Intro - Eli
EliNelsonheldhiscell phone a little farther from his ear, trying to divide his attention between his friend on the other end and the TV across the room.On the screen, a muscular blond gymnast in blue shorts and singlet appeared, walking away from the camera.For a moment Eli’s attention was caught.But after two years of rooming with Tyler, he could recognize the guy in about a millisecond just from the way he moved, even in rear-view on a small screen ten feet away.This blond guy didn’t have the build or the fluid grace.Not Tyler.
“...don’t you think?”Derek said over the phone.
Eli focused back on the conversation.“Sorry, I missed that.”
“The road trip.It’s gonna be awesome.I still don’t get why you won’t come along.Just you and me, like after senior year.You don’t have a summer job, and I’ll cover the gas.We’d have a blast.I’ll even stop at the occasional gay bar so you can get laid, as long as you don’t tell me about it.”
Eli snorted.“Yeah, right.You in a gay bar.”
“If it would cheer you up.”Derek’s voice got quieter.“I swear, Eli, you’ve been so fucking quiet for months.Exams are long over.You need to get out and live a bit.”
“I will,” Eli promised absently, his eyes on the screen.The action had gone back to vault, but the dark-haired competitor was still not Tyler.Coverage of the 2012 Olympics gymnastics trials was bouncing between the events to follow the top competitors, and he was going to go nuts if Tyler wasn’t up soon.
Derek nagged, “When?Look, come out with me tonight.We’ll have a few beers or catch a movie or something.”
“Not tonight.”
“Why not?Dammit, you used to be fun.Is it that roommate of yours?Did he do something?”
“What?”That pulled Eli’s attention away from the screen.“Why the hell would you say that?”
“Because you used to talk about him a lot.Tyler this and Tyler that, until I figured you had a hell of a crush on the straight guy.And now you don’t mention him at all, so I thought maybe you had a fight, or he was hassling you about being gay or something.You know, he may have all those fucking gymnast muscles but I can still kick his ass if he’s not being cool about you.”
“It’s nothing like that.It has nothing to do with Tyler.”
“If you say so.”Derek sounded unconvinced.“Anyway, think about the road trip.I’ll be at Casey’s tonight if you want to hang out.Hell, you’ll probably get hit on, if you want that.”
Eli hesitated, and then saw the action on-screen shift again.The camera played lovingly across the tightly-muscled form of a honey-blond young man in shorts, singlet, and those odd flat shoes half the guys wore.The announcer said, “Tyler Bannichek needs a better vault on this, his second attempt, to clinch his spot on the Olympic team...”
Eli said, “I’ll catch you later,” into the phone.Derek might have made some kind of reply but Eli had stopped listening, stopped doing anything except fixating on the image of his best friend, his roommate, the one man who could make him hurt all the way to his core.Tyler, with his amazing body and his dark-gray eyes, and his talent and courage and stupid,stupidambition.Eli watched the way Tyler moved, looking for any hesitation, tightness, any sign of the pain Tyler lived with every day.But the way Tyler shook his arms out, stretched, and stepped up onto the runway was all power and grace.No evidence at all.
The entire length of these Olympic trials, Tyler had been amazing.Only once had there been any hitch.Just that one time, landing a triple dismount off the high bar, Eli had seen Tyler take a big, big step.While the announcers talked about how Ty's expression showed his anger at himself, Eli read that look very differently.That was Tyler hurting badly, and a little scared, after doing something that zapped him with pain.
Eli had watched intently as Tyler had held his finish pose several extra seconds before walking away from the floor.He thought maybe he was the only one in the world who saw that tiny jolt in the line of Tyler's back as he took his first step.One flinch, and after that there’d been nothing else to see.
Eli had watched the whole competition so far.Not that he would ever let Tyler know that.He always gave Tyler a hard time about paying extra money for cable with all those sports channels when his budget was tight, but secretly Eli was glad.When Tyler headed out for Tokyo or California, Eli quit pretending not to care.He just let himself watch every moment of Tyler that the screen would give him.
The announcer said, “There's a lot riding on this vault.”Eli bit his lip, thinking that the guy had no idea how much.
On screen, Tyler signaled to the judges, then ran down the approach, perfect in his power and speed.Eli held his breath.Held it through Ty's great punch off the springboard, the strength of Tyler's push off the vault table, his double with a half twist high in the air, and then the landing.Eli saw Tyler's feet hit, stick, and Tyler's back hold solid and still as he straightened.
Eli still waited, waited through Tyler's salute, and the excited babbling of the announcer, until he saw Tyler step away from the vault moving a little stiffly but without a limp.Then he let out that breath and clicked off the remote.Tyler had made it through safely, one more time.Eli didn't want to hear his score, or think about what a great result might mean.He wasn’t going to listen to the news, wasn’t going to find out whether Tyler was now Olympics-bound with a month of even harder and riskier training…
He stood abruptly and fetched a beer from the fridge, closed his eyes and poured it down his throat, swallowing the bitterness that ran smoothly across his tongue.Half the bottle was gone before Eli opened his eyes and looked around.Their apartment was small, simple, cluttered with the gear of two guys who didn't much care about neatness.Home for the last two years, from that first day he'd knocked on the door, answering an ad for a roommate, and the door was opened by a guy right out of the last porn he'd bookmarked.
When they started living together, he'd thought for a long time that Tyler was straight.Just amazing eye candy at first, and then a friend to hang out with, and slowly his best friend in the world.They'd started looking out for each other.There were the nights Eli stayed up studying until three in the morning, and staggered out of his room at seven to find the coffeemaker set to brew a fresh pot for him and some munchies left ready on the counter.Or the evenings Tyler dragged himself in from the gym barely able to move, and had looked at Eli like he was some kind of god when Eli offered painkillers and icepacks, Gatorade with a straw, and food Tyler could eat lying flat on his back.
Two years of friendship.
Eli finished his beer and grabbed another.Even when Eli discovered Tyler was gay, the dude remained uninterested, closeted, damn near asexual in his obsession with his sport.An obsession that paused for nothing and no one, not for friendship, not for pain, not for risk, not for goddamned common sense.Tyler would compete until it killed him.
Eli felt nauseous.He sat down fast enough to rock the spindly kitchen chair.He should be picking up his phone and calling Tyler, congratulating him, asking if the selections were made yet, but he couldn’t.As long as Eli didn’t make the call, as long as he didn’t listen to the news, he could pretend there was a chance Tyler hadn’t made the team.Tyler might yet come home and realize there was something more to life than sacrificing himself for his sport.
Eli had seen Tyler preparing for the Trials, pushing his body to the ragged edge in his quest for an Olympic dream.If Tyler was on the team, he’d be coming home all right, but only to train more—harder, faster, to put in longer hours forcing his body through tougher moves.Eli realized he couldn’t stand to watch that.If Tyler was selected, then Eli was done.Done with pretending to be just a friend, done with waiting on the sidelines for disaster to happen—just done.The beer suddenly tasted foul in Eli's mouth.But drinking was better than thinking.He tipped the bottle up and chugged the last third, swallowing fast and smooth and trying not to think about anything at all.
Maybe hewouldgo to Casey’s tonight.He didn’t want to get laid, hadn’t been interested in another guy in months, but it would be good to hang out with Derek.And maybe he’d listen to his friend’s plans for a road trip.
