrong.
The road was wet, the car was old, she lost control and that was that.
I don’t know how long I was in hospital because I couldn’t bear to count the days, but it was a long time.
Mum and Dad came every day after work. Friends came when they could, but it was often just me and my thoughts.
I couldn’t even watch tennis. It hurt too much, not being the one on the court. Knowing what I’d lost.”
For a few long seconds there was just the gentle rise and fall of his chest at my back. Then, “I thought about messaging you, you know, probably a dozen times. But everything I thought to say sounded trite and stupid, so I was a coward and told myself you didn’t want to hear from me anyway.”
He’d had my number. Hard to imagine what I might have thought had Scrunchie shown up on my phone. Perhaps back then I might have remembered what it meant.
“Was I wrong?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I was desperately lonely. Heartbroken, not just broken-broken. But I was also angry all the time, so I might have hated you for it. Or I might have clung to you in a way that would have been very embarrassing later.” I shrugged. “Maybe for the best that you didn’t.”
Silence stretched again. Around us, his bedroom was slowly darkening as the day disappeared. Soon, there would be nothing but the weak shreds of streetlight creeping up from the road below.
“So,” he said at last. “You don’t overthink to stop bad things happening, because you know literally right down in your bones that sometimes accidents happen anyway. You overthink to gain some control you can hold like a shield. To help keep that frightening truth at bay.”
He was always so insightful, able to slice me open with nothing but words, and see me in ways I couldn’t. “Yeah, I guess so,” I said, because to try to thank him for it would catch in my throat. The air in the room already felt too thin.
Needing to change the mood, or at least shift the spotlight, I sat up and turned to face him. “What about you?”
“What about me?” he said, an amused frown twitching his brows close.
“What are you afraid of?”
“The usual things.”
“Oh, come on,” I said, rolling my eyes. “I just spilled a bunch of trauma here, you’ve got to give me something.”
“Give you something?” With the ease of too much muscle, he shoved me onto my back and climbed atop me to rub our soft cocks together. “I can give you something.”
“Not what I meant!”
He grinned, the sight barely a shifting of shadows in the gloom. “Maybe not, but it has been ten minutes. And it was hot.”
It had been. It always was, but I wasn’t going to let him wriggle out of this just yet. “Come on,” I said as he ran his hand down to cup my balls. “Tell me something about yourself and then we can go again.”
With a sigh, he withdrew his hand. “What do you want to know?”
“I don’t know. Tell me something you never thought you’d tell me.”
He still held himself over me, the growing darkness leaving his face a collection of increasingly familiar lines in shadow. “All right,” he said, and shifted his weight slightly. “I booked that practice court after you in Paris on purpose. After I saw your press conference.”
“What? Why?” I asked.
“Because when you lost your temper, I remembered the old Matteo and realised . . . I’d kind of missed him. And that maybe he was someone I’d like to know.”
I stared up at him, unable to breathe, those words absolutely fucking me up. They weren’t that momentous, I told myself, a mere statement of friendship, of a sort, yet I’d never been more grateful for the darkness that allowed me to hide in their wake.
“Of course, then you were a dick and I was a dick,” he went on with a shrug. “And that seemed par for the course, honestly. You were such a dick when we first met at that training camp. Not that it stopped me jerking off while thinking about you.”
My laugh was half shock, half relief at the change of subject. “Are you kidding me?” I said. “You mean if we’d gotten our shit together, we could have been doing this years ago?”
“Oh, you too?” He laughed back. “Well, that’s a hot thought. Not that I had any idea what I was doing back then. Probably would have been terrible.”
“Awful,” I agreed. “Though I don’t think it would have mattered.”
“Probably not. Everything is hot at that age. God, just imagine the look on Danny’s face if he’d walked in on that though.”
“No, thank you, I’ll pass!” I tried to push him off, and what started as a playful wrestle soon grew hot, leaving us gasping against each other’s mouths. And safely back in the shoals of mutual desire, I could breathe once more.