Hold Me Close

nothing at all

Oli's purring underscores the awkward silence with a blissful ignorance. He relishes the firm strokes of my hand as I run it along her back, needing to feel normal just as much as he needs the attention. Alexia's eyes scan along every inch of my apartment. She has never been inside, apart from that time when her stupid dog wreaked havoc on my poor cat. Her lips twitch into an almost-smile as she catches sight of the gleaming metal displayed on shelves on one wall of my living room. A silver Champions League medal. Courtesy of Barcelona.

I was on the bench for that match, following a minor injury from training earlier that day. There is only once in my life when I have felt more helpless than I did that day, when I watched my team be hung, drawn, and quartered in a Champions League final. What tops that is watching Scarlett die. Both are tough topics.

I remind myself that Alexia's collection of silver medals from the same competition is larger than mine. I won it twice when I played for Lyon. Her gaze lingers on the shiny gold, hardening in determination. I let out a sigh, feeling the exhaustion wringing out of me as though a dam has opened and I have no choice but to respond.

"Are you hungry?" I ask her, setting my bags down on the sofa. She does the same, broken out of her trance by my question.

"No," she replies curtly, though she watches as I open the fridge to help me decide whether or not the tightness in my stomach can be quelled with food. "Tienes hambre. Podemos a comer." I shake my head, finding myself too lazy to make anything.

Weirdly enough, she sits down on the sofa with Oli in her lap, both of them very comfortable. Fucking traitor. I turn on the TV, checking the time on my phone as I do. Jaimie wants to phone me; she is concerned that my fine-ness could be a front and that I am potentially curled into a ball in the corner of my apartment. I call her quickly, talking in Dutch, watching the conversation fall on deaf ears as Alexia focuses on the late-night Spanish TV.

Telling Jaimie about my company may have been a bad idea, because she – rather loudly – reminds me of the current occupation of my spare bedroom. I crane my neck round from my position, catching sight of the state of the room. Her clothes are everywhere. She tells me that the sheets are dirty, and I have no intention of inquiring further into why she is so insistent she change them herself when she returns. I can infer.

"So what the fuck am I supposed to do?" I groan, walking over to the sofa and taking a seat as far away from Alexia as possible. She glances over at me, but the conversation is of no interest to her. The tightness in my stomach is always present when she is near me. I shuffle so that I am pressed against the end of my sofa, increasing the distance between us. Oli's purrs sound like the cold song of betrayal. "Can I make her sleep on the sofa? Do I take the sofa?" I can hear Jaimie roll her eyes. She is preoccupied, though she is hiding it quite well. I think that my sister sometimes forgets she can prioritise her own life over me, and, more importantly, that she has a right to do so. I am not her charge.

"I am going to change." Alexia stands up, tipping Oli off her lap gently. "The bathroom?" I point to the correct door. My cat follows her as she pads, bag in hand, away. I tell Jaimie that I will tell her to sleep in my bed. I am a heavy sleeper, and I can sleep in a lot of places. Alexia does not seem like the kind of person to fall asleep easily, judging by the bags under her eyes.

Stretching out on top of the plush cushions, I flex my fingers and toes, trying to wake myself up a bit more. The TV is uninteresting if it is a language I cannot understand, and so I switch the channel to Netflix and continue watching Queer Eye. Jaimie likes it and has forced me to watch it with her enough times for me to vaguely enjoy it.

Alexia takes a whole episode of the show to be done, though I think she had been on the phone in the bathroom at one point. Privacy would not be an issue if she were to talk in Spanish or Catalan, but the red rims of her eyes and the sniffle of her nose is probably why she stayed locked in there. I wonder what she has been crying about. What does she have to be crying about?