Twenty-Two
WAKING IN STRANGE places had always been part of life on tour, but waking in Miles’s house was a whole new experience.
The usual moment of disorientation remained, only to melt into sunlight and soft sheets and the faint scent of lilies.
This was his actual honest-to-god bed in his actual honest-to-god room in his actual honest-to-god house – a space that was entirely his and entirely him, and he had invited me into it.
Miles lay comfortably sprawled, one arm draped across his bare chest and his legs tangled in the sheet.
He was endlessly beautiful, with those long legs and broad shoulders, and the fine wrists about which his collection of woven bracelets sat like slashes across his skin.
I wanted to touch him as the sunlight did, falling upon his shoulder, and because neither of us had anywhere else to be that day, I surrendered to the impulse.
I slid a hand up his arm, his skin warm and inviting. Just like the smile that slowly turned his lips though his eyes stayed closed.
“Morning,” he murmured. “Are you staring at me?”
“Maybe.”
Still with his eyes closed, he rolled toward me and planted sleepy kisses along my jaw before pulling me against his soft, warm skin.
God, I could get used to this. I could really get used to this.
To him and this space and this ease – a thought as hastily followed by the knowledge that I had no right to it. Yet.
The need to tell him how I felt was like a bowstring pulling taut, but I had to be sure Miles was all right first. The previous night he’d clung to me for a long time.
Slow, silent tears had fallen to dampen my shoulder and I had let him keep his privacy as he let them go.
Much later we had ended up in bed, the encounter far gentler than the one Miles had initially demanded to bury his hurt in.
Instead, I had softly made love to him, leaving his face turned on the pillow and his eyes squeezed shut like he needed to be alone as his body gave in to mine.
Now, he nuzzled my jaw, pressing sleepily against me without any heat. “How’d you sleep?”
“I would say like a baby,” I said, “but honestly, more like someone who played yesterday then flew across time zones.”
“Mmm, and then I wore you out.” Miles opened his eyes, lids still heavy. “Do I need to caffeinate you? No, you don’t do that, do you. You’re a perfect puritan. I don’t know how you manage all the travel without coffee.”
Before I could think of a clever retort, my stomach rumbled. “Coffee I can do without. Food on the other hand . . .”
“Oh, shit! I didn’t even feed you last night.” He looked stricken. “I’m a terrible host.”
“You’re fine,” I said, nuzzling him back. “If I’d been starving, I would have asked. I got something at the airport on the way.”
“Gross, airport food. I can do better than that.”
With a groan of effort, Miles rolled over and levered himself off the bed, gloriously naked in the morning sunlight.
Leaving his clothes from the night before tangled amongst mine, he snatched up a pair of black house pants from a chair and slipped them on.
They were thin and low-slung and did nothing to hide his morning erection, and were somehow crueller to my self-control than if he’d just walked around naked.
“What do you like for breakfast?” he asked, running a hand through his hair and leaving it messier for the intervention. “I wasn’t sure, so my housekeeper bought lots of stuff.”
Because in all the time we’d spent together there had been plenty of lunches and dinners, but I could count on the fingers of one hand the nights we’d spent in each other’s bed. Nights always followed by creeping away rather than sticking around to eat.
“Whatever you’re having is fine,” I said, pulling myself up after him. “I really am very easy.”
“Easy, huh?” He eyed me appreciatively, gaze trailing down my body as I got to my feet. “I admit the urge to give breakfast a miss and eat you instead is quite strong. But you’re starving so I must be good.”
“Regretfully, yes.”
Miles groaned and dragged his gaze away with an effort. “Right, well you’d better put clothes on or I will not be held responsible for your lack of sustenance.”
He walked out on the words, leaving me to drag on my discarded clothes because I couldn’t even remember where my bag was let alone what I had shoved into it in my hurry.
Out in his perfect, showpiece kitchen, Miles was gathering ingredients in front of a blender, while behind him a coffee machine made the strange moaning gurgles that came from producing boiling water.
With sunlight pouring in through tall windows and plants everywhere, it was another of those entirely Miles snapshots I wanted to burn into my retinas.
“Smoothie,” he said, gesturing to the blender. “My usual breakfast because I can take it around with me if I have things to do. Do you want one?”
“Sure.”
“What do you want in it?”
“Whatever you’re having,” I said, and when he gave me a sceptical look, I added, “easy, remember? You feed me, I’ll eat. I’m really not picky.”
Miles gave a facial shrug. “All right. I’ll remember that.”
Having rescued his black coffee from the machine, he set it on the bench and started throwing things into the blender—spinach, yoghurt, oats, berries, banana—all with the ease of much practice, hardly seeming to think and certainly not measuring. When he was done, he handed me a large glass.
While I settled on a stool at the bench to drink mine, he walked around checking his plants. He touched the dirt of some, examined the leaves of others, or lifted pots entirely as though he could tell something important from the weight.
“You’re such a plant gay,” I said, grinning as I watched him.
Miles shot me a disdainful look over his shoulder. “Plant gay? Pretty sure that’s not a valid category of gay.”
“Why not? We don’t always have to categorise by kink, do we?”
“Guess not. What kind of gay are you then?”
I paused mid-sip. “I don’t know. A reading gay?”
“I read now too.”
“I noticed that.”
The look he shot me owned a hint of suspicion. “Did you?”
“Yes! I saw your e-reader. Romances. Imagine my utter lack of surprise.”
Miles gave one of his half shrugs, and turned back to his plants. “It’s your fault. When you left London, you took your reader and I hadn’t finished that book yet.” With his back to me, he added, “I needed the happy ending.”
His words caught in my chest as he went on tending his plants.
Had he glanced over for a reaction, this might have been the moment, but there was something protective about the way he kept working, turned away like he didn’t want me to answer.
So I sipped my smoothie and let it go, the need to speak knotting tighter in my chest.
AFTER brEAKFAST, WE went out for a hit on his private court. We spent half the time seriously training, the other half challenging each other to ridiculous shots because for once we had all the time in the world. No one was waiting to use the court and no one was watching.
“Have you decided what to do about your coaching situation?” I asked when we were packing away the balls, both of us having developed a healthy sheen of sweat in the Californian sunshine.
“Decided is a strong word, but I have thoughts,” Miles replied. “Mostly about what I need. Someone like Tomas perhaps, who wants to keep my head in the game. You really landed on your feet there.”
“Yeah, I was lucky. Danny introduced us because he thought we’d suit and he turned out to be right.”
“For once.” Before I could think to defend my old coach, Miles had grimaced. “That’s not really fair of me, is it?” he said. “I guess I’m just surprised. It’s a decent thing to do – doing yourself out of a job like that.”
I shrugged, drying myself with a towel he’d pinched from that year’s Australian Open.
“I don’t think Danny thought of it like that.
He’s in no position to travel so I would have needed an assistant coach at the very least. But no changing the subject by getting me to talk instead.
I’m getting wise to your tricks, remember? ”
With a wry smile, he regarded me steadily for a time, while from away beyond the tall, green thickets that fenced us in came the distant sound of morning beachgoers.
“I guess you are,” he said eventually. “I don’t know how I feel about that.
But to answer your question, I don’t want to rush any decisions, so I’m taking my time figuring out what suits me. ”
I liked the words ‘decision’ and ‘suit me’, suggesting he intended to choose his own team.
He didn’t say so and I didn’t ask, because the longer I was silent the more acutely aware I became that we still hadn’t talked about what this was, and without it, inviting me to stay for a week wasn’t the same as inviting me into his life.
A conversation we could return to later, I hoped, though as I once again didn’t speak, I realised it was because part of me was desperately, horribly afraid.
Afraid that somehow I had misunderstood and misread and mis-everything-ed the entire situation, as stupid as that sounded after all we’d said and done and become.
I needed a plan, needed the right moment, and this one here, covered in sweat, wasn’t it.
We moved to the shower next, and cleaning off sweat soon became pushing each other up against the tiles to hunt out sensitive places on neck and collarbone and jaw.
Water rained into every kiss, and having captured Miles in the corner, I took us both in hand and started stroking.
I kissed him and jerked us both off until we were moaning into each other’s mouths – the speed with which we came proof of just how desperately we’d been wanting all morning.
“We should have a swim after lunch,” Miles said as he dripped dry onto the bathroom floor, the towel in his hands busy with his hair instead. “You being here is a good excuse to actually use the pool. Usually, my housekeeper’s kids are the only ones who use it.”