Chapter 7

Two things happened in the same week.

Graham bought me a suit.

He brought it up Monday morning. I was at my desk and he came by with the outside coffee and leaned on the edge, our usual configuration, him and the corner of my desk, and said, "There's an investor meeting Thursday. Bigger than the dinner. More formal. What are you planning to wear?"

I looked down at myself. One of the button-downs from before; tie, khakis ... the same they bought me before. "This," I said, because I didn't have anything else and we both knew it. The implication of his question was that it wasn't enough.

He looked at the shirt. Looked at the tie. Not cruelly. Just the way a person who wears good suits looks at a person who doesn't. With clarity.

I began to calculate how many frozen burritos an actual suit would cost me. Then, he said: "Come with me at lunch."

My heart skipped ... Lunch! The first time he'd invited me.

He drove me to a store on Madison I'd never been inside, I'd just walked past it. Everyone walks past stores like that. The windows had one jacket on display, no price tag, which tells you everything you need to know: It's either free, or it's stupidly expensive. And we all know it wasn't free.

Inside, the store smelled like good fabric and leather and the kind of air freshener that doesn't smell like air freshener, like they had some sort of wood and leather oil in the back they subtley pump through the HVAC. The associate – not salesperson, associate – was a tall woman with short hair and a measuring tape around her neck, and she said with a nod, "Graham. Good to see you."

Graham. First name. Because of course.

"He needs a suit," Graham said, gesturing at me. "Something that fits him properly."

"I can't afford this," I said, quietly, hoping the associate didn't hear. I'd lost count after my head got up to two months' worth of frozen burritos.

"Business expense. The firm needs you presentable for client-facing events." He said it in the voice he'd used to close deals at the dinner, the one that didn't invite discussion. I didn't discuss it, I just gulped, and looked at the associate.

I tried on three suits. The associate pulled them from racks with a confidence that suggested she could size a person from across the room, which she probably could. The first was charcoal and too boxy. The second was navy and fine – I love blue. The third was dark gray, almost the same shade as the charcoal but with something different in the cut ... slimmer, more deliberate, and when I put it on and the associate pinned the shoulders and the waist and I looked in the mirror, I saw someone I didn't recognize. Someone who could sit at a table with Catherine and the gold-cufflink guy and not be the youngest, poorest person in the room.

I almost felt like I should be singing "The Rain in Spain," and my heart fluttered, skipping ahead to whether I'd be singing "I Could Have Danced All Night."

Graham was behind me. I could see him in the mirror. He was sitting in a leather chair the store had for this purpose, for men who brought other people to be dressed, and he was watching me in the mirror. Not the suit. Me. My reflection. His legs were crossed and his arm was along the armrest and there was nothing casual about how still he was. He was absorbing this. The way I looked. What he'd done to me.

I was looking at his reflection looking at mine and for a few seconds nobody spoke. He stood. And he walked over to me and stood not right behind me, but slightly to the side. Both hands landed on my shoulders, and his face betrayed nothing while my knees struggled to stay firm.

"This one," he said. Quiet. Like he was saying something else.

The associate smiled. She knew. I don't know how but she knew. Something about the way she looked between us when she brought the shirts, a flick of the eyes that was knowing without being judgmental. She'd dressed men in this store before, for the men sitting in that chair, and she recognized the arrangement.

We got the suit, two shirts, a tie. Real silk. The associate boxed everything. The total was on a screen I didn't look at because I didn't want to know. Graham paid with a card and signed something and we left with the bags and I carried them to the Audi and I didn't know what I felt. Grateful. Uncomfortable. Owned? Something about being chosen and fitted and watched in a mirror by a man whose opinion of how I looked mattered to me more than my own.

Thursday came. The meeting.

I changed in the office bathroom. I hung my shirt on the hook on the back of the stall door and put on the new suit piece by piece. But when I was taking things out, I saw a few more items. Graham must've slipped them to the associate when I was looking away: Three silk underwear. One boxers, one briefs, and one ... did that store even sell those? I looked again. Was it really a thong? He must've slipped it in the bag from somewhere else. And if he did, what did that mean?

I put on the boxers, the pants, then the shirt. The shirt was white and crisp and fit my shoulders exactly. The jacket. I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror under the fluorescent lights, and even with bad lighting I looked different. I looked like someone who worked here. I looked like someone Graham would want next to him at the office, for business work.

And without thinking, my eyes glanced down to the bag, and I rearranged things so my old clothes were on top ... I looked like someone Graham would want next to him in bed. That had to be it. This wasn't me spiraling, this was clear as day, clear as the package that tiny piece of fabric was in.

That thought landed and I let it sit there.

I was done pretending it wasn't what this was.

When I came out, Graham was in the hallway. He was heading toward the conference room and he stopped. Full stop. Looked at me. His eyes went from my face down to the suit and back up and something crossed his face that he didn't hide fast enough. Want. That's what it was. I'd been studying this man for weeks and I knew his expressions like I knew the mitten stain and the bus schedule and the smell of his office. That was want.

"Come here," he said.

I went to him. Fourteen steps down the hallway.

He reached for my tie. His hands were at my throat ... no, not on my throat, at the knot of the tie, adjusting. Pulling the silk through to straighten it. His fingers were careful and specific. He knew how to do this. He'd done this for himself 10,000 times, every morning, tie and collar and knot, but he was doing it for me now, standing in the hallway of his firm with the conference room twenty feet away and people inside waiting.

He smoothed the collar. His fingertips moved from the tie to the collar and then they were on my neck. On the skin below my ear. Again. Not light this time. Deliberate. His thumb found the same spot it had found behind my desk that night, the nape, and pressed. His other fingers were on the side of my throat and I could feel my pulse against his hand and he could feel it too. There was no way he couldn't feel it racing.

"You clean up well," he said. Low. Just for me. His eyes were on my mouth again, the same way they'd been in the Morrison doorway, except this time he wasn't checking if I was hurt. He was looking because he wanted to look. And I was letting him because I wanted to be looked at.

My body froze, while my brain sung. "I'll never know what made it so exciting / Why all at once my heart took flight."

It wasn't the way I'd frozen before, not the headlights freeze. This was different. This was standing completely still because if I moved I was going to close the tiny gap between us and kiss him in the hallway of his firm and I knew that and he knew that I knew that he knew that ... and his hand was on my neck and neither of us was pretending this was about the tie.

He read it. Whatever he saw on my face – the want, the fear, the fact that I was vibrating in place with the effort of not moving – he read it. And after a second his hand dropped. He stepped back. His expression reset to professional so smoothly it was like a door closing. Like, he'd had practice?

"There," he said. "Let's go. They're waiting."

He walked toward the conference room. I stood in the hallway for another second. Then I followed. Because what else was there? What else is there when a man touches your neck and you stand there wanting him so badly your teeth ache and then he walks away and you're in a hallway in a suit he bought you and your skin is still burning where his fingers were.

I don't remember the meeting. I sat in a chair. I held a pen. I had a legal pad, and I'm sure notes were taken. But all I had was the ghost of his fingers and the look on his face before he'd covered it and the certain, undeniable knowledge that Graham Mercer wanted me the same way I wanted him, and we were both standing at the edge of something and neither of us had stepped off yet.

That was the first thing.

The second thing was Jett.

I'd noticed him around since the first day. The jaw, the haircut, the shoes. He worked in project coordination and he was good at it, from what I could tell. People treated him with the casual respect you give someone who's competent and knows it. We'd been nodding at each other in the kitchen for weeks. Polite. Nothing.

But after the tie, I caught him watching. Not me directly. The space between me and Graham. Watching. His face was doing something complicated when he looked at Graham's office, and then at me, and then back. I couldn't read it. I filed it under "office politics" and moved on. Above my paygrade.

He was in the kitchen when I went for water. I was still in the suit. Probably looked different enough from my normal self that it was noticeable. To people who notice clothes. He was leaning against the counter with a protein shake in a branded cup from some place that probably charged $12 for blended kale with grass clippings.

"Nice suit," he said. "That's new."

"Yeah."

"Graham pick that out for you?"

Something was under the words. I couldn't identify it exactly. In hindsight, it was like a hook in the water. A thing that was shaped like a question but was actually a statement.

"It's for the meeting," I said.

"Sure." He smiled. But it wasn't really a smile. It had the shape of one, the muscles doing the right thing, but none of the temperature. Like a photograph of a smile instead of the real thing. "Graham's very generous with his favorites."

He pushed off the counter and walked out.

It was one sentence. But that one sentence had shattered something inside.

I stood in the kitchen holding a paper cup of water. Something cold and heavy settled in my stomach. I didn't know what had just happened. Not specifically. But I knew the feeling of being warned, and I knew the feeling of someone who was angry about something they couldn't control, and Jett was both of those things.

I went back to my desk. I took off the jacket and loosened the tie, they were strangling.

I didn't look at Graham's office.

For the first time in weeks, I didn't look.

After Practice — Chapter 7: Room 214

I'm going to slow down here; I need to. Because I've been telling this at the pace it happened, which was fast, a whole season compressed into weeks compressed into one hotel room with the door closed, and now I need to get it right. Or as right as I can, ten years later, with the details worn smooth from replaying them.

Liam took off his shoes. Leaned down, pulled them off, and set them by the bed. (See? Commas help slow the pace.) Sneakers that were still damp from the pool deck – why he had been wearing them? I don't know. He looked at them for a second. Then he looked at me. Like, when he was pulling me or holding me at the water, the wet shoes now reminded him of me, and us touching.

I was standing by the door. Just mere feet away. There was one bed, no excuse. The team was gone, and the hallway was getting quieter as they left.

It was just us.

We'd chosen it.

He turned on the TV. Some channel. Then muted it. The screen flickered blue and the light moved across his face and the silence had the TV in it now, which made it less heavy. A visual distraction in case it was needed. For ... whatever reason.

"Kai," he said.

"Yeah." I think my voice choked. Maybe it just did in my head, or in my memory.

"I don't ..." He stopped. Started again.

"I've been trying not to ..." Stopped again. Ran his hand through his smooth hair.

His hand stayed on the back of his neck, like he was holding himself together from behind, and all I could hear was my heart ind my blood and my ears were aching for anything else that emitted from his soft lips.

"Whatever," he said. "I don't know what this is."

My heart sank.

And I recognized what he said. Not the words: The shape.

The way he couldn't finish a sentence. I recognized it because I'd been doing the same thing all season, just in my own neurotic way. Filing, labeling, covering, calling things by the wrong name because the right name was too heavy.

"Yeah," I said. "Me either." I was a shitty liar. I knew exactly what this was because I'd been cataloging it forever, trying to rationalize it away and failing utterly.

He was looking at his hands. The hands that had been on my shoulder, my hip, my ankle, my inner thigh, and my back in the water. They were in his lap, folded, knuckles white. His lap ...

"Come here?" It was a question, and for one of the first times I'd known him, his voice quivered. The captain wasn't in control of himself because he couldn't be. If he was in control, maybe he wouldn't do what needed to be said, or say what needed to be done. Because everything was mixed up.

I don't remember crossing to the bed. I remember being by the door, and then I remember being on the bed next to him, touching. The part in between is just gone, in a moment. My body made the decision before my brain caught up.

Same position as Jessup's room the night before except no team, no Reeves, no joke. Just us. Just the muted TV making the room blue. Standby. Like we had been. Like I was now: On standby, waiting for him.

Liam turned toward me. His knee pressed into my thigh. He was close. Closer than the truck. Closer than the pool. Closer than the shaving. Because this time I knew that it wasn't just physical.

He put his hand on my face.

I forced my eyes to stay open.

His palm on my jaw. His fingers along my cheek. His thumb near my ear. The hand that had been on my shoulder in chapter one and on my hip during exchange practice and on every part of me that the sport allowed. The hand that helped spot me when he wore no underwear.

Now the hand was on my face, and there was no sport. No relay. No coaching. Just his hand on my face because he wanted it there.

And I thought: So this is what all of that was.

Every shoulder touch. Every car ride. Every text at 11 PM. Every Thursday after practice. Every time he said my name when he didn't need to. Every time he stood too close. Every time he didn't move. All of it, the whole season, it was this. His hand on my face in a hotel room. It was always going to be this.

He leaned in. I leaned in. I don't know who closed the last breath, and it doesn't matter.

His mouth. I'm not going to describe it the way I'd describe a race. Not going to time it or split it. I'm going to tell you it was warm and soft. His hand was on my face and my hand was on his chest and I could feel his heart under my palm: fast, faster than it should've been for someone sitting still. And I was shaking, shivering in the heat. My hands were shaking, my breath was shaking, and I was kissing a guy for the first time in my life, and it was Liam, and it was terrifying and it was the best thing that had ever happened to me. And I let my eyes close for it. For the eternity and the infinity that it lasted, I wanted no sensation other than his touch.

When it ended – because all good things do – I didn't open my eyes. I kept them closed. Felt his forehead against mine. His breath on my mouth. His own shaking vibrating through me.

That was a moment. It was a good one – amazing one. Life is made of moments. And I was fortunate: That night, there were many, many moments. Shimmering, lovely, and happy.

We didn't do everything. I want to be clear about that: Not that night. Not yet. What we did was stay close. We kissed more. I knew his body with my eyes, and I learned parts of his body with my fingertips. And my tongue. He did the same.

I know what you're probably thinking: We fucked like bunnies.

We didn't.

Seriously.

I will say that we released tension that had been building the entire time, and it was so much better than being alone. So much better while kissing a guy. So much better when touching and being close.

At some point we lay down, side by side, facing each other, a wad of tissues on the floor, his arm over my waist, my hand on his arm. We existed together. That's the only word. The chase of the orgasm wasn't what this was about. Or it was, maybe a little, but there was something bigger happening and we both knew it.

He was warm. I'd known that all season, through water and pool decks and car seats. But this was different. His warmth without anything between us. His skin and mine and the sheet and the blue TV light and his breathing and mine.

We didn't talk much. At one point he said my name, quiet, close. And I said "yeah," and he said "nothing, just ..." and didn't finish. I didn't need him to.

I don't know how long. I wasn't counting anymore.

Then, his one finger twirling my black hair, propped up on one arm and looking into my eyes, his other hand just resting on my chest: "The team's gonna be back soon."

Practical. Logistics. A senior making a reasonable observation about time. And also: we have to stop. This can't be visible. Tomorrow we drive home. He's graduating, I'm a junior, and whatever this is doesn't have a container yet and we can't build one tonight.

I sat up. He sat up. I moved to the edge of the bed; I didn't want to. The distance came back. I hated every inch of it.

"So," I said. And I laughed. Half real, half the cover story reassembling. "That happened."

Liam laughed. The quiet one. Breath through his nose, corner of his mouth. The one that belonged to moments beyond filing.

"Yeah. That happened."

As Cinderella's Prince claims: "Any moment – big or small – is a moment, after all." And fuck ... "Seize the moment, skies may fall any moment."

And we had. And now, that moment was over. Because it had to be.

I turned the TV volume on. We sat on the bed and didn't talk about what we'd done. We ddin't look at each other and I felt every atom of space between us.

The team came back around eleven. Loud in the hallway. Jessup opened the door without knocking. "You missed the pizza. It was garbage."

I had just flushed the tissues and was coming out of the bathroom.

"We ordered room service," Liam said.

A lie. We hadn't ordered anything. We'd been lying on a bed with our foreheads together and his hand on my face and now he was lying about room service to Jessup like it was nothing. And the lie was almost the most intimate thing he'd done all season. More than the hand on my face. More than the kiss. Because the kiss was for us. The lie was for everyone else. It meant he thought what happened was worth protecting.

"Smart," Jessup said. "Night, guys."

"Night." They left.

I turned off my lamp. Liam turned off his. Dark.

"Night, Kai."

"Night, Liam."

I didn't sleep for a long time. But for the first time all season, it wasn't because I was confused.

Morning. We didn't talk about it.

We packed our bags, went to breakfast with the team. Liam sat across from me, and said "pass the syrup," and I passed the syrup, and that was the most we acknowledged of Room 214. My fingers didn't even touch his, I pressed against the syrup on the table and just pushed it until he could reach.

The bus left at ten. Back seats. Same as always. Liam took the window, I took the aisle. Half the team was asleep before we hit the highway. Kessler was out cold two rows up, mouth open, which someone was definately going to post to the group chat.

We talked. About the meet. Our relay split. How Kessler had dropped a full second. We talked about swimming because swimming was the language we'd built everything on and we were good at it.

We did not talk about last night. The conversation moved around it the way water moves around something heavy at the bottom of a pool. You could see the current bending. But the thing itself stayed where it was.

At some point Liam said, "You're gonna have a good senior year."

"Maybe."

"Not 'maybe.' You dropped time at conference. If you train through summer you could go sub-forty-nine."

"It'll be weird without you."

The words came out before I could edit them. "Without you." Specific. Personal. The kind of thing I would have filed two days ago and I said it flat, looking out the window, because I was tired of editing. Not brave. Just tired, and everyone nearby wasn't listening or were asleep.

Liam was quiet. Then: "I'll come back for your meets."

"You don't have to."

"Someone's gotta make sure you don't false start at regionals."

I smiled. He wasn't looking at me. Same highway, same trees. But the words landed where he meant them: "I'll come back."

"You better."

Loaded words. The joke: yeah right, like you'll drive two hours for a high school meet. The plea: please come back, please don't let this end. And the honest thing, the thing I'd been building toward all season: you better, because whatever happened in that room isn't something I can go back from, and if you disappear into college and pretend this was a conference weekend thing I will lose my mind.

I said "you better" and it carried all of it and I don't know how much he heard.

He nodded. Still looking out the window.

The bus pulled into the school lot around noon. The team scattered. Parents' cars waiting. Season over.

Liam grabbed his bag. We were the last two off. He stopped in the parking lot. Turned to me.

"Good season. Kai."

The way he said my name. The way he'd said it all season. On the deck and in the truck and in the dark and on the mat and in the pool and in the hotel room with his hand on my face. I knew what it meant now. I knew what it had always meant. I'd always known what it always meant.

He put his hand on my shoulder. Same shoulder. Same hand. Same gesture from the pool deck the day I earned the anchor spot. I was just standing in a parking lot with Liam's hand on my shoulder and knowing exactly what it meant.

"See you around," he said.

"Yeah."

He walked to his truck. Opened the door, tossed his bag. Before he got in he looked back. Quick. Over his shoulder. It might have been nothing; a guy checking behind him before getting in his truck.

It wasn't nothing.

I got in my car. Same chlorine towel in the back. I put my hands on the steering wheel and sat there. The parking lot was almost empty. Liam's truck pulled out and turned left and the taillights got smaller and he was gone.

I sat there for a while. I didn't turn on the car. I just sat in it and felt the season settle. All of it. The tryouts and the Thursdays and the weight room and the shaving and the pool and the relay and the room. Heavy and warm in my chest. I didn't file any of it. I just let it be there.

So yeah. That's conference. That's what happened. Or some version of it; you know how memory works. And if you're thinking that's the end, it wasn't. Not even close. That was barely the beginning.

The summer after, Liam was home from college for three weeks. The pool was open late and there was no team and no coach and no relay and no excuse for any of it. But that's a different story. Or the next chapter of this one. I haven't decided yet.

But for now, that's the end of this story.

Names and places may be changed. I know that some of you would really have wanted more. This is my first multi-chapter story to completion, and I wanted to tell something personal. Sometimes real life high school isn't all barely-legal orgies and raunchy sex. Sometimes it's just about two guys trying to figure things out, making a connection, and realizing that they're accepted by the other person for who they are. Sometimes, "becoming a man" – the first time – really can be special. No leprechauns, no handcuffs, no orgy, no cheesy music ... just special. And that's erotic.

Chapter 6

The Morrison building was the near-miss.

Graham took me to the site on a Tuesday afternoon, second week of the real work he'd been giving me. Different project, different building. The Morrison was downtown, four stories, mid-renovation. Concrete floors with cracks. Exposed wiring hanging from the ceiling in bundles. Plastic sheeting over the window frames where the new glass hadn't gone in yet. The contractors were gone for the day, but their stuff was everywhere. Sawhorses, a table saw with the cord unplugged, hard hats on a shelf by the door. Someone's Gatorade bottle on a windowsill.

"This one's further along than Belmont," Graham said. He was walking ahead through the ground floor. "We start showing the retail spaces next month. I want you to understand the layout so you can talk about it if someone asks."

If someone asks. Like I was going to be part of this. Three weeks ago I was scanning invoices and now he was talking about me like a person who would explain buildings to investors. I just nodded. And wondered why the contractors didn't clean up better.

The first floor was coming together. You could see where the retail spaces would be, the framing was up, electrical roughed in, some units with pluming. He walked me through, pointing at things, explaining the tenant mix. A bakery here. Co-working space here. Something about square footage and lease rates that I half-understood and 100% faked.

At one point he stopped in the middle of a future storefront and turned to face me. The late-afternoon light was coming through the plastic sheeting in this hazy, orange glow and he stood in the middle of it. He looked at me like he was about to say something important. I stopped walking.

"What?" I said.

"You've got drywall dust in your hair." He reached out and brushed it. His fingers went through the hair above my ear, slowly. His thumb traced down to my temple. His hand lingered. Not long. But he was looking at me the way he'd looked at me at the Belmont warehouse, in the column of light through the roof, and his thumb was on my temple and I could feel his fingerprints, like it was actually possible to feel his finger prints on my skin.

"Got it." He dropped his hand. Kept walking.

I followed him. I always followed him. I almost felt like his puppy. But it was more than that. And I'd done a bit of research, and I knew what being his "pup" would actually entail.

We went to the second floor. More framing. The residential units were taking shape, and you could see the bones of the apartments through the studs. Graham was talking about ceiling heights and I was following him through a doorway that was just a frame, no door, no drywall on either side yet, and something fell.

I don't know exactly what it was. A sheet of drywall that had been leaning against the wall, I think, or a section of temporary framing that wasn't braced properly. I heard the sound first. A cracking, scraping groan. And then Graham moved.

His arm went around my waist. He pulled me forward and into him, away from whatever was falling behind me, and I was against his chest with his arm across my stomach and the crash happened behind us and dust went up and ...

It was quiet.

Just quiet. And his arm around me.

"You okay?" Right at my ear. Close enough that I could feel the words vibrate through his chest into my back before my ears understood them. I didn't look around, my eyes pressed closed, and I felt muscles and warmth behind me.

"Yeah," I said. "I'm fine."

He didn't let go.

I could feel his chest against my back. The rise and fall of it. He was breathing a little harder than normal, but not much. Not panicked. Just the adrenaline of a fast reaction. I was breathing harder than that. His arm was solid across my stomach, heavy, his hand flat against my side with his fingers spread. I could feel each one, five distinct points of heat through the dress shirt we'd bought last week. His belt buckle was against my lower back, and his thigh was against the back of mine and he was warm everywhere.

He turned me around. Not fast. His hands went to my waist, both of them, and he turned me to face him. And we were standing in a doorway with dust settling around us and the afternoon light coming through the plastic on the windows and his hands were on my waist and our faces were close.

Close. Like, I could see things I'd never been near enough to see. The exact pattern of lines around his eyes, fine ones that fanned outward. Silver in his cheeks. A scar on his jaw, thin and white, maybe an inch long. His mouth. I'd been trying not to look at his mouth for weeks. I was looking at it now.

He looked at mine.

I know because I saw it happen. His eyes moved. From my eyes, down. Landed on my mouth. Stayed there. And something in my stomach dropped and my skin went tight everywhere at once and I stopped breathing. Just stopped. Him looking at my mouth with his hands on my waist in a dusty half-built apartment with nobody around and nothing between us. Except cloth.

I'd like to say something happened. I really would. It was like every little bit had been leading up to this.

So, I waited for it. I wanted it. Every part of me was leaning toward it, this invisible gravity pulling me forward, and I could see him feeling the same pull. His grip tightened on my waist, the smallest bit you'd never see but you feel. His jaw flexed. He was deciding.

Then he stepped back. Hands off. He looked at the fallen drywall. "I need to talk to the site manager about securing materials. That's a liability."

His voice was normal. Professional. Already moved on. He walked into the next room and I stood in the doorway for a second, and then I followed him because what else was I going to do? Stand there? Stand there where he almost kissed me ... but didn't.

He walked me through three more rooms. He talked about finishes and bathroom layouts and something about the plumbing that I'm sure was important. I didn't hear a word. Not one. My brain was still in the doorway. My body was still pressed against his chest. His hands were still on my waist and his eyes were still on my mouth and every cell in my body was still vibrating with his heat.

In the stairwell going down, he was ahead of me. He looked back over his shoulder.

"You sure you're okay?"

"Yeah. Fine."

He studied me. I don't know what he saw but he saw something. "You'd tell me." Not a question. "If anything made you uncomfortable. You'd tell me."

I held his gaze. The stairwell was dim and the dust was still on both of us. His face was careful and searching, and this was the closest he'd come to acknowledging what had just happened. What had almost happened.

"I'd tell you," I said.

He nodded once. Turned. Kept walking.

The drive back was quiet. He put the jazz on. I looked out the window. The city went past and I watched it without seeing it. My reflection in the car window looked the same as always and that felt wrong. Like the outside should match the inside, which was rearranged.

At the office he said, "Go home early. You've had enough excitement." Light. Easy. Like he thought I didn't want more excitement. For all the questioning I'd been doing of myself and what it meant to be near him and how it felt, when it almost seemed to happen, it didn't.

Maybe nothing had happened. Maybe a piece of drywall fell and he grabbed me and checked if I was okay and that was it. Reflex. Professional concern.

I went home. Sat on my mattress. Did the thing I always do. Built the explanations. He grabbed me because something was falling. Instinct. Anyone would do that.

He held on because he was making sure I was okay. Normal.

He turned me around to check my face. Reasonable.

He looked at my mouth because I was talking, or because there was dust on my lip, or, because ...

Because.

The explanations ran out where they always run out: The because that doesn't have an end. He looked at my mouth "because." He held on "because." He keeps me late "because." He said let's keep him "because."

I lay on my mattress in the dark. The ceiling with the water stain. The faint traffic sound from the street above my window.

I didn't build any more explanations. I was tired of building them. They didn't hold up anyway. They were like the temporary framing in the Morrison building, propped against a wall, not secured, and the slightest pressure knocked them over.

I reached down. Closed my eyes. And I didn't pretend. I didn't try to steer my brain toward something else, some video, some memory of Sarah in her parents' basement that I'd been using like a shield for years. I let it go where it had been trying to go for weeks. Where my "research" on pornhub had taken me and what might happen if ...

Graham. His arm around my waist. His hand on my side, fingers spread. Being pulled against him, his chest against my back. His breath on my neck saying "you okay?" His hands turning me around. His eyes moving from mine down to my mouth. And then what would have happened if he hadn't stepped back. If he'd leaned in instead of pulling away. His mouth on mine in that dusty doorway. His hands tightening on my waist. Pulling me closer instead of letting go. His hand going to the back of my neck the way it had in his office, that thumb, except this time there was no spredsheet and no excuse and his mouth was on mine and his body was against mine and I was hard, I was so hard it hurt, and I didn't stop, I didn't redirect, I just let it happen.

I grasped my cock as I let him feel my neck, as I let him kiss me, let him nibble down as he took off my tie that his company had bought me, unbuttoned my shirt that his company had bought me, and kissed down my chest as he undid the belt and the pants and everything else. I moaned as I felt like I could feel his breath on me and his hands on my dick and his mouth wrapped around my shaft. I pinched my nipple with my free hand as I saw what he was doing to me, as he used one hand to play with me while the other stripped off his own shirt, as his thick silver chest was revealed and I pressed my hands against his hard muscles and just when I thought he was going to thrust and breach me ...

I came. Hard. Harder than the night after the dinner, harder than anything in months. My whole body seized and I gripped the mattress with my free hand and my back arched and I made a sound into the dark of my basement room that I'd never made before and I just lay there afterward. Breathing. Wet. Hand still on myself. Staring at the ceiling as cum dried on my chest and my lip and I could smell my seed and I didn't care and I wondered if Graham's smelled the same, or if his cum smelled like him.

And I thought, clearly, without any of the usual static or hedging or explanation-building: I want him. I want Graham Mercer. Not in some abstract, theoretical, I-find-him-attractive way that I could file under "normal admiration" or "professional respect" or whatever. I want him the way you want someone. The real way. The physical, specific, keep-me-up-at-night way. The way I have never, in twenty years of being alive, wanted anyone. Not Sarah. Not any girl. Not anyone. Just him.

And then, following close behind, quieter but heavier: what does that make me?

I didn't have an answer. I lay there in the dark and the question sat on my chest like a physical weight in the cool, drying cum and I didn't have an answer. The question was enough.

I turned my head and looked at the mitten stain on the ceiling. It looked different in the dark. Less like a mitten. More like a hand, reaching.

I closed my eyes and I could still feel his thumb on my temple where he'd brushed the dust from my hair.

I didn't sleep for a long time.

After Practice — Chapter 6: The Relay

After dinner, the team piled into Jessup's room. Fourteen guys, room for two ... guys on the beds, on the floor, leaning against the wall. Someone had music on their phone, something with too much bass because it hurt my head. Someone else had a bag of Doritos the size of a small child, probably from Costco. The AC was rattling and the room smelled like chlorine and Axe body spray and whatever Jessup had spilled on the carpet earlier, which he said was Gatorade but looked suspicous and didn't smell like electrolytes. Which, I'm sure have a smell?

Liam was on one of the beds, his back against the headboard. I sat next to him. Shoulders touching. Fourteen guys in a room with two beds, everyone crammed together. Proximity, not choice. Another two guys were at the headboard, shoulders also touching; one was half off the bed though. Totally straight, all of us. Just us guys.

Except I'd chosen where I sat. And his arm was warm against mine. And after the warm-down pool and dinner and his knee against mine for an hour, sitting next to him felt like a continuation of something that had started underwater. Ten years later, I still remember thinking that, and my dirty mind also thought "and I really want your swimmers." I mean, I hadn't even really done anything with a guy yet, and that's what I was thinking.

And then my heart stopped. Because Reeves said it and I nearly died.

Reeves was a junior – my year – backstroke, loud in the way guys who aren't quite good enough to be confident are loud. Never really liked him, he seemed too performative. He looked up at us on the bed and said, "You two need a room? Oh wait, you already have one."

Normal laughter. Team laughter. The same joke someone could make about any pair. It meant nothing to Reeves. He was already moving on.

But I stopped breathing. And Liam moved.

An inch. Maybe two. His shoulder pulled away from mine and the air where his warmth had been felt like a wound. I felt the absence the way you feel a tooth that's been pulled. He laughed, late, the sound coming uncomfortably after everyone else's, and then said something deflecting, "Kai snores, he should be paying me" or whatever, and the room moved on. (I don't snore. Really. I dare any of you to come sleep with me and tell me I snore. Oh, wait ...)

But I didn't hear Liam because I heard the blood in my ears. I was performing a face and my ears were ringing and the two inches between us had turned into a wall.

The rest of the night Liam talked to other people. Jessup. Kessler. Reeves, for fuck's sake. Captain normal. He didn't look at me. Not once, even when he was facing me. And I sat on the bed and watched him not look at me. Devastated. I tried to figure out if two inches of distance could actually hurt this much or if I was being insane.

Finally, back in our room. Liam went straight to bed. I went gay to bed, even if I didn't have the thought.

"Night." One word from him. No dark-room voice. No "I keep thinking about."

He turned on his side facing the wall and the silence between us was the wrong kind. Not the warm silence from last night. The cold kind. The kind that has a wall in it.

I lay there and I listened to him breathe and I thought about what scared me. Not that Liam didn't feel it. The warm-down pool, his knee at dinner, every engineered car ride ... that wasn't nothing. I knew that. What scared me was that he could feel it and choose to stop. That a joke from fucking Reeves could make him decide it wasn't worth the risk. That he could weigh what was happening between us against his reputation, against Bri, against being normal, and "normal" could win, which meant I – we – lost. He could just turn toward the wall and switch it off.

That was the worst part. Not that it might be in my head. That it was real and he might decide to pretend it wasn't.

I slept eventually. I must have.

Because at some point I woke up.

Morning. Liam was already up, dressed, scrolling his phone. Team warm-up pants, conference shirt. "Morning. Breakfast in 20." Captain voice. Polite. The daytime settings.

I smiled and the smile was a cover story. We went to breakfast and he sat across from me and I ate scrambled eggs and thought about the taste of nothing (honestly: not hard, those eggs were probably from a powder).

Finals warm-up was at 4 PM. The relay was 7:15. I stretched on the deck and I knew where Liam was every second because my body was a tracking device for him and it didn't have an "off" switch, no matter how much I begged.

Liam found me before the relay. I was behind the blocks, stretching my ankles.

"Kai."

Not "hey." Not "you ready." My name. In the real voice. The one from the warm-down pool.

I looked up.

His face was doing the thing I recognized. Not the captain face. The face from when he'd been kneeling between my legs and looked up. The one he couldn't fake because it came from somewhere he didn't control.

"Let's go sub three-thirty," he said.

He held out his fist. I bumped it. Our knuckles stayed. One second. Two. Longer than a fist bump. Long enough that it was a bridge. Him saying: "I'm here. Last night was ... I don't know. But I'm here." At least, that's what my brain immediately said it was saying without him saying because fuck my spiraling.

"Sub three-thirty," I said.

He nodded. Dropped his fist. Walked away. And the container that Reeves had sealed shut cracked open again.

Finals night. Loud. The scoreboard lit up, the crowd in the stands. 200 medley relay, event 14.

Jessup led off backstroke. Liam was second, fly. Kessler breaststroke. Me, anchor, freestyle. Lane 4. Seeded first.

I watched Liam swim the fly.

I know I was supposed to be tracking splits, watching our position, doing the ten things an anchor does while waiting. I wasn't doing any of them. I was watching Liam swim. His whole body moving in a wave, shoulders breaking the surface, arms sweeping forward, lean muscles stretching his skin in ways I wished he'd stretch me. I'd watched him swim fly a hundred times and every reason I'd ever given myself for watching was bullshit ... I knew it now and I didn't care. He was an artist. You spend an entire season constructing reasons to stare at someone and eventually the reasons run out and you're just ... staring.

He touched the wall. His split was 24.8, which meant we were leading. He hauled himself out and stood on the deck dripping and I could feel him watching me. I didn't look up. I didn't need to. I knew exactly where he was.

Kessler dove. Breaststroke. I stepped up on the block. My feet found the grip. I curled my toes over the edge and got into the stance Liam had fixed, the one with the dropped hips. His adjustment. His hand on my hip, weeks ago, just us. I could feel its ghost.

I went.

The exchange was 0.08. I felt it click. Sub-fifty, I knew by the third turn. My body doing what it was built to do and my mind empty the way it gets during a race when everything fires and there's nothing except the next stroke, the next breath, the next wall.

Still, I could somehow hear Liam screaming from the deck. His voice ... my ears somehow picked it out in the crowd, in the deafening silence that my brain imposed on me when I swam.

It wasn't words. Just sound. His voice cutting through the crowd, raw, open, a sound I'd never heard from him. Liam didn't yell. Liam was controlled. And here he was screaming while I swam the last 25. I swear I swam faster because of it.

I touched the wall.

Came up gasping, grabbed the lane line. Didn't look at the scoreboard. Looked at the deck.

Liam was there. Right there, leaning down. He grabbed my shoulders and pulled me up, his muscles flexing and stretching his skin again. Halfway out of the water, my chest against his chest, his hands on my back, both of us wet and breathing hard and his face was right there, inches from mine. I wanted to kiss him. Right there, in front of everyone.

I didn't. But I wanted to. And that was the first time I'd let myself think it that clearly.

His arms were around me and mine were around him and I could feel his heartbeat against my chest, or maybe that was mine; I couldn't tell where my body ended and his started. I just felt warmth, and pressure. And I can still close my eyes today and think back to that moment, and remember what it felt like.

His mouth was moving, saying something I couldn't hear over the crowd, and his eyes were on mine. Nothing about this was ambiguous. Nothing.

Then the team was there. Guys jumping in. Kessler cannonballing. Celebration chaos. But under the water, in the mess of legs and arms, Liam's hand found my hip. Deliberate. Specific. His fingers curving around toward my back, the team right there, Jessup two feet away, and Liam's hand on my hip under the surface where nobody could see.

It stayed.

Back at the hotel, all in one room again ... our room. The team was going out. Pizza. Someone said ice cream. Swimmer calories. Liam was on his bed, still in warm-ups.

"I'm tired," he said. To the room. To Jessup, to Kessler. Normal. "Think I'm gonna crash."

Then he looked at me.

The warm-down pool look. The shaving-bench look. The one that came from underneath everything he showed the world.

"You going? Or, are you staying, Kai?"

Captain voice and real voice at the same time. Both registers layered. Anyone listening would hear a senior asking his relay partner a casual question. I heard everything underneath it.

"Yeah," I said. "I'm pretty beat."

The team left. One by one, then in groups. Jessup clapped Liam on the shoulder on the way out. "Rest up, old man." The door closed behind the last person.

The room was quiet.

Liam was sitting on the bed. Our bed. I was standing by the door. And the silence was different from every other silence, because this one was chosen. We'd chosen this. We'd stayed behind on purpose. And whatever was about to happen in this room with one bed and a closed door and no team and no excuse, I was not going to file it. I was not going to build a container.

Whatever this was, I was going to let it be what it was. No spiraling. Just reality. Just the moment.

The Boss's Door: Always Open — Chapter 5

The client dinner was a Friday, four weeks in. I asked Dina, she told me that Mr. Mercer had extended me and I didn't have an end date. I'd be lying if I said my heart didn't skip a beat, or that my brain was already picking out the more expensive ramen to try.

Back to the client dinner ... Graham told me that morning. He was in his doorway again, leaning against the frame with one hand up near the top, which stretched his shirt across his chest in a way I noticed and then un-noticed immediately. "I have a dinner tonight with the investors on the Morrison project. You're coming."

"Me?"

"You." He looked at me. At my Goodwill button-down, which I'd been rotating with one other shirt, a blue one from the same Goodwill trip that had a small stain near the hem I kept hoping nobody saw. His eyes went down and up. Quick. The same once-over from my first day, except now I recognized it. "Wear something decent." He stared into my eyes; I had no idea what he was doing. Then, "Here." He dug out his wallet and handed me a bill. I'd never seen Franklin on something in real life, and he didn't even wait for me to thank him, he just went back into his office.

I spent my lunch break at a Ross Dress for Less on Third Street. I had $9.99 plus tax in my budget for a tie, which at Ross gave me options ranging from ugly to uglier. I found one that was dark blue with a pattern that could have been tiny diamonds or could have been printing errors. It was silk or silk-adjacent. I bought it; I wanted to show Graham I respected the money and him. I skipped lunch, which meant I'd be running on the PB&J from that morning until whatever the restaurant served.

When I got back, he was in the elevator, too, and I handed him the change. He looked at what I bought. Didn't say anything. When we got to our floor, he put his hand on my shoulder and my heart fluttered; he led me to Dina. "Take the company card, and take Drew to get some decent clothes for the client dinner tonight, please." She looked from him to me, and there was something in the corner of her mouth that made me incredibly nervous for reasons I didn't know – well, I did, but I didn't want to think about that because when it all ended I didn't want to be broken.

So, Dina took me shopping. Several items. Stood outside the dressing room waiting, approved or disapproved when I came out. When my face was thoroughly reddened and my arms thoroughly laden, she paid with the card. It was a metal card. Something else I'd never seen in real life.

The restaurant was a place called Luciano's. Not the kind of Italian place with checkered tablecloths and a Chianti bottle with a candle in it. The kind where the menu is one page and nothing has a price because it's too damned expensive, and the bread arrives on a piece of slate with oil in a dish so small it might have been decorative. I'd walked past places like this. I'd never been inside one.

There were six people at the table and they were all at least twice my age. The men wore watches that caught the candlelight. The women had jewelry that was small and real. One guy across from me had cufflinks that were definitely gold and sparkled in a way that was definitely diamonds, because a guy who wears gold cufflinks is not going to have the fake stuff. That, and I'd worked a jewelry counter at Macy's for two weeks before they let me go, which is the kind of life experience that qualifies you to identify precious metals.

Graham introduced me. "This is Drew, my assistant. He's been working on the Belmont project with me."

That was generous. I'd been looking at spreadsheets while Graham explained them. But he said it like I was a contributor, and the investors smiled at me and nodded and a woman named Catherine said "nice to meet you, Drew" in a way that suggested she meant it. The tie Dina had picked out felt tighter, and for a second I felt like maybe I did belong at this table in this restaurant with these people.

Graham sat next to me. The seating was tight, the way restaurants like this do it, so his leg was against mine under the table. Not close. Against. The tablecloth was heavy, white, and you couldn't see underneath it.

His thigh was warm. I could feel it through both layers of fabric, his suit and my khakis, and it was solid and it didn't move. He didn't shift away. He didn't adjust. He just sat there with his leg touching mine like it was the most natural thing in the world, and I was supposed to eat bread and make conversation while my entire left side was on fire.

I didn't say much during dinner. They were talking about cap rates and construction timelines and something about permits that turned into an argument I couldn't follow. The wine was a Barolo that one of the investors had ordered for the table, and a glass of it probably cost more than my entire outfit. I understood about 30% of the conversation, and I faked the rest with nodding and trying to hush my stomach with bread.

But, Graham kept me in it. He'd glance at me every few minutes, not checking up, just including. A look that said, "you're with me." Once, during a pause, he leaned toward my ear and said quietly, "The guy across from us is full of shit about his permit timeline. Watch his hands."

I watched. The guy was fidgeting with his fork, turning it over on the tablecloth. Spinning it. I'd served drinks at a few poker games before – again – I was fired. Or, they didn't ask me back. And Graham was right.

I leaned back toward him. Close. Closer than I needed to be. "His left eye twitches too," I whispered. "When he says the numbers."

Graham looked at me. Something flashed in his expression that wasn't amusement and wasn't surprise, but it was something warmer than both. He held my gaze for a heartbeat and then turned back to the table and said, "Mark, walk me through the permit schedule again. Slowly this time."

Under the table, his hand found my knee. Not a brush. A deliberate grip. His hand on the side of my leg just above the knee, firm, proprietary. He squeezed once. Held it. Then let go. Under the tablecloth where nobody could see. It had to be an acknowledgement of the extra tell. Had to.

I did not look at him. I looked at my water glass. I looked at it very carefully, like I was studying water, because my face was doing something I couldn't control and if I turned toward him he would see it.

The waiter came around with the wine and looked at me. Before I could speak Graham said, "He's fine with water," easy, smooth, already past it, didn't need to say anything about my age, and the waiter moved on. Graham ordered a glass of the Barolo for himself. Nobody questioned it. Nobody questioned anything Graham said at this table. These were rich, powerful people and they deferred to him. Not obviously. Just in the way they listened when he talked and waited when he paused and laughed slightly too hard at his jokes.

I watched him operate and I thought: this is what it looks like when someone is completely in their element. This is a man who built a thing and sits at the center of it and the world rotates around him because he made it that way. And he brought me here. He sat me next to him. He put his hand on my leg.

In the car afterward, driving back toward the office garage where my Civic was waiting, the jazz station on and the city sliding past, Graham loosened his tie with one hand on the wheel. Pulled it down, unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. The collar opened and I could see his throat and the silver beginning at his chest and I watched him do it and I didn't pretend I wasn't watching.

He caught me.

Not directly. He didn't turn his head. But his mouth shifted. That corner. That one corner of his mouth that I was starting to know better than my own face.

"You did well tonight," he said.

"I didn't do anything."

"You watched. You listened. You didn't try to prove you belonged. That's harder than it sounds. Half the people at that table can't stop talking because they're terrified someone will realize they don't have anything to say. You just sat there and took it in." He glanced over. "And that thing about the eye twitch. You see people, Drew. Not everyone does."

The praise landed in my stomach, warm, and it spread outward. Like how I imagined the scotch he wouldn't let me drink. Or like sitting near a fire. I wanted more of it. I wanted him to tell me I did well again, in that exact tone, with that specific weight, and I wanted to feel this exact feeling and I didn't want it to stop.

"Thanks," I said. Because I didn't have bigger words.

He pulled up to the garage entrance. Put the car in park. Turned to face me. In the low light from the dashboard his face was all planes and shadows, the silver catching the glow from the parking structure.

"I like having you around." He said it simply. Like it was easy. Like it wasn't a grenade.

"I like being around," I said, and then immediately wished I could pull the words back into my mouth because they were too honest and too much and they meant exactly what they sounded like.

He smiled. The real one. The uncontrolled one from the warehouse. "Good. Stay."

There it was again. "Stay." He said it at the end of every night like a period at the end of a sentence. Stay past the week. Stay past six. Stay at the dinner. Stay. Like he kept asking and I kept answering yes and neither of us was talking about the job.

I got out. Walked to my car. Sat in the Civic with the check engine light and the cracked windshield and didn't start it for a while, long after Graham Mercer had driven off.

I got home. I took a shower. The water heater in the basement took about three minutes to get above lukewarm, and I stood under it while it climbed from cool to tolerable and thought about the dinner. Graham's thigh against mine for the entire meal. The grip on my knee. His hand on me like something he wanted. The tie loosening, the collar opening. His throat. The chest hair. "I like having you around."

I tried to do what I usually did. What I'd always done. I thought about Sarah, from high school, the things we'd done in her parents' basement when they were out. I thought about the video I had bookmarked on my phone, the generic one, the one that worked because it was reliable and I didn't have to think. I tried to go there. The familiar route. The safe one.

My brain slid off it like water off glass.

I closed my eyes, and I thought about Graham. Not accidentally. Not a stray thought that wandered in while I was thinking about something else. I thought about him deliberately. His hand on my knee. His voice at my ear. The scotch on his breath. The way he smelled in the car, leather and cedar and him. What his hands would feel like somewhere else. What his mouth would feel like. What it would have been like if he'd leaned across the center console and kissed me in the parking garage with the dashboard light on his face and my Civic watching us.

I came faster than I had in months. Hard. My back arched and I gripped the mattress and I made a sound into the dark of my basement room that I'd never made before and I just lay there afterward. Breathing. Heart going. Staring at the water-stain mitten on the ceiling.

Okay.

That word again. "Okay." Like a door that keeps opening a crack wider every time I say it. The first okay was after the look on my first day. The second was after the warehouse, his hand on my chest. The third was after his thumb on the back of my neck. This one was different. This one was after I'd come with his name in my head, his scent in my nose, and his form in my closed eyes. It wasn't spoken, but it was there, filling the whole space, and the okay wasn't surprise anymore. It was something closer to admission.

Okay. I'm attracted to my boss. Okay. He's a man. Okay. He's more than one and a half times my age. Okay. I just got off thinking about his hands. I looked down at mine. Okay.

Sarah never made me feel like this. No one had ever made me feel like this. I had gone the better part of a decade thinking the machinery worked a certian way, but it turns out the machinery had just never been turned on. Graham turned it on. By existing. By smelling the way he did and saying my name the way he did and putting his hand on my knee like he had every right to it. By telling me to "Stay."

I wasn't ready to build a sentence around it yet. I wasn't ready for labels or categories or the conversation I'd have to have with myself eventually about what this meant for who I was. But the okay was getting bigger each time. Taking up more room. And I was running out of space to pretend it wasn't.

I fell asleep with the shower dripping through the wall.

After Practice — Chapter 5: The Warm-Down Pool

I woke up first.

Early. The light through the curtains was thin and gray, and the room smelled like hotel and Liam. I was on my side, facing him. I didn't remember turning over in the night, but I must have because I was staring at his face, so calm, peaceful. He was on his stomach, but his head was turned towards me, the sheet was at his waist, and his back was bare. I could see each knob of his spine, and the way his shoulders looked, relaxed, which was so different from when we were in the pool. He looked younger asleep. Less like the captain and more like just a person.

I looked at him for a while. I won't say how long. Long enough to know I was doing it on purpose. Long enough for the room to brighten that amber color of dawn. Long enough that if he'd opened his eyes I would've had no excuse. I memorized things. The mole on his left shoulder blade that I'd never noticed from this close. The way his hair fell across his forehead. The stubble on his jaw that I'd never really looked at because I'd never been this close to his face in daylight in a situation where I could just ... study it.

I made myself breathe. I made myself get up.

In the bathroom I stood at the sink and looked at myself in the mirror. My hair was flat on one side, goggle marks on my forehead from yesterday that hadn't faded. I didn't know what I should – or could – be feeling. Something had cracked open last night and I'd let it stay cracked and now, standing in a hotel bathroom at six-something in the morning, I could feel it. The full weight of wanting someone who was sleeping naked on the other side of the wall.

I am so fucked. And not in the way I think I wanted to be.

I thought Liam was doing the same thing from the other direction. He couldn't say it either. So he said it with his hands, with his car keys, with hotel room arrangements and Thursday practices and every excuse he built so we could be alone. I didn't see that then. I was too busy filing. But standing in that bathroom, I could feel the shape of it, even if I couldn't name it yet. He was as scared as I was. He just hid it differently. I hid behind "relay partner." He hid behind doing things for me and calling it captaincy. He hid it behind a girlfriend? Fuck. So many signs all pointing to one thing, but that roadblock forcing me away. Why did he do this to me? Did he mean to? Did he know what he was doing? What did he want?

I brushed my teeth. I went back out. Liam was still asleep. I sat in the desk chair and looked at my phone. I absolutely did not look at his bare back. Or the way the sheet had slipped another inch. Or the curve of his ass where the sheet ended and Liam began.

Fine. I looked. Obviously. I'm not a saint; I'm a gay teenager in a hotel room with a naked guy I've been losing my mind over for months. I looked and I felt guilty and I looked again and the guilt was quieter the second time and by the third time I'd stopped pretending I wasn't going to look because fuck it was the third time I'd looked.

Prelims went well. The warm-down pool was in a separate wing through a set of double doors. Four lanes, lower ceiling, the lights dimmer. It felt private even when it wasn't.

After the session, the team headed for the lobby. Dinner in twenty. Liam looked at me and ased "warm-down?" and I said "yeah" and we walked through the double doors while everyone else left.

The warm-down pool was empty. Just us. Because that was the universe right now. The echo was different here, softer, the ceiling lower and the sound dying faster. The lights hummed; that low electrical buzz you stop hearing after a minute but it's always there until it's shut off, and then you wonder how you didn't hear it. We got in, same lane, and swam easy. A few hundred yards of free, barely kicking. Cooling down. Letting the lactic acid go.

We ended up on the wall at the same end. Arms on the gutter, kicking slowly, faces a couple feet apart. The water was warm. The light from the windows was doing the ripple thing on the ceiling, slow, and moving. I could hear Liam breathing ... slow, and moving.

For a while neither of us talked. Warm-down quiet. You're tired, you're in your head, the water does the work. I'd been spending so much time in my head lately.

Then Liam said, "I keep thinking about after this season."

He wasn't looking at me. He was looking at the lane line. His chin on his folded arms.

I didn't say anything.

"Like, what this is without ..." He stopped. Didn't finish. Just left it there. The word "without" pointing at something neither of us was going to name.

"This." "Without." And the thing is, "this" could have meant the relay. The team. Swimming. Senior year. That's what a normal person would assume.

But he said "this" the way he'd said it in the weight room on the mat. Like it had a capital letter. Like "This" was a noun, and he'd just watched me look up his shorts leg without any underwear despite however long ago that was. The thing between us – space, water, clothing ... anything. And "without" meant what happens when the relay is over. No exchange. No Thursdays. No drive home. No excuse.

I hung on the wall and kicked slowly and felt my calf brush his under the water.

I didn't pull away. He didn't pull away. Our legs were moving in the warm-down kick and his calf pressed against mine and it stayed. Skin on skin, under the surface, where anyone who looked would think it was refraction. Both smooth. Both shaved. The contact was light but I could feel every bit. The warmth of him through the water. The steady pressure that said, "this isn't accidental."

Liam turned his head and looked at me.

I looked back.

For maybe thirty seconds neither of us said anything. Neither of us looked away. Our legs were touching under the water and the pool was empty and I thought: "this is it." "This." This is the thing. Whatever this has been all season, all the touches and the rides and the dark room and the pauses, it's this. Him looking at me in a pool where no one else can see and not pretending it's something else.

I'm telling you this ten years later and I can still feel it. The water. His leg. His eyes. That's how I know it was real.

We stared. Not staring; we looked. There's this musical, Into the Woods. And this song in it, the baker's wife sings. All about moments – good ones, bad ones, but just life being made of moments. And if you can share just some of those good moments with someone, it's all worth it.

Liam and I ... I felt like we were in one of those moments. I still feel it.

And then the double doors opened and Jessup stuck his head in. "Coach wants everyone back. Bus is leaving."

Liam broke the moment, our This. "Yeah. Coming." Captain voice. He pushed off the wall and swam to the ladder. Got out. I watched water run off his back. I got out after him. We didn't say anything.

But it happened. Our moment. And both of us knew it.

Team dinner. Restaurant, long table, the whole team. Barnes at one end going over the finals schedule. I ended up next to Liam. He sat down first and I sat in the empty chair next to him and under the table his knee touched mine.

He didn't move it.

I didn't move mine.

Jessup was telling some story about a kid in lane 7 who false-started twice. Everyone was laughing. Liam was laughing, the public laugh, the captain laugh, slightly deeper than his normal one and more controlled. He said something back that made the table crack up. He was performing. He was good at it, even if he didn't know it.

But under the table his knee was pressed against mine and it hadn't moved for fifteen minutes. The heat of it was going straight through my warm-ups into my skin and I sat there with a plate of pasta I wasn't eating and I thought: I could live in this. This pocket of silence inside the noise. His knee against mine while the whole team talks around us and nobody sees.

The waitress brought more bread. Someone knocked over a water glass. Kessler was eating like he hadn't seen food in a week. Normal team dinner. Normal everything. And under the table Liam's knee was against mine and his hand was on his own thigh, close enough that his pinky was almost touching my leg, and I watched his hand not move and my hand not move and the two inches between his pinky and my thigh were the most charged two inches in the state.

The thing about that dinner is that I knew. Not guessed, not hoped, not rationalized. Knew. His calf in the pool was not accidental. His knee at dinner was not accidental. It couldn't be. The way he'd said "this" and not finished his sentence was not accidental. Whatever I'd been telling myself all season about relay partners and team stuff and proximity, it was bullshit and I knew it was bullshit and the bullshit was over. Completley, totally over.

He felt it too. He had to. It was the only possible explanation, but that was the part I couldn't file, couldn't rationalize, couldn't explain away. He felt it too. The warm-down pool had said it. His eyes had said it. His leg against mine in a crowded restaurant while the whole team sat around us and he laughed at Jessup's stories and performed normal and kept his knee against mine like it was the most important thing he was doing all night.

I ate my pasta eventually. It was fine. I didn't taste it. I was too busy feeling his body heat through two layers of nylon and thinking about what was going to happen when we went back to our room. Our room with one bed. Where he sleeps naked. Where last night he said my name in the dark and didn't finish his sentence.

Whatever it was, I wasn't going to file it. Well ... I know me better than that. I filed it under "moments."