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But emboldened by the vulnerability I’ve had out of him so far, I keep pushing. “Why do you act like you hate everything all the time?”
“I don’t hate everything,” he throws back without thinking, an automatic response to be contrary.
“Yeah? Name one thing you like.”
“Soccer,” he replies immediately. “And also…” He cuts himself off suddenly, like he was about to reveal a secret that he isn’t supposed to share.
“And?” I ask again, desperate to crack him, to try and find the real Miles underneath this shell. I know he exists. I’ve seen him before, and I want to see him again.
But whatever the second item on his list was, it looks like I'm not going to find out today as he closes back up like a clam and just shrugs again. “I don't know.”
“Tell me about London,” I say again. “Please. What was it like to grow up there?”
He doesn't say anything, the stormy expression staying firmly on his face, his eyes so sad and turbulent that it makes me feel like I’m about to jump off a cliff into a raging ocean if I keep pushing. And though I want to jump, I'm not sure if the waters I'm diving into are going to catch me or leave me to fall on the rocks. Either way. I know there’s no going back for me now. Miles is inside my head and I can’t shake him out.
I’m about to ask again when the server comes back over, bringing us noodles and takoyaki. I thank him with a big smile. Miles just grunts in affirmation.
Carefully, I pick up the chopsticks, noting how Miles goes for a fork, and start eating, hoping that the food will help dissipate the atmosphere between us. It doesn’t. Instead, we eat in silence, Miles’s mood seeming to get worse by the second.
“How’s the food?” I try as he shoves a third takoyaki in his mouth.
“Good,” he says with his mouth full. “What’s in this?”
“Octopus,” I say simply.
He gives a little start, then swallows his mouthful whole. “Octopus?”
I nod, trying not to find his reaction amusing, and failing. “It’s good, isn’t it?”
With narrowed eyes, he stabs another ball and carefully puts it in his mouth. He makes the whole thing into a show, and I can’t tell if he’s doing it just to entertain me. Either way, I’m falling hook, line, and sinker because his comic timing is impeccable. “Yeah,” he says finally. “Not what I’d have imagined, but yeah. Good.”
And with that, the silence takes over us again, like there’s a thousand things bubbling under the surface that we could say but neither of us are quite brave enough to vocalize any of it. We’ve entered a kind of awkward bubble, a kind we haven’t been in for months, and I don’t know how to break it.
I know what I want to say to him. I just can’t bear for him to break my heart by telling me the truth — that when he goes, that’s the end of us.
CHAPTER 22
MILES
“It was me and Grandad,” I say suddenly, mouth full of rice, breaking the weird silence between us. Olivia gawps at me, her mouth opening in surprise before she remembers that’s impolite and shuts it again. I guess she wasn’t expecting me to open up at all.
Honestly, I wasn’t really planning on it.
Whatever magic Olivia has makes me helpless to her, makes me say things like this that I’ve never said to anyone else and never really wanted to. I’m not big on the whole emotions-sharing thing. But Olivia is safe. I can trust her. It’s been a long time since I could breathe out around another person, but when I'm sitting with her, I can believe everything is going to be okay. That I can tell her anything.
Almost anything, anyway.
The lump in my throat is as big as a golf ball, but I continue. “We used to play foot— soccer in the backyard. That’s what got me into it. Playing with him, kicking the ball around. He always used to tell me to pay attention in school because then, if the footie thing didn’t work out, at least I’d have some brains in me to do something else.”
“And did you?” Olivia asks, delicately slurping on a noodle.
I laugh tersely. “Nah. I nearly failed my GCSEs. Barely scraped a C in my maths. Only just scraped one in English. My teachers hated me because all I ever wanted to do was go kick a ball about. I used to sneak out of school to do it. I nearly missed all my mocks because I didn’t want to be there.”
She clearly doesn't have any idea what I'm talking about, but I keep going, knowing that if I stop telling my story now, I’m going to choke on the words and they’ll die in my throat. “For as long as I can remember, it’s just been me and Grandad. I loved that man. But he died a few years ago.”
“I'm sorry,” says Olivia, taking my hand gently, as if she doesn't realize what she's doing, like she’s running on autopilot.
I swallow hard, fighting back tears. “It's fine. He was old. It wasn't a surprise.”
