AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The elevator jolts suddenly and begins to descend to the ground floor. A moment later, the doors open and a woman steps in. Noah rushes out past her, and the woman gawks. There are so many people lingering in the lobby around Rod Laver Arena, I can’t risk speaking to Noah here. I hurry after him.
‘Let’s talk outside,’ I say, guiding him across the floor and opening a door to the back of the arena, an area blocked off to the public by a large hedge.
The crowd roars inside the arena. The sound of the cheering, the applause, is so loud I feel it vibrate through the ground.
Noah shakes his head, his floppy fringe skimming along his brow. ‘I just . . . fuck.’ He kicks at the astroturf, blowing out a breath. ‘I just hate that you’re famous. It makes shit so complicated.’
It’s the most I’ve got out of him since he stormed out. ‘It does make everything more complicated. I was scared that if you knew who I was you would only want to be friends for—’
‘Money? Clout?’ Noah scoffs but then he must realise I’m being serious. ‘For the record, I don’t, but I understand. I didn’t have the best childhood, and when I moved here, I was looking for a normal life too. With normal friends, doing things normal people my age did. Then I found you. And it turns out you’re the opposite of normal.’
‘I should tell you the truth from the beginning.’ I’m so emotionally exhausted that my English is slipping. Letting out a long sigh, I force myself to relax my shoulders. ‘But I didn’t lie earlier. You know me more than anyone else. No one else knows . . .’ The words catch in my throat, it’s a struggle to say them out loud. ‘That I’m gay. Not even my family.’
Noah scrubs a hand over his face, wiping away the remaining tears. The crowd cheers behind us.
‘I get it,’ he says quietly. ‘Your shit is complicated, mine is too. I hate that you felt like you had to lie about who you were just to feel like my feelings were authentic. It’s manipulative. It’s wrong.’
‘I know it was wrong. I understand if you don’t want to stay; I can call you a car.’
Noah’s silent for a long moment, glancing between me and the open doors to the arena. ‘I want to stay.’
Somehow, we both know he’s talking about more than just this match, more than this evening. I know we’ve been friends till now, but the desire to be more is so overwhelming I want to take him by the shoulders and pull his mouth to mine.
‘ButI have boundaries,’ Noah says, his tone firm. ‘No more lying.’
‘Agreed.’
‘And no photographs together.’
I swallow down my nerves. The last thing I need is to be pictured with Noah, to have the rumours spiral. ‘Agreed. There will be photos if you come to matches, but the media may not make a connection.’
Noah pauses, as if thinking. ‘Okay. So, we just have to be careful while we’re out.’
Careful. I can do careful. I’ve done it my entire life. ‘We’ll be careful,’ I promise just as the crowd erupts again in the stadium. ‘You want to go back in?’
‘Yeah,’ Noah says on the tail end of a sigh. I open the door and his shoulder clips mine teasingly as he brushes past me. ‘You know you’re gonna have to teach me the rules, right?’
‘Basically, each player tries to hit the ball over the net, in a different spot from where the other player is standing,’ I reply.
Noah gasps, mock scandalised. ‘Sarcasm? Was the Gabriel I knew truly a lie, after all?’
‘No lies,’ I promise. ‘You can google me all you like. And call me Gabi. All my friends do.’
Noah pauses just inside the door. He looks down at his phone. ‘I don’t think I will, if that’s okay with you.’
‘Call me Gabi?’
‘No.’ He chuckles. ‘Look you up on the internet.’
I frown. ‘Why not?’
‘Because you can’t google me. It doesn’t seem fair,’ he says. ‘I’m sure Wikipedia has all your good and bad parts documented in astounding detail. You don’t get a choice about what people know. I trust you to tell me what’s worth knowing.’
What can I say to that? My heart feels like it’s in my throat.You don’t get a choice about what people know.
It feels like so much more than that. It feels like when I’m with Noah I’m someone entirely different from the person I appear to be to everyone else; I don’t feel like Gabriel the tennis star or Gabriel the coddled adult–child who’s never let off the leash. I just feel likeGabi.
And that’s scary.
