June (14 months until the Olympics)
I know Brandon and Val are up to something. Neither of them are any good at keeping secrets. When you grow up in a household like mine, you learn to watch people and figure out what’s not being said, so I pick up on the little flickers between them, the knowing glances when they think I’m not paying attention.
Confronting Brandon about it is easier than I expected, because he invites himself over to my apartment after training one evening to show me this documentary they had to watch for one of his classes. Classes are over for the semester, but he’s been talking about it for weeks and insists that it’ll “blow my mind.”
I tried to tell him that I don’t have a TV the first half-dozen times he mentioned it, but he just shows up on a Saturday evening with his laptop tucked under his arm, filling my doorway until I silently step back to let him in.
Last week, I made the decision to confront him because I knew he’d be the easier of the two. Val may not have a poker face, but she’s good at skirting around things she doesn’t want to talk about—like how her mother keeps calling and Val keeps ignoring her calls. But Brandon is an open book, and he’ll probably spill everything the second I bring it up.
Except he’s in my apartment, bouncing around and examining the bowl of fruit in my kitchen, the neatly folded pile of laundry that I haven’t put away yet, and my row of textbooks on the shelf. He ducks into my bedroom like he owns the place—no understanding of personal boundaries.
“Jeremy, c’mere!”
I follow reluctantly, then stop in the door. Brandon’s set his laptop down, and he’s sitting on my bed with his back against the wall, legs spread out across the comforter. His shoes are on the ground between us where he must have kicked them off, and he’s in the process of pulling his hoodie over his head to reveal a thin white T-shirt.
And the ink, of course. My mouth goes dry, and I cross my arms and look away to hide my reaction.
“No, dude, come here.” He pats the bed next to him, then grabs his laptop and balances it on his knees. “Get comfortable, I want to show you this documentary. It’s pretty short.”
I’m not sure what his definition of pretty short is, but any time that I have to spend sitting on my bed next to Brandon will be torture, I have no doubt. But I go, and I sit on the bed, careful not to touch Brandon except where our sleeves brush against each other.
The documentary is really interesting; it’s about doping in sports and how far athletes will go to pursue a specific achievement. Brandon talks a little bit around the narration, explaining about his sociology course and how the professor had them discuss the video in terms of society’s expectations about sports.
I lose track of the plot about two-thirds through, when Brandon puts his hand on my leg to emphasize a point.
Brandon keeps talking, like he’s unaware that my entire focus has shifted to the spot of heat from his hand that seeps through the cotton of my sweats. It’s so impossible to ignore that the rest of my body feels cold in comparison, and I shiver even though the air conditioning isn’t on.
“Dude, if you’re cold, you should have said something!” Brandon drags his hoodie up and covers me with it like a blanket, and then—oh god—and then wraps an arm around my shoulder.
The warmth is everywhere, and I can smell the cheap lotion Brandon uses to keep his skin from drying out, the faint scent of his sweat on the hoodie spread over me. I’m shivering harder.
The documentary is over, and Brandon slides the laptop to the end of the bed and turns to look at me full-on. “Are you sick?” when he touches my forehead, his hand is fire on my skin.
“No,” I say, like I’m not trembling uncontrollably, “I’m fine.”
“Yeah, man, sorry, but I’m starting to learn Jeremese. ‘Fine’ actually translates to ‘freaked out,’ so I’m not falling for that one anymore.” Brandon manhandles me until I’m no longer slouched against the wall and I’m facing him instead. When he speaks again, his voice is low and soothing. “You know you don’t need to be afraid of me.”
“I’m not afraid of you.”
It’s true; afraid isn’t the correct word. I’m terrified of him—of how much I want him.
Brandon tilts his head. “Either you’re worried that I’m going to make a move on you, or you’re worried because you want me to make a move on you.”
I bite my bottom lip and don’t respond, because I’m not entirely sure what the right answer is. Then I look up slowly and meet Brandon’s steady gaze . . . and hold it.
And Brandon is Brandon, impulsive and undaunted, so he just leans forward and presses his lips against mine.
This time I know what to expect. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what happened in that hotel room in Dubai, and then trying to force myself to forget about it immediately after. I’ve studied every single second of that kiss in my memory, the way he teased my lip with his tongue and then explored my mouth, the way he stole my breath and any sounds I might have made and swallowed them into his own body.
I want to run away. I want to crawl under the bed and hide until he leaves and never comes back. But more than that, I want to close my eyes and surrender and let him kiss me again and again.
So I do.
And he does.
Brandon kisses me, unhurried and intimate, like he’s reading braille with his lips, gently brushing his mouth over mine until everything feels hazy and numb, tiny light kisses until I can’t take it any longer and press forward, desperate for more—more pressure, more heat, more anything.
“Jeremy, damn it,” he says between kisses, and then he pushes against my shoulders, nudges me down onto the bed, leans over me, and kisses me until I’m dizzy. My back is flat against the mattress now, and Brandon is gazing down on me, dark hair and brilliant eyes filling my vision, and his body is so, so warm that I’m not shaking anymore.
I’ve never felt anything like it, and I don’t know what to do. My limbs feel heavy, but I want to touch Brandon, to see if his hair is as soft as it appears, to explore if I can feel the ink beneath his skin when I run my fingers over the branches of the tree and the cursive on his ribs.
My body reacts, waking up, and—
“No.”
I say the word against Brandon’s lips, barely a whisper, but he hears the word or feels it and freezes.
“No,” I say again, and push him up, scrabbling out from beneath him until my back hits the headboard and I can grab my pillow and pull it over my lap, hiding my shame, hugging the cushion and burying my face in it.
Brandon doesn’t touch me, thankfully. I can’t look at him, have no idea if he’s sad or angry or freaked out. I tense when the bed moves, but then relax when I realize that Brandon is standing up.
“It’s okay, Jer.”
It’s really not.
“I can’t do this.” My heart is racing, my palms clammy, and all I can feel is shame and weakness and the deep-seated knowledge in my stomach that this is wrong. “Please leave.”
Brandon moves until he fills the edge of my vision, and I turn my head in the pillow just enough that I can see him kneeling beside the bed, watching me. He’s a few feet away, like he knows that any closer would be too close. Somehow that’s enough to get me to relax—that he’s giving me the space I need and won’t push.
“Thank you.”
The words don’t make sense. “For what?”
“For the kiss, of course.” Brandon quirks his lips. “It was good.”
It was. The kiss was calming and intense at the same time, the way that diving is. Throwing yourself off a platform into thirty feet of air and feeling the adrenaline and the peace at the same moment. I nod slowly.
His smile lights up the room. “Okay.” He pushes to his feet and nods. “Awesome.”
And then I remember what I wanted to ask him when he first showed up, before he turned my entire life upside down without even trying. “Did you plan this?”
“Plan what?”
“This.” I gesture between us, a quick jerk. The shame that’s still racing through me has erased any sign of my reaction, but I don’t let go of the pillow yet. “You and Val have been plotting something about me. Was this just part of your plan?”
Brandon shakes his head. “No way.” He laughs softly. “Man, I should have guessed you knew about it. You’re way more observant than most people I know. Nah, Val and I were planning to get you to have fun, maybe to enjoy a few of those chocolate milks. But this, today? This was only for me. I mean, for the two of us.”
The words relax me the rest of the way. “I don’t need to have fun.”
That earns me a snort and an eye roll. “You absolutely do,” Brandon says. “And you can have fun at the public pool on a Sunday afternoon, or drinking chocolate milk instead of sports drinks.”
“And kissing?”
Brandon’s laugh is louder this time. “Like I said, this wasn’t about me and Val trying to get you to unwind. This was because I wanted to kiss you, and I could tell that you wanted to kiss me too.” My cheeks flush, but I don’t look away, because Brandon is too beautiful, a beacon that fills the room. “But it was fun, wasn’t it?”
Again I’m not sure what the answer is.
He’s sliding his shoes on and collecting his laptop. “Well, it was fun for me at least.” He balances on one foot, that gymnast grace letting him tug his shoes on without wobbling. And he doesn’t pull his gaze away from me either. “I’d like to do it more. Kiss you.”
I’ve been kissed three times in my life. The first was Val when we were fifteen and almost seventeen. I wanted to see if I could make myself enjoy kissing a girl, but the experiment was a failure. I walked away with the decision to never kiss anyone else.
Until Dubai and Brandon.
“I don’t know what I want.” I hesitate, because that’s not entirely true. “I think I want to kiss you again though. But I can’t— I won’t—” I finally turn back to the pillow in my lap, frustrated.
“Hey, just kissing.” Brandon takes one step forward when I glance back up, but there’s still plenty of space between us. “It doesn’t have to be anything else until you’re ready for more.”
It’s the more that makes me close my eyes as the shaking resumes. The way my body wants something that I can’t give it, and the flood of shame that overruns everything else.
“Hey.”
When did Brandon get even closer? His hand is on my shoulder, but instead of making the trembling worse, it helps to calm my racing heart.
“Deep breaths.” Brandon leans down, and I wonder if he’s going to kiss me some more, but he doesn’t move to do so. “Jeremy, hey.”
I meet those bright-blue eyes without hesitation.
“I will never, ever, do something that you aren’t ready for.” Brandon is serious; I’ve never seen him so somber. “And if you ever say no, I’ll stop immediately.”
It’s exactly what I need to hear. “Okay.”
He smiles. “Good. So, I’d like to kiss you good-bye now, before I head back to my dorm.”
I don’t say no.
Brandon’s kiss this time is gentle, fleeting. He puts his hand on my cheek as he presses our lips together, then pulls back and grins. “All right. I’ll see you tomorrow at training?”
My lips are tingling like the time I tried some of Val’s medicinal lip gloss. “Yeah,” I manage.
Another grin, this one full of Brandon’s usual energy and cheer, and then he’s gone.