August (0 days until the Olympics, and too many without Brandon)
I don’t start to get worried until two days before the preliminaries, and then it’s not the diving that is worrying me.
It’s the fact that Brandon has cut off all contact with me. He’s not answering the emails I send him, and his phone goes to voice mail when I call. I sent him a text asking if he’d Skype with me, and then waited three hours by the computer to see if he’d sign on. He didn’t.
I pushed him away.
“Fuck.” I’m in my room at the Village, so at least there’s no one around to witness me running my hands through my hair and cursing to myself. “He’s cutting you off. It’s probably far kinder than having to face him telling you to leave him alone.”
It still hurts though.
But, then, I hurt him. I shoved him out of my life and said cruel, awful things to him. What Brandon is doing now, refusing to acknowledge my presence, is far nicer than I deserve. He could be tearing into me over the phone, or sending me a vicious email. He should be.
I tried to apologize and tell him that I was still in love with him. I came out for him, though I know he wished I’d come out just for myself. But none of that was enough to heal the damage I’d caused.
Val swings by to pick me up and walk with me to the natatorium for practice. We have to share the platform with other divers, but I’m only running through a couple of my dives, just to keep my head in the game. If I push myself too hard, I risk injury on the eve of competition.
“You okay?” Val asks.
Normally I respond with, I’m fine. It’s become our mantra. She asks, I answer, the same thing every time.
Today, though, the lie isn’t coming. “No. I’m . . . I’m not okay.” I will be eventually, but right now I’m still battling the desire to call Brandon again and again, or to get on a plane and leave the Olympics behind to track him down in person.
Val nudges our shoulders together gently. “Hey, it’ll be all right.”
Empty consolations, but I feel better when she takes my hand and squeezes it tight, just for a second.
Practice goes well, and it gives me a chance to say hello to several other divers that I recognize from previous competitions. The international diving scene is tiny, and we’ve all met and become—well, if not friends, at least friendly enemies over the years. I shake hands with a few of them, smile politely at others.
I’ve been diving for fifteen years. Heartbreak isn’t going to ruin my focus, and missing Brandon isn’t going to disrupt my training.
When you get up on the platform, you have to let go of everything. No fears, no worries, no stress. Just you and thirty-three feet of air, and the smooth surface of the water.
But it still feels like a hollow victory every time I rip a landing.
I wake up to knocking on my door.
It’s not especially early—maybe half-past eight, judging by the sun that filters in through the windows. I forgot to close the curtains last night, and my punishment is a blinding shaft of sunlight when I roll over to check the clock.
Someone knocks again, and I groan.
“Who is it?”
Being in the Olympic Village has been . . . an experience, to say the least. It’s like being back in the dorms in college, except that everyone is disgustingly good-looking. On three different occasions someone has knocked on my door trying to find a specific hookup, only to proposition me when they realized they were at the wrong room.
All in all, it makes me hesitant to open it until I know who’s on the other side.
“It’s me.” Val. Who sounds chipper and too awake.
I stumble out of bed, wearing just boxers and a thin white tank. Val doesn’t care if I’m barely dressed, though unless she’s brought me coffee, she’s going to have to deal with me grumpy too.
“I didn’t get to bed until almost three,” I call through the door as I fumble with the lock, “because my neighbor was throwing a party, so you’d better have a good reason for— Oh.”
Val is standing on the other side.
And she’s not alone.
“Awesome, now that I’ve delivered you here in one piece, I need to go talk to the med team about finding a massage table to use.” Val says all of this calmly, still too cheerful, and she’s not looking at me.
She vanishes, and I’m standing in the doorway staring at a pair of familiar eyes that are the exact color of a swimming pool in sunlight.
“Hey,” Brandon says. “Can I come in?”
Numb and silent, I step to the side, and he bursts into the room chattering a mile a minute.
“Do you have any idea how hard it is to navigate the Olympic Village?” he asks. “I’m glad Val picked me up from the airport, or I probably would have gotten lost in about five minutes flat. God I hate flying. The only flight I could get on short notice was a red-eye, and then I had to clear customs. Val stopped for coffee though, god bless her.”
He stops talking at last, dropping a duffel bag on the second bed in the room and exhaling heavily. Then he turns to smile at me. It’s so familiar, so utterly Brandon, that I pinch myself on the thigh to make sure I’m not hallucinating.
“Hi, Jeremy.”
My mouth opens, but nothing comes out, so I close it again.
He looks incredible. His hair is a bit longer, his skin a few shades darker, I assume from spending time in the Texas sun. And his smile is relaxed and wide.
Brandon takes a step forward and hooks his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans. “I told Val we should wait a few hours, or bring you some coffee as well.” He laughs. “You’re like the least morning person I’ve ever met.
Then he takes another step closer and rests his hand lightly on the back of my neck. He’s an inch taller than me, I realize; he’s wearing shoes, and I’m barefoot.
“Jer, say something.”
The words shake me out of my thoughts. “How are you here?” I blurt out. His eyes narrow in amusement. “Why are you here? After what I did to you, I thought you never wanted to see me again outside of a computer screen, but you’re—”
My words are cut off because he pulls me forward, just a few inches, and kisses me.
It’s hot and gentle and absolutely perfect. It’s better than the feeling of flying when I jump off the platform, and better than standing at the top of the podium.
It’s also not something I deserve.
I have to wrench myself backward to break the kiss.
“Brandon,” I say, “wait.”
Emotions flutter across his face: disappointment, worry, frustration.
“I can’t do this.”
A new emotion appears now . . . hurt.
I swallow. “Not yet, I mean.” Brandon’s expression is closing off, and he takes a step back, putting more distance between us. “Wait, please just let me talk for a second.”
He doesn’t move any farther, at least, so I swallow and press on as quickly as possible. “You have no idea how happy I am to see you. I—I thought you’d given up on me. You didn’t answer my calls or emails, so I thought you were just trying to let me down nicely, you know? Like you wanted to cut off all contact. And I wouldn’t have blamed you if you had.”
Reading Brandon’s face is almost easier than having a verbal conversation. He’s never been good at hiding what he’s thinking. Right now, he’s biting his lower lip and his eyes are sad.
I center myself with a few deep breaths. “I figured something out, these last few months without you.”
“Yeah?”
It would be so easy to close the gap between us and kiss him again, to push him against the wall and moan at the sensation of his body against mine for the first time since April. But I’ve never been one to do things the easy way, I guess.
And this needs to be said.
“I realized that I didn’t enjoy diving nearly as much anymore because I was diving alone.” Brandon’s face goes blank, which makes me stumble on the next few words. For the first time, I’m not sure what he’s thinking. “I . . . didn’t know if I wanted to keep diving. Without you around, I mean. Because we were partners, and I was never so strong as when I was diving next to you.”
“Are.”
Huh?
Brandon must see the confusion on my face, because his lips quirk in a grin. “You said we were partners. Past tense. I was correcting you.”
Oh.
He keeps talking. “But you kept diving on your own. Even though you weren’t sure you wanted to.”
“Because as much as I missed you, I still had hope that I’d impress my dad. That he’d be proud of me for once in my life.” Brandon’s face shows what he thinks about that, and I shrug, swallowing around the lingering pain that makes my chest ache. I might have accepted that I’ll never live up to Dad’s expectations, but that doesn’t mean the hurt vanished overnight.
I take a deep breath and keep talking. This is the part that’s the hardest to admit. “I called my dad when I made the Olympic team. I thought, ‘Now he’ll be proud of me. This will be enough.’”
Brandon looks devastated. “He wasn’t.”
“No.”
There’s silence in the room, and my heart feels like it’s going to beat out of my chest. “But after that dream was ripped to pieces, I had to take a good look at my priorities. And I realized that as much as I want to dive with you, and for my dad, what I really needed was to figure out what makes me happy.”
Brandon nods. “And now you’re here. At the Olympics, which you’ve been dreaming about since you were a kid.”
“At the Olympics with you,” I correct. “Which I’ve been dreaming about since the moment I fell in love with you. Because that’s what makes me happy, Bran. I love diving, but diving without you in my life is like diving from the side of the pool, instead of from ten meters up. I don’t care about medals and the next event on the calendar if you’re not with me. And I don’t care if you dive or not, if you decide to never compete again . . . as long as we love each other, that’s the most important part.”
He shudders, a full body shake, and then he’s pushing me against the wall and kissing me, biting my lip and running his hands over my shoulders, arms, anywhere he can find skin. He tugs my head back, changing the angle of the kiss, and I relax into it and open up beneath the onslaught.
“Bed,” he says.
I just got out of bed, and now I’m scrabbling to get back into it.
Brandon laughs as I take his hand and tug him forward. “You’d think they’d put something other than single beds in these rooms,” he says. “The organizers of this circus have gotta realize that the athletes here are going to spend every free second going at it like rabbits.”
“Ugh, please stop talking about other people having sex,” I say, and pull him down on the narrow bed on top of me.
He doesn’t stop laughing, but he presses his face into the curve of my neck, and I can feel the vibration of it against the sensitive skin there. Then he kisses me on my pulse, and his hands slide under my shirt, and I forget about anything else altogether.
“You have supplies?” he asks, pressing my shirt up to lick a line up my chest, laving attention over a nipple until I’m gasping.
“Supplies?”
Brandon can’t seem to stop grinning, but it’s joyful and open, not mocking. “Condoms. Lube.”
Oh. “No. I didn’t think— I wasn’t planning to need them.”
His eyes go soft. “That’s okay. I was.”
I cry out when he vanishes from above me, grasping for him. He catches my hand and presses a kiss to the palm before letting it go. “Just one second.”
Rolling onto my side, I watch him root through his duffel bag, and take the chance to study him while he’s distracted. His T-shirt is thin, and hints of muscle show beneath the worn cotton. He’s wearing jeans, which I can only rarely remember seeing him in, and they’re hanging low on his hips, so I can see a tiny hint of tattoo peaking over the back of his hip where the denim has slipped down.
He turns and catches me staring.
“I’ve missed you.”
I reach out, though he’s too far away for me to pull him back. “I missed you too.”
Turns out I don’t need to pull him, because he comes willingly, and he strips off his T-shirt and shoes as he does.
“I miss this,” Brandon says, and kisses me again and again.
Things get hazy after that, a blur of sensation and an overwhelming rush of emotion. I went twenty-two years without having sex, and didn’t miss it, but three months without Brandon’s hands on me has turned me into a desperate, needy thing.
“I have to compete tomorrow,” I point out.
Brandon nips at the base of my throat. “I know. Doesn’t mean I can’t ride you though.”
I’ve missed a lot of things about Brandon, but at the top of the list is his filthy mouth.
We get clothes off, kicking them onto the floor and groaning as skin touches skin. My hand seeks out and finds his cock, and his eyes roll back in his head as I relearn the weight of him. By the time he drizzles lube over my fingers, we’re both panting and sweaty, and our breathy moans fill the room around us.
“God, Jeremy.” Brandon sinks down on my cock with a sound that sends goose bumps up my arms. I settle my hands on his hips, and trace the patterns of the tribal tattoo there while I do everything in my power to keep from coming immediately.
“I would give up a gold medal for this,” I tell him, and I mean every word of it.
He smiles down at me, but his eyes are joking like he thinks I’m exaggerating. I hold his gaze, and see the moment he understands. “Sweet-talker,” he says against my lips.
“I would, Brandon.” He shifts, pushing himself up and sinking back down easily. I’m babbling now, but I have to make sure he knows. “This is better than any Olympic medal. You are. You’re worth more than anything to me.”
And he takes my wrists in his hand, presses them down on either side of my head, and bends to bite the skin right above my heart. “I know,” he says. “I know, I know.”
I push my hips up into him. It’s like diving synchro all over again; my body remembers his, and we fall into sync right away, moving in tandem.
If this were an Olympic sport, we’d have tens across the board.
But it has been three months, and we’re both on edge, barely hanging on. Brandon tightens around me, and I jerk, losing the rhythm. He swallows my cry as I come, kissing me hard, and then my hands are free and I can wrap them around Brandon’s cock, tease his balls, follow the soft skin back to where we’re still connected, and feel him stretched around me.
It only takes a few tugs before his head falls back and he moans, his come streaking across my chest.
Brandon rolls off me to the side, though the bed is so narrow that he’s pressed between me and the wall, every inch of us touching as we catch our breaths.
My eyes fall closed. I’m relaxed for the first time in ages, and Brandon is panting against my neck, his head on my shoulder. His eyelashes tickle when he blinks, and one hand traces my chest lazily, rubbing his come into my skin.
“Gross,” I say, but I’m smiling.
His hand pauses suddenly, and presses slightly. A dull pain radiates below my collar bone.
“Oh shit. Jeremy, I’m so sorry.” Brandon sits up, eyes wide in horror.
His tone puts me on edge immediately, and muscles that had just relaxed are now tensing up. “What?”
He touches the tender spot on my chest again, and I look down to see the beginning of a dark-purple bruise. It’s right over my heart. If I close my eyes, I can remember him biting me there.
His tone changes, grows more afraid. “Your wrists.”
I examine those too. They’re red, but not bruising, though I can see distinct finger lines.
“It’s okay.”
I’m waiting for the fear to set in, the realization that the entire world will be watching me tomorrow with Brandon’s marks on my skin, but all I can feel is the fading buzz of an incredible orgasm and the memory of Brandon’s body against my own.
“It’s okay,” I say again, because he doesn’t appear convinced. When he finally meets my gaze, I smile. “I’m not upset.”
Brandon runs a finger over the bruise tenderly. “I can ask Val if she has waterproof makeup, maybe.” He still sounds miserable.
“Brandon. Let them see it.”
He freezes.
“I don’t care about the mark. Let the entire world see it. Let them know that my boyfriend is here in Toronto with me, supporting me, and loving me.”
Brandon’s shoulders start to relax, and I maneuver us both so we’re lying down once more on our sides, face-to-face, my leg thrown over his to keep him tucked close against me. The morning sunshine is quickly warming the room, but there’s no way on earth that I’m going to leave this bed to close the curtains.
“I am.”
My forehead wrinkles as I frown. “You are what?”
“I am your boyfriend, and I am here to support you.” He presses a kiss on my forehead and sighs. “And I’m here to love you. But mostly I’m here to watch you finally win that gold medal you’ve always wanted.”
“I told you that I would rather have you than a gold medal.”
He kisses me again, this time on the corner of my mouth. “You can have both, you know.”
I can.
The thought rolls over me. I have Brandon, and I have Val and Andrey. My team, my boyfriend . . . and maybe I can have that Olympic champion title as well.
“I want to win a gold medal this year,” I say. “For myself, and for you, and for our team. But in four years, I want to win a gold medal with you.”
He tenses against me, then nods. “I’m with you. But . . .” he pulls back enough to meet my gaze, “not because I want to win a medal.”
“Because you’ve already won,” I say, smiling at him.
He smiles back, wide and beautiful. “Because what you said before, about what makes you happy . . . that makes me happy too. Having you by my side is all I want, and I don’t care if we’re on the platform or not. If we win a medal together, it’s only because we’re best together.”
“So you’re saying you want to win a gold medal in being boyfriends.”
He laughs, and his eyes shine. “Yeah. That’s what I want.” He kisses my cheek, then the corner of my eye. “But I do want to dive with you. And if that means we’re good enough to be back in these tiny-as-fuck single beds in four years, then that’s just a bonus.”
I kiss him, still grinning. “Then we’ll dive together, and see where life takes us.”
“Deal.”
Lying there in Brandon’s arms, it doesn’t matter what happens tomorrow or the next day. It doesn’t matter because Brandon’s here, and we’re together.
I close my eyes and sink into his embrace, and it feels just like flying.