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CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Push you’re on fire!”

Since my semi-final loss at Internazionali D’Italia, we’d visited the Colosseum, thrown coins in the Trevi Fountain, and eaten a lunch of crusty bread, cold meat and cheese on the Spanish Steps.

Joel had one more surprise in store for our last full day in Rome before we headed to Paris for the French Open.

“I’ll explain when we get there, keep your panties on,” he’d said when I’d asked for more detail.

I dug my nails tighter into his stomach, the memory of his teasing sending a wave of … something through me. His muscles contracted under my fingers.

We pulled up on a random bit of pavement – Joel seemed to be quite at home with the Italian method of parking – and he crossed the road, threading between the traffic like a pro, heading towards the stone arch of a stucco building.

“This is the Basilica di Santa Maria, ” he told me in a hushed tone, leading me through the ancient church, through several stone archways and onto a colonnade, hemmed in on one side by the church wall and on the other by barred archways.

Tourists were lined up to get up close to a big round stone face with a gaping mouth at the end.

I raised an eyebrow at Joel, who spread his arms wide, grinning.

“Here we are – La Bocca della Verita ; the Mouth of Truth.” Joel explained, passing coins to an attendant as the line progressed us closer. “Legend says that you put your hand in there, and if you’ve ever lied about anything, it’ll bite your hand off.”

I gaped at him in horror.

He laughed. “You game?”

I shivered all over. The claim sounded pretty far fetched, but I was a superstitious Catholic after all. I wracked my brain trying to catalogue all my past lies. There had been some doozies.

We reached the front of the queue.

“You go first,” I said, pushing him towards it. He looked dubiously at the black gaping mouth for a long time. His hand stretched out towards it. He paused.

“Joel, don’t!” I cried. He turned to me, expression grim. What lies had he told to make him feel that sick about it?

“Don’t do it – I want you to keep both your hands!”

He chuckled but stepped back hastily. “Okay, do you want to do it, or not?”

I shook my head emphatically. The people lined up behind us chortled at our stupidity; we’d just watched over a dozen people pose with their hands in the stupid mouth, with no adverse effects. I dragged Joel to the side, and we left quickly.

Joel was subdued all afternoon. We ate pasta at a little café near the Roman Forum, and he was virtually silent. We returned the moped to the hire place, and walked back towards our hotel, over the Ponte Sant’Angelo. Still nothing.

I was going crazy – Joel was never like this.

My curiosity overwhelmed me as we returned to the apartment. Joel headed towards his room, but I grabbed him by the arm. He looked at me questioningly.

“So, what’s your big lie?” I asked.

He refused to meet my eyes. “What do you mean?”

I snorted, keeping a hold of his arm. “I mean, you freaked the fuck out at that stone mouth. And you’ve been weird all afternoon. What’s going on?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Joel said dismissively, pulling his arm out of my grip and turning away.

“Why not?” I demanded.

“It was stupid, I got caught up in the moment. That’s all.”

He reached his bedroom. I followed, forcing my way into the room even as he tried to close the door on me.

“I don’t believe that for a second, Joel.”

He barked out an angry laugh. “I don’t owe you my secrets, Mel.”

I took a step back, shocked. “What?”

“You aren’t entitled to know every little thing about me! You don’t get to push, and push, and keep pushing until I …” He dropped his forehead into his hand, thumb and finger massaging his temples.

Irrational fury raged inside me. “Oh, well, while we’re on the subject of ‘pushing’,” I snarled, “ you don’t get to push me either!”

“What are you talking about?” he asked wearily, dropping his hand to his side. He looked … tired.

“I’m … I mean …” I stammered, then cleared my throat. “I mean, you keep doing … things to me, and …” I looked away, embarrassment scorching across my scalp.

“What things?” His voice was hoarse. “You mean, this sort of thing?”

He took a step closer to me. I took a step back, but his hand snaked around and pressed me to him. My nose was against his chest. I inhaled – woodsy aftershave and warm skin. My legs turned to jelly, his hand on my back the only thing holding me up.

I tilted my face up. His gaze seared me, his lips slightly parted. A little crease furrowed his dark brows, but his eyes were cobalt fire.

One palm held me still, the other slid up the side of my neck, tangling into my hair.

“Do you feel ‘pushed’ right now, Mel?” he whispered.

I bit my lip. I wanted to feel pushed. I wanted him to push me against the wall. I wanted his tongue pushing into my mouth. I wanted that muscular thigh of his pushing between my knees, forcing my legs apart. I wanted him to push my t-shirt up, knead my breasts with those long fingers. I wanted …

“Don’t,” I pleaded. “Please don’t.”

Joel’s Adam’s Apple bobbed as he swallowed. His lips pressed together, thinning. He untangled his hand from my hair and the pressure of his hand on my back disappeared.

“I’m sorry, Mel.”

I couldn’t respond. I turned and fled, grabbing my bag and running. Out of the room. Out of the hotel.

I wasn’t sure it would ever be far enough to subdue these feelings. He pushed me but I was pulled to him.

I can’t let this happen.

I couldn’t sleep. When I’d returned to our apartment, it had been empty. Hours later, Joel still hadn’t returned.

Something big was going on with him, but he wouldn’t talk to me. Something was going on with us, but I couldn’t think about that right now.

I wanted to text him. Just to be sure that he was okay. But I stopped myself. Fear sat like a stone in the pit of my stomach. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know exactly what he was doing tonight. But I thought I might have had a good idea.

I got my answer at about two AM. The apartment door clicked open, then closed. Muffled, slurred words – Joel. Relief turned me boneless. But then, his words were met by a giggle. A high-pitched giggle that was way too feminine to be Joel.

The knot in my stomach swelled, until it was pushing up into my rib cage, squeezing the air out of my lungs.

I crawled deeper under my blankets, pressing my pillow around my ears as the bedroom door next to mine snicked closed, but it didn’t shut out his low chuckle, and that grating, squeaky giggle on the other side of the wall.

I had no right to feel the way I did. I had no claim on Joel, and I didn’t want one either. Yes, I felt things with him, but that was an itch I was never, ever going to scratch. It would be disastrous.

But I also didn’t want him to be in the room beside mine, murmuring and moaning and making some other girl cry out, while I had to listen. I didn’t want that at all.

“Bit too much to drink last night?” I asked Joel coldly as the plane reached cruising height and he unbuckled his seat belt.

“Something like that,” he muttered, cracking open the complimentary peanuts and tipping half the packet into his mouth.

“Any hole in a storm,” I commented, grabbing the in-flight magazine out of the holder and leafing through it as if I could read Italian.

“Any … what?”

I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. His body was turned towards mine, his eyes slightly bloodshot, which somehow intensified the blue of his irises.

“I mean, you were clearly hard-up last night. You almost tried to jump me , and when I rebuffed you, you disappeared for hours, and then brought some random hole-with-a-heartbeat back to our room and had loud, drunken sex at three in the morning.”

Joel made a weird, strangled sound. Was he choking on a peanut? I looked at him, worried, before realising with rising frustration that he was laughing.

“What the fuck is funny about this, Joel?” I demanded. He guffawed harder, reaching for the bottled water.

“Any hole in a storm – that’s going in the phrasebook!”

I found my own lips curling at the corners as I realised my mistake. His laugh had always had an infectious quality to it.

“I meant, any port in a storm. Or maybe any hole’s a goal – I don’t know.”

“Any hole in a storm is my new favourite saying!” Joel shook with laughter for a long moment, then took a deep breath, had a sip of water, and was suddenly completely sober .

“Mel, I’m sorry about what happened last night. I shouldn’t have brought someone back to the room. It was really inconsiderate of me. I should have thought about how much it would upset you.”

“Upset me?” I asked, looking back at the magazine so he wouldn’t see the consternation on my face. “It kept me awake, that’s about all it did. How drunk were you, anyway?”

He sighed. “Drunk enough that I can’t even remember what her face looked like.”

“She couldn’t have been that memorable then, could she?” I asked cuttingly.

“She doesn’t even rate as the most memorable woman I touched in the last twenty-four hours.”

Why did that make my chest jolt?

“How many women did you touch yesterday, exactly?” I managed to ask over the sudden tightness in my lungs.

“Just one other.”

I could not respond to that. Instead, I stared out the window, white, fairy floss clouds below, blinding sun all around.

When I had myself under some semblance of control again, I turned back to him, all business now.

“Okay, Joel. I’ll forgive you. But if we’re going to do this – work together I mean – we need some ground rules. First, no bringing other people back to the room.”

Joel nodded.

“Second, no going out for hours on end without telling the other person where you’re going, or when you’ll be back. We’re here to work, not to play.” He nodded again, a little amusement creeping onto his face.

“Third –” but I didn’t get to a third, because the plane shuddered, and I lost my train of thought. I closed my eyes. It got worse. I could feel the sweat on my palms as I clawed the armrests.

And then his hand was on my face, stroking. I couldn’t open my eyes, so I just let him touch me until the shaking (both the plane’s and mine) stopped. I opened my eyes. Joel was leaning close, his thumb on my cheek.

“It’s okay, Mel. It’s going to be okay,” he whispered.

I felt my body relax slightly. The seat belt light went off with a ding.

Joel undid his belt, moving closer and wrapping his arms around me until I was cocooned in them.

I didn’t protest. I was so exhausted from the turbulence that I had no strength to argue with him.

I felt his lips brush my forehead once. I just let it happen.

When I felt calm enough, I spoke. “Hey, Joel,” I began.

“Yeah?” he replied quietly.

“You know how I said once that if you’d been my big brother, I would have killed you by the time I was twelve?”

“I remember.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re not … my brother that is. Because if you were, I would have killed you, and then you wouldn’t be here to act all big brotherly now when I need you.”

He laughed into my hair. “I’m glad I’m not your brother too, Stinky.”

I didn’t know how to interpret that comment, so I decided not to try.