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‘He did. Like this.’ Jamie smirks and raises his eyebrows.
‘No, I didn’t,’ Eddy insists again. ‘That’s your imagination messing with your head.’
‘Or it’s you trying to psych me out, so I fuck up today,’ he replies.
‘I’m allowed to smile, you muppet,’ Eddy snaps.
‘It was the way you smiled,’ Jamie insists. ‘Like you wanted me to know something had happened.’
‘Jamie,’ I start, but he doesn’t let me finish.
‘Seeing the two of you together, soaking wet, acting like you had a secret, going upstairs together, him grinning at me like he’s got one over on me,’ Jamie rants. ‘Does Sol know you’re sharing a room?’
‘Right, okay,’ I interrupt, raising one hand. ‘This is silly. We’re not sharing a room – not that it’s anyone’s business but mine where I sleep – I’m here to do a job and I’m doing it, and you two arguing is what we’re supposed to be avoiding.’
Jamie’s expression shifts, surprise interrupting his anger.
‘You’re not sleeping with him?’ he checks.
‘She didn’t say that,’ Eddy can’t resist replying.
I shoot him a look. I know, I know, they have their rivalry, but he could help me out at least.
We made the decision together. A sensible one, to put work and the tournament first, to avoid the exact situation we’re finding ourselves in now.
‘You have no right to ask her personal questions,’ Eddy says.
‘And you don’t get to act like she belongs to you,’ Jamie replies.
‘I never said she did.’
‘You’re acting like it,’ Jamie claps back. ‘She doesn’t deserve it.’
‘You hardly know her,’ Eddy snaps.
‘Enough,’ I tell them. ‘I am standing here.’
Jamie turns towards me fully.
‘I do know you though,’ Jamie tells me. ‘I got to know you when we got stuck in that lift together, when we flirted, got closer right before they let us out. When I had dinner with you in your hotel room, at the Evergreen. At my home game you came to. When we went to dinner together, two nights ago.’
My eyes immediately dart to Eddy, who basically didn’t know most of that. Not because I was going behind his back, or doing anything close to cheating, because we were never really together, but he doesn’t look happy about it.
‘Is all of that true?’ he asks me.
Jamie’s face lights up when he realises this is news to Eddy.
‘Yeah, but it’s not how he’s making it sound,’ I insist.
‘Isn’t it?’ Jamie replies, raising his eyebrows.
‘So that’s what you’ve been trying to taunt me with this morning, saying I don’t know what she gets up to – I thought he was making it up,’ Eddy says, turning to me.
‘We did get stuck in the lift, we did have dinner together when we were both staying in the hotel on the same night, and I did have dinner with him a couple of days ago – a dinner he tricked me into thinking it was for work…’
‘But you stayed,’ Jamie reminds me. ‘And you can’t say there hasn’t been anything between us.’
‘Oh, but I can,’ I reply. ‘I absolutely can – you’ll both be surprised to hear this, but I can do whatever I want, and go wherever I want, and it doesn’t have to mean anything.’