Truth, Pride, Victory, Love

by David Connor

  I stared at it awhile, my hand eventually trembling so much I couldn’t even see the words. In just my towel, I burst into the little office just off the locker room Coach Keller used after practice to record my times and upload video onto his laptop. “What the fuck?”

  “It was his choice, Reed, not mine.”

  “Because you yelled at him.”

  “Because I yelled at him?” Coach snorted. “What are you, eight?”

  Once again, I was back in Mrs. Smeckler’s fourth-grade class.

  “I yell at you every day. You don’t fucking quit.”

  I didn’t know how to answer that.

  “He’s going to be training with a more prestigious coach.”

  “Because his parents bought his way in.”

  Coach didn’t deny it.

  “How come you don’t charge me or my parents for your services?”

  “Because you don’t have the kind of bank account the Webbers do,” Coach said simply and honestly. “And because I believe in you so much, it’s not about making money. Maybe that’ll come later.”

  “You don’t believe in Mathias?”

  He took a long time to answer. “Not nearly as much, no.”

  “Oh.” I turned to go. “Wait.” I spun around. “Where is Mathias going?”

  “He’s moving to Arizona.”

  Every bit of air within me left my body. I actually stumbled back. “Motherfucker!”

  “You want to go with him? That’s where the big boys train—the superstars…. I might be able to get you in.”

  “No.” I answered right away.

  “You sure?”

  “I said no and I meant it.” I shook my head as something dawned on me. “None of this happened overnight.”

  “I don’t see how it could have.”

  “So… so, he knew he was going. He’s been planning the move awhile, and didn’t say a word.” I assumed that might have been what he’d been working toward telling me the day he’d gotten busted, the day he’d apologized for everything and nothing. Still…. “How long has he known? Was he going to finish the semester and then go? Would he have told me in person if this hadn’t gone down?”

  Coach didn’t answer. The guy knew rhetorical ranting when he heard it.

  “Fucking douchebag!” I wanted to kick something—bad for my foot. I wanted to punch something—bad for the hands. I needed both for swimming, so I grabbed the pen from Coach’s hand and chucked it across the room.

  “Let it out.” He stood. “Do you need a hug?”

  I started laughing. I couldn’t help myself. I laughed for at least three whole minutes, until I cried for four whole days.

  12

  “GO!”

  “Faster! Faster!”

  “You got this!”

  The cheering at the side of the pool was exuberant and raucous. The guy in the other lane was close—too close. It was going to be tough to pull ahead, especially when stopping to rest every couple of seconds.

  “Keep going, Dev! You can do it!” I hollered.

  He did. Somehow, my brother touched the wall first! He won!

  “Yes! That’s my bro!” I slapped him on his bare, wet back as he not so gracefully dragged himself across the decking and up to his feet after his very first competition. We had traveled all the way down to Westchester for it—the entire family, including Desiree and Shemar. Cal was there. He was Devon’s coach.

  By the fall of 2013, Dev was a Special Olympian, three years before I’d become the other kind. The Rio Games were thirty-three and three-quarters months off. Like when Beth was pregnant and her doctor counted in weeks instead of months, I counted in months instead of years for some reason.

  As I stood there proudly watching my brother fight for breath after working so hard to make his way across the pool, I forgot about that timeline, though, at least for a little while, to concentrate on nothing but him.

  “Was I good?” he asked.

  “You were amazing,” I told him, a bit choked up.

  “I was asking Cal,” Devon informed me.

  Cal’s beaming smile said it all. He was proud of Devon, and happier than I had seen him since the accident. He was also ripped. Lucky me, I got to see him with his shirt off every couple of weekends as he trained my brother at the Dover pool. I didn’t get home as often as I’d promised, which both of them reminded me of when I did. We were almost back to normal, Cal and I. The wall between us had come down slowly, and finally, on those rare occasions we came face-to-face, it felt like old times. His seizures were gone. Maybe. Hopefully. Almost definitely. Having gone nearly a year without one, he was allowed to drive again and swim. A while before that, he’d returned to the factory floor. His boss, Mr. Kenney, had lured him back before that with the promise of future advancement and college tuition. He saw something in Cal, he had said, and put him to work in the office until it was safe to get back on the machinery. Cal was also back in school. Technically, he was Dev’s assistant coach, but obviously the title didn’t matter. They’d soon be off to competitions all over New York. Cal was determined to have Devon branch out into National Special Olympics meets too, and Devon and my parents were onboard—as long as it didn’t become too stressful.

  “Two Olympians in the family….” My mother radiated pride through her smile and crinkled eyes, as she had us side by side, a rare occurrence these days.

  “I’m not there yet,” I reminded her.

  “Good going, Devon!” He got a hug from his new girlfriend, Amy—take that, Loralie O’Dell—who had also won her race.

  “Yay, Devon.”

  We were swarmed then by a slew of teammates and strangers.

  “Way to go!”

  “Congratulations.”

  I could see it coming before it happened. Devon was normally a very chill guy. On rare occasions, however, noise, visual chaos, or other sorts of environmental stimulation became too much for him to process. I’d seen him panic at a crowded grocery store the day before Thanksgiving, and Mama once had to take him out of a restaurant during a family celebration when the waitstaff started to sing “Happy Birthday” to Dad. Strangers invading his personal safety zone, certain daily frustrations, homework stress, it could be anything. A math worksheet once triggered an almost catatonic state. Devon would sort of drift off while wide-awake, as if just treading water, to use a swimming metaphor, barely buoyant, hardly able to stay afloat.

  “Stop!”

  He mostly only struck out verbally, though he had decked me recently, when I’d tickled him too much. He’d apologized for days, but I knew I’d had it coming, and I’d told him so.

  “Okay, guys, Dev needs a little space,” Cal said to the others.

  It was all a brand-new experience, and though my brother obviously loved the swimming part, it seemed adoring fans might be a bit much.

  “I want to go home,” he said to Mama.

  “Okay. That’s what we’ll do,” she said.

  We all ushered him out, without even a good-bye to Amy.

  “You want to ride with Cal and me?” I asked.

  He shook his head. He wouldn’t even speak.

  Since Devon obviously wanted our parents, I hung back. “How long you down for this time?” Cal asked me.

  I watched as my brother got into the car.

  “He’ll be okay, Wats. This has happened before—and with other kids. Everyone here gets it.”

  “I hope so. You ready?”

  “I have to talk to Dev’s other coach. Paperwork and stuff. It’ll only take a minute. You mind?”

  “No. It’s all good.”

  “I was hoping to get you alone a few minutes anyway.” He was standing pretty close. “We need to set up a playdate. You staying the weekend?”

  “No. Just the morning, really.” I was still focused on my brother, even as my parents’ car pulled away.

  “Oh.”

  “I know. At least Dev didn’t make me feel guilty this time. ‘I get it. We’re both in trai
ning now.’ That’s what he said.” I had to smile. “Wait. A playdate?”

  Cal tickled my wrist with his middle finger. “I was hoping we could hook up while you’re here.” He whispered it, a bit too loudly, considering how many people were around us, as we waited in the parking lot.

  “Is that some sort of street sign for sex?”

  “Is what a what?” Cal laughed at me.

  “The tickle thing?”

  “Wats, I grew up next door to you in a cow town. What do I know about street signs?”

  “Well… whatever… I’m not helping you cheat on Caryn.”

  Cal and Caryn had been an official couple for a while by then. I recalled the story they had told me together, as a tag team, via Skype.

  “I found him the night of your sendoff, halfway up the street, sitting on the curb by himself while most of the guests were still at the party,” Caryn had started the tale.

  “She sat down beside me and kissed me on the cheek.”

  “I’d been wanting to kiss him again since prom night.”

  “She said, ‘You’re into Reed, huh?’”

  “He told me yes, right out. ‘Me too,’ I said. ‘And you, I think just as much, to tell you the truth.’ We ended up holding each other until Calvin’s leg fell asleep.”

  “She made fun of me because I couldn’t stand.”

  “And we laughed, but he shut me out after that for a while.”

  “Caryn and your brother, they’re both pretty persistent, though. Man, am I glad for that now. She showed up at the house almost every day.”

  “Every single day,” Caryn had said.

  “One night, we went to a movie. I gave in. ‘Jesus! Okay!’”

  “I jerked him off in the theater and then asked if he was thinking of you or of me.”

  I remembered my heart skipping a beat.

  “‘You, then,’ I told her. ‘Both of you now.’”

  “And I’m cool with that,” Caryn had said. “So, we’ve been together ever since, long distance at times, but together.”

  Caryn would send me pictures of Cal naked from time to time, and as I enjoyed them, I felt the need to remind her I had seen it first. They both called what they had “meaningful but casual.” Caryn figured she might experiment in college herself, if the right girl came along. As far as I knew, she hadn’t. I was pretty sure she would have offered details—or pictures.

  “I like cock a lot. I like Calvin’s,” she’d repeated several times, “but as long as we’re both completely honest about the whole thing, why shouldn’t I play a bit if I feel like it?”

  I had no answer for that. Why not? I hadn’t really felt like it. Okay, that was a lie. I felt like it a lot, but I’d become far too busy to pursue sex. I could satisfy myself, for the most part, with a little help from the Internet and pictures of Cal.

  “She’s down with me getting with you, Wats. It was her idea,” Cal told me, there amongst the cars and people getting in them after the swim meet. “It’s her fantasy, really.”

  “Shh.”

  “Ask her.”

  I pulled out my phone to take him up on the bluff.

  “You need the number?” he asked.

  “Nope.” I swiped the screen of my phone until Caryn came up.

  She had gone off to college over in Pennsylvania, and our visits home rarely corresponded. Growing up seemed to mean growing apart from childhood friends. Distance on a map was a bitch. We still talked, Caryn and I, but as was often the case, even in the age of Instagram, Snapchat, and whatnot, communication was sporadic. I had swimming. She had everything. Much like Mathias, she had joined enough college clubs and activities to keep her busy every waking hour of every day. I wondered if she had issues with loneliness as well.

  I dialed and put her on speaker so Cal could hear as I ducked behind a partition hiding an AC unit.

  “Reed!” She answered, damn it. “How are you? Where are you?”

  “Good. I’m in Dover. Well, I’m not. I’m in Westchester… at Dev’s meet with Cal.”

  “He wants to know if we can fuck,” Cal said to Caryn and everyone in close proximity.

  “Shh.” Though Caryn laughed, I cringed, as I’d have sworn three people turned around to look at the large wood-and-lattice panel.

  “Only if you send me pics.”

  Cal’s expression, all squinty eyes and crooked grin, it was so loving, so content at the sound of her voice telling us to fuck. “See. I told you she’d let me. Think you can take me up your—”

  “Cal,” I said through clenched teeth. He was annoying the hell out of me, but still, my dick was getting hard. Most importantly, I loved him, like always, and he finally seemed his old self again.

  “Calvin’s won’t be your first, will it?” Caryn asked.

  “Yes. And how can you not be… jealous?” I asked quietly. Two people involved in this conversation were still standing in the middle of a parking lot at a public pool, yet here we were having a rather private exchange.

  “Oh, I kind of am. I told him only you.”

  “Oh.”

  “Though we both figured you’d be back together with Mathias, like, any minute.”

  “Like I said before, I’m not sure I was ever together with him in the first place. I guess we were… but… no. It’s been over a year, by the way, so I think we can let that go.”

  “Well, if you’re attached, Cal and I said we would pick out someone else together. Which isn’t easy.”

  I had to smile. “You’ve given this some thought.”

  “I read a lot of gay fiction. The thought of my guy doing it with another one is kind of hot.”

  I laughed. “O… kay.”

  “What’s with the tone, mister?”

  I flinched. “You seem a little… eager is all.”

  “Hey. The idea of two women together has been the ultimate stereotypical straight man’s fantasy for centuries. Are you really going to criticize me for wanting to see two hot guys go at it?”

  “I didn’t mean to criticize—”

  “Good. Because that would definitely be a double standard… kind of sexist, even.” Caryn was scolding me.

  “Sorry.”

  “You’re not just two hot guys either. You’re two hot guys I love… who love each other… with unfulfilled desires between you. What I’m really saying is, it’s fine by me if you want to… fulfill them. And I totally wouldn’t mind watching. So are you gonna?” She sounded rather excited again.

  “Probably not today.”

  “Shit!” That was from Cal.

  “I have to spend some time at home and then get back up to school.” I was torn. I wanted to, but I didn’t. Maybe I was afraid I’d fall in love with Cal and the feelings wouldn’t be mutual. I knew how that felt. Then again, what if they were? Then Caryn would be hurt. Yeah. I thought too much. It was my fatal flaw.

  “Too bad,” Caryn said. “I kind of had visions of a permanent three-way thing, how pretty we would all be in a bed together, totally happily ever after.”

  I laughed. She didn’t.

  “I’ve got to go, guys. We’re having a clothing drive for the less fortunate. I’m in charge.”

  Of course she was. The notion took me back to Mathias cleaning out his closet and offering me his hand-me-downs. I definitely had way less money than he, but as I thought about my family and two best friends, one beside me and one in a tiny avatar in my phone contacts directory, I knew no way in hell was I less fortunate.

  “Maybe you have time to suck Calvin’s dick and post a Vine?”

  “You expect it to be that quick?” I asked.

  “Full-length video, whatever. I’m not placing parameters.”

  I looked at Cal and his basset-hound eyes. Then I took in the rest of his body: dark, smooth, muscular; his broad shoulders just right for resting my head on; the inviting black commas of hair on his hard gut I could toy with while sucking his thick, salty hard-on. “We’ll see. Talk to you soon.” I ended the call. “I d
o love you, Cal.”

  “Back at ya, homie.” My head did fit perfectly between his neck and those shoulders when he came in for a quick bro hug. “So, what’s the problem?”

  That was it, sort of. We could have embraced, but a quick back slap with barely a squeeze, that was what I got. Still, I said, “Come on, Coach lady,” as I watched Devon’s other mentor stop and talk with everyone in her path as she tried to get to Cal. “I want to get out of here.”

  While Cal talked to her once she finally came over, I called Mama on her cell phone to check on Dev. When she said he was fine now, Cal and I took off. He was still shirtless. It was a hot day—and a hot setting. We took the back roads. Yeah. I did it, because I’d had the idea in my head already. Fondling Cal as he drove wasn’t terribly smart, so when things got intense, we pulled off into a secluded wooded area.

  “So….”

  “Yeah.” When I reached over for the bulge in Cal’s trunks again, he stopped me by grabbing my wrist. “What?”

  “It’s, uh, good we’re talking again, thanks to Dev.”

  “Definitely.” I reached for his cock.

  “Wait. Jesus.”

  “Okay. Sorry. I thought that was the whole point here.”

  The windows were down. No music was on. The only sound was the occasional bird. I listened for the one that said “David, David, David,” as I waited for Cal to say what we were waiting for.

  “I know a lot of time has gone by,” Cal said, “and maybe it’s because we’ve only seen each other a handful of times….”

  “You’re busy too.”

  “Don’t get all defensive.” He slapped me several times with my own hand as I tried to fight off both him and a smile. “We never really talked about everything… or officially… kissed and made up.”

  “Oh. I—” To my surprise, he kissed me then, and it took my breath away. It was what I’d been waiting for half my life, and I didn’t know how to react.

  “There,” he said as if he’d accomplished something major. “I never… did that before.”

  “No.”

  “Not with any guy.”

  “No?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “How’d it feel?”