Thirteen
I WOKE TO the sound of wind buffeting the glass and the repeated buzzing of my phone.
By the light sneaking in around the curtains, it wasn’t early, but it was also far too early and I wanted to stick my head under the pillow.
Instead, I glared at my phone’s lock screen.
A trio of messages had Miles’s name on them, but they’d come from one of his social accounts.
The most recent said, Please get back to me as soon as you receive this!
Before it was, We’ve got a problem, and Hi Matteo, sorry to contact you like this. It’s Tina.
The app took far too long to open, but suddenly very awake, I soon typed back, Hi Tina, what’s up?
Oh thank god one of you is awake. Would it be all right if I called you? It might be easier than typing.
Sure.
I gave her my number and asked her to give me a few minutes because I didn’t feel up to a conversation until I had pulled on proper clothes. I had only just achieved a clean shirt when my phone rang. “Hello?”
“Hi! Matteo?”
“Yeah,” I said, staring at the shadowy mess that was my bedroom floor. “Isn’t it really late there?”
“Three, maybe? I don’t know, it doesn’t matter. I can’t sleep.” She sounded on edge. “Is Miles with you?”
“No.”
The cab ride home had been silent but for a few desultory observations about the weather and the late hour.
At the end of the drive, Miles had tapped his credit card without bothering to hear the total, as he’d dropped it on the cheque at the restaurant without looking; his carelessness about money a timely reminder of the gulf between us.
A reminder that he was Miles fucking Callahan.
I hadn’t waited to see if he wanted me to spend the night after that.
It had been a long day and I needed sleep.
“So,” I said when she didn’t immediately reply. “Is that all you wanted? Or is there something else I can help you with?”
Tina gave a light, breathy laugh. “I don’t know. Miles has not been . . . forthcoming about the nature of your relationship, so I can only hope I’m right in assuming that him being gay is not news to you.”
“Uh, not news, no.”
“Then perhaps I am also right in thinking it was you he was seen kissing last night.”
Her words sank into my gut like a brick, halting even my slow pacing across the bedroom floor. “Yeah. It was just two girls who’d asked him for an autograph though, it wasn’t a big deal.”
“Unfortunately, when you’re Miles Callahan everything is a big deal. He has some . . . very intense fans, so things like this tend to spread.”
“Things like what?”
“One of the girls posted a picture of herself with Miles at a restaurant, saying she got his autograph while he was on a date with his boyfriend.”
Boyfriend. The word tightened my throat even as I shook my head. “I’m not his boyfriend.”
“But you had dinner last night? And kissed in public?”
“In public is a stretch. There was no one around.”
“There’s always someone around. Did he tell you the paparazzi followed him to a gay club in Miami a few months ago?
Just something a few do now, since they know we’ll buy the photos.
It’s hard to protect against that—they’re sneaky bastards—but he’s never been this careless with something so simple before. ”
I stared unseeing at the faded blue curtains, a sneer slowly twisting my lips. Choosing to be honest meant I was safe from such things, while Miles had preferred to keep his secret, even if it meant having to buy up compromising photos. I couldn’t tell if I felt more anger or pity.
“The post has gotten a lot of traction,” Tina went on when I didn’t answer. “But it still seems to be within the ecosystem of Miles’s hardcore fanbase so I’m hoping with some damage control it’ll fizzle out. Thankfully, I’ve had no word that any publication has picked it up, so there’s that.”
“And what exactly do you want me to do about it?” I asked, not caring that the words came out with bite.
“Nothing directly. Your name has come up a few times but only as vague speculation because you’re known to be gay, and hopefully it’ll stay that way.
I would, however, greatly appreciate it if you would let me know if anyone contacts you, or if any bloggers or journalists—anyone really—tags you in any overt speculation. ”
A reasonable request in the circumstances. “All right, sure, I can do that.”
“Thank you.”
“Anything else?”
She laughed, a bright, brittle sound. “Don’t kiss him in public again?”
“I didn’t.”
“Pardon?”
“I didn’t,” I repeated. “He kissed me.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, I promise I’m not trying to contaminate his image with my gayness.”
“I didn’t mean that, I—”
“I gotta go,” I said, too annoyed for explanations. “I’ll let you know if anyone contacts me. Otherwise, you know how to reach me now.”
A pause. “Of course. Sorry to have interrupted your morning.”
“No problem. Bye.”
I hung up, and it was all I could do to fling my phone onto the bed rather than at the wall.
That Miles had chosen not to come out was not news. That he went to extreme lengths to protect himself was, but shouldn’t have been surprising. Tina hadn’t seriously suggested this had been my fault either, yet anger fizzed through me hot and fierce and I wanted to break something.
Leaving my phone where it was, I pulled on my shoes.
When I left the apartment, I wasn’t entirely sure whether I was going straight out for a run or to knock on Miles’s door first, but in the end the decision was made for me. As I drew level with his door, his voice sounded from within and I paused to listen.
“Yeah, I’m hearing you, Tee,” he was saying, no doubt pacing as I had been.
“But it’s not a big deal, all right? One person—Yes, of course it’s spread, things do, but come on.
Mat is not my boyfriend—Yes, I did, because I drank too much and wasn’t thinking, but he’s not my boyfriend.
What is he? He’s the guy I’m fucking because you always tell me I need to be more careful and what’s more careful than screwing one of the few people in the world who has no reason to go to the fucking press? He’s safe. It’s simple. That’s all.”
Nothing I didn’t already know. Hell, I’d told Katie days ago that he was just the convenient hot thing across the hall, yet the words were still a slap and I didn’t need to hear more.
I needed to run until the anger was gone.
Needed to run until I stopped thinking. Run until this stupid pain in my chest went the fuck away.
KATIE WAS ON the couch when I got back, her laptop open and the remains of her breakfast in a large bowl beside it.
“There you are,” she said, not glancing around. “Snuck off for some morning delight, huh? Well, you’re just—”
“No, I went for a run.”
She looked up then, brows raised. “Oh. Everything okay?”
“Sure. Is that the Wimbledon draw?”
“Yeah, they just started. About to do the women’s seeds.”
“No time for a shower then.”
“Probably not.” Katie gestured to the flowers with a slightly bemused smile. “Yours?”
I turned away to get some water, the small kitchenette like a hole into which I dove. “Uh, yeah. Part congratulations on making the main draw, part ‘your apartment looks sad’. Honestly, I think he just likes having flowers around and took the excuse.”
She didn’t immediately answer, and I kept my back turned rather than risk her expression. If I started explaining what had happened it would all come out in a rush, and while the urge to vent my anger was strong, the desire to cling righteously to it and wallow was stronger.
From the laptop came the reedy voice of the draw announcer, preparing to pull our futures out of a hat. “Third seed, Leia Desrosiers.”
“Oh sure,” Katie said finally, her sarcasm cutting across the feed. “That’s definitely the normal reason people give flowers. Come on, Mat, what—?”
“I think I’ll take that shower actually,” I said, turning toward the bathroom. “It’s not like a few minutes will change the outcome. Scream if they pronounce my name Mat-ee-o again though, yeah?”
Draw announcements were often nerve-racking.
A tourna-ment’s draw laid out our first-round opponents, charting which players we might meet later and who we were unlikely to meet at all.
When I finally looked at mine, the news was mixed.
The good news was that Miles and I were in opposite halves of the draw, making the chance of playing him basically zero.
The bad news was that I’d drawn Marco Bicchieri for the first round – the world number three.
It was about as bad a draw as one could get and Katie waited, grimacing, for me to say something.
I ought to have been annoyed or disappointed—that the reaction she was waiting for—but my anger was caught up elsewhere and I just shrugged. “It’s fine. I go out there and play my game. Give it a hundred and ten percent. It’s not like I have anything to lose.”
When Miles arrived a few minutes later, he strode in with a broad smile, saying, “You drew Marco! Poor guy is going to think he’s stepping out for a routine first round and won’t know what hit him.
You got a good draw,” he added to Katie, along with a good morning as though nothing at all had changed, and because it hadn’t anywhere but inside my head, she greeted him like the third resident of our apartment he had become.
“First round, sure,” she said. “But I have a very poor record against Dasha Sidorova if I have to face her in the second.”
“Poor records are made to be broken.” He leaned against the kitchen bench.
Nothing in his demeanour suggested he was keeping his distance, yet he was a whole world away.
I hadn’t noticed his habit of kissing me good morning until he’d stopped.
“Hey,” he said, looking my way. “Tina said she called you.”
“Yeah, she did.”
If he was hoping for more, he wasn’t going to get it without asking specific questions – questions Miles seemed loath to put into words. He was still smiling, but he’d settled into watchful mode and I knew I was being read. “You okay?” he asked eventually.