September (11 months until the Olympics)
Brandon hasn’t touched me for a week.
He doesn’t seem to be angry . . . he’s still laughing and goofing around in practices, and he calls encouragement to me during dryland like normal. He just won’t touch me, shies away when I get too close, and his shoulders go up when we’re in the same room. I think . . . honestly, I think he feels betrayed. Because I went to Andrey, and now his small collection of belongings is stacked neatly in the corner of my living room and there’s a pile of folded sheets and blankets at the foot of the couch every morning.
We go to practice together. Brandon goes to work—he won’t give the job at the bar up, even though Andrey assures us the scholarship renewal will be resolved soon—and then we go to afternoon practice and walk home together.
He talks to me like normal. Smiles, laughs. But he doesn’t bring me treats anymore to tempt me off my strict diet, and never offers to share headphones.
Most importantly: he doesn’t come near me.
It hurts, but I don’t know how to admit that to him. He’s like a drug: I got a taste, and then it was taken away, and now I’m craving him and torn apart by the loss.
And it’s scary, because . . .
Well, because I don’t know what to do.
I know how to kiss him, and how to touch him until he gasps and lets out tiny moans that send shivers down my spine. I know what he feels like, and I’ve learned the sensation of his skin against my own—he let me trace his tattoos once, first with my fingers and then with my lips. And when he would touch me back, it was unlike anything I’d ever experienced before. But until now, no one has ever hugged me or caressed me. This time last year, I would have sneered at anyone who tried. I didn’t like being touched, before Brandon. Val would sometimes take my hand or bump shoulders, and Andrey would clinically move my body into a position to demonstrate when his words weren’t sufficient.
But when Brandon touches me, it’s something else entirely. It makes me feel better. It helps me focus.
I want to do that for him. I just don’t know how to convince him to let me.
Labor Day comes and goes, and classes start back up. Andrey is frustrated; apparently the person he needed to speak with was on vacation for the end of summer, so Brandon is going to miss the start of classes while they try to figure out what’s wrong with the scholarship. I settle into my classes, and feel helpless when Brandon’s shoulders get tight every time he walks in on me studying.
I go to Val’s one afternoon on our day off from class and diving, because I don’t know who else to turn to.
“What makes you think I can help?” she asks. She fixes me a cup of coffee, then sits across the table from me.
“I don’t know.” I inhale steam, closing my eyes. “You’re the only person I could think to ask for advice. I don’t know anything about sex or about other people.”
Val snorts. “And you think I do?”
“I . . .” Well, I’d never considered it. “I guess I figured you must? You were off in California at college. I assumed you were a hell of a lot more normal than me.”
“‘Normal’ is a bullshit word.” Val’s voice is sharp. “And, for the record, I don’t. Do that, I mean.”
“Sex?”
“Sex. People. Any of it.”
“Huh?”
Val flips her hair over her shoulder and shrugs. “I’ve never had a relationship, not like you and Brandon. Never felt the need.” She has a cup of tea in front of her, but she’s not drinking it. Her fingers are clenched tightly around the mug, knuckles white, despite the way she talks so flippantly.
My coffee is still too hot, but I sip it and burn my tongue anyways while I try to sort it out. “Are you . . . like me?” My heart still races if I even think the word, though Val’s never had a problem saying it. I don’t think she’d be so nervous to tell me, if she were.
“I don’t think so. Like, maybe I’m also interested in women? But I’ve never actually wanted to have sex with anyone.” Val takes a sip of tea, and her grip relaxes. I blush furiously and slouch down in my chair. Hearing her say it so plainly is like nails on a chalkboard. “I think maybe I would someday. But only if it was someone I could be best friends with first, you know? I thought for a while it might be you, but once I realized you’re gay, I knew it wasn’t meant to be. Someday I’ll find someone. For now . . . I’m happy as I am.”
“Oh.” I don’t know what else to say. Val has always respected my desire not to talk about my—the urges I have. And I don’t talk about her dream of retiring from diving. So I guess we just never talked about her preferences either.
Val laughs. “Dude, it’s okay. You don’t have to freak out, trying to process this.”
“‘Dude’? You’ve been hanging around Brandon too much.”
“You’re one to talk.” Val sobers and straightens. “But I think Brandon is scared right now. He had the situation under control—at least, in his own mind he did. And you yanked the rug out from under him. So you need to show him that nothing else has changed. You’re still diving partners, you’re still friends. And you’re still . . . whatever it is that you are.”
And this is why I came to Val.
By the time I get back to my apartment, Brandon is home from a full shift at the bar. He’s damp from the shower and lying flat on the carpeted floor, stretching slowly.
“Long day?” I ask when I walk in.
Brandon’s head turns to follow my movements, but he keeps pulling his leg up flat along his body, hand wrapped around his ankle. His shorts stretch over his body, and my mouth goes dry at the outline of his quads and gluts, tight beneath the fabric.
“Yeah. A lot of standing and lifting trays. Didn’t want to risk getting too tense.”
I set my bag down and bend to untie my shoes, setting them carefully by the door. Brandon’s are on their side, kicked off and left there, so I pick them up and place them next to mine. Having Brandon here has been hell on my desire for order.
Then I join him on the floor, sliding down to sit by him, legs stretched out in front of me and toes pointed. I fold myself down, the opposite of what he’s doing. “I hate having a day off.”
He huffs, bending his knee and twisting his body. “You would.”
He means you’re an obsessed workaholic. It’s not a lie, but I wasn’t actually referring to diving. “I don’t like getting stiff when I don’t work out regularly,” I clarify.
“There are other ways to work on flexibility than going to the pool for a training session.” Brandon’s put both feet flat on the floor, knees bent, and stretched his arms out over his head, twisting his body to work the muscles along his spine. When he relaxes again, he catches me looking, and his eyes darken. “Yeah, that would be one way, for sure.”
I still get a wave of shame when my body reacts to Brandon, but today Val’s advice is ringing in my ears. So I blush, but I also push myself to my knees and lean over Brandon, putting my hands on either side of his outstretched arms.
“You know I, uh.”
“You uh?” Brandon’s smile is teasing.
“I care about you.” My face is on fire.
Brandon shifts, lifting his arms to wrap them lazily around my neck. His hands cross between my shoulder blades, and the weight makes me sink toward him, closing the inches between us. “Yeah, I know.”
“But you’re upset with me.”
“I’m not.” He’s frowning though.
Finally, I give in and dip to kiss him briefly. Like I expected, the simple connection makes me feel better almost instantly, and I can see that it subtly relaxes him too. “You think you have to handle everything by yourself, but you don’t. You don’t have to be on your own anymore,” I say. “I don’t know what happened with your family, but you have us now. Val and Andrey and me.”
Brandon pulls me down, arranging me until I’m flat on top of him, my head on his chest. It’s not a sexual thing; it’s more like I’m a blanket, covering him from neck to toes. His fingers twist through my hair, and when he talks, I can feel the words rumble beneath my ear.
“My parents kicked me out on my eighteenth birthday.”
“Because you’re . . .” I swallow, “you’re gay?”
“Because I refused to hide that I was. I knew it was going to happen; they’d never made a big secret about the fact that they thought homosexuals were sinners. But I kept the secret for my entire childhood, only ever told Aaron and a few other trusted friends. And then a week before my eighteenth birthday, I took the credit card they’d given me and went on a shopping spree.”
Brandon doesn’t sound upset, but his story is sending my heart tripping through my chest.
He takes a deep breath and his other hand, the one not in my hair, runs up and down my arm. “I bought clothes, my iPod, a new laptop. Stocked up on all of the essentials. And then I came out the day I turned eighteen. Held my head up, looked them straight in the eye, and said I’d rather rot in hell than spend another second pretending to be someone I’m not.”
“Where’d you go?” My body feels chilled, but Brandon’s hands are warm spots grounding me.
“Aaron’s at first. Then a few other friends. I was ready for it, y’know? I didn’t have any delusions that my parents would suddenly change their mind and love me for who I was. And it wasn’t like they’d been around much when I was growing up. It hurt a bit, but I’d prepared for it. I’ve been on my own ever since.”
I turn, resting my chin on his sternum, and kiss his chin. “I think you’re the bravest person I know,” I tell him, “but you’re not alone anymore.”
He tugs me up so we can kiss properly, tongues dueling lazily until we’re panting. “I’m not brave.”
I kiss him harder, because I can’t tell him that he is. Braver than me, braver than I’ll ever be. The thought of confronting my own family and saying those words to them? I shiver, and Brandon’s arms wrap around me even tighter.
“Let us be your family now,” I say against his lips.
He hesitates, so I run my hands down his side, find the hem of his shirt, and burrow for hot, smooth skin.
“I want to be here for you. I can’t— What you did was incredible, but now you’re here. You have your team.”
He caves visibly when I press kisses down his neck, finding the tender spot above his collarbone and scraping my teeth along it. I’ve made a study out of finding the places that make him arch and moan, cataloging them. This spot makes him shudder, and when our eyes meet, his are wet, the stunning blue reflecting like sapphires.
I imagine this is what people refer to as “making love.” Everything feels slowed down and stretched out, like after I’ve entered the water on a dive and am hovering, weightless, for the second before surfacing. Brandon kisses me, wrapping a leg up over my thigh and then tugging gently, rolling us, so suddenly I’m on my back staring up at him. I laugh and let him push me into the carpet.
Brandon slides down my body, pulling my pants down with him. I gasp and get hard immediately.
So far, the only thing we’ve done is use our hands on each other. I know there’s more we could do—Brandon’s mentioned it, and I spent an evening once on my laptop, looking things up, because the only thing worse than having to research something so shameful is to not have the knowledge at all.
But while I know that there’s more we can do with our bodies, the theory has never become reality until now. Brandon grins wickedly, then bends his head and exhales a low laugh over the bulge in my underwear.
“What? Brandon—”
Before I can even try to figure out what’s happening, his mouth is on me. The cotton over my cock gets hot, then wet, and I scrabble at the carpet for anything to hold on to, but there’s nothing.
“Do you remember Indiana?” Brandon doesn’t move an inch, so every word brushes his lips against my aching hardness.
“What—what about it?”
“The afternoon when we checked into the hotel? Afterward, at dinner in the restaurant, what were you thinking? You seemed so upset, but it wasn’t just that. It seemed like you were working through something in your head.”
He’s talking about the time I heard him and the guy from Florida, the thumps and moans through the hotel wall. Thinking about Brandon with another man should probably bother me, except my body reacts when I think about the sounds I overheard, and the realization after that it was Brandon causing them—and making them.
“I wanted to know how you— Ah!” His mouth is back on me, soaking through my briefs. “How you found someone so fast. And what you had done to—” My eyes roll back when his nails scrape up my inner thighs. “What you’d done to cause those moans.”
Brandon’s smile somehow gets more wicked, and his eyes are dark, gazing up my body at me.
He only says one word before my brain shuts down:
“This.”
And then his mouth is on me. He’s pulled my underwear down, and I have a split second to gasp as the cool air hits my cock, before Brandon’s mouth covers it, and there’s heat and silk and suction. He swallows around me, and I can feel his throat working.
I thought Brandon’s hand on me would be the best thing I’d ever feel. I was wrong.
Eventually I become aware of loud, throaty moans, and realize that they’re mine. That Brandon’s wringing these sounds out of me. I want to be embarrassed, but I can’t think past how good this is, how there are tears running down my face and neck because I never imagined anything on earth could feel so incredible.
Brandon shifts and groans, the sound transforming into vibration that results in me wailing and my eyes clenching shut. But I have to peel them open, because I need to see what’s causing those noises.
He has his pants open, and I can just make out his hand moving over his own cock in time with his mouth bobbing up and down on me. The sight is enough to send me over the edge, and my hands finally find purchase in Brandon’s hair.
“Bran— Oh fuck, gonna come,” I manage.
The warning only makes him suck harder, and I come with a garbled yell, my body bowing off the floor before sinking back into the rough carpet, spent.
Brandon’s still using his own hand, so I blink tiredly at him and say, “C’mere.”
He moves back up my body and kisses me lazily, and I taste myself on his tongue while my hand works over his cock. I’ve done this enough now that I know how he likes it, and it’s only a minute before he’s shaking above me and coming on my stomach.
After our breaths have calmed and I’m starting to feel cold and sticky, I kiss his cheek and say, “I want you to do that again.”
His response is immediate. “Anytime.”
“And I want you to let people help you. Even if you think you can handle something by yourself.”
This time he doesn’t respond right away. He watches me, tracing a finger over my eyebrow and down the side of my face. “Yeah, okay,” he eventually says.
“Good.” I smile up at him.
I have diving, I have a team who supports each other, and I have Brandon. This is perfection.