November to December (9 months until the Olympics)
It’s the Sunday before Nationals, which means it’s Date Night. Sundays are our only consistent day off, so ever since our Halloween date, Brandon has declared them sacred and off-limits to anything diving related.
Our first official date was when Brandon declared that all future dates would involve leaving campus. “We spend enough time around here, so Date Night should be a break from that,” he said. For Halloween, he took me to a cheesy outdoor village with hay rides, pumpkin carvings, and a campfire. It had been absolutely perfect.
So given Brandon’s rules, I’m not entirely sure why we’re at the pool, and wearing our bathing suits.
“Isn’t the point of Date Night to do something fun?” My mouth trips on the last word. Sometimes the dates are fun—the trip to the Fall Village was amusing and immature, but I roasted my first s’more and petted a bunch of farm animals. Some of them are quiet nights in, me teaching Brandon how to cook or him catching me up on a lifetime of cheesy cult-classic movies.
“Patience, Padawan. All shall be revealed.”
I have no clue what a Padawan is, but Brandon is already taking my hand and leading me through the natatorium, so I close my mouth and follow. We walk past the diving well, and the separate pool with lap lanes marked out, and to . . . “The hot tub?”
“Not just any hot tub.”
Brandon pulls me up beside him, and sure enough the normal tub has been transformed. The lighting is low, the jets are bubbling, and there’s a tray of fruit, cheese, and crackers on the ledge. Brandon’s iPod is plugged into a set of speakers and playing something old-fashioned and crooning.
“No rose petals and bubbles?” I ask, but I can’t tear my eyes away from the sight.
“Hush.” He kisses the corner of my mouth.
The water is hot, the jets are soothing, and we slide onto one of the benches, Brandon sitting first and pulling me into his lap, arms wrapped around my chest and hips. He feeds me a strawberry, and I twist to feed him a cheese cube, and we trade kisses and snacks until our fingers go prune-y.
It’s utterly, perfectly romantic.
“What’s the occasion?”
Brandon hums and shifts. He’s half-hard, but he doesn’t grind against me, and there’s no sense of immediacy in his voice. It’s like he doesn’t plan to do anything about it. “Nationals are almost here, and you’ve been so tense. I wanted to help you relax.”
I’m pretty boneless and content right now. “It’s working.”
“Remember that bet I made with you back in March?”
Maybe not entirely boneless, as one part of me starts to stiffen. “Yeah.” The word’s a whisper, barely audible over the bubbling water.
“You,” he’d said, that day in the locker room. “If I compete and win, I want you as my prize.”
“We’re going to win at Nationals.” Brandon sounds so sure, so absolutely confident, that I believe it as well.
And we’re damned good. Every synchro practice leaves me feeling exhilarated and triumphant. I watch the replays on Andrey’s iPad after each training session and watch the proof of how in-tune we are. When you’re diving synchro, the best thing you can do is focus on your own dive and ignore your partner, but Brandon dives like he’s an extension of me. His individual marks still aren’t amazing, but our synchro scores are incredible.
“Yeah, we are.”
He kisses the spot behind my ear and breathes deeply, not speaking. I know he won’t ask; he never asks, never pushes. It’s how I know he’s safe. Brandon can be trusted, because he’d never take what wasn’t offered.
But I don’t know if I can offer him this. Not yet.
Not after Thanksgiving.
It’s only been two weeks, and I haven’t stopped trying to scrub my skin clean in the shower each night.
Val didn’t come with me this year, which meant it was just me, my brothers, and my dad. Being world champion doesn’t matter to them. To be honest, not a lot does except beer and football. And, after two decades, you’d think I’d have a thicker skin to protect me from the words they throw out so carelessly, the way they call the ref on screen a “fucking faggot” or mock me for being a “little fairy who can’t even grow a beard.”
But this year, every single slur hit hard, like they were balling up their fists and aiming straight for my gut. Every time they called diving a “gay” sport, I pictured Brandon and felt sick and shameful.
The worst part was that they didn’t even seem to notice. The words are just so ingrained in their vocabulary, they don’t actually mean anything to Nick, Isaac, or my dad anymore.
So I sit silently in the pool and let Brandon feed me strawberries, sink down into the water a bit more so I can rest my head against his shoulder, and close my eyes. The music and hot water soothe me, and Brandon’s heartbeat and his hand sliding softly over my stomach is enough to banish the lingering pain. For now at least.
Eventually we climb out of the pool, kissing lazily and laughing as we wrap up in giant fluffy towels that Brandon borrowed from a supply cabinet. We gather up the remains of his romantic spread and drip back to the locker room.
Brandon changes into dry clothes in front of me, not bothering to shower. “We’re just going to go to your place and get dirty again,” he points out. I’m too distracted by the miles of skin and muscle to argue.
He’s right though. We do go back to my apartment and get sweaty and sticky.
That night he stays over, curled around me in my narrow bed that’s barely big enough for two people. He snuggles up behind me—he calls it spooning, and kisses my nose when he proclaims me to be the “little spoon,” which makes me blush all down my neck and chest—and falls asleep easily.
I stay up a bit longer, feeling warm and safe for the first time, and wonder if I can, in fact, offer him what he wants after the championships next week.
It’s luck of the draw for where the National Championships are held each December. A few years ago we went to Florida for them, which was a nice treat over winter break. This year they’re a few hours away. But Andrey gets us hotel rooms anyways, because a winter storm is scheduled to roll in and blanket the city in ice.
Brandon’s friend from Texas also rolls in, beating the storm by a few hours and escaping the airport just before they close it.
He meets us in the hotel lobby, and the hug he gives Brandon isn’t “just friends” by any definition of the word that I’ve ever heard.
“Bran, babe, holy shit you look great.” His friend—Aaron—is attractive in that all-American jock way. He’s a bit shorter than Brandon, but he has epic shoulders and sandy-blond hair in a crew cut. He pecks Brandon on the lips, and Val and I exchange a what the hell glance before Brandon leads him over to introduce us.
I know from Brandon that they dated for a while, but that they were best friends before and after that. I also have been assured, over and over, that there is absolutely nothing between them.
But whereas Brandon’s one-off in the hotel in Indiana is strangely appealing to think about, I can’t help but feel jealous when I look at the easy way Brandon and Aaron stand beside each other, constantly touching.
Even if I wanted to be upset, it’s not like I have time to spend with Brandon. We have a day of practice in the competition pool, and then it’s the Men’s Synchronized 10-Meter Platform event. Unlike the individual events, there’s no preliminary or semifinal rounds, so we have one shot—six dives—to get this right.
Some divers are superstitious. They don’t talk before a meet, or they listen to certain music, or they pray. I usually find somewhere quiet to sit and breathe for a bit before we start, but today Brandon finds me and folds himself down cross-legged so we’re sitting knee to knee.
“I’ve never had anyone come to one of my competitions before,” he says.
I was sitting with my eyes closed, but I open one and give him an annoyed stare.
Brandon, of course, ignores it. “And I get the feeling that you’ve never had anyone cheering you on from the stands either, other than Andrey and Val.”
Now both eyes are open. I hate that he knows this about me; I hate more that it still hurts to have it pointed out.
“But today Aaron’s going to be cheering for both of us, okay?”
I watch Brandon warily, but he seems completely serious.
“Okay,” I say after a moment.
He smiles and nods. “So come on, let’s go win this.”
The strange thing is, I feel better standing at the top of the platform and knowing there’s someone in the stands watching me, holding their breath when I jump, applauding when I rip the entry. Val and Andrey sit poolside, and I love knowing they’re there to support me, but it’s different knowing that Brandon’s friend—a complete stranger—is cheering us on.
We dive. And before every dive, I glance over at him and our eyes meet. I say the dive and count us down, and we leap together.
Back two and a half somersaults, one and a half twists. This one is Brandon’s favorite, though he won’t tell me why.
Reverse three and a half somersaults, in the tuck position.
Our hardest dive, a forward four and a half somersault, which Brandon doesn’t quite manage to get vertical on, but we still get high marks from the synchro judges.
And six dives later, we stare at the scoreboard in shocked relief, and Brandon hugs me close and shakes.
If you’d told me a year ago that I was going to enjoy diving with Brandon, let alone become a national champion for men’s synchronized diving with him, I would have laughed in your face.
Looking into his breathtaking eyes, another thought occurs:
If you’d told me a year ago that I was going to fall in love with Brandon Evans, I would have thought you were crazy.
Brandon smiles at me, and his joy is contagious.
And yet, here we are.