The next morning we wake up but act like we have no immediate plans to get out of bed while an entire city is buzzing with life outside the windows. All I need in this moment is food and Nico. I'm thinking of skipping my training which I never wanted before. But he says he wants to watch me play football and asks if he can come to my training ground today.

My heart is full and I just nod, speechless—this is not just sex, it's so much more. I shake my head disbelieving that he is waking up in my arms, looking at me like I'm the answer to all his questions, giving me the version of himself that the rest of the world can't ever see.

I turn around and smile down at him, settling my weight on him as he spreads his legs wide, wrapping them around me. I'm studying his face almost curiously.

"What?"

"You've got... " I pause, and tap Nico's cheek, underneath his eye. Nico blinks as I poke at another spot on his face.

"Pecas?"

"Freckles. Is that what you call them? Pecas?"

"Yeah." Nico chuckles as I trace my finger over his cheeks. "I get them in the sun sometimes. They're usually too small to notice." Too small to notice if a person is not looking close enough, but I have.

"I like them," he blushes when I say this, a rare sight.I touch his face again and kiss a tiny brown spot on his cheek. Kiss him again, a little higher, and again, under his eye, and again, pepper small quick kisses across his nose and cheeks and Nico starts laughing, no, giggling, and it's beautiful. It's bright. It's real. And only for me.

"Jordaaaaan..."

I pull my head back but he leans up and takes my face in his hands.

"Bésame."

"Bésame?" I repeat amusingly. He kisses my mouth.

"Mmm.. it means kiss me." So I kiss his mouth and kiss his neck and kiss his chest. His nipple. His belly button. Slowly I go lower. And he tells me the word in Spanish for every part of his body I kiss. And I repeat or try to, and he laughs when I fail horribly or praises me when I pronounce it correctly.

When I fuck him again he's already deliciously loose and warm, wild and so eager like he is trying to pull me deeper inside of him. I'm so much more confident in my moves that I decide to take him on the mindblowing ride consisting of various different positions. I speed up, I slow down, I take my time, touching, feeling, learning his body and all of his sensitive spots. He's always been considerate in bed, even back when we first hooked up, every single time he has taken care of my needs, going at my pace. I can't help but think how it would be if the roles were reversed—there's a part of me that wonders how it would feel to let Nico be in control.

"Next time I want you inside me," I breathe over his lips. It comes out with a desperation I usually don't like giving in to but it just feels so right. The blissed-out look on his face lets me know what he thinks about it, he's gasping for air, flushed and feverish. Warm fingers link through mine on the mattress beside his head, as I'm stimulating the deepest parts of him and he is so lost in pleasure and need that he moans something I don't understand. I hope he'll translate the words to me later properly because some of it almost sounds like amor. And I know what that word means. I've been feeling it too, every time we kiss and our mouths fit perfectly, everytime we're close and I want him even closer.

*

Nico is supposed to stay three more days. I don't know what we are and what will happen after but somewhere along these strange few days we'd crossed the line from experimenting and casually hooking up to something more. He is talking about a possibility of him signing for some model agency in London and I want to think I know what that means but I don't question it yet. I will ask him when I take him to the airport. I will tell him that I would very much like if he could stay in London or get a job that would bring him here more often.

"Let's go out tonight, what do you say?" Nico tells me as he tries on one of my football jerseys and observes himself in the mirror. He takes a picture and I stiffen. No, he won't, he can't post that. If Sonya or one of his siblings don't see it, at least one of his million followers will do some detective work and connect the dots—there's my number and a team name on it. I'm not even close to being famous but in the world of English sport, people know me as a young prospective footballer that will one day probably have a career in one of the top leagues in Europe.

"You look... good in that," I cough awkwardly because he really does and the first thought I have is to bury myself deep inside of him from behind while he's wearing only that. He eyes me in the mirror. "But...uh..."

"I won't post it. I'll never out you, Jordan."

"I'm not saying I want to hide you. Or myself. I don't give a fuck what people say about who I sleep with it's just..."

"I get it," Nico says softly and smiles. "It's still early days. And Marc would kill me. He would probably think it's one of my tantrums, that I'm... um, how do you say in English? Capricious? That I'm doing this just to spite my family."

"Like when you fucked his married best friend in his house?"

"That..."

"Are you still fucking that old man?" I think what I really wanted to say is I like you very, very much, Nico, and I hope you kind of feel the same about me and nobody else but my mouth didn't get the memo from my brain in time. There's still a big piece of puzzle that I'm missing from Nico's story, but I was too blinded by his nearness that I never asked what's the deal with his family and what's their relationship like—they seemed perfectly normal to me.

"Listen, I'm...He's not that old and I'm gonna- "

At that moment his phone rings and he closes his eyes in frustration. "De puta madre, ahora quien... I'm so sorry, I have to get this, it's Sofia, I promise, I'm not fucking anyone else and I'll explain everything."

My jealousy doesn't disappear, it only intensifies because Sofia is another person that I'm jealous of. Sort off. Their relationship is palatable. I can feel it even now with her being almost two thousand kilometres away from him. There's a tether between them and I've experienced that the very day I met them both, when I saw their interaction and their silent communication, the secrets that I will never be deserving of knowing.

And when Nico starts panicking after hearing her on the phone I know that she's always going to have priority in Nico's life. I don't understand what he's saying but his hands start shaking and he looks lost and scared. I'm thinking the worst but when he hangs up, he doesn't offer any explanation just that he has to go back to Spain as soon as possible. I try to calm him down but he's on the verge of tears and is packing his suitcase, forgetting our conversation, our three more days. Forgetting me. As he's buying his plane ticket for Madrid for that evening he doesn't even look at me.

"Fuck. Fuck. I shouldn't have ever come here," I hear him say in his jumble of words.

And it breaks my heart. I watch him leave the hotel room like he is taking something of mine away with him, but I don't say a thing. I let him go.