“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 training 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 do 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?”
“Damned good, actually. Great, in fact.”
“And you can’t wait to do it again, because I’m completely irresistible?”
“You’re all right.”
I huffed, amused by the way he’d said it. “Gee, thanks.”
“Sorry.” Suddenly, Cal looked very serious. “For the way I acted and some of the things I said a little while back… a hundred years ago. This whole bisexual thing. I’m not sure I get it.”
“What’s to get?” I asked.
“Well, see, I know I’m not gay and in denial, because… dude… after all these months, I still fucking love Caryn. I love her tits and I love her—” He put his hand in my lap and grabbed my hard cock. He squeezed it and grunted. Since Caryn didn’t have one of those, I assumed he was referring to her vagina. “But I ain’t hating your dick either.”
“So?”
“‘So.’ Fucking so….” He almost laughed too. He wasn’t mad. “Like it’s that easy to be into both girls and guys.”
“Why is it hard?”
Cal took his hand away from where it was. “I’m glad I never told you I loved you, because this way you didn’t get hurt. Maybe not as much as you would have, at least… if I’d have said it when I felt it, and then gone all back and forth like I did.”
“I’m sorry it’s been so confusing, and for everything else you had to go through.” I wanted to touch his face. I wanted to kiss him again.
“You said all that before, Wats, over and over, a hundred times, even when I wouldn’t listen.”
“Let me say it again, now that you are. I felt really bad… I still do… that you had to give up swimming.”
“Truth?” We were holding hands again, and I couldn’t even pinpoint when it had happened. Sometimes they rested in my lap. Sometimes Cal moved them around.
“Yeah. Truth. Always,” I said.
“I probably would have quit by now anyway.”
“Seriously?”
“One thing I definitely don’t miss is competitive swimming.” He waved it away, like he meant it. “Never once did I get a swimming boner, like you do.”
“You did so. Remem—”
“Metaphorically, you anus. One of the social workers back when I was in the hospital, she made me envision the rest of my life. I was a dick, at first, like I was with you—”
“No.”
“Let me talk. Jesus, Wats.”
“Sorry.”
“She pushed. Shark Tank was on, and maybe I was bullshitting at first, because Daymond John was talking, but I think that’s my thing. I’m going to major in business and finance.”
“Yeah?”
“And I think I might maybe buy the factory someday, develop real estate, not just for profit, but to better the whole town. I want to put my employees’ ideas to work, not just their bodies. I even imagine maybe running for some sort of political office.”
“No shit.”
“Where we grew up, it’s great, right?” He didn’t give me a chance to agree. “Fuck yeah, it is, but it needs a boost. I’d love to get those abandoned buildings where your mom and dad work up and running again… turn them into something. Mr. Kenney is already mentoring me. He don’t have to live here, you know. Dude’s rolling in it like a Webber, could fucking live in Hawaii if he wanted to, but he stays because he grew up here. I’m all over that.”
“It gets you hard? Like swimming does for me?”
“Believe it or not.”
“Sweet. I just want you to be happy.”
“I’m getting there. And speaking of hard, I am again. And I see you are too. I… I’d like to suck it… if you want, because Caryn said it was okay. And you can get at mine.” He took a breath and relaxed. He actually said, “Phew,” as if admitting what he just had was work. “She says what no high school teacher of mine ever would have. ‘Cal, you think too much.’ I wonder, though… does being bi mean I’m twice as likely to cheat?”
“Have you?”
“No,” Cal said right away.
“In a year… give or take.”
“No, because it’s like, nothing’s lacking with Caryn.” He made the primitive grunting sound again, except this time it didn’t altogether sound pleasurable. “According to her, we’re like any other couple that fantasizes away from one another, only when we can’t be together, we sometimes both get off imagining your hairless body naked—or your hairy one—you know, depending on which way we want to see it that day and whether or not you’ve shaved.”
“Stop.”
“She said she wants to be sexually fluid. She wants to be, but she’s not sure she is. ‘There’s a bit of disappointment in just being straight.’ Those were her exact words.” Cal smiled. “I guess the pendulum has swung that far now, some young people think straight is backwards or something.”
“She’ll find herself,” I said.
“I’m pretty sure I can almost be kind of comfortable pretty soon calling myself absolutely bisexual if—big if—I actually am and it’s not just all about you.”
I looked at Cal’s hand on my thigh. The car was getting hotter. We were both sweating. I could feel it on his palm and my leg and down the back of my shorts.
“Caryn is a one-day-at-a-time kind of gal. As long as we’re happy, we’re happy. If we’re not, then we talk about what happens next, she says. And we do talk about it, and yet you saw how casual she was about you and me fucking. Not in a she-don’t-give-a-shit kind of way,” Cal added quickly.
“No. That’s definitely not how I saw it.”
“She gets it’s a lot to think about, despite getting on me about obsessing.”
“Do you have to decide right now?” I asked.
“Caryn wouldn’t think so, but I do, if I want to give you head, because what if doing that leads to feelings?”
“What if?” I repeated. “I mean, it would be really cool to see what we could be… if… except….”
“Except?” Cal made the disgusted grunt again—“God!”—and finally let go of my hand. “You’re telling us to let the idea go, but you’re still hung up on Whitey Greenbucks.”
I looked over—and then burst out laughing. “Whitey Greenbucks?”
Cal shrugged and smiled wider. Man, was it beautiful. Still, I punched him.
“Ow.”
“Knock it off with the skin color crap.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“And what led you to that conclusion?”
“He’s the only guy you ever wanted more than me.”
“Oh.” There was no point trying to deny it.
“And still do.”
I didn’t object to that either. “It’s better if we’re both honest.”
“Yup.” He gently touched my face, showing genuine affection. I’d missed it so much.
“It’s amazing to see you with Dev,” I said, once the silence went on too long.
“I think he saved my life.”
The comment surprised me. “Really?”
“I was ready to give up, Reed. Seriously. I’d go three weeks without a seizure—four—five—and then have one and have to start counting all over. It was fucking devastating.”
“A year now, though, right?”
“Yeah. The doctor said, ‘See. I told you they could just stop, just like that and forever.’ I didn’t believe it until they did, but look at me now. When Devon called me and said he wanted to be just like you…. Actually, what he said was he wanted to be almost just like you, and he sent me the link to Special Olympics and asked me if I would coach him on the side.”
“Yeah.” I knew part of the story, just not the emotional side of it for Cal—and the almost-just-like-me part.
“It was, like, my best day ever, ’cause it was later that same night Caryn made me go to that movie—Les Misérables—a fitting selection, since we both were. God, it sucked. I told her I’d been into her since that first day we rode home from the meet with her. I told her I didn’t say anything right away, because, besides having to deal with my own shit, well, some white girls would have been… not up for that.”
“Come on. You know better. Not Caryn.”
“No. Funny thing is, my parents are one pro, one con. My dad hasn’t totally come around yet.”
“Wow.” Maybe I didn’t really know Mr. Bellamy as well as I thought. On the other hand, “I get that, I guess,” I had to admit. “Remember when you said I’d abandoned you for Mathias?”
“That was the depression talking. I shouldn’t have—”
“No.” I touched his arm for reassurance. “It’s okay. It’s just that…. See, there were times I was with him when I felt like I was abandoning my whole race… the one I feel like I am even if it turns out I’m not.”
“You want to know… for sure?”
“Maybe. Someday. It’s just weird how even the most tolerant minds can sometimes get bogged down with stuff like that.”
“You got smart in college.” Cal smiled.
I laughed. “I was always smart.”
“And you think too much too. I worry quite a bit about what my old man would have to say about… you and me. Or me and any guy.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
Cal shrugged. “It is what it is, as they say.”
“You could have called,” I told him. “We could have talked… really talked.”
“I did call. You don’t always call back.”
I was guilty as charged on that. The deeper I sank into my own isolation, the more I ignored the people I needed, the same ones who often needed me.
“Your parents are cool with the whole guy-on-guy stuff?” Cal asked.
“They’ve never referred to it as that, but yeah. Once we finally discussed it, all was good. They’re nosy too, though. ‘Who are you seeing?’ ‘When can we meet him?’ ‘No one and never.’”
“You really need to get over that a-hole Webber.”
“He’s not an asshole.”
“Tell me how he’s not.”
I took a breath to think.
“Time’s up.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“Aren’t we all?” Cal’s smirk was endearing.
“I guess. So what’s the solution, oh smart one? What amount of asshole-ishness is acceptable?”
“Slightly less than what Mathias Webber has.”
I laughed again, longer and harder the second time. As Cal started the car and pulled back onto the road, I kissed him on the cheek and then put my head on his shoulder.