AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘I told Victor I’m gay,’ he says. I do my best to keep my eyes on the road.
‘What happened?’
‘He hugged me. Told me not to worry about the deals or the sponsorships or the fans.’ He pauses for a while, as if thinking. ‘Victor said he’ll handle it. It was . . . good to talk to him about it.’
‘That’s fantastic.’ I like how upbeat he sounds about the whole conversation.
Gabriel’s hand slides up my leg. ‘If I stayed for longer, would you like that?’
His sudden question, combined with his touch, makes me jump and I almost run the car off the road. ‘Right,’ I say once my heart rate’s come down. ‘Firstly, no lewd touching while I’m driving, and second: what?’
Gabriel smiles but removes his hand. ‘If we’re not going to Brazil, then I don’t have to rush home.’
‘You’d do that?’
‘I’d do it for you, yes,’ he says, and dear god, it feels like my heart is going to burst.Focus on the road, Noah. Can you imagine the headlines if you were in a crash with your gay tennis star lover?‘Do you want that?’
Of course I want it. ‘I’d love for you to stay. I could ask Margie if she wouldn’t mind if you crashed at our place.’
‘I’d like that.’ He says it so earnestly it almost hurts. Because he wants to stay here with me. He wants to get to knowmeand who I am and get to know my friends and where I come from. Not that I have any friends, I realise. Except for Margie. Is Peaches my friend? I wonder what Gabriel would make of Peaches and her huge platforms and glittery wigs.
‘You’ll have to show me around Paris one day.’ I carefully take my hand off the wheel to take a sip of coffee. ‘If I can ever afford the flight.’
‘I’ll pay for it.’ Gabriel says it like it’s nothing.
I choke on the coffee, swallowing what I can. ‘Gabi, you can’t justsaythat.’
‘Why not?’ He sounds genuinely confused, which only makes this worse. ‘I have the money.’
I suppose as a professional tennis player, he is quite wealthy. ‘It’s not about the money, it’s about the principle.’
‘What principle? It would be a gift.’
‘But I could never pay you back.’
‘I am not asking you to. That’s what gift means.’
Realising I’m getting nowhere with this argument—and that I’m arguing about a very generous offer—I shake my head and let Gabriel think he’s won.
It’s almost two hours drive to Anglesea. Gabriel stares out the window for most of it, captivated by the rolling green hills that hug the small port city of Geelong. A few minutes later, the first glimpse of the ocean appears on the horizon, a shimmer of dark water.
‘It’s a bit of a drive, but it’s not as busy as the city beaches,’ I say as we motor along the coastline, weaving through dense marshland, mangroves and bushes of blooming pigface.
‘I don’t mind.’ He places a hand on my thigh again. ‘It’s beautiful.’
17
Gabriel
Ihaven’t been to the ocean since I was in Algeria. The smell of the sea—the brine, the freshness—reminds me of waking up with the windows open at my grandparents’ place. It reminds me of late-night training on their rooftop when the wind would whip up whitecaps in the waves and scatter cool mist over the sweltering city.
‘I need to buy swimmers,’ I say once we park, spying a run-down surf shop across the road with a row of surfboards resting against the wall.
‘Sure. We can make a stop,’ Noah says.
It’s so hot the tar sticks to the soles of our shoes as we walk across the road. The girl at the till looks barely eighteen; she’s got a cool beachy vibe with her long blonde hair and a smattering of freckles across her nose.
‘Heya,’ she chirps. ‘Lemme know if you need anything.’
