2 comments/ 16257 views/ 2 favorites 7. The Patriots Ch. 04-06 By: inspirixis1 CHAPTER FOUR Micah waited nervously on the front steps of Ellia's apartment building. This was not the way he had been planning on telling her about his swimming. He should have just chucked his bag out when he'd realized the flat he'd had to repair on his way home from the pool this morning was going to make him so late he'd have to go straight to cycling practice. Or he could have stashed it somewhere, but instead he had taken a chance with her, and it looked like it was a bad decision. She had looked furious when they'd gotten back to the gym after the ride. Her lips were pressed together and her eyes narrowed towards him. She had her arms crossed in front of her and her manner was stiff and hostile. Despite her obvious anger, it did not appear that she had told anyone else. After the ride Guiseppe had patted him on the back and said, "buono, buono," in that well meaning but partly distracted way he had. That was something. He just had to try and bring her around. He flattened himself against the building to take advantage of the thin band of shade on the top step of the landing. Ellia rounded the corner, walking towards him in long purposeful strides. She didn't say anything to him when she passed him to unlock the front door of her apartment building. She led him up the stairs and unlocked another door. Inside her apartment he leaned his bike against the wall and she motioned for him to sit at a small kitchen table. She started opening windows and he looked around. It was a studio apartment, just one big room that contained bedroom furniture at one end and a kitchen at the other. It was tidy. Apart from a messy pile of books and papers on top of the dresser everything was neat and clean and in its intended place. There were two framed photographs on her bedside table but the pictures were turned away from him. Ellia still hadn't said anything to him. She was moving around her kitchen preparing food and ignoring him. She steamed edamame, dumped them into a big bowl and set it on the table in front of him. "Eat," she ordered. Micah was more than a little intimidated by her and he was starving so he complied. She sat down opposite him. "So?" He looked her in the eye. "I'm sorry." "For what?" "For deceiving you." She leaned forwards and picked up a handful of edamame beans. "Tell me about it." "I used to swim, I think I already told you that." "Uh-huh." "Well it's kind of a family tradition. My dad swam in two Olympics and my brothers are going for selection in June. They'll make it. They both won events at the world championships last year. My friend Lucas, the one that gives me all the music?" "Mm?" "He's a swimmer too. He's kind of like my cousin. His dad is my dad's best friend. He's the fastest breaststroke swimmer in the world right now." "Okay. So you swim to try and fit in with them?" "No. I quit when I was sixteen because I couldn't keep up with them. I took up cycling so I could have my own thing, make my own way in life, you know?" "Mm." "When I was nineteen I was finally diagnosed with Celiac Disease and that's when my career started to take off. Once I stopped poisoning myself with gluten I had so much more energy and I was able to train harder and race harder. I started winning in the under 23 division and it felt good. I'd never really been the best at anything before and it made me feel... I don't know... euphoric. So I decided I wanted to be a professional cyclist. "I lived in Denver, which is where my family is, most of the way through college and the whole time I never went to the pool, I just rode my bike. Then I was recruited by my first pro team and I moved to California. "Once I was away from home I started to miss swimming. It was the strangest thing. I hadn't felt like swimming in years and then all of a sudden I wanted to do it every day. At first it was just for relaxation, but eventually I started working out properly. By the time I moved here to Italy I'd already decided I wanted to go to the Olympic trials. "I asked my mom to help me and she wrote a program and got me a wild-card entry to the trials. It's been a long time since I swam competitively but my name is Watson and that means something in swimming circles back home." "Is she a coach?" "No, she's a lawyer, but she's been around swimming for a long time." "So let me get this straight... you haven't raced in years but you're jeopardizing your cycling career in order to follow a training program that a lawyer wrote for you to try and qualify for a swimming race that you probably won't final in anyway." The way she said it made him feel small and stupid. He looked down at his hands. "I was kind of hoping to make a relay... Matthew, Lucas and Ollie are all trying for the medley relay, I wanted to be the freestyle leg." "So it is about fitting in." He shrugged. "I don't know. I guess on some level it is, but it's more than just fitting in. Winning is so shallow when there is nobody to share it with... Do you have any idea how cool it would be to race in the Olympics with your brothers? To share that experience with the people you love the most?" She stared at him for long seconds and then sighed. "You know this is a stupid idea right? You know that swimming and cycling are not compatible training programs?" He nodded. "When in June?" She asked. "The 25th through July 2nd." "Do you have time off for it?" "Yeah, the track cycling trials are the week after. Fabian and Guiseppe think I'm going early to prepare for them." "You're a track cyclist?" "No. I still have to buy a track bike and figure out how to ride it. I'll probably fall on my face." She shook her head. "Okay," she said. "Okay what?" "Okay I'll help you." "Why?" She shrugged. "I like a challenge." A smile started at the edges of his mouth. "You're not angry at me?" "No. I think you're mad as a meat axe, but I'm not angry at you." He laughed. "Mad as a meat axe? I've been called a lot of things but never that." "Well you are." "So are we still on for tomorrow then? We're still going backpacking?" "You are crazy aren't you? You have two months to prepare for Olympic selections in two radically different sports that you have no idea how to race and you want to go wandering around the Alps?" The smile fell from his face. "I... I thought you wanted to." "Micah, I want my athletes to not look like idiots on the world stage. Please, help me out here. Do you have your training schedule for the next month?" "Not printed out. It's in an email on my phone though. Do you have a printer?" She didn't have a printer but there was an internet café a few blocks away so they decided to go there. Micah showered in her tiny bathroom with a showerhead that was so low he had to duck to get his head under the water. He put on the clothes that he had worn to swimming that morning, a black t-shirt and cargo shorts and converse sneakers. When he came out of the bathroom Ellia had changed out of her work clothes and into some ridiculously fashionable get-up. She was wearing a pair of white linen trousers and a silky navy blue tank top that had a row of tiny buttons down the front. Her thick golden hair was twisted up at the back and held in place with a wooden clip and her lips were pink and shiny. She looked at him for a second and bit her lip as she turned away. "Ready?" They went to the café and printed out the workout plan that his mom had sent him and then she wanted to take him to her local grocery store to show him something. It turned out that Italy was actually very proactive when it came to Celiac Disease. She said that everyone knew what it was and as part of their national health system all children were screened for Celica Disease by the time they were six. He couldn't imagine how different his life would have been if he were diagnosed at six rather than nineteen. He would probably be as tall as his brothers. He would probably have never quit swimming. The store that she took him to was narrow and overcrowded with produce. The hairy middle-aged guy at the front counter's face lit up when he saw Ellia but quickly darkened when he caught sight of Micah. It was pretty typical. People weren't outright racist, he'd never been thrown out of a store or anything like that, they just acted coldly towards him. Ellia spoke to the store owner in rapid Italian and Micah couldn't keep up with the conversation. All he could figure out was that she was apologizing for something and the store owner smiled and shook his head and said, "Si, Americano..." The hairy old guy turned to him and held his hand out towards the produce. "Come, I show you your food," he said in a friendly way. He walked them up and down the aisles and Ellia told him that all of the things he was pointing out were gluten free. There were entire companies that only made gluten-free products. There were gluten free breads and crackers, pastries, cookies and granola bars. It didn't take him long to become completely laden with boxes of food and then he started loading Ellia's arms too. When they got to the deli and the man told him that the salami was gluten free he bought the whole huge sausage of it. When he was paying for it the man started talking to Ellia again in Italian. He wrote something on the back of a business card and handed it to her and she thanked him profusely. He smiled and shook Micah's hand and told him to enjoy the food. "What did you say that made him like me?" Micah asked when they were walking back to her apartment. "Huh?" "You know, when we first went in he looked like he wanted to chuck me out, then you said something and all of a sudden he was friendly." "Oh... I just told him you are American." "Why would that make a difference?" "Well..." She hesitated. "I don't know how to say this without offending you." "What?" He asked defensively. "It's just that... the way you, and Americans in general, dress is kind of... not very nice." "What? I'm clean. My clothes are clean. It's not like they have holes in them or anything." "Yeah I know... It's just that we live in Milan. Fashion is kind of important here." He was silent for a while as he absorbed her criticism. "So you're saying the reason people are rude to me is because I don't dress nicely enough?" "Probably." He suddenly felt embarrassed. He looked around at the other people walking around the streets and felt underdressed. They all looked like Ellia. The women were dressed elegantly and the men were similarly chic. Even the children were dressed up with pretty clothes and shiny leather shoes. "That seems so superficial. To judge someone by the clothes they wear is so... high school." "How would you prefer they judge you?" "I'd prefer they didn't judge at all." "That's wishful thinking. Everyone judges everyone at some level. It's part of being human. It's part of determining who's safe and who's dangerous." "Woww... Now you're saying that I look dangerous?" She shrugged her shoulders. "You're probably more intimidating than you realize." Just because he was a black man people thought he was dangerous? "That is so unfair." "Yeah, I know, but think about it. Popular culture is full of black American men who are either borderline frightening, or outright dangerous. Think of all the movies and rap stars, the football players who murder their wives, and basketball players who get accused of rape." That tipped his discomfort with this topic into anger. "What the fuck Ellia? You're comparing me to OJ Simpson? Do you know how unfair that is? I don't compare you to Hitler just because you're white. And there are plenty of non-psychotic black men in the media." "Such as?" "The President," he spat out. "Colin Powell. Nelson Mandela." She sighed. "Okay, you're right. Just forget it." But he couldn't forget it. Even after he had gotten home and put all of the groceries away and was trying to work on a computer code that he was helping Matthew with he couldn't forget it. It was so unfair. He hadn't pinned Ellia for a racist. He went into his bathroom and tried to look at himself objectively in the mirror. He was taller and darker than average, and probably broader than average too. He took his t-shirt off and watched his muscles flex as he moved. He had always been lean enough to see his muscles. He knew he was much stronger than the average man and he acknowledged that if he wanted to he could physically overpower most people. As sick as it made him feel to think of it, he knew he could easily overpower a woman. His email alert dinged and he went back out to his computer. It was from Ellia. "Micah, I'm sorry I offended you. I didn't mean to compare you with a murderer just because you have the same skin tone, it was wrong of me. I've amended your mum's swimming schedule and also changed your weights program a bit (attached). You should think about getting a track bike and putting some time in at the velodrome. Let me know if you want me to come with you. Ellia." He sighed. At least she acknowledged that comparing him to OJ Simpson was wrong. Maybe he had jumped to some conclusions too quickly. Maybe she was just trying to explain why the store owner had suddenly been friendly when he realized that Micah wasn't a gang banger. He wrote a reply. "Ellia, I'm sorry too. It's kind of a touchy subject and it's easy to over react. Maybe I do need to buy some Italian clothes. Will you help me please? As you know both my Italian and my fashion sense suck. Thanks for the training program. I'll let you know when I get a track bike. Micah." He hit send and leaned back in his chair. He should buy a track bike. It was getting pretty close to the trials and he had been meaning to do it for ages. He opened the internet browser but instead of searching through different track bikes he found himself typing Ellia's name into the search engine. Ellia Smyth. He hit enter. Her name was unusual enough that the first match was really her. It was an article about a triathlon that she'd won that was dated four years ago. She'd been on Australia's junior national team. There were two photographs. In the first one she was running out of the surf wearing a dark green swimsuit with "Smyth" printed across the front and "AUS" underneath in bold yellow letters. She had the number 16 written on her thighs and biceps in black ink and was in the process of tearing a bright orange swim cap off her head. She had a look of determination on her face as her long slender body strode towards the transition to the bike. In the second photo she was on the winners podium with a big metal cup. Her hair was pulled back messily and a few little strands stuck out at odd angles. She was smiling directly into the camera and Micah felt a twitch in his pants. Ellia was gorgeous. He'd never seen her like this -- without fancy clothes or makeup on, or her hair done. To see her wearing nothing but a swimsuit and an enormous, genuine smile was a huge turn on. He flicked through a few more pages that mentioned her, all of them relating to triathlons. She had been really good, she'd won a bunch of races when she was in the junior division and placed in a couple in the under 23 division, but she had stopped competing three years ago. There were a few more photos of her competing but in the end he went back to the one of her on the podium. He unbuttoned his pants and let his cock out. It was already hard for her and he groaned as he stroked himself and gazed at her smiling image on the screen. His mail program dinged again and he used his free hand to navigate to it and read her email. "I am essentially devoid of fashion sense. My sister Laura picked out an entire wardrobe for me when she was here, including shoes and makeup. It was like one of those cheesy movies where the cool girl gives the dorky girl a makeover. I'm not kidding. I will come shopping with you though, moral support is always good and I know where to go. Come to my place tomorrow morning at about ten. E." Micah leaned back and closed his eyes and thought about Ellia as a dork and was surprised by how much he liked the idea. He pumped harder and faster as he imagined her in clothes that didn't make her look like a super model, jeans and a t-shirt that was just tight enough to make out the delicious curve of her breasts. He imagined her taking off that t-shirt, smiling at him and revealing the creamy white skin of her belly and little pink nipples that stood out on top of small round breasts. He imagined his hands caressing those soft breasts, and his dark lips against the tender skin of her neck and that was when he lost it. He didn't even need to fantasize about having sex with her to cum, just the thought of kissing her skin was enough. As he sat there breathing deeply and thinking about her his email program dinged yet again. "Actually, make it 10:30," she'd written. He used his left hand to type the reply. "Okay, see you then. Thanks." CHAPTER FIVE "Are you sure I need all these shoes?" Micah asked. "I think Gianni probably knows what he's talking about," Ellia assured him. She knew how it felt to have one of these Italian makeovers. At first she had been uncomfortable in her own skin, she felt like a fake, but then she'd gotten used to it. It was a pain in the ass to always have to think before you put clothes on, but it meant that she didn't stand out and as Laura had pointed out, it was respectful to the culture to try and fit in. Mario's recommendation had been such a blessing. After Micah had spent an exorbitant amount of money buying gluten free produce in his little store, Mario had told her to take Micah to Gianni and to give him the note that said she and Micah were his 'valued customers'. She had been so surprised and touched. A personal recommendation in Italy was like a gold card. Gianni was a tailor and an excellent one at that. He didn't ask Micah what he wanted, he just asked a bunch of questions about him. Ellia had to help with some of the translations but she tried to just let Micah speak without interruption, mistakes and all. "What do you do for leisure?" Gianni asked. "Ah... I play sports. I walk in the mountains and swim in the lakes." "You don't go to the art galleries?" "No." "What is your job?" Ellia was expecting him to say that he was a cyclist, but he didn't, he said, "I am a physicist." "Ah! A scientist?" Micah nodded. "Si." Gianni told him what he was going to make and got Micah's approval, and then took about a million measurements of his body. Then he wrote down the name of a shoe maker and the descriptions of three different pairs of shoes and told them to tell the shoe maker that Gianni had sent them. All she said to Silvio, the shoe maker, was, "Gianni sent us," and he treated them like royalty. "I've never had clothes or shoes made specifically for me before. My brother is going to be so jealous," Micah said. Ellia was glad that he seemed to have gotten over the argument they'd had yesterday. She didn't know how she had gotten around to comparing him to rapists and murderers, all she had been trying to explain was that as a very large man who didn't smile very often he could look intimidating to people who weren't used to being around him. It didn't take that long for Silvio to measure Micah's feet and write out the order. The shoes were ridiculously expensive, as were Gianni's tailor made clothes, but Micah just handed his credit card over. "Are you sure you don't want to go camping this weekend?" He asked as they were walking back to her apartment. "We could drive up this afternoon and camp at the trail head. We could still get in two nights on the trail before we have to be back for training next week." 7. The Patriots Ch. 04-06 She was tempted. "But Micah, you only have two months before the trials..." "Yeah, and I'm talking about two days. I'm supposed to get a couple of rest days anyway." He was right and she gave in to him. She already had everything packed anyway and she didn't have anything else planned. When they got there she was glad. She had been outdoors a lot over the past couple of weeks but it had always been in a car. It was so good to just sit among the trees and breathe in the fresh air. Micah seemed infinitely more comfortable up in the mountains than he did down in the city, or even on his bike. He moved with ease and he smiled a lot more. When Micah smiled you could see almost all of his teeth, both the top and the bottom rows of straight white teeth. He had a beautiful smile. He'd bought a stack of firewood from a store along the way and they built a fire that they sat beside and ate the dinner he'd cooked on his camp stove. "Were you a boy scout?" He shook his head. "I went for a year or two, but my parents decided it was a waste of time. The point of those groups is for the kids to make friends but my brothers and Lucas and I would always just hang out as a group and there wasn't much point in going on their scheduled camping trips and all of those weekly meetings when we weren't making any new friends." "You didn't fight with them?" "Of course, but there were enough of us that there was always a buffer. I have an older sister and Lucas has an older brother too, so there was really a pack of six of us. What about you? Did you fight with Laura?" "No, not really. She's two years older than me and infinitely cooler. It's my little brother I always fought with. Bryce was the biggest little shit you've ever met. He used to do things for no other reason than to annoy me. It got better once he got to high school and realized he wasn't as hot as he thought, and that I could get him out of trouble if I wanted to." "You went to the same high school?" "Yeah." "I thought they were all single sex schools in Australia?" "No. Why would you think that?" "Lucas did an exchange year in Brisbane when we were fifteen." "No shit? Which school?" "I don't know. It was an all-girls school. He did one of those rotary exchange things and I dared him to fill it out as if he was a girl. He told them his name was Lucy and they placed him with this girl Carlie who went to an all-girls school." Holy shit. Lucas couldn't have been that guy. "Are you kidding?" "No. We thought it would be funny, but he ended up having kind of a rough time. He told me Australian girls are brutal." He gave her a small crooked smile. "Did he run cross country?" "Yeah, that was in the phase when he quit swimming." "Micah, I raced against him." "You're kidding? I hope you beat him?" "Yeah, well it was orienteering that I raced him in and it wasn't hard. He was like an elephant stampeding through the forest. He had no sense of direction, I remember we crossed paths when I was on the fourth or fifth beacon and he asked me for directions to the second one. His map was misaligned and he had no idea where he was." Micah laughed. "Yeah, that sounds like Luka. I can't believe you remember him. That was what? Seven or eight years ago?" "Micah, he threw up on the state governor. He's a local legend. People still talk about him. When you do something really embarrassing people still say, 'at least you didn't barf on the governor.'" Micah was laughing, his dark eyes sparkled in the soft flickering light of the fire. "I can't believe that's your best friend," she said, shaking her head. "Small world huh?" "Mm." "I think he fell for her." "Who?" "Carlie, the girl he lived with. I think he's still in love with her." "What? You don't fall in love when you're fifteen and pine for someone for seven years." "No?" "Well I've never heard of it." "Yeah but you'd also never heard of anyone vomiting on the governor until Luka showed up." She smiled. "Mm. It just seems a bit far-fetched. Don't you think there comes a point in a long distance relationship when your memories are all tainted and your longing for a person that doesn't really exist?" "Maybe, but they're not in a relationship, they're just friends." "Even so, I think long distance relationships are a recipe for disaster. They are so impractical, especially when you live in different countries. He should try to move on." Micah nodded and turned back to the fire. Suddenly she felt like they were talking about more than just Lucas and his friend. That night Micah put the fire out with water from the stream they were camped beside and when he crawled into the tent he turned and laid with his back to her. It wasn't long before his breathing went deep and even, but Ellia lay awake for a long time, going over their conversation in her head. Was she misreading it? Did Micah just imply that he was interested in her? And did she really just shut him down? There was a way to remedy it. He was lying right beside her. He was asleep but she could easily wake him. She could easily touch him. She turned onto her side towards him and watched him sleep. It was dark in the tent, but not so dark that she couldn't make out the silhouette of his head, neck, shoulder and the arm that was resting outside of his sleeping bag. The dim light reflected off the smooth dark skin of his sculpted bicep and she reached out to touch it. Her hand hovered in the air, caught in indecision, and then she retracted it. She didn't want to be the first one to make a move. What if she was wrong? What if he really didn't have an interest in dating her? There was a difference between being attracted to someone and wanting to date them. It would make life so awkward if she made a move and he wasn't into it. She turned away and drifted into an uneasy sleep full of jumbled images of Micah. He was already outside doing something by the time she woke the next morning. She changed into her hiking clothes and stuffed her sleeping bag into its sack before she left the tent and stretched out in the brisk morning air. "Morning. Tea or coffee?" He asked. "Mm... Tea would be nice." She sat on a big cold rock and looked around while he made her tea. They were camped in a stand of pine trees beside a broad gushing stream. The air was thick with the fresh scent of pine and the earthy smell of moss and rich organic dirt. "That's the one, huh?" She nodded towards the huge peak looming to their west. Micah turned at looked up at it. "Yeah. That's where we'll be tonight." It wasn't so much a difficult hike as it was a long one. It had been a while since she had carried a pack and it took a bit of adjusting and get used to. It wasn't that heavy, Micah had insisted on carrying the tent, water filter and the fuel so all she had was water, her sleeping pad and bag, spare clothes, half the food and the stove. She was half expecting Micah to take off ahead, he was fiercely competitive on the bike and she had guessed that was a personality trait that would permeate the rest of his life, but he walked slowly enough for her to keep up comfortably. They walked through stands of big pine trees and across wide flower-filled meadows. They rock-hopped across streams and ate a lunch of cheese, salami, gluten-free bread and fresh apricots perched atop a big sun-bleached boulder. The apricots were so sweet and ripe that the juice dribbled down her chin and she stopped to wash her hands and face the next time the crossed a stream. When they got above the tree line and the trail became a long series of tight switch-backs Micah stopped to wait for her to catch her breath every so often. It was getting late and windy when they finally made it onto the ridgeline. She was tired and looking forward to setting up camp and dinner. Her hip had taken about as much as it could handle for one day. The view was amazing. Row upon row of snow-topped jagged mountain peaks stretched out to the horizon. Ellia was enthralled and she took out her camera and snapped photograph after photograph. She turned to take a photo of Micah, but was stopped dead by the look on his face. He had the map and his compass out and his forehead was creased with worry. "What's the matter?" He didn't look up. "There's a storm coming." Ellia scanned the sky for imminent danger. There were a few dark clouds off in the distance, but they didn't look all that threatening and they were miles away. "We need to get out of here, it's not safe." She squinted her eyes at the clouds. They didn't look like such a big deal. "How are you feeling?" "I'm kind of tired," she admitted. He swung his pack off his shoulders and rooted around in the top pocket, pulling out an energy gu packet. "Here." He held it out to her. "Eat it." She hated energy gu but his eyes were so serious that she ripped it open and forced herself to swallow the thick pasty contents. Micah swung his pack back on and fastened the clasps. "We need to get as far back down the mountain as possible, at least back into the trees. Go as fast as you can without putting yourself in danger." She nodded, suddenly scared by his urgency. She looked back over at the clouds before she turned back onto the trail. Was it her imagination or had they gotten bigger? She trudged back down the switchbacks as quickly as she dared. Her pack now felt like it was full of lead and her legs were sore. Each step threw a bolt of pain to her hip. She knew she was beyond her threshold but she kept going. Something about Micah's calm reassurances belied the seriousness of their situation. The wind picked up and they were still above the tree line, still totally exposed on the bare rocks. "Don't worry about it," Micah told her. "We still have plenty of time." The sun had slipped behind the ridge line long ago and they walked in the shadow of the mountain, the grey monotone of the sky and the dirt and rocks on the trail confusing her eyes and causing her to trip more frequently. Micah was holding on to the back of her pack. When she put a foot wrong he held her up while she regained her footing. It was getting cold. The wind whipped around them in long low ghostly whistles that caused her to shiver not only from the chill, but also from the fear of what was to come. Finally they were back in the trees and the branches bowed and creaked in time with the gusting wind. The smell of pine and moss was gone, replaced with a biting cold and the sting of fine grey dust. They kept on walking and it started to snow sideways. The pain in her hip caused tears to prickle her eyes, but she just concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. Micah led her off the trail and across a stream to a flat area that was bordered to the west by a steep wall of rock. The wind wasn't quite so bad, but it still made putting the tent up difficult. "Get inside," Micah said before they had finished staking out the rain fly. "But..." He cut her off. "Get inside and change out of your wet clothes." She did as he had told her, but even in her dry clothes she couldn't stop shaking. She pulled her beanie down around her ears and blew up her sleeping pad to sit on. Micah unzipped the fly and went through her pack. He threw her sleeping bag in to her and then zipped everything back up and was gone. She pulled the sleeping bag out and got inside it and zipped it all the way up to her chin so that she was mummified. She still couldn't stop shaking. She hugged her arms around herself and concentrated on the warmest parts of her body, her armpits and between her legs, and tried to ignore the throbbing pain in her hip. She knew this pain well, and that if she didn't take oxycodone now she wouldn't be able to sleep tonight. She sighed as she left the promise of warmth in the sleeping bag to get the medication from her pack in the vestibule, letting cold air in again. She was still shaking a few minutes later when Micah came in. He was covered in little white snowflakes that quickly melted on his dark skin. He was still only wearing the clothes he had been hiking in, pants and a long sleeved shirt, but he was only shivering intermittently, not shaking the way Ellia was. He unscrewed the lid to a plastic bottle and held it up to her. "Careful, it's hot," he warned. He held onto the bottom of the bottle and watched as she drank the salty soup in small sips, the hot liquid bringing warmth back to her center. "Got it?" "Uh-huh." He let go and went about getting himself organized, blowing up his sleeping pad, then changing into dry clothes and getting into his sleeping bag. He took the soup from her and drank a few gulps before handing it back, and then started handing her other things to eat. She didn't protest. She just stuffed them in her mouth, chewed and swallowed. When they were done eating he put everything away. "It's going to get cold tonight," he said. "This isn't cold?" He bit down on his lip and shook his head, his eyes full of remorse. "You're wearing dry socks?" "Yeah." "Do you have a spare pair?" "I'm wearing both of them." "Let me see." He leaned towards her and unzipped her bag all the way, the invasion of the cold air throwing her into a new fit of shivers. He pulled her foot out and she gasped involuntarily from the pain in her hip. His eyes shot up to her face. "You hurt yourself?" "No. It's an old injury. I had hip surgery a few years ago and it hurts when I do too much." He shut his eyes for a few seconds and breathed out. "Why didn't you tell me?" She shrugged. "It's not a big deal. The joint is stable. It's just a bit of pain. I already took something for it." He shook his head and checked her socks and seeing that they were thick and woolen he carefully put her foot back inside the sleeping bag and zipped it up most of the way. He pulled her gloves off her hands and replaced them with a pair of his thick woolen socks and then zipped her up all the way. She was still shivering but now the drugs and food were starting to kick in and she was getting sleepy. She wasn't warm but she was starting to feel that beautiful drug-induced haze that takes the edge off anything unpleasant. Of all of the painkillers she had tried over the past three years oxycodone was by far her favorite. Micah was lying on his side facing her, watching her carefully. "Ellia, I think you'll need to sleep with me." "Huh?" "In my sleeping bag. I don't think yours is warm enough." "Oh." "I won't touch you or anything, you'll still be in your bag, I'll just put mine around you too." "Okay." He unzipped his sleeping bag and she turned away from him as he scooted up behind her. Getting in his sleeping bag with him was much more difficult than it sounded. She was pretty much immobilized in her own bag and even after she freed her arms to help her hands were useless with the socks over them. Finally, after a lot of struggling and accidentally whacking each other around Micah sat up and lifted her into his lap. "Just be still." He organized her bag around her and did it back up, then moved into the center of his bag and enclosed her in his arms while he leaned forward to zip it up around them. When he was done her back was pressed firmly against his chest. He lay back down and rolled to the side so that he was spooning her. She could feel his ribcage expanding and contracting as he breathed. He squirmed around behind her. "Um... is this okay?" He asked as he wrapped an arm around her middle. "Uh-huh." It was more than okay. Lying pressed up against his warmth like this was incredibly comforting. The wind howled and whipped at the tent fly but it didn't frighten her when Micah held her like this. In fact, nothing frightened her right now. She fell asleep to the slow steady thump of his heartbeat. When she woke her face was pressed against his throat and his arms were wrapped around her tightly. His stubble scratched against her forehead as she breathed in air heavily laden with his scent. Micah smelled amazing. It wasn't a nice smell; they had hiked for hours yesterday and hadn't bathed. It was a kind of a salty, earthy smell that hit her hard right at the base of her brain and stirred such a strange primal desire in her gut that she had trouble focusing. She had an alarmingly strong desire to touch him, to lick his skin. All she could think about was entangled limbs. Brown skin touching white. But before she had time to remember why she was cocooned so tightly against him the throbbing pain in her hip hijacked her brain. She groaned and he stirred beside her. She needed more drugs. She squirmed to try and get up but she was trapped. Her hands were useless and there was no room to use them anyway. "Hold on." His throat vibrated against her lips as he spoke and her body was consumed in a strange mixture of intense searing pain and uncomfortably sensual arousal. Micah was aroused too, she could feel it even through her sleeping bag. He struggled to get his arms free of her, which just ended in him pressing her to his body more tightly. "Sorry... I... shit." She closed her eyes and tried not to let the combination of his deep voice, amazing smell and the feeling of his hard penis against her belly and the vibrations of his throat against her lips overcome her. Finally he freed his arms and found the zipper and she rolled out onto her own sleeping pad, the movement of her hip joint causing her to cry out in agony. He leaned over her and undid her sleeping bag, plucking his socks off her hands when they came into view. "Are you okay? What can I do?" "Top pocket of my pack. Small white box." He retrieved the oxycodone for her and she burst one out of the blister pack and swallowed it. It would take about a half hour before it felt better and Micah left her to rest while he boil water for tea. Even though Micah carried almost all of their gear, and she had the help of a narcotic painkiller, getting off the mountain was excruciatingly slow and painful. It was this way with her hip. It was 100% fine and functional for the vast majority of the time, even running and cycling were fine these days, but all it took was one day when she over-did it and she would be paying for it for the next three days. Like she was paying for it now. She felt stupid for ruining their camping trip, but Micah was obviously upset about teasing her for being frightened of the cold and then leading them into a situation where hypothermia was a real risk, so she just shut up about it. He led the way and stopped to help her over obstacles. He stood in the middle of streams and held on to her arm as she picked her way across. When there was a big step he waited at the bottom and guided her down like a gentleman helping an old woman out of a bus. She slept on the drive back to Milan. She only woke when Micah was lifting her out of her seat. It was way too dark and quiet to be Milan. "Where are we?" "Shh, we're at my place. Go back to sleep." His feet crunched over gravel towards a warm glowing light and that's all she remembered until she woke much later in an unfamiliar bed in a room she didn't recognize. Long shafts of soft morning light filtered through the glass panels on two doors at one end of the room and twin windows on the far wall. The room was spartan. Apart from the bed the only furniture was a dresser, a mostly-bare set of book shelves, and a bedside table that held a glass of water, her pain medication, a banana and a note written on a yellow post-it note in neat round letters. "I went to the pool. I'll be back around 9, Micah," it read. 7. The Patriots Ch. 04-06 It was eerily quiet. In Milan she had gotten used to constant noise. If it wasn't the damn church bells it was the honk of a horn and screeching tires, or the loud banter of people chatting on the street as they walked. But here the only sounds were her own breathing and the occasional twitter of birds outside. The pain in her hip was still a dull ache pulling on her brain and she fought hard against the urge to take another oxycodone. She wasn't addicted to painkillers, but it was a slippery slope that she knew was easy to fall down. She wasn't walking anywhere today so she didn't need a narcotic. She got up and went to find something softer, an ibuprofen or panadol or something like that. She limped into the adjoining bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet, turning the labels on bottles until she found an enormous bottle of ibuprofen, and then she took a shower. When she got out she went to her pack, that was by the glass doors in the bedroom, and looked for her clothes, but it was empty. Instead there was another post-it note from Micah. "I washed your clothes. They're on the clothesline outside." She pulled back the white linen curtain from one of the doors and looked out onto a brick patio with a metal table and chairs and a retractable clothesline that extended out from the wall of the house. There didn't seem to be anyone around so she went out there in nothing but a bath towel and retrieved her freshly laundered clothes that were pegged in a neat row beside the clothes that he had been hiking in. She took a quick look around on her way back into the bedroom. She was definitely not in Milan. There were rolling green hills all around and the silhouette of mountains in the distance. Once she was dressed she wandered through Micah's excessively well organized home, which was something akin to a rustic country cottage, and read all of the post-it notes around the place. Some of them she understood, there were reminders to buy more inner tubes and to pay the water bill and a shopping list on the fridge, but others were indecipherable equations, or single words that were meaningless to her. There was one on the desk in the living room that said, "Re: MJW1 T on γ?" She guessed that had something to do with his work as a physicist. She had been surprised when she had found out but he had been nonchalant when she asked him about it. "Did you think I was a dumb jock?" He asked. It made sense when she thought about it. In fact it fit his personality perfectly. Physics was really just applied mathematics and she could imagine Micah as a mathematician. He was an understated person. He didn't try to draw attention to himself or make wild claims and he had a need for accuracy. The prawns were a perfect example; he couldn't eat them until he knew exactly what they were. She took a cushion from the couch and sat on the patio chair to enjoy the view and the warm sunshine. It seemed inconceivable that just two nights ago she was so incredibly cold. From the patio she had a view over the road at the bottom of the hill and she watched the occasional car or bicyclist ride past. She recognized Micah immediately. It wasn't just that he was going twice as fast as anyone else on the road, it was his position on the bike. He had a lovely, relaxed stance. He stopped at the bottom of the gravel driveway and walked up the hill with his bike on his shoulder. "You're alive," he said with a smile as he cut across the grass to the patio. "Uh-huh." "I was starting to worry. You were pretty out of it yesterday. You passed out in the car mid-sentence. I had to pull over to check to make sure you were still breathing." "Sorry. It's the drugs. They make me sleepy." He leaned his bike against the brick wall and pulled his swimsuit out of the mesh bag and hung it on the line where her clothes had been then plopped down in the chair beside her and took his helmet off. "You were telling me about your accident..." She didn't remember that. "How far did I get?" "You said you were on your bike and that someone opened a car door in front of you." "And you want to know the rest?" He nodded. "Well, I swerved to avoid it and was hit from behind. I landed on my side and shattered my hip and broke my collarbone. I don't really remember any of it though because I was knocked unconscious. My helmet was split to pieces, they said if I wasn't wearing it I would have died. "I don't even remember waking up in the hospital. I was training for the national selections in triathlon and according to my family it was the most heartbreaking time of their lives, not because I almost died but because I had short term memory loss and they had to keep on telling me over and over again that I didn't make the team and that I was probably never going to race again. Dad said after a while he only came to the hospital when he knew I'd be asleep so he wouldn't have to keep on delivering that news to me. "What I do remember is the conversation I had with my doctor before I was finally discharged. By that time I'd already been told that although I would probably walk again I would never be able to compete as an elite athlete. I didn't believe it. He told me that all of those inspirational movies about athletes coming back from injuries like mine were bullshit and that my real chance for happiness in life was to choose something else and learn to love it the way I had loved triathlon. "It crushed me, but it was the best advice anyone ever gave me. A few weeks later the woman who was driving the car came to visit me. The poor lady was wracked with guilt. It wasn't her fault but she couldn't accept that. She told me she would do anything in her power to help me get back on my feet. It turned out that she was the CEO of the Australian branch of 3, the mobile phone company. I told her what I wanted and, well, that's the reason 3 sponsors cycling, and the reason I have my job." Micah was looking at her steadily. "That's quite a story." She shrugged. "I'm not really religious, but you know that saying, 'when god closes a door, somewhere he opens a window'?" "Mm?" "I kind of believe in that." They spent the day together. He drove her down to the local markets and wheeled her around on one of his bikes while they both shopped for groceries for the week. She felt kind of stupid but the less time she spent on her hip the quicker she would recover, so she went along with it. He wheeled her around the streets of the little village near his house and she taught him some Italian. Micah was incredibly shy with his Italian but once she got him speaking and laughing he got better. He understood more than he could articulate. That afternoon when he drove her home he double parked at the front of her apartment building and carried her pack and the groceries up the stairs for her. "Sorry this weekend turned out to be so bad for you," he said. "Stop apologizing. It's not your fault." "Yeah but..." "No buts. And it wasn't all bad. It was good until you saw that storm, and today was nice." There was an awkward silence as they stared at each other and she tried to will him to hug her, or kiss her, or do something. "I'll see you tomorrow," he finally said. CHAPTER SIX Ellia was killing him. Micah had thought that he was working out hard until she'd come along with her deceptively difficult workouts and the reward of her approval and pretty smile. Since she had rewritten his training schedule and started showing up at the pool and velodrome he had discovered anew the meaning of the word tired. The first time they'd gone to the velodrome had been so nerve wracking. They'd just opened an indoor cycling facility in Boulder, near his parents' house, but he'd never been. In fact he had never been in a velodrome at all until this endeavor. He'd never seen the attraction of riding indoors. Sure it'd be nice to be on the bike through the winter without having to use a trainer all the time, but he preferred cross-country skiing so he could get outside while trying to stay fit. There was a world-class velodrome in Montichiari, which was only about an hour and a half from Milan, and he'd just about thrown up when he went inside it and saw the steep bank on the turns and realized that he was going to have to learn to ride it without gears or brakes. They'd gone on a Tuesday night during the time it was open to the public and watching the amateurs ride around and around had made him feel sick to the stomach. Perhaps sensing his hesitancy, Ellia had toned down her enthusiasm. She had ridden in a velodrome in Sydney before and had raved about how much fun it was, but once they were face to face with the reality of a track that had turns that banked at over 40 degrees she just patted him on the back and said, "Speed is your friend." He had been so nervous as Ellia held the bike upright and he clipped his new super-light, super-stiff, super-expensive shoes into the pedals. He rode slowly and tentatively around the flat warm-up section of the track until he finally got up the nerve to merge into the riding lanes. He owned a fixed-gear road bike, which he rode reasonably frequently, so the feeling of turning the pedals whether he wanted to or not was not a new one. What was new was how smooth it felt. How he felt like the bike was a part of him. How in the absence of bumps in the road or wind or the distraction of traffic, every tiny little adjustment he made affected the way the bike rode. The wooden boards of the velodrome rumbled beneath his wheels and he focused on his body. He could feel the air passing over his skin and he adjusted his posture to see how it affected his aerodynamics. He pedaled harder and immediately felt the bike jump forward, every single watt of power transferring directly from him to the track. It was such a rush. The track was so smooth it practically dissolved underneath him. It felt like he was riding on air. And just like that, he was hooked. He slowed down and pulled back into the warm up lane and coasted to a stop near Ellia. He was puffed and his heart was beating abnormally quickly. His legs felt like jello, but he couldn't wipe the smile off his face. Ellia smiled back at him and grabbed onto his handlebars. "Enough for one day?" He unzipped his jersey and pulled it off. "Huh? No way." He handed the sweaty jersey to her and then he took his gloves and socks off and handed them to her too. Once he had his shoes back on he clipped back in and took off again. He didn't want to stop. It was the best thing he had ever felt in his life. Without his jersey he could feel with exact precision the flow of air over him. He felt it on his fingers and wrists, on his ankles and knees, on his shoulders and over his back. He felt little eddies of air swirling over his chest and abdomen. He'd ridden in a wind-tunnel a couple of times before, so he knew about optimizing aerodynamics, but this was an order of magnitude better than a wind tunnel. On the track he was actually riding. The bike was moving underneath him, responding to him. Even with all of the fancy computer read-outs you got from the wind tunnel, the track was still a hundred times better. He was beyond tired but he couldn't make himself stop. He kept on telling himself, 'Just one more lap.' Finally a buzzer went off and he noticed that the couple of riders that were left on the track pulled off. He guessed the public training time was over. On their way out he purchased a six-month public pass and twenty hours of private track time, and for the entire month of May he was either at the track or looking forward to going to the track. There were no races to worry about in May so he could focus and train without distractions. When he was training with the team on the road he was looking forward to the track, he was even thinking about it when he was in the pool. Ellia came to the pool most mornings to administer his workout. They were grueling. She had cut his mileage way back but increased the intensity of the work by an order of magnitude. Almost everything was timed. Each day he had to try and break the time that he'd achieved the day before. She was particularly fond of timed kick pieces. She liked to scatter them in among the planed workout, especially when he was really tired. When he was really hurting it was almost guaranteed that Ellia would give him a set of four 100s kick and stand on the deck with her stop watch running, urging him on. She wasn't afraid to yell at him. She told him when she thought he didn't have his mind on the game and she was usually right. Her favorite saying was, "Pull your finger out and start swimming like you mean it." As much as she was a hard ass, she also had a softer side. One morning, during the first set she pulled the plug. "What was my time?" He asked. "Don't worry about it. Swim 500 easy to warm down then we'll go and get some breakfast." He was so relieved. He was sore and tired. The exhaustion was so deep inside his bones it felt like it might never lift. He didn't know how much more his body could handle. They rode their bikes back to his house. Apart from training with the team, Micah pretty much only rode his fixed gear bike now. He sat in the shower for a long time and when he came out Ellia had breakfast ready. "I don't want you to go to the track today," she said. He just nodded and continued to eat. He was too tired to think. He'd just do whatever she said. That afternoon, after he'd somehow pulled himself through the team training session, she came over to his place and gave him a massage instead of going to the velodrome. "Only five more days of this Micah, then you have one more tour race, then two more weeks of training and that's it. All you'll have left is taper week and the races." "Mm..." He wasn't really listening to her. He was concentrating on the amazing massage she was giving him. She was finding all of the tense sore spots and rubbing the stress away. Her hands were bringing such comfort. When he woke up the room was dark. He'd slept for over four hours. His stomach groaned from hunger and he got out of bed and groped towards the door. There was an amazing smell coming from the kitchen. He stumbled through the blindingly bright light of the living room and blinked his eyes a few times to get the kitchen to come into focus properly. Ellia was cooking dinner. She looked up at him and one side of her mouth turned up into an almost-smile. "Go put some clothes on cave man, dinner is almost ready." He looked down and was mildly embarrassed to find that all he was wearing was a pair of underwear. "You're here late," he commented once he was dressed and they were eating. "You looked like you could use the help." He nodded. "Thanks. You want to stay?" "Ah... is that alright? I'm just going to be back out here again tomorrow morning anyway." "Yeah, that's fine." "I mean, I don't want to impose or anything..." He laughed. "What?" "Ellia, you're my only friend in a... what?... five thousand mile radius. I wish you would impose more often." She smiled at him and went back to her meal, but the distance thing was bothering him. He got up and went to his computer and googled the distance between Denver and Milan. "Five thousand two hundred and eighty miles," he called out. "You are my only friend in five thousand two hundred and eighty miles... plus or minus about ten or twenty miles." When he went back to the table she was smiling and shaking her head. "What?" "You can't ever do something half way can you?" "If you're going to do something you should do it right, don't you think?" "Yeah, you're right, I've just never known anyone who actually lives that idea out." He wanted to go back to bed pretty much right after they'd cleaned the kitchen and he really didn't like the idea of sleeping on a camping pad. He only had one bed in his little house. "Do you mind sharing the bed?" He asked. "No, that's fine. Unless you're worried about me snoring?" He smiled. "I'm so tired that I could sleep through even the infernal racket of your snoring." Her eyebrows rose in surprise. "Infernal racket?" "I'm only kidding. The only time you snore is when you're sleeping in the car." She didn't have any extra clothes with her so he gave her a t-shirt to sleep in, which hung off her lithe frame like a potato sack. She sat on the side of the bed and loosely braided her long, thick, blonde hair and he tried not to look at her. "Ready?" He asked when she seemed like she had settled under the covers. "Uh-huh." He turned the bedside lamp off and turned to get comfortable. His foot brushed against her calf and she jumped out of the way. "Sorry. Don't worry. I won't try to touch you. Even if you wanted to I'm so tired I don't think I could. Now I understand why all my brothers and I have birthdays in September." "What do you mean?" "My dad was a swimmer and swimmers get October through December off. December plus nine months is September." "What about Lucas? His dad was a swimmer too, right?" "Yep. August 24." "That's interesting. I'd guess it would have more to do with fertility than abstinence though. I wonder if anyone has studied that. I know there have been studies on cyclists but they always hypothesize those findings are because of physical trauma." "Yeah, I'm probably infertile." "Wouldn't matter anyway. I can't have kids." "Huh?" "Oh shit. Sorry, I didn't mean with you, I just meant... It's just that you were talking about... crap. Sorry." She blurted out. He turned towards her. "It's okay. Why can't you have kids?" "My uterus was too badly damaged in my accident." "Oh Ellia, I'm so sorry." She sighed. "Thanks. It wasn't much of a blow at the time, but as I get older it seems like a bigger deal." In the darkness he couldn't really make out the features of her face, but he could hear the sadness in her voice. He wanted to hold her so badly. He wanted to bring her comfort, but he'd just told her that he wouldn't touch her. He lay there, staring at her silhouette and wishing that she would give him some sort of cue so that he could hold her hand, or touch her cheek, or hug her to his body, but she didn't. She just sighed and said goodnight. That was the way it was with Ellia. She was his friend and his coach and his chef and occasionally she slept over in his bed, but apart from the occasional sports massage, they rarely touched on purpose. It drove him insane with desire. He didn't care if she was unable to bear children, it didn't stop him from wanting to fill her up with his seed. On the nights that he was alone, and he had the energy, it was her that he thought about when he touched himself. Sometimes after she had slept over the night he could still smell her on his pillows when he went to bed the next day, and it would derail any plans of sleep until he had finished visualizing himself making love to her. He started to worry that he was falling for her. He'd never been in love before and frankly he didn't want to start now. Not with someone who would make life so complicated. Of course he wanted to fall in love, but he wanted that to happen with someone who lived in Denver, or at least who lived in the US. The problem was that Ellia was so damn perfect. Of course she was physically gorgeous, but that wasn't what drew him to her. It was all of the little things. When they had been backpacking in the Alps she had bent down to pick up trash whenever she had seen it. Even on the way back, when she was clearly in excruciating pain, she had bent to pick up trash. She had a toughness about her that he admired. She rarely complained about anything. She tried new things seemingly without fear. And she could drive stick. He didn't know why that was important to him, but he really liked the fact that she could drive a vehicle with manual transmission. 7. The Patriots Ch. 04-06 Despite this toughness she was distinctly feminine. He was sure the way she moved was designed specifically to torment him, and the way she said his name with her rounded, airy accent cut straight to his heart. His name was invented to be pronounced by her delectable mouth. His confidence that starting a relationship with her was a bad idea was quickly waning. He knew with certainty that he didn't want a foreign girlfriend; the problem was he was also certain that he wanted Ellia like he'd never wanted anyone else before. He needed to get away from her. He needed to talk to Lucas, or Matthew, or Nicholas or someone who could make him see sense, someone who could put things back in perspective for him. He was going to have a long life and it was important to find someone to spend it with who wasn't going to make him live in a strange country, or who wouldn't feel like she was compromising by living in the US with him. His trip home for the trials couldn't have come a moment too soon. Ellia drove him to the airport in his car. He'd told her to use it as much as she wanted over the next two weeks and that she could stay at his place if she wanted too. His house had a few extra amenities that her apartment didn't, like a clothes washer, internet and TV. "Good luck and have fun," she said as she stood on the curb outside the airport terminal. "Thanks for everything Ellia." He allowed himself the luxury of hugging her, of breathing in her scent and feeling her body press against him. His brain was going wild being this close to her and he felt flashes of all of the different scenarios he'd imagined passing through his body. "I'd better go. Airlines always have issues with bikes." She smiled and nodded. "Call me when you get a chance." "Okay." As he was walking away he heard her rev the engine of his car aggressively. He turned, surprised, and saw her sitting in the drivers seat laughing at him. That little cow. She knew he liked to baby his car. She waved to him before she pulled out into the traffic. Micah was left smiling and shaking his head. She'd learned exactly how far to push him to tease him without upsetting him.