Chapter 19 19
Roman's POV
I was standing by my bedroom window, one hand braced against the frame and my weight off my bad leg, watching the street below, when I spotted Miles. Miles was coming from the direction of the bus stop, moving fast, with a flat pizza box balanced in one hand and his backpack bouncing on his shoulders. I watched him disappear under the awning of the building entrance and then waited.
"Phew." I muttered. I was starving. But then, a whole ten minutes passed. I lowered myself onto the edge of the bed and picked up my phone.
ME: Are you lost?
MILES: The lift is broken, I'm on the stairs. I hate you and your building.
ME: It's three floors!
MILES: I almost dropped the pizza box twice. If this pizza is ruined I'm going home.
I put the phone down and waited. Another four minutes went by before I heard the knock on my bedroom door.
"It's open," I called.
Miles came through the door looking like he had climbed a mountain. His hair was slightly damp at the temples and he was breathing heavily, but the pizza box was level and intact.
"I climbed up three floors," he announced, dropping onto my bed. "Nearly killed me."
"Have you forgotten you play hockey?" I reminded him. "You shouldn't be getting winded after climbing up a staircase.
"I play hockey on ice, not stairs." He set the pizza on my table and looked around the bed. "Where's the nurse? I thought she would be by your bedside."
"Ha ha! She is in the kitchen, I think. Making something." I settled into the armchair in my room and propped my leg up on the table. "Don't antagonize her."
Miles was already opening the pizza box. "What's she like?"
"Imagine my mother, but in a white uniform."
Miles stopped opening the box and shuddered. "Oh, my God."
He shook his head slowly in solidarity, then lifted a slice of pizza and bit into it.
"So bow's the knee feeling?" he asked eventually.
"Not better than it was in the clinic, trust me." I picked up my own slice of pizza. "The exercises Harmony had me on were actually working."
Miles looked at me over his pizza. "Harmony."
"Sinclair. Harmony Sinclair." I corrected myself. "That's the name of my physiotherapist, in case you have forgotten."
"Mm hmm." He took another bite. "I'm just saying, for someone who spent the first week complaining about her every single time I visited, you say her first name pretty comfortably now."
"She's good at her job," I muttered. "That's all."
"Suuuure. Is that why you asked me to go get her that iPhone? Do people do that for their physiotherapists now?" He set his slice down and looked at me properly. "I saw you two on the floor that day. I was in the room, remember? I have eyes."
I said nothing, which was basically a confession, and Miles being Miles let it sit there without pushing further. That was the thing about him. He knew when to press and when to leave something alone. It was one of the better things about him.
"She got suspended for seven days because of me."
Miles winced. "Oh, damn. What happened?"
"We um... we kissed and my mum walked in on us." I admitted.
"FUCKING HELL, ROMAN!"
"Shhh!" I shushed him, glancing apprehensively at the closed door of my room. "Want that nurse to swoop in here and tell us noise is not good for my kneecaps? Can we talk about something else?"
Miles silently picked his slice back up, but I could see the twinkle in his eyes. I knew that he was filing it away to return to later, which was annoying. I changed direction before he could circle back.
"Speaking of secret women, how's yours?" I asked him. "And don't deny it, because I still remember what you said when you visited at the hospital."
The shift in his face was immediate and involuntary. It was just a flicker, half a second, but I had known Miles Carter long enough to catch it.
"I say a lot of things when I'm talking." He was quiet for a moment, turning his pizza crust over in his hands. "I've been talking to her a bit more lately. That's all."
"What girl?" I asked. "From where?"
"I know her around," he said vaguely, and there was a care in that word that I noticed. Miles was not a careful person by nature. Vague didn't suit him.
"Around?" I repeated.
"We... have a mutual friend." He met my eyes briefly, then looked back at his pizza. "It's not a big thing yet. We've just been talking."
I didn't pester him anymore about this mystery winan. We finished the pizza and Miles pulled out his phone to show me a video of Paulie attempting a new move at practice that had ended badly.Then, we spent twenty minutes going back and forth about the Northwestern University match and what the team needed to fix before then.
Sarah appeared from the kitchen at some point to inform me that it was time for my evening medication, and to pointedly eye the empty pizza box. I took the pills she held out, drank the water she handed me, and she retreated back to the kitchen without acknowledging Miles once.
Miles watched her go. Then he turned to me with bright eyes. "Give me five minutes," he said.
"What are you doing...?"
He was already up, moving toward the living room with his hands in his fanny pack. He was heading in the direction of the locked cupboard off the bookshelf. I heard him in there for about two minutes, then heard the sound of the kitchen tap running, Sarah's voice saying something about meal planning, and Miles' voice replying with a forced warmth.
He came back into the bedroom four minutes later, closed the door behind him, reached into his fanny pack and produced the bottle of Hennessy.
"Voilà!" He announced. "You're welcome."
"You absolute fucker," I laughed, reaching over to the small shelf above my bedside table for two glasses.