Page 91 of Polo Fever
‘I’mfine.’
Unable to keep still, he walks about, agitated, shaking out his hand and muttering in Spanish under his breath. I watch him, wondering what to say.
‘Basilio was out of line,’ I reason. ‘He was trying to—’
‘Why didn’t you tell me that you were thinking of moving to DQ? Why didn’t you tell me they’d offered you a position there?’ he asks gruffly, barely looking at me.
‘They haven’t! He’s screwing with you, Mateo. He’s drunk.’
‘But youhadtalked about it.’
‘No!’
‘But he offered you a job,’ he seethes, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘Again.’
‘Nothing formal. Mateo, trust me, you’re blowing this out of proportion. Basilio said that to hurt you. He’d literally just mentioned that if I was worried about my future at Maycourt, then maybe I could consider other stables like DQ which might have all-round positions. It was barely a conversation.’
‘You’re thinking of leaving Maycourt.’
‘I… I don’t know. I don’t want to, but I might have to. This was only meant to be temporary and Lady M never discussed anything further.’ I put a hand on my hip. ‘But this isn’t about me.’
‘Of course it’s about you,’ he contends, coming to a halt in front of me, his eyes flaring with anger and pain. ‘He won’t leave you alone! He knows how to hurt me and he doesn’t fucking hold back, does he? What was he saying to you?’
‘Nothing important.’
‘I saw him touching you. He was all over you.’
‘He was drunk,’ I repeat, exasperated.
‘Any chance to fuck with me, he’ll take it.’ He shakes his head dismally. ‘If it weren’t for him, we wouldn’t have argued this morning and I wouldn’t have lost my temper during our match today. I played right into his plan.’
I frown at him. ‘What?’
‘He knew what he was doing,’ he tells me eagerly, as though Basilio is some great evil mastermind and we’ve foiled his plotting together. ‘He knows that there are two ways he can fuck with my head.’ He counts them out on his fingers. ‘My mother and you. My only weaknesses.’ He throws his hands in the air. ‘And I let him. I fuckinglethim.’
He picks up his pacing and muttering in Spanish again. I watch him in silence for a few moments as he does so, my brain trying to get my thoughts into a sensible order, a task not helped by those delicious summer-in-a-glass cocktails I helped myself to earlier.
‘You think Basilio is the reason we argued?’ I say eventually.
‘Yes! It’s always him.’
‘We didn’t argue because of Basilio,’ I state, my brow creasing in confusion that he would have been labouring under this impression. ‘We argued because of us.’
He stops, lifting his head to look at me.
‘Is that how you really see me, Mateo?’ I ask calmly. ‘As a weakness?’
He sighs heavily.
‘Am I a problem for you?’ I continue, narrowing my eyes at him. ‘A threat that your enemies can prey on to hurt your career?’
‘That’s not what I…’
My stomach twists as he trails off.
‘I think it is what you meant,’ I say quietly, before taking a deep breath. ‘We didn’t argue because of anything Basilio said. We argued because you’re oblivious to me being angry at you for not coming to see me yesterday.’
‘I tried! How was I supposed to know that you wanted the opposite of what you said? I’m not a mind-reader! You told me you wanted to be alone!’
