Page 50 of Your Pace or Mine
“Thought you weren’t sharing?”
“I’m feeling particularly generous today.”
“Because you like the way I look?” Darius teased.
“Because I like you,” Jamie replied, flushing pink right down to the collar of his shirt. Darius was suddenly overcome with a need to know how far down that colour extended, but he held back.Not real, he reminded his frantically beating heart. No matter how sincere Jamie sounded, he needed to remember that.
“So, what makes this place so special to you?” Darius asked, hooking a foot around Jamie’s under the table. It made him feellike they were two teenagers at a malt shop in an old American film. Jamie didn’t move away.
Jamie shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess it’s just been… constant. Whenever things are too much, I come here. There’s no pressure. No expectations.” He looked down at the table.
Darius watched him for a moment, then nodded. That made so much sense. “I get it. I think I could use a place like that.”
Maria arrived with their treats and drinks. Darius did find himself immensely jealous of the mocha cake; he wondered if he’d be able to taste it on Jamie’s tongue if he kissed him. Was he allowed to kiss him now? They were in public, so technically...
“It must be hard,” Jamie said, interrupting Darius’s runaway daydream. “Training for something as massive as the Olympics, I mean. Was that always the plan?”
Darius nodded. “Always. Like, from the day I knew I could handle the long distances, the Olympic marathon was the goal.”
“Why? There’re other races, right? Like prestigious ones. Boston and stuff? Chi’s obsessed with Boston.”
Darius laughed. “They’ll probably qualify for it.”
“God, it would make their whole life to hear you say that, you know.” Jamie shifted so he was trapping Darius’s leg between his knees. “You want more than Boston, though?”
Darius chewed on his bottom lip. “It’s stupid.”
“Oh, I doubt that.”
“One of my best memories with my dad was when the Olympics came to London. Did you see any of it?”
“Nah,” Jamie replied. “I was still up North. London felt really far away back then. Reggie’s family got tickets to a couple of football matches in Coventry, but I don’t think my parents even tried for the ballot.”
“We were at so many of the events, I guess I thought it was normal at the time to have that level of access. Or maybe I wasn’t thinking about it at all. It was just a chance to spenda day with my father, away from the house where my parents were constantly fighting. I didn’t stop to consider whether it was normal to sit in a box with Prince Harry watching the athletics or not.”
“I’m sorry, back up to how you know Prince Harry. Can you introduce me?” Jamie winked.
Darius glared. “He is straight, married, and you are in arelationship.”
Jamie smiled coquettishly at him. “I am, am I?” He pressed his knee against Darius’s harder under the table, and Darius met his eyes. Nobody could see that; the contact was just for them.
“So, is that what inspired you then? A day out with the royals?” Darius rolled his eyes. He did know how ridiculous it was, but at the time, all he had been thinking was that he got to spend a day out of the house with his father.
“It was incredible, but not because of them. I remember sitting there with my father, watching his eyes light up as athletes, who looked more like him than anyone else in our box, took the podium. And I remember him telling me that if I worked hard, I could be there one day too. So I did. I trained until I couldn’t breathe, started winning local races, then regional ones. For once, he was proud of me. Maybe I wasn’t the son he wanted in every other way, but this I could do. I could go all the way to the Olympics.”
“Darius, that’s...”
Jamie looked sad, and that wasn’t at all what Darius wanted. “Obviously, by the time I was a teenager, a lot had changed. I wasn’t trying to get my father’s approval so much as just survive boarding school, but the Olympics goal sort of stuck. And now it just feels like… like the thing I have to do, it’s the biggest international stage, the only time the rest of the world pays any attention to niche sports, and no matter how many people runmarathons these days, the elite field is still pretty niche. We don’t exactly rival football for media coverage.”
“Yeah, that’s fair. I don’t think I could name a single runner other than Mo Farah before I met you.”
“Exactly, and I’m willing to bet you first heard of him because of the Olympics.”
Jamie nodded. “I suppose.”
“How about you? Dance must be similar, right? Competitive, demanding, no guarantee of success, no matter how hard you train. So you work yourself to the bone, and then some dickhead with a chip on his shoulder gets to decide it wasn’t enough.”
Jamie reached across the table and took Darius’s hand, tracing patterns on his palm. “It is, similar, I mean. Talent alone is never enough.”
