THE ONLY thing that had changed when they finished practice was there was some light in the sky. The temperature had not budged a frigging degree and the wind most certainly hadn’t calmed any.
Brandon and Joel made the dash to Joel’s car no less quickly than they had earlier. The only difference now was the car hadn’t been running long enough to warm up when Brandon hopped inside. At least the closed doors stopped the wind from cutting through them like a knife—a very sharp, very long knife that seemed intent on slicing straight through his body as if he wasn’t wearing any clothes whatsoever.
“Fuck!” Brandon swore loudly.
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say that,” Joel commented with an admiring smile.
Instantly embarrassed, Brandon blushed and looked down. “Sorry. I can’t say words like that when my dad’s around. He doesn’t permit it.”
“That doesn’t make any sense at all,” Joel complained. “I’ve heard him say that and a lot of similar words hundreds of times during a standard practice. Why is it okay for him to swear but not for you?”
“He says that it isn’t proper for an Olympian to swear, that cameras are always around recording stuff when you get to that level and people are always looking for dirt, looking for a way to trip you up and to make you look bad. An Olympian must always be on his best behavior because you never know when someone is watching, listening, and worst of all recording.”
“Dude, I hate to break it to you, but you’re not an Olympian. You’re a high school student. You swim good and all, but that’s a long ways from being an Olympic competitor.”
“I know that. But he says it’s important to practice now so that it becomes second nature to behave properly when I do become an Olympian.”
“He seems pretty confident in you.”
“He knows what he wants,” Brandon commented quietly.
The heater in the car finally started to pump out a little warmth, but not enough to force out the cold that seemed to inhabit Brandon right down to his core.
“What about what you want?” Joel asked as they sat in the idling car. The question caught Brandon off guard. “What do you want, man?”
Brandon turned to stare at Joel, his mouth slightly open. “No one… no one’s ever asked me that before. I don’t know how to answer that question.”
“It’s a simple question, dude. Everybody wants something. Everybody has a dream for themselves, even if it’s buried deep inside and never shared with another living soul. So what is it that you want?”
“I… I don’t know,” Brandon said softly. He actually did know. Brandon did have a dream, but it was a personal dream that would remain buried where it was and not brought out and paraded around for public consumption. There was no way Brandon was going to tell Joel that his dream was to meet a man and find the love of his life, someone with whom he could share the ups as well as the downs. Someone who would love him and who he could love, someone to wake up next to every morning, someone with whom to make mad and passionate love every night.
“That tells me all I need to know,” Joel commented.
As Joel drove them back toward home, he thankfully did so at a more sane speed, since this time they didn’t need to rush to be somewhere. While he drove, Joel talked about some of the things he was considering doing in the city that day, the stores he wanted to go to, the things he wanted to look at, and the things he planned to buy, the movie he wanted to see, a friend he wanted to drop in on to see if he could find her alone and talk her into sex.
Brandon half listened, enough to know that he was intensely jealous, not just about the sex but about everything. The idea of being able to determine his own path for even one day was so foreign to him Brandon just couldn’t comprehend it, as Joel babbled on. He heard enough to know when a polite nod of his head was called for, or when to mutter a word in acknowledgment to something Joel had said.
Since they were not rushing quite so much, Joel actually drove up Brandon’s driveway as far as he could. It wasn’t entirely shoveled out yet. That was one of Brandon’s chores, but the cold weather had made extended bouts of shoveling highly unappealing. He knew he had to get it all done before his father returned, but that wasn’t anytime soon.
“Same time, same place tomorrow?” Joel asked.
Brandon sighed. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Sure you don’t want to go with me today?”
“You don’t know how much I wish I could, but I can’t,” Brandon said, feeling as if he bore the weight of the world on his shoulders and was about to collapse under the load.
Joel was usually bold and boisterous, but for once he was quieter. He looked at Brandon with an understanding that told Brandon he got it. “All right, man, but sometimes I think you need to strike out on your own and just tell him to fuck off.”
Brandon laughed, but it was not jolly, joyful laughter but was instead filled with sadness. He thought of that frequently but knew he would never be bold enough to do something like that. There was one absolute, undisputed alpha male in his house, and it sure as hell wasn’t Brandon. He was definitely the beta or even the omega male in their house, but it was a role he knew well since he’d always occupied the exact same position, even when Jeremy, his older brother, had still been in the picture. They’d never had any problems, just so long as it was clear that Jeremy was the older brother. Brandon missed him, even though they hadn’t been especially close. He still to this day had no clue what had gone down between Jeremy and their dad, but whatever it was, one day Jeremy was there and then the next he was gone, and his dad was more pissed-off than usual. Brandon could still remember his dad’s words, “We will not speak of him again.” Brandon shook his head at the memory—his dad sure had problems with control issues.
SWIMMING BURNED a lot of calories and always left Brandon hungry. So the first thing he did once he got home was cook and eat a huge breakfast to replenish his body’s fuel. Afterward he immediately washed the dishes, something second nature at this point.
He did allow himself one luxury—he sat down on the sofa and tackled some of a novel he was supposed to read for his English class. It was due right after the break, so he wanted to try to knock it out as quickly as possible. The only problem was the book was tough to read, not something that could be called a real page-turner. He knew it was a classic, but did it have to be so damned boring and slow to develop? And why couldn’t they write words that made sense?
He very nearly dozed off from boredom but was rescued by the ringing telephone. He grabbed for the phone, which sat nearby, and said, “Hello?”
“Brandon, it’s your father.” The voice immediately launched at him. “Did you practice this morning?” he asked with an accusing tone to his voice.
“Of course,” Brandon said.
“I bet you slacked off without me there to ride your ass, didn’t you?”
“Not that I’m aware of,” Brandon offered but knew it wouldn’t carry any weight with his father, whose mind was clearly already made up on the subject. He wasn’t sure his father even heard the words Brandon said, but he had to try. “I practiced just like I do every morning.”
“I swear, I need to ride you every minute to make you do what you need to do. This isn’t a game, Brandon. This is real life and real life requires a lot of work and a lot of sacrifice.”
As his father babbled on in one of his standard speeches, all of which seemed to automatically assume Brandon was a disreputable slacker who needed constant hounding, scolding, and harassment, Brandon’s mind wandered a bit. He even grew so bold as to try to read another page of the horrible book still in his hand.
“Are you listening to me?” his dad asked, a fairly standard question from the man, which got a standard answer.
“Of course I am, Dad.”
“You better. Tomorrow morning I want you to practice and give it your all. You cannot slack off just because I’m not there to crack the whip. The more ground you lose, then the harder we’ll have to work when I get back to make up that lost ground, so do yourself a favor and do the work now.”
Without any comment about how everything else was going or how golf in Florida was or even what the weather was like there, Brandon’s dad finished his speech and hung up. Brandon’s obligation for the morning was now complete. Well, mostly.
Tossing his book aside, Brandon reluctantly bundled up in many layers and went back outside to try to knock out some more of the driveway. Shoveling the heavy snow wasn’t much fun even at the best of times, but doing so in the cold and with the constant, biting wind chasing him made the chore seem ten times harder, which was why Brandon had been trying to do the work in small chunks.
Despite the weather, though, Brandon wanted to get the job done and be rid of that weight hanging around his neck, so he pushed on. While he didn’t complete the entire thing, he got more than half of what was left. One more good trip outside later in the afternoon and he would be done. But it wasn’t going to happen at the moment because his muscles ached from shoveling on top of his efforts in training. Practically crawling, Brandon returned to the house to grab something for lunch before lying down to read. And that was when and where he promptly fell asleep.