0 comments/ 22790 views/ 11 favorites 7. The Patriots Ch. 01-02 By: inspirixis1 CHAPTER ONE "You'll be fine," Laura assured her as she squeezed her in a tight hug. "'kay," Ellia stuttered through her tears. She had no idea how she was going to manage all alone in Italy. "Why don't you ask Micah to hang out? He's American right? At least he speaks English." "I assume he speaks English," Ellia reminded her. She had worked with him for two weeks and had never heard him string together more than three words in either English or Italian. "Besides, American is bad. I don't want to fall for an American." Laura held her at arms length and rolled her eyes as she shook her head and smiled. "Just because he's good looking doesn't mean you're going to fall for him. Trust me, 99.9% of the male population are totally unbearable, there is next to no chance you will fall for him. Just ask him if he wants to hang out, see some of the sights together or something. Life is always brighter when you have someone to hang out with." "He's probably nuts," Ellia complained, unable to hide the doom and gloom she felt in her heart. "He's probably part of one of those crazy cults you hear about over there. He probably already has three child-brides." Laura laughed. "You know that's not true. America is a big place, I'm sure there are some normal, sane-ish Americans. They can't all be in cults." She knew she was being stupid. She knew Micah was from a normal family and that he wasn't married. Not that he'd told her, she'd read about it in the newspaper. The tram came rattling closer and closer. The seconds ticked down to the moment her big sister would be gone. Ellia pulled her back into another hug. "Thanks Lou," she sobbed into her hair. "Thanks for everything." Laura squeezed her tight. "You're going to be fine Elle, this is going to be the best adventure of your life." She nodded, completely unconvinced. Ellia let go and Laura climbed up into the tram. She turned to wave before she disappeared from view. "Love you Elle," she called out. "Love you too," her voice broke as she called back. And then she was gone. Laura was gone and Ellia was alone in this enormous, old, confusing, cold city. Alone in Milan where nothing made sense and nobody seemed to be able or willing to help her. A cold wind whipped around the grey cobblestone streets and she clutched her new winter coat closer around her body to stave off the chill. This little corner of Milan looked just as depressed as she felt. The trees looked dead, leafless and twig-like. There were no robust jungle-like trees here. There was little greenery to speak of and the sky was just a powder-blue sliver above her, in the long narrow gap left between the never-ending rows of apartment buildings. She kept her eyes on the ground but she felt others' eyes on her. The way Italian men looked at her made her cringe. It wasn't just her that they looked at that way it was all women. Italian men were uninhibited in delivering what Laura called 'appreciative glances.' It bothered Ellia. To her it felt inappropriately sexual. She didn't want men to be thinking about sex when they looked at her. As usual Laura had teased her about it. 'It's harmless, you're being over-sensitive,' she had had said. She walked back to her tiny studio apartment and sat on her bed and cried. Laura was right; this was supposed to be the biggest adventure of her life. She had pursued this dream so long and so hard, but now that she was here all she could do was cry. She didn't leave her apartment for the rest of that day, or the next. The day after that she thought about going out to get some fresh bread and fruit and veggies but instead she ended up toasting the stale bits of an old bread loaf and smearing them with butter and vegemite. Even this brought tears to her eyes. How was it possible to be in the middle of Europe and miss a two-bit ass-backwards town like Brisbane? The next day she had no choice but to go out because she had to work. The team was doing physiology and biomechanics testing in the training facility on the outskirts of Milan. She should have been excited; the science of being a physiotherapist was the part that she loved, but she couldn't get excited today. All she could think about was the lonely, empty apartment that she would go home to tonight. It would be four thirty in the afternoon in Brisbane. Laura would be starting to wrap things up at work, probably thinking about what she was going to cook for Aaron for dinner. In another hour her swimming friends would be diving in the pool for their evening work out. They might miss her and wonder how she was. They might make some comment about how jealous they were of her being off on an adventure in Europe. Ellia didn't want to be on an adventure in Europe. She wanted to be diving in the pool and complaining about how their coach was late again and laughing about something that had happened to one of her friends that day. She didn't want excitement, she wanted the safe predictability of her old life. But instead here she was in Milan, in a warehouse that had been converted into a state-of-the-art gymnasium. Most of the athletes pretty much ignored her. She was the most junior member of the training staff, hardly someone they should be bothered trying to impress. It was fine with her. She just did her job. She took their height and weight and measured their body fat using the calipers, then set them up for and performed their VO2max and lactate threshold tests. Micah had been assigned to her, as usual. He was the rookie on the team and so naturally he was assigned to her, along with the other riders of lowly rank. She spoke to him in English. She didn't know if he would prefer Italian or not but today she didn't really care, she was sick of speaking Italian. She took him over to the corner of the big open gym that she was set up in. He got on the scales and she recorded his weight and then used the extendable ruler to measure his height: Eighty kilograms and one hundred and ninety centimeters. He was way too big to make it as a professional cyclist. She had him strip down to his cycling shorts so she could do the skin-fold test to determine his body fat. His shoulder and abdominal muscles flexed enticingly as he pulled his t-shirt over his closely cropped hair and dropped it on the chair, and then he was standing in front of her, almost naked and looking at her expectantly. She got to work on his skin-folds, first taking his measurements and marking the test sites with a black felt-tipped pen, then going back to pinch his fat and record how many millimeters of it he had at the different sites around his body. It was difficult to get a good reading because he was so lean. Road cycling was a sport where an athlete couldn't afford to carry too much extra fat around, but Micah took that notion to the extreme. She had to keep on apologizing because she couldn't get a good pinch, his silky brown skin was so taut that it slipped right out of her grasp. When she was done she typed his numbers into the computer, calculated his body fat percentage and compared it to the figure someone else had calculated a month ago. She turned to him. "The point of this exercise is to monitor how your body changes in response to your training regime. This early in the season most guys are still a bit pudgy from taking time off and the value in knowing your body fat percentage is really a motivational one. But in your case I don't think there is much to be learned by reading into the numbers." Micah sat still, listening to her with his hands in his lap and his dark brown eyes focused on her. She explained how different testers always got slightly different numbers and how it was easier to make a mistake when you were testing someone with very little body fat, like him. "I got five percent, the person who did this on you a month ago got six percent. At best, measurement uncertainty is typically is in the range of ten to fifteen percent, which translates into about one body fat percentage point, so really six percent and five percent are the same number." "No, it..." Micah stopped mid sentence. "What?" "No, don't worry." He waved his hand dismissively. "What?" She insisted. "It's just that your measurement error and your total uncertainty are different. You plugged your measurements into a function, so your total uncertainty, assuming your errors are normally distributed of course, would be the square root of the sum of the squares of the measurement uncertainties." Wow. She looked at him dumbly for a second. He was right. "It doesn't matter," he said, shaking his head. "What you're saying still holds true. It's just a stupid technicality." She shook her head. "No, no, you're right. You're allowed to correct me." "No, that was rude, I'm sorry. It's just nice to speak English again." There was a twinge of sadness in his voice as he looked at the floor. She sighed. "I know what you mean. I'm sick and tired of only understanding every fifth word that's spoken." He looked up and smiled at her. "You understand every fifth word? You're way ahead of me. I need a translator just to go to the damn grocery store." He looked into her eyes steadily, beaming a huge white American smile at her. She realized that this was the first time she had seen him smile. She had worked beside him for more than two weeks and yet this was the only glimpse she had gotten of a spectacularly beautiful smile. "Are you okay?" He asked. "Huh?" She knew she wasn't blushing and not enough seconds had passed to count as staring. "You seem different today. You don't have your usual enthusiasm about you." "Oh." Now she waved her hand at him dismissively as she shook her head. "It's nothing. Stupid really." His brow furrowed and he tilted his head. "Did something... bad happen to you?" "What? No. It's just... my sister came up here with me to help me find an apartment and settle in, and she went back home a few days ago." She felt stupid admitting it. "Oh." He breathed out and his shoulders relaxed at the same time. "So you're just feeling lonely?" "Yeah, something like that." "Ellia," she heard from across the room. "Il tuo turno." "Come on." She motioned for him to follow her across the gym. She helped him to set his bike up on the trainer that was attached to the computers and put the heart rate and breathing monitors on him. "You know the drill?" "Yeah." His voice was muffled through the big plastic cone that was now covering half of his face. Micah pedaled at the output she specified and she collected samples of his blood every two minutes to determine his lactate threshold. She pricked his ear to get the first sample and from then on he bled non-stop. The blood gathered at the bottom of his earlobe and dripped onto the polished cement floor in big violent red splotches. It was another bad sign for him. There were a lot of sports where it didn't matter if you were a bleeder, but if you fell off your bike and got cut up it was pretty important to be able to keep your blood inside your body if you were going to finish the race. It's not like your team doctor could give you a blood transfusion that night either, there was way too much sensitivity over blood doping for that to be a possibility. When he was done with the tests she reduced the data and saved it in his file, Micah J. Watson. "What does the J stand for?" He was still sitting on his bike, puffing, although he had taken the breathing apparatus off and he was holding a tissue to his ear, trying to get it to stop bleeding. "Jude." "Micah Jude, that's very... biblical." Maybe the newspaper had gotten it wrong and his family was part of one of those weird fanatical religions. He sniggered. "You think that's bad, my brother's name is Matthew John, I don't think it gets much more biblical than that." She lifted her eyebrows at him. "Big bible people?" "Who my parents? No. We're named after our grandparents, John and Judith." His breathing was settling down now. The rise and fall of his chest slowing gradually as his heart rate decelerated. His entire body was covered in a thin sheen of sweat that made his skin look oddly radiant under the fluorescent lights. She turned away and compared his numbers with what he had gotten a month ago, and then with the numbers that the rest of the team were getting. He was doing okay. His lactate threshold was rising nicely and was somewhere near the middle of the team. His VO2max was huge, but when you took into account his body mass he was closer to the bottom of the team than the top. She talked him through the results as he pedaled slowly on his bike to cool down. He nodded grimly. She understood. Although the results weren't bad, they weren't great either. Micah didn't have any innate physical advantage the way some guys do and he was huge compared to the other cyclists; he was going to need to pull off something amazing to get selected to do any racing with this team. She helped him release his bike from the trainer and then she went to start on the next athlete assigned to her. "Ellia," Micah said as she was walking away. "Thanks." She turned back to him and nodded. "No worries. Have a good ride." He nodded and she watched as he walked away with his bike, the metal clips in his shoes clicking against the cement floor. The next day was the beginning of a five-day high altitude team training camp up in the Alps. Eighteen cyclists were strung out along the edge of the road with a support vehicle up front and a mechanics van in the rear. Ellia was riding in the support car with the team manager, head trainer and the doctor. The scenery was amazing. This was the first time she had been in a proper mountain range and she was stunned and in awe of its beauty. Majestic snow-capped peaks rose all around them and wide meadows were surrounded by stands of pine trees and dotted with barns and farmsteads. They rode through tiny little villages that seemed to cling to hillsides, and across narrow bridges over rumbling mountain streams. It was March and it was cold. There were patches of snow on the northern hillsides and the cyclists' breath made little fog clouds. They all wore long leggings, sleeves and vests. They had been riding for over five hours, practicing one of the important stages of the Tour de France. Micah was in the lead; he had been since they had started this climb. It was an extremely difficult climb, about fourteen kilometers long with an average grade of about eight percent. He was pushing hard, standing in the saddle every now and then to accelerate as he came out of a hairpin turn. "Danilo is off," she heard over the radio. Riders had been falling off the back of the pack for a few kilometers now, even with the advantage of being in the slipstream they couldn't keep up with Micah. She turned in her seat and watched him out the back window of the car. He shouldn't be able to do what he was doing. At six foot two and one hundred and seventy-five pounds he was too big to be a good climber, and Ellia knew for a fact that physiologically he didn't have anything that the other guys didn't. How he pulled it off was mystery... until you looked into his eyes. He was in agony. If you looked at his body you would never have known, his legs pumped the pedals in a merciless rhythm and his upper body was relaxed and moved smoothly, but his face was a give away. His jaw hung open and his brow was both raised and creased in an expression that was reminiscent of desperation. He was pulling away from the rest of the team, he'd opened up a gap of about ten yards and it was growing by the pedal stroke. He was standing in his saddle and his bike swayed beneath him as he gritted his teeth and squinted his eyes as if what he wanted was just in front of him, as if he could catch it if he just pushed a little harder. They were nearing the top of the climb. There were snow banks on either side of the road and it made Ellia nervous, surely it couldn't be safe to be working out in such awful cold. The cold didn't seem to bother Micah though, he was several turns ahead of the rest of the pack now, and it was obvious that nobody was going to catch him. "Test him tonight," Fabian, the team manager, told the doctor. When she had looked up his file in the gym the other day she had seen that Micah had been tested for EPO and other drugs five times in the duration that he had been with the team. Five times in six weeks and every test was clean. The terrain leveled out at the summit but Micah didn't stop pushing. She watched him flick up through the gears, never giving himself a moment of rest. He still wore that same look of single minded focus as he pedaled up to the rear bumper of the car, checked the road for oncoming traffic and then sprinted past the support car to start the long descent to the valley below. Fabian shook his head in frustration. "That little shit," he spat out. Now they were behind him and all they could do was watch in wonder as he pulled away while going downhill. Micah descended like a bat out of hell. He cornered so fast and he leaned so far into the turns she felt sure that he was going to go flying off the road on more than one occasion. But he didn't. He just pulled further and further away. Finally he was so many turns ahead of them that it seemed futile to try and catch up. "Just wait for the others," Fabian ordered. The others were a long way back. When they finally caught up to Micah on the valley floor he was sitting upright on his bike and pedaling slowly. They passed him and she looked out the back window as the rest of the team gathered around him. He was brushing his teeth. It was such a strange sight to behold. He had one hand on his handlebars while the other scrubbed his teeth with a toothbrush. He leaned to the side and spat white foam onto the road, flicked the toothbrush twice and put it away in the rear pocket of his jersey. "He is just a stupid rookie," Fabian said. "The other men know to save a little. They have four days ahead of them. This moolie burns bright, but he will not burn long." Much as she hated to admit it, she suspected that there was a grain of truth in that statement. That evening he was last on the massage list, as usual. It pissed her off. He had shone today, he deserved to be first, but instead he was still delegated the lowliest rank. Micah looked like a panther when he slunk. He was all long smooth clean lines and sharp eyes. He wore nothing but a hotel towel twisted around his narrow hips and a pair of flip-flops on his feet. "Hi," he said. She smiled at him. She never smiled at the other guys because she knew they would take it the wrong way, but she felt comfortable with Micah. "Hey, nice work today." He smiled back that big white American smile. "Thanks." He lay face down on the table and she got to work. She liked treating Micah. Most of the other guys she treated were arrogant. Sometimes they made remarks to her that let her know that they were more important than she was. Barely a day went by that one of them wouldn't suggest that she should give him a 'happy ending' to his therapeutic massage, or sometimes one would just ignore her entirely. But not Micah, he was different. He was always polite. He always showered before it was his turn for massage, he never said anything sleazy to her and he always thanked her by name when she was done. There was also probably an element of the novel when it came to treating him. Micah had smooth deep brown skin that she guessed was probably somewhere near the middle of the scale when it came to people of African descent. Ellia had never known a black man before and she was surprised by how drawn to him she felt. She wanted to touch him. With the other guys she treated, therapeutic massage was a chore, something she did because it was her bread and butter, but she liked massaging Micah. She liked watching her pale hands pass across his dark skin. 7. The Patriots Ch. 01-02 It was just because she was curious. It was natural to be curious about people who were different. As usual his muscles were already supremely relaxed. "How are you so relaxed?" She asked. "I swim," he replied. "Huh. How often?" "Any chance I get. I just got out of the hotel pool." "You swim after a full day of riding?" "Sure. It's relaxing." "Evidently." She was working on his calf muscles and they gave way easily under her thumbs. The other athlete's calf muscles were so tight and knotted that they felt like they had tumors growing in there, but not Micah's. "I used to swim," she said. "Well sure, you're Australian right? I heard it's illegal to not swim there." She laughed. It wasn't too far from the truth. "What was your event?" He asked. "200 fly. I loved butterfly." "Mm," he sighed. "That was my dad's favorite event. It wasn't his fastest but it was still his favorite." "How about you, what was your event?" "I don't know," he replied. "When I was younger I swam the IM and the middle distance freestyle events." Ellia had finished with his calf muscles and had moved up to his hamstrings and buttocks. Like most cyclists he had enormous thighs, but unlike most cyclists he also had a beautifully built upper body. He had nice square shoulders and long toned muscular arms. It was part of reason that he shouldn't be able to climb the way he did. He carried a lot of extra weight in his upper body. He fell asleep as she massaged his long sleek muscles. He didn't snore but she could tell that he wasn't conscious from how deeply and evenly he was breathing. She moved up to his head and massaged the muscles in his neck, shoulders and arms. They were so well toned. He felt so different to the other cyclists. "Micah..." She shook his shoulder gently to wake him. "Huh?" He woke confused. "Flip over and I'll do your quads then you can go get your dinner." She turned around to give him privacy as he adjusted himself and the towels. It was not unknown for the guys to 'forget' about the towels, or to 'accidentally' expose themselves to her but when Micah said okay and she turned around again he was covered properly. She massaged his quadriceps and he closed his eyes and bit down on his lower lip. She couldn't help but look over his body. He had essentially no fat on him. He had what she now recognized as a swimmer's core; sleek taut abdominals and pectorals and long strong laterals. When she was done with him she felt some strange twinge of disappointment. "Is anything else bothering you?" She didn't know why she asked. She never asked anyone else that question. "Yeah, what does moolie mean?" She was instantly uncomfortable. She didn't want to answer that question. "I mean with your body." He stared at her for a moment then he said, "My hands. My hands hurt." She nodded and picked up his left hand and started to massage it. He had long slender graceful hands. "Is it a racial slur?" He asked. She continued to look at his hands as she nodded. "It means something like 'nigger.'" He relaxed back into the table. "Hm. Moolie. It's a difficult word to say with spite, it sounds more like a term of endearment." She didn't know what to say. She dealt with sexism all the time but racism wasn't something she was accustomed to dealing with or talking about. Micah was just lying there talking about it as if it didn't bother him at all. It couldn't possibly be the case. She didn't care how strong he was, nobody could go unaffected by the things that had been said about him. When the team had announced that they had signed him for the season there had been somewhat of a public uprising against him. The media did their best to slam him. They called his contract outrageous. They sent their journalists out to try and uncover the dirt on him but they'd come back empty handed. They'd published what they had found, and every little thing made the rounds. Someone had gotten a hold of his tax returns and found out that he donated his winnings to charities that included various rape crisis centers across the U.S.A. which lead to the preposterous speculation that he was a rapist. Through all of the mud slinging and name calling Micah was silent. He didn't talk to the press. Even when he was being called a baboon and sports journalists were crying out for his contract to be terminated he was silent. Micah's fist sin was being American but his real downfall was the fact that he was black. He was the first black cyclist to make it onto one of the big professional cycling teams and that caused a real stir, especially since he had been signed to what was traditionally considered to be Italy's national team. It was stupid. Although the vast majority of the management, staff and sponsors were Italian and they spoke exclusively in Italian, there was no rule that said that the cyclists needed to be Italian. "Thanks Ellia," he said when she told him that she was done. "No worries, although I doubt you really needed it, you're always so loose." "Sure I needed it," he said. "Maybe not the massage, but definitely the conversation." His deep brown eyes radiated calm. "You'd better hurry up or you'll miss dinner." "Urgh," he groaned. "I can't eat their food anyway so it doesn't matter." "Huh? What do you mean?" "I have Celiac Disease. I can't eat anything with gluten in it, which means anything that has wheat, barley or rye is out, which is basically everything." "You have Celiac Disease?" "Yeah. It sucks. I hate eating." "You're allergic to wheat and you choose to live in Italy, the home of pasta?" He shrugged. "It's not an allergy, it's an autoimmune disorder, and Italy just seemed like a good opportunity." "So what do you eat?" "Fruit and vegetables, nuts, cheese, rice and potatoes. When I'm at home I eat a lot of meat and eggs, but I don't really have a way of acquiring or cooking them on the road." She nodded lamely. Poor Micah. The strikes were lined up against him. He was politically unsuitable, way too tall, had no inherent physiological advantage and he had a malfunctioning digestive system. He would never make it as a professional cyclist. He twisted his towel into a knot around his hips and got up. "See you tomorrow," he said as he left the room. The next day she was fully expecting him to drop to the back of the pack. He must have been exhausted from yesterday's huge climb and as far as she knew all he'd eaten in the interim was nuts and berries. But there he was, again at the front of the pack, taking the lead frequently. It was the same the next day and the day after that. He was always near or at the front, pushing. He didn't eat anything that was offered to him; instead he carried bags of food in the back pockets of his jersey. One night she asked him why he didn't ask the cook to make him gluten free dinners. "They made it clear that I shouldn't expect any special treatment." "But you have a disease, they should accommodate your needs. That's not special treatment." He sighed as he shrugged his shoulders. "I asked and they said no." It made her angry. She suspected that Fabian wanted him to fail. He was always swearing at him under his breath and calling him a moolie. It made Ellia want Micah to succeed. He was the underdog in every way possible and the Australian in her couldn't help but back the underdog. It was then that she decided that she was going to help him. The next time they were on the road she would make sure that he was eating more than dried fruit and nuts. He didn't talk to her when she massaged him in the evenings anymore; he fell asleep almost as soon as he lay down. He must have been exhausted. It was getting progressively more difficult to wake him as the week wore on. On the last day, when she was sure that he wouldn't be able to hold on any longer, he surprised everyone by breaking away from the pack again. It was on a steep climb and he attacked as he came out of a tight turn, sprinting to the back of the support vehicle and sneaking up the inside to pass them. They all watched in stunned silence as Micah led them up the side of the mountain at a blistering pace. There was no way they could justify not racing him. As usual he was asleep as soon as he lay down on her massage table. There was almost no point in massaging him. Even though he had just spent five days slogging it out in spectacular fashion his muscles held none of the tension. But she massaged him anyway, it was her job, and whether he needed it or not he deserved it. When she woke him he said, "Oh, sorry, I drooled all over your floor." His voice was low and husky after sleep. "No worries, it happens all the time." He turned over and she started on his quadriceps. "Are you feeling better?" He asked. "Huh?" "You were lonely at the beginning of the week, are you feeling any better?" "Oh. Yeah, I guess so. It's better when there's work to do." "We get a few days off now." "Mm... you deserve it. You should try and rest, get off the bike for a few days." "Do you want to hang out?" She looked up, surprised. "Not as a date or anything, just hanging out, speaking English... It's okay if you don't want to." She examined his face. Calm brown eyes stared up at her, waiting. Getting into a relationship in Italy was a bad idea, but he wasn't talking about a relationship, he was just talking about 'hanging out.' "You don't speak English, you speak American," she said, smiling. His fabulous smile almost knocked the air out of her. "And you speak Australian so I have no doubt that we will have no idea what the other is saying." She laughed. "Okay. What do you want to do?" "Swim? We could check out Lake Como?" "Isn't it really cold? I don't think people swim in it." "Nah, I'm sure it'll be fine. Cold water is refreshing." He laid his head back on the table and closed his eyes. "Besides, I think there's other stuff to do there apart from swimming." He was starting to slur his words. "Maybe we'll see Sylvester Stallone..." He was asleep again. When she was done she didn't want to wake him. He must be so exhausted. He had fallen asleep exactly as he lay, his left hand relaxed down by his side and his right one resting on his stomach. He looked so peaceful and so perfect. When she got home the next day she immediately got on ichat and messaged Laura to tell her about the week. "Going to Lake Como with Micah tomorrow," she wrote. "Whoopee!!! I knew you would see sense and ask him." "He asked me." "Ohhh... interesting." "Just to hang out. He specified that it was not a date." "Yeah, sure." "What?" "Are you gonna kiss him?" "What! No!" "Come on, you know you want to." Honestly she did, but it wasn't going to happen. Having a relationship with Micah would be difficult on too many levels to even think about. They were too different. On one level he was American. The land of the free and all of that. She had never been to America but they had a reputation for being a bit full of themselves. Micah himself didn't have a big ego, but he was part of a bigger whole that did. They also had a reputation for being a nation of gun toting religious nutcases. It seemed like anyone could just walk into a shop and buy a gun over there. It was their constitutional right. Apart from seeing a police officer's holstered pistol, Ellia had never seen a gun before and she had no desire to ever see one in the future. And the religion thing... even the president went on about god all the time. To say that she was skeptical about dating someone with this sort of background was an understatement, and that wasn't even touching on the fact that he was black. Ellia did not consider herself to be racist. She believed that everyone deserved the same rights, privileges and responsibilities regardless of the color of their skin or the shape of their eyes. But the problem with dating someone of a different race was that culture is more than skin deep. Above and beyond being American, Micah and his family would have traditions, opinions and customs shaped by the experience of being African American. She didn't understand his culture and there was a good chance that she didn't have the ability to understand it. All of this mulling over their cultural differences was inconsequential anyway, there was one big undeniable problem with a potential relationship with Micah, they lived on continents separated by the largest ocean on earth. Ellia was only in Italy on a temporary basis and she had a feeling that Micah would move back to America the first chance he got. She had a single season contract with the team after which she fully intended to move back to Australia. She had already made inquiries at the Australian Institute of Sport and the Queensland Academy of Sport. Treating Australia's top elite athletes was her dream; if the AIS or QAS came through with a job offer she would drop everything else to take it. So even if one part of her yearned for something more with Micah, it was futile to wander that path, it could only lead to heartache. CHAPTER TWO Micah didn't even try to find Ellia's apartment without plugging in his navigation system. One of the first things he had learned when he moved to Italy was that driving over here was a sport. When Italians got on the road they didn't fuck around and if you didn't want to become road kill you had better not fuck around either. Completely at odds to this mentality was the barrage of confusing and seemingly incorrect traffic directions posted on the roadsides. You could drive around in circles for hours following those directions. She was sitting on the front step of her apartment building when he pulled up. It was a warm day and she was wearing a blue tank top with a white long-sleeved button-down shirt and a beige linen skirt with strappy leather sandals. Her long thick blonde hair was in two braids on either side of her head and she carried a big raffia beach bag slung over her shoulder. She looked like she was headed for the beach, but she also looked like she could have just stepped off the pages of a fashion magazine. Ellia always looked immaculate. The way she dressed you could have mistaken her for an Italian. "What are you listening to?" She asked on the drive up to the lake. "I don't know. It's on shuffle." He picked up his i-pod and passed it to her. "Kaki King," she read off the display. She was silent for a while as she flipped through the music files. "You have funny taste in music," she said. Micah shrugged. "I'm not really that into music, most of the songs on there are stuff that my friend Lucas gave me so really you're looking at his taste in music." "You're not into music?" "No, not really. Why? Are you?" "No more than the next person I guess. I just thought you'd be really into it." "Why?" She was silent. "Because I'm black?" He asked. He looked over at her and saw that she was blushing. He didn't understand why she was embarrassed. She shrugged her shoulders. "I've never known any black people before, I only know what I've seen in the movies." He shouldn't have been so insensitive but he couldn't help but laugh. "So you thought I'd be into rap and hip hop?" "I don't know." He nudged her with his elbow. "By that logic you should be some sort of crocodile wrestler, right?" "How do you know I'm not?" He glanced over and saw that she was smiling at him slyly. It made him laugh. "Oh my god, look at all the flowers," Ellia exclaimed when the drove through the impressively up-market town of Como. She gasped when she saw the lake for the first time. "It's so beautiful! Look at how the mountains come straight up out of the water, it's spectacular!" Her enthusiasm pleased him. He was glad that she seemed to have kicked off the depression that had seemed to engulf her at the beginning of the week. Depression was never an easy thing to deal with and he was pretty sure that she had come to Italy alone, so she was in a vulnerable position. It took a while to get to Bellagio. When he'd ridden here on his bike it had seemed a lot shorter, but dealing with the narrow windy roads was a lot harder and slower in a vehicle, even if it was the size of a motorcycle sidecar. "Do you want to swim first or walk around?" He asked. "You're seriously going to go swimming?" "Yeah. You don't want to?" "It doesn't really look like a swimming sort of place. Where's the beach?" "I was going to go off a boat ramp." Out of the corner of his eye he noticed her shaking her head. "Okay, you can swim first. I'll watch you jump in and back out again from the cold." When they got to the quaint little boat harbor he stripped down to his swimsuit and put on his neoprene cap. Ellia took her shoes off and gingerly dipped her toes in the clear sparkling water. "It's really cold," she warned. "I don't think you should go in, you might get sick." "How long do I have?" He asked as he joined her on the boat ramp, walking into the chilly water and pulling his goggles on. "How long do you want?" "An hour?" "An hour! You'll catch pneumonia!" He couldn't help but laugh at her. Pneumonia. "See you here in an hour then." He didn't wait for her to reply before he dove in and swam out of the little harbor and towards the eastern shore of the lake. Micah wasn't bothered by the cold. He'd swam in water colder than this before. He swam East for a half hour, and then back towards the northern tip of the hill that was Bellagio. God he loved to swim. When he was younger, and he felt like he had to swim to make his parents happy he had hated it, but now he loved it. He let his muscles relax and just flow with the water. When he was younger he was always feeling frustrated because he didn't understand why his brothers were better at swimming than he was. He always felt like he worked harder than everyone else but that work never seemed to be rewarded. "It's just a body type thing," his sister Grace had finally pointed out to him. "You'd be better suited to running or cycling." He probably should have gone into cross country running or track and field or something like that, but he loved the bike. He loved going fast, feeling the air whipping around his body, finding the edge of control and sitting on it. It was ironic that he had switched from swimming because he was too small to cycling where he was considered too big, too big and too black. It hadn't been a problem at home in America. Sure there were a ton of racists in the U.S. but for the most part his skin color had not been a problem when it came to sports. He had always found the officials and the media and the law to be on the side of fairness in the U.S. But Italy was different. He should have read more about it before he tried out for the team or accepted their contract. He regretted his decision. He was just so keen to get onto the UCI circuit, to get the sort of experience that would turn him into a real cyclist, to get the sort of exposure that would get him a proper contract as a team leader. He'd had no idea what he was in for. Italy was going through a rough time when it came to racism. He guessed he could see why accepting blacks was so hard for them. Compared to Italy, America was a spring chicken. Everything in America was new and founded on the principle of freedom. Of course there were a few rocky points in history, but your average American accepted change as an inevitable part of life. Italians had a different attitude. There were Italians whose families had lived in the same region for tens of generations. Hundreds of years would go by and nothing would change. They were attached to their towns and the countryside and their cities because they had some sort of genetic memory, some sort of invisible bond with the land and with each other. They loved their lives, they loved their country, and they wanted the same thing for their children and their grandchildren and their great grandchildren. They didn't want change. They didn't want freedom. They were satisfied with the way things used to be. 7. The Patriots Ch. 01-02 A black American on their national cycling team was not the way things used to be. Italians wanted to go out to the big cycling races and throw all of their passion and support behind their team, they wanted to see people who looked like them do amazing things. They wanted to see their own flesh and blood up there, feel their connection, marvel at the beauty of it. It was just a different way of doing things, he reminded himself. If he were in their position he would feel the same way. He was glad he wasn't in their position. He was glad that he would be able to leave after this season was over and he hoped that he'd be able to go home to America. He hadn't realized how much he loved America until he left it. Sure there were plenty of things wrong with it, actually too many to list, but he loved it and he missed it with a searing intensity. America was a place where people cared about other people even if they were different, in fact especially if they were different. It was a place where blood was less important than ideals, where equality was something that people tried to practice. They weren't always successful, but they tried. His heart ached with longing when he thought about home. He tried to push it to the back of his mind. It was almost April, he only had another seven months before his contract ended and he could go home, he should just try and make the most of it. He was in a great position to learn the famous climbs in the Alps, which could only help him in the future. He slowed down as he got closer to the little boat harbor and looked around more frequently. There wasn't much boat traffic about but it paid to be careful when it came to swimming around boats. "Micah," Ellia called out to him from on top of the stone seawall that protected the harbor. "Here..." she threw his flip flops down to him and he walked up the boat ramp and onto the seawall. She was sitting on her beach towel with her back leaning up against a metal railing and had a big broad-rimmed hat on her head to protect her fair skin from the sun. Even though the only skin she had showing was that of her bare calves you could tell that she had a nice body. She was tall for a girl, and fit. She had an athletic build; shoulders that were that were broader than her narrow hips and tight toned muscles. He sat on his towel beside her, shivering. "I told you it was too cold in there, look at you, you're shaking." She put her book down and rose to a squatting position, slinging her towel over his shoulders. "I'm fine." "You're not fine, you're shaking." Her voice was a mixture of annoyance and concern. She rubbed up and down his arms through the towel and he felt how close she was to him. Her breath tickled his wet cheek. If he turned his head right now they would be face-to-face. Her pink lips would be just inches away from his. He wanted to object to her fussing over him but he couldn't bring himself to. He just looked at the ground and concentrated on the feeling of her hands rubbing up and down his arms. It shouldn't have been a big deal. Ellia touched his bare skin all the time, but for some reason her rubbing his arms through her beach towel was so intimate, so comforting. She moved her hands to his back and rubbed up and down over his shoulders and back. He breathed deeply. It felt so good. When he stopped shivering she retracted her hands and he slipped a hooded sweatshirt on. "What are you reading?" He asked. "Oh, it's just a novel my mum gave me, it's by an Australian author. It's set in Brisbane." "You miss home?" She looked up at him for a few seconds before she nodded her head. "It's so weird, all through high school and university I dreamed of leaving Brisbane. Whenever I was bored or when I was working out and had nothing else to think about I'd daydream about Europe and how much fun I was going to have and all of the amazing things I'd see and do. Now that I'm actually here my body craves home. My skin misses that awful muggy heat, my nose is lost without the eucalyptus and salt, my ears crave the squawking birds and my eyes miss the huge sky and the too bright sun." She looked away and shook her head. "I need to snap out of it. I only have a few months to enjoy this, I need to suck it up and start living." He smiled. "That is exactly what I was just thinking about myself." She scanned the mountain peaks in front of them. "Do you like to hike?" "Uh-huh." "What about backpacking?" "Yeah, I like backpacking." That was an understatement. He loved going into the backcountry, there was nothing like being out in the wilderness. She looked over at him, her bright blue eyes mirroring the depths of the lake he'd just been swimming in. "Do you want to go backpacking in the Alps with me?" Of course he was going to go backpacking with her. They had a break in their schedule after the April races and they decided that would be a good time. It should be warm by then and there would be plenty of water. They walked through the cute little hillside town of Bellagio. The streets and alleys were narrow and steep and crowded with storefronts. Bright striped awnings, framed artwork, pots full of vibrant flowers, and café chairs and tables spilled out onto the sidewalk. The old-fashioned lampposts made it feel like they had stepped back in time. Ellia's enthusiasm was infectious. Everything they saw seemed to excite her and make her happy. They bought gelato and strolled along the lakeshore path, through manicured gardens and over old stone seawalls with ornate cast iron railings. "It's not melting," she said. "Huh?" "My gelato, it's hardly melting. I've never had so long to eat an ice cream in my life." She seemed delighted at this new development, her bright blue eyes were full of wonder and she smiled broadly at him as if he had cast some magical spell that kept her ice cream frozen longer than she was used to. He fought the urge to reach for her hand. She fell asleep in the car on the way home. He glanced over at her and smiled. She wasn't cute when she slept like that. She wasn't curled up and peaceful and pretty. Her head lolled to the side, she snored and her mouth hung open. Every now and then she would make a funny sighing noise. Her lack of grace as she slept only made him like her more. She woke up once they got into the stop and go city traffic of Milan. "Was I snoring?" "How much of the truth do you want?" "Hmm... In this case, I'll take none." "Okay... No, you weren't snoring. You were perfectly peaceful." "I thought so." They talked about Belgium, Spain and the Netherlands for the rest of the drive. They were leaving on Tuesday for three weeks on the road, touring around and racing. Micah would have his first race in Spain and he was nervous. Ellia assured him he would be fine. It wasn't just the racing that made him feel nervous, it was the prospect of being on the road for so long with limited ability to acquire and prepare food. God he hated eating. He wished there was a way to get all of the calories and nutrients and vitamins and minerals that he needed without having to be bothered with eating. Ellia surprised him on the first night he came to her hotel suite to get his massage. She had cooked him dinner. She told him that his time would be better spent eating than getting massages and that she would provide him with dinners. He was skeptical, cooking for him was not part of her job description and he was worried that she might find it demeaning. "It's fine," she had assured him. "You are my athlete, it is my responsibility to make sure you have what you need to succeed. If is safe food is your limiting factor then I am happy to make sure it's available to you." He was also worried about her accidentally poisoning him. He couldn't count the number of times that he had been poisoned by accident, it was so easy to do that he'd even poisoned himself a couple of times. Gluten was in almost everything. He had to be super careful with the types of vinegar he consumed, which meant that almost all sauces were off limits, and cross contamination from normal food and utensils that had touched normal food was a huge issue. Just one bread crumb could give him problems for days. When he ate gluten his body freaked out. It wasn't like an allergic reaction where you get hives and if it's really bad your throat swells up, it was a gastric problem. Within about twelve hours he would have horrible diarrhea, stomach cramping and nausea and it would last for at least two to three days, sometimes longer. Sometimes he could deal with it and still train, but sometimes it was so bad that there was no point in leaving the house. When this happened he would set his bike up on the trainer and practice in close range to the toilet. He had been accidentally poisoned once before a race and although he'd managed to finish it he'd done poorly. It wasn't just feeling sick and needing the bathroom that was the problem, it was an energy sapper too. But Ellia didn't poison him and it was so amazingly good to have a proper dinner at the end of the day that he quickly forgot worrying about it. Because of her schedule in treating the other guys dinner was always cold, but he didn't care. He got real food and he got to eat it with Ellia, his little ray of sunshine in an otherwise dark routine. He got to actually look forward to dinner. When he was swimming in the evening in whatever body of water was available to him he pictured Ellia in his head and thought about the conversations they'd had and the conversations he'd like to have with her. He imagined her cheering for him and him kissing her after he'd won a race. Her reaching for him... At first she was pretty conservative with what she cooked, but as she started to learn the breadth of the foods that he could eat she branch out. What started as steak and boiled potatoes with butter turned into herb encrusted chicken with rice and mushroom-stuffed bell peppers and baked sweet potatoes. She was so pedantic about her cooking that he grew to trust her entirely. One night all she had for him was baked potatoes with butter and chives and steamed spinach and she explained that she was in a rush and she forgot to scrub the skillet she had cooked the meat in. "Sorry. It was probably okay but I don't think it's worth it to risk it. I know it was used for breaded chicken last night." "No, don't be sorry. I'd prefer not to eat at all than to eat something suspect. Thanks." She was also a godsend in that she was so good at speaking foreign languages that she could read ingredient labels and talk to store owners. But despite her excellent language skills Ellia still checked with him before she added something new to her menu. "Can you eat seafood?" She asked one night when they were in Spain. "Yeah, so long as it is wild caught. Farm raised seafood is sometimes fed with wheat products so it has to be wild caught." The next night she had boiled 'prawns' for him to eat with a huge salad and baby potatoes. It was hot and she had opened the windows of the little room to the warm evening breeze and the smells and sounds of the street below. It was noisy outside. Over the past three days the crowd had had grown exponentially and the tension in the air was about to reach fever pitch in anticipation of the race start tomorrow. "I thought prawns were the huge ones, aren't these really shrimp?" He asked. "No, prawns come in all sizes, shrimp are the little teeny tiny ones." Ellia was peeling her cold shrimp with the speed and precision of a factory line-worker. She decapitated with a quick flick of her wrist, then in one movement grabbed the legs and peeled them away, twisting her thumb between the body and the exoskeleton and sliding the flesh out from the tail segment in one piece. "Are you sure?" She sure looked like she knew what she was doing when it came to seafood, but his brother Zach was a chef and he always called them shrimp unless they were the really huge ones. She shrugged her shoulders and looked up at him. "Look it up." A few strands of her dark blonde hair had come loose from the thick braid she wore on workdays and hung casually around her face, accentuating the curve of her cheekbones. He got up and went into her bathroom to wash his hands. Ellia didn't believe in napkins, when he had asked her about it she had looked at him as if he were retarded. 'What do you need a serviette for? You're not eating with your hands are you?' She had said. Now, even when they were eating with their hands she still didn't bother with a napkin. Somehow she managed to eat without needing to wipe her hands or mouth. After he'd washed his hands he went back to the table in her hotel suite, got his phone out and googled 'shrimp vs. prawns.' It turned out that they were actually completely different species. The easiest way to distinguish between them was by examining the segments of their bodies. "In shrimp the second segment overlaps the first and third segment, but in prawns it only overlaps the third," he read out to her. "So let's see..." He looked down at his plate to examine the body of his mystery dinner, but they were all already peeled. He looked at Ellia who had a regretful smile on her smooth face. "Sorry. We were going to be here until Christmas at the rate you were going." "It's okay, they have different gill structure too, prawns have lamellar gills but shrimp have branching gills." He picked up one of the shrimp heads out of the waste bucket and peeled back the head armor to reveal the gills. "Hm..." "What? Show me." She stood and leaned over the table to look at the gills. "I think they look branched." "I don't know Micah, they look pretty lamella to me," she teased. She looked up at him and smiled. Her face was so close to his, their eyes were locked and she was smiling and teasing him in such a comfortable way. The warm air moved lazily around them and brought her scent to him, a combination of the lotion she used for massage and whatever sweet fresh scent it was that had become linked with her image in his brain. Outside the fans shouted and laughed raucously but it didn't penetrate his mind. It felt like they were enveloped together in a cocoon of warm air. Micah felt his pulse quicken and his lips started to tingle in anticipation. He wanted to kiss her so badly. He wanted to close the few inches between them and kiss her perfect, shapely lips. Ellia's eye's widened momentarily, causing her pupils to dilate. Her lips parted and a little breath escaped her lips, the disturbance of the air just perceptible on his over-sensitive lips and sending bolts of electricity through his body. His heart was hammering at a million miles an hour. All he had to do was lean in closer... But she moved away. She sat back down. She probably didn't want him to kiss her. Even though he hadn't actually done anything, her rosy cheeks and averted eyes made him feel like he had taken things a step too far. He regained his sense of time and place. "What were they called at the market?" "Camarones." "Okay, we're having camarones for dinner. I'm satisfied with that." She smiled and shook her head as she went back to her food. The next morning he stopped by Ellia's room to get his breakfast before the team tactical meeting. Ellia had been making him breakfast ever since they had been on the road. It was mostly fruit and nuts but every other morning he got cold hard-boiled eggs and some mornings he got cheese rolled up around slices of tomato. That morning he got a big log of something white that was wrapped in that rice paper that's used for spring rolls. He sniffed at it and poked it and pulled the rice paper back to see what was inside. There was rice in there. He took a small tentative bite and was pleasantly surprised. It was some sort of sweet creamy rice pudding that tasted mildly of citrus and some spice that he couldn't put his finger on. "What was that rice stuff you gave me for breakfast this morning?" He asked that night. "Creamed rice." "What is the spice you used?" "Cardamom, why? You didn't like it?" "No, it was amazing. I could have eaten four of them." Ellia smiled in satisfaction and from then on he got some sort of rice filled spring roll every morning. Sometimes it was creamed rice, sometimes it was sweet sticky rice with chopped fruit, and sometimes it was plain rice with tomato and salt and pepper. He started to notice that he didn't feel as badly fatigued as he had before. He could actually stay awake through the team meetings and he recovered faster after pushing himself hard on the bike or in the water. He still hadn't told anyone but his mom about his swimming. He didn't care about the team managers or his teammates and he knew his brothers and his best friend Lucas wouldn't care but felt kind of bad about keeping it from Ellia. She knew that he swam at night but she thought it was just to warm down and relax after a hard day in the saddle. She didn't know that he swam in the mornings and she definitely didn't know that he was training to try and get selected for the Olympic team. She would probably flip out if she knew, it wasn't exactly a good training tactic for cycling and she put in a lot of effort to make him faster on the bike. He was planning on telling her at some point, but there never seemed to be a good opportunity. She always wanted to talk about food or their camping trip. She seemed to be just as excited as he was for their trip. She made a list of all the gear she had brought with her from Australia and a second list of the extra gear she thought they'd need. She only had a three-season tent and she was nervous about it. "I think we'll need a four-season tent, I mean there's snow up there... snow." Micah couldn't help but laugh at her. Ellia seemed to have a phobia of all things cold. She had never been in the snow before and she was freaking out about it. She thought it was going to be like Antarctica up there when in reality there would probably only be a few patches left in the shady areas along the route they were taking, they probably wouldn't need a four-season tent. "I have one," Micah assured her. "We can take it if it makes you feel better." "You don't mind sharing?" "No, I don't care, do you?" She narrowed her eyes at him. "Do you snore?" She asked jokingly. He raised an eyebrow at her. "You're worried about me snoring? Do I need to remind you about Lake Como?" She smiled. "You said I slept peacefully. And you don't snore, but even if you did I'd prefer that to freezing to death in my flimsy Australian tent." Ellia wasn't afraid of him. It felt good to have a woman trust him like that, especially a white woman. In Italy he'd gotten used to women shying away and avoiding him on the street. Sometimes, especially if she was walking alone, a woman would actually cross the street in order to avoid passing by too close to him. It was as if they thought he was going to reach out and accost them, drag them into an alley and rape them and take their purse or something. He found it offensive. Like all women, Ellia had nothing to fear from him. She was beautiful, and when she smiled at him he felt the desire stir inside, but she didn't seem to feel the same way and he certainly wasn't the sort of guy who would force himself on a woman. Besides, the long term outlook for a relationship with her was bleak, so what was the point in even trying? Ellia loved her country the same way that Micah loved America, he could tell from the way she talked about home and her family. A funny little smile would play at the corners of her mouth and she would get a far away look in her eyes when she told him about Brisbane. 7. The Patriots Ch. 01-02 It seemed that she spent a lot of time outdoors. She was always talking about the beaches, or how she and her younger brother Bryce would ride their bikes out to the rainforest, or about the hikes that she'd done. There were no big mountain ranges close to Brisbane, but there were a series of small mountains that took a few hours to hike. They were volcanic necks, the erosional remnants of ancient volcanoes, Ellia hadn't known this but Micah had looked it up after she had described them to him one night. "When you're on Christmas holidays, and it's stinking hot, there's nothing like getting up really early and climbing a glasshouse mountain and getting all sweaty and dirty, then going down to the beach and swimming in the ocean to cool off," she told him. "There's this awesome beachside café that we always go to afterwards that has the best steak sandwiches that are served with 'the lot.'" "What's the lot?" "All the usual stuff plus a fried egg, bacon, cheese, beetroot and pineapple, if you ask for it." "Beetroot? Like pickled beets?" "Yeah, they're really good." Micah scrunched up his nose in distaste, it sounded disgusting. "Hey, don't knock it until you try it," she said good-naturedly. "If you ever come to Australia I'll buy you one, minus the bread of course. You'll like it, I promise." Her eyes sparkled when she made these little promises to him and those were the times that he wanted to lean in and kiss her the most. He liked how passionate she was. She could get all worked up with pride over a sandwich that had pickled beets on it. For the first time in months Micah felt happy, it was just like his dad had told him, a real friend is worth their weight in gold. He'd never really appreciated that before. Growing up with two brothers close in age and his friend Lucas the same age as him he'd never had to worry about making friends before. Even when he went to college he didn't worry about it because for the first two years his younger brother Oliver was still around, and for the last two years his older brother Matthew was back from where he went to college in California. Finding Ellia here in Italy was a gift from the gods. She was funny and generous and easy to get along with, but most of all she had a sense of right and wrong. He had asked her why she helped him with his food and she had been brutally honest. "Honestly Micah, you're probably going to fail as a cyclist. You must know it. Even if you weren't so tall and your gut worked properly you would still probably fail. It's just the way it is in this sport, only a few can succeed and they are usually the ones who are physiologically superior, they have the heart and lungs of a horse in a human body. "But here's the thing... if you fail it should be because you're not good enough, not because you were at a disadvantage because your team refused to provide you with proper nutrition." "You think I'm going to fail?" "Probably." "So why bother helping me?" "Because I think it's the right thing to do. You deserve a fair chance. Besides, probably is not definitely. If you do succeed, if you do win a stage, or win a race... well, that's something I'd like to see." For some reason having the person who put so much effort into his success telling him that he would probably fail was a huge motivator. Ellia was just being realistic. She didn't want him to fail; she was just acknowledging that it was the most likely outcome. She said she'd like to see him win and it made him want to work harder. He wanted to win. He was going to win. CHAPTER THREE Micah's Celiac Disease was a blessing in disguise for Ellia. It forced her to go out and see different cities and talk to people. She had taken Latin in high school and Italian at university so she was able to communicate in a general way in Spanish and French as well as being competent with Italian, and the more she spoke and listened the more comfortable she felt. The worst part was getting over the fear that someone was going to laugh or turn their nose up at you, but most people were friendly and helpful. When they finally got back to Milan after three weeks on the road she was surprised that she felt just a little bit of that homey feeling. When she passed the caffé that she had eaten breakfast at a few times she felt a comfort that she wasn't expecting. When she went to buy groceries the man behind the counter made a fuss over the fact that he hadn't seen her in weeks. "Oh, it is such a joy to see your beautiful face Signorina, I feared that you had left us forever," he gushed. He was old and hairy with a big thick moustache and his flirtatious way of interacting with her would have made her uncomfortable before, but now she just smiled and told him that she had been away in Spain, and they had a long and pleasant conversation. She asked him if any of the homemade goods in his deli were gluten free. "Oh yes of course," he answered. "You have Celiac Disease Singorina?" She was surprised that he knew what Celiac Disease was. "No, not me, my friend." He took her around his shop and showed her all of the gluten free products that he carried and told her which of his fresh pastas, meats and cheeses was gluten free. He told her that many Italians had Celiacs Disease and explained the provisions the government had set up to educate the public and ensure that those with the disease could carry out a normal life unimpeded by their strict dietary needs. At first she was surprised, then she was angry. The way the team was treating Micah wasn't just morally wrong, it was legally wrong too. Fabian, the team manager, should know that, she suspected that he did know that. She would have to bring it up with Micah the next time she had him alone. They had two weeks of training in Italy with a long weekend in the middle and then they would be off to Switzerland for the Tour de Romandie. She and Micah were going backpacking in the Alps over the long weekend, and that would be as good a time as any to bring it up. She was excited but weary about the trip. She had done quite a bit of backpacking in Australia but nothing at such high altitude and nothing that had the possibility of being so cold. She didn't own any cold weather gear. Micah was unconcerned. He seemed to think that it wasn't going to be a big deal because it was the end of April, which was practically the northern summer. He just laughed whenever she brought up how cold it was going to be. She had two days off before the team trained together again and she took the opportunity to wander around Milan and take in some of the sights. She already had a basic feeling for the place from the tourist stuff she had done with Laura and now she took her time and soaked in the little details. She re-visited the Milano Duomo, the main cathedral, and sat in one of the pews and admired the architecture and art. She watched the changing colors of the majestic stained glass windows as clouds passed over the sun. She went to the Arco della Pace, the Arch of peace, and admired and walked around it slowly examining the art and the stone. It wasn't as interesting as she had been hoping and so she wandered back through the Parco Sempione and sat for a while and watched some kids playing soccer on the bright green grass. She had never seen grass as green as it came in Europe. She missed Micah at dinnertime. Even though she was able to stave off the loneliness during the days she still felt kind of empty at night. On her second morning off she caught Laura on ichat and spent over an hour telling her about the April sprint races in Belgium, Spain and the Netherlands. "Is your big trip this weekend?" Laura wrote. "Yeah." "Looking forward to it?" "Uh-huh." "Still pretending you don't want to jump his bones?" "Stop it." "Do you think he wants to jump yours?" She paused for a moment before she replied, "Yes." Micah hadn't said or done anything obvious to let her know that he was interested in her, but she had a feeling. Sometimes he looked at her for just a fraction of a second too long, and then there had been that incident with the prawns, or shrimp, or whatever they were. She was sure that he was about to kiss her when she had forced herself to pull away. He had been gazing at her with such intensity; his steady deep brown eyes causing some unknown fire to erupt inside her and making her legs feel shaky. "So why not?" Laura asked. "Impractical." "Um... no. You both want the same thing- someone to spend time with and rely on for the rest of the year." "Then what?" "Go your separate ways. No big deal. It doesn't have to be bigger than you want it to be." "What if it doesn't work?" "There are other physios right? Swap him with someone else." It was a weird thought, Micah being something that could be swapped. That conversation reverberated around her head over the next few days as the team trained together. She was back to her regular role as a physiotherapist. On the first day back she did skin fold, VO2 and lactate threshold tests and after the team rides she massaged the athletes before they went home. On the forth day they were supposed to meet in a parking lot on the North side of Milan at 8 am. At five to eight Micah was still not there and she started to worry. He was usually early, but not today. At eight fifteen Guiseppe, the head trainer, called the riders together and talked to them about the ride they were about to do and the goals he wanted to achieve. Finally, at almost half past eight when the team was just about to head out, Micah came flying into the parking lot on his bike with a mesh bag slung across his back. He sat up and looked around, saw her and pedaled straight towards her. He took the bag off and handed it to her without so much as unclipping from his pedals. "Thanks," he said. Then he joined the rest of the cyclists and was back on the road. She didn't know what to do with the bag and so she brought it in the support car with her. She was tempted to look through it but she felt like that might be an invasion of his privacy. She could tell what was inside because it was made out of black mesh, there was a dry bag with clothes in it, kick board, pull buoy, a set of plastic hand paddles and a ziplock bag full of pieces of paper that she couldn't quite read. He'd obviously come straight from the pool. What was he doing with hand paddles? Some swimming was good cross training for cycling, to an extent. It was fine to keep the upper body fit but he shouldn't be trying to build upper body bulk, which was basically what hand paddles were for. Sure they were used for technique too, but it was unavoidable to build muscle when you used them. She'd have to talk to him about it. After an hour Guiseppe called him back to the support car to collect water bottles for the rest of the team. He leaned down to look in the window and his eyes flashed from her to the bag at her feet and back to her eyes. He bit his lip and looked away. Now she was dying with curiosity. What was in there that would make him look so guilty? He had given it to her. She could just take a quick peak. After he had collected the water and returned to the rest of the team she opened the bag and looked inside. Each piece of equipment had 'MICAH' written on it in neat straight block letters and the kick board had the words 'is a poo' scrawled after his name in slanted messy cursive. She took the ziplock bag out. The piece of paper that was visible was a computer print-out with that day's date at the top and what was obviously a work-out plan. Ellia recognized the shorthand abbreviations for different exercises and the workout format. She looked over it and had to do a double take. It wasn't the sort of workout that you would do if you were swimming as cross training. Micah had made it sound like he swam to relax but this was not a relaxing workout. This was the sort of workout an elite swimmer would do to prepare for racing. She added the distances in her head. If he did this workout this morning he would have swam six thousand three hundred meters. She looked up at the cyclists. She couldn't see Micah, which meant he was somewhere near the front. He didn't look any different today. He didn't look like he was exhausted from a swimming workout. She opened the plastic bag and took out the wad of papers. It was a stack of workouts stapled together, each with a different date at the top, extending all the way back to the first of April. Each workout had neat concise notes at the bottom written in pencil. She flipped to the first page. It was an email: Micah, I'd say your best bet is the 400 free, but enter the 100 and 200 as well. A relay isn't out of the question. I've written the following with that in mind. Please remember that you promised you would try to keep this in perspective. It's just a race Mikey. Love, Mom. Ellia flipped through each day. Almost every day had a workout. It seemed like he got Mondays off, and she was relieved to see that the dates that he'd raced on were also missing. "What's that?" Guiseppe asked. "Um... It's a training diary. It just has his VO2 and lactate numbers and his standard test times and daily mileage. He must keep track of that stuff." She lied and she felt bad about it. Guiseppe wasn't a bad guy, he'd been kind to Ellia and he'd never shown any prejudice when it came to the cyclists. She knew he didn't have anything to do with Micah not being able to get safe food. "Oh." He turned away, uninterested. She was pretty sure Micah would be in trouble if anyone knew he was swimming like this, he might even get thrown off the team. It just wasn't a compatible training system. Judging from the guilty look he'd given her he knew this too. She put everything back in his bag and tried to decide what to do. She could give him an ultimatum; stop swimming or she would tell Guiseppe what he was doing. She could ignore it, but it was difficult to believe that such a training regime wasn't damaging to his cycling. He was paid to ride a bike. She spent a lot of time and effort making sure he had enough food to ride a bike. She was kind of pissed off. They were done with the ride by noon and most of the guys forewent their massages to go home for lunch and the afternoon off. The way Micah walked up to her was reminiscent of a dog with his tail between his legs. His head was bowed and he looked up at her uncertainly. "We need to talk," she said. He nodded. "You know where my apartment is?" "Yeah." "Meet me there in half an hour." On the tram ride home she got out his workout plan and looked over it again. She went back to the email from his mom. 'Keep this in perspective,' she'd written. Ellia couldn't help but mull over that request. What parent effectively asked their child not to try so hard? What was the right way to deal with this? She didn't want to drive a wedge between them. Micah was her only real friend in Europe. She trusted him. She felt like if she had a problem she could call him and he would help her. She liked eating dinner with him and hanging out. She didn't want to loose that. But what he was doing was wrong. It was deceptive and destructive and wrong and it made her angry.