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“How about a dip in the pool?” he asked Jeff.
“Think Kieran wants us in the conference room in forty minutes,” Jeff told him. “So, just enough time for a wank in the shower.”
Alex cut him a look. “Images I didn’t need.”
“Prude.”
Since innuendo was Jeff’s forte and Alex wasn’t at his brightest anyway, he left it at a shrug. A covert check revealed that Lee was already gone, had probably headed straight to the room to drop off his stuff. Well, they couldn’t avoid each other forever, so best get it over with.
For once, Alex took the stairs instead of the lift, sports bag bumping against his thigh on every second step. In front of the room, he fought the ridiculous impulse to knock—he had justas much of a right to be here as Lee. So he tapped his card against the electronic lock, waited for the green light, and pushed the door open. Lee looked up from where he was sitting in one of the armchairs by the window, phone in hand and frown firmly fixed in place.
Alex carefully closed the door, and then it was just them and the abyss of silence that gaped between. He turned away to set his bag down next to his bed. When he glanced over his shoulder, Lee had gone back to his phone.
All right, then. So that was how they were going to play it.
Since the match analysis would be followed by a training session, Alex grabbed his football kit and went into the bathroom to change. He thought he heard Lee give a derisive snort at that, but when Alex pointedly turned to look at him, Lee’s attention was fixed on something on the screen. Arse.
Lee didn’t react at all when Alex came back into the room, and Alex should ignore him. Really, he should. “You’re going to act like I don’t exist?” he asked instead. “Very mature.”
It earned him a masterfully executed eyebrow raise before Lee slowly, deliberately, refocused on his phone. The hazy sunlight that filtered through the half-open curtains cast him in bronze.
“Do you have a problem with me being, you know…” Alex cleared his throat. “Bi?”
“A problem with you being bi?” Lee said it smoothly, his attention veering towards Alex. “No. Less than you, maybe, given that I can say it without hesitation.”
“Give me a fuckingbreak. Just because I don’t prance around shouting my sexuality from every rooftop—”
“Neither do I.”
“—doesn’t mean I’m struggling to accept myself.”
“You didn’t even tellJeff.” Lee leaned forward, a cobra ready to strike. “Someone you seem to consider a friend, even a good friend, and you know he’d be in your corner, but you couldn’t be bothered to trust him with that?”
Alex shifted his weight and fought the impulse to avert his gaze. “Jeff? Or do you mean yourself?”
Lee’s chin tipped up. “It’s not much of a friendship if only one person is honest.”
Okay, that hurt. Alex swallowed around the tightness in his chest. “I don’t tell just anyone about how things are with my parents, you know?”
“Thank you for your highly selective trust.” Lee’s voice dripped with sarcasm, his eyes bitter. “So generous of you to bestow that kind of courtesy on this lowly peasant, my Lord.”
Alex cut him a sharp look. “That’s hardly fair.”
“Isn’t it, though?” Lee asked, and Alex crossed his arms, then realised he’d done just that and dropped them back to his side.
“It’s not.”
“Agree to disagree.” Lee’s tone was cool, as though he’d already drawn a line under their friendship. Alex bit the inside of his cheek and waited for the sting to distract him from the leaden pressure in his belly.
“Fine.” He inhaled sharply through his nose. “Guess there’s no point in trying to solve this if you simply don’t care.”
Lee’s eyes flashed with something that Alex couldn’t read. “Guess not.”
God, how had things gone downhill so quickly?
“Okay,” Alex said, quiet now, and for a moment, it looked like Lee was going to respond. Then he shrugged and turned away, and yeah, all right, Alex could take a hint.
And yet he waited for another second, and another. Still nothing.
