9
RYAN
“Gerard!” Nathan shrieks, scrambling around the perimeter of the pool. “Stop poking my ass with your noodle!”
“I thought you liked me poking you with my noodle, Nathan!”
Oliver pinches the bridge of his nose, shoulders slumping slightly before he exhales through his teeth, the breath making tiny ripples in the water around his chin. “They’ll tire themselves out eventually,” he says, mostly to himself. “They’re puppies.”
We drift toward the deep end, away from the splashing and screaming. The water grows darker here, the underwater lights casting long shadows that dance across Oliver’s features. He’s treading water with ease, his muscular arms barely breaking the surface. I, on the other hand, am doggy-paddling for my life. Athletics were never my strong suit.
“You okay?” Oliver asks, noticing my struggle. “Need to grab the wall?”
“I’m fine.” I amnotfine. My legs are burning from the effort of staying afloat.
“Uh-huh.” He doesn’t call out my obvious lie, just braces one arm on the edge of the pool and angles himself closer so I can grabhis shoulder if needed. The gesture is casually protective and inherently Oliver that my chest aches with the familiarity of it.
This is who he’s always been. The boy who walked me home from the park every day because I was scared of a neighbor’s dog. The friend who never made me feel small, even when I was the smallest kid in the neighborhood.
And now, here in the deep end, with the chaos of his teammates providing a convenient smokescreen, I make the catastrophic mistake of looking at him.
Not at his face. I’ve been doing that—carefully, strategically, the way one navigates a minefield. No, my eyes betray me by dropping to the waterline where it laps against his collarbones, and then lower, following the slope of his chest.
Oliver’s pectorals are—how do I put this clinically?—massive. Two slabs of muscle that catch the refracted light from below, every contour and ridge thrown into sharp relief. A dusting of dark hair trails between them, thickening slightly at the center before tapering into a line that descends toward his stomach. His arms, braced casually against the pool’s edge, are thick and corded, veins mapping their way from bicep to forearm. The deltoids alone could have their own zip code.
My gaze continues its unauthorized expedition downward.
The water distorts things, bends light in ways that any physics student could explain. But it doesn’t hide them. Not really. Through the shimmering surface, I can make out the rigid grid of his abdominals—six distinct segments that flex and release with each subtle kick of his legs. Below that, the V-cut of his hips angles inward like an arrow pointing toward territory I have absolutely no business surveying.
And yet…
The dark thatch of hair at the base of his abdomen is unmistakable, even through the water’s rippling lens. It’s dense and full—the same ungroomed bush that the Ice Queen’s blog once dedicated an entire post to, calling it “the BSU Barracudas’ unofficial team mascot.” At the time, I’d read thatarticle on my phone in the library and nearly choked on my green tea. Now I’m seeing it in person, and choking seems like a generous description of what’s happening to my respiratory system.
Below the bush—God help me—is the unmistakable silhouette of his penis.
I am not cataloguing it. I amnot. I am a twenty-year-old astronomy major with a 3.9 GPA and the emotional regulation of a seasoned Buddhist monk. I do not catalogue penises. I observe celestial bodies. Moons. Planets. Things that are appropriately distant and incapable of making my mouth go dry.
But my traitorous brain has already done the math. It’s thick. Considerably so. Even in the cool water, even soft and drifting lazily between his thighs like it has nowhere important to be, it carries a weight and girth that is?—
Stop. Stop it right now.
His legs extend beneath him, long and powerful, the quadriceps bunching and releasing with each treading motion. His thighs are thick enough to rival tree trunks, capable of propelling him across ice at terrifying speeds. His calves taper into ankles, and then—his feet. Even his feet are large. Proportionally, absurdly large, and help to understand why shoe companies manufacture size fourteens.
Ladies and gentlemen, Oliver Jacoby has grown from a boy into a man.
The kid who lifted me off the basement floor in a cardboard helmet is gone. In his place is this…monumentto human development, treading water three feet from me. Meanwhile, I still weigh a hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet, and my feet are a size eight.
I quickly realize that my body is responding to this visual inventory in a deeply, profoundly inconvenient way. The cool water is doing nothing to counteract the heat pooling low in my stomach, and the tighty-whities that I refused to remove are about to become a very obvious circus tent. Because white cotton, water, and arousal never mix well.
I need a distraction. Something unsexy that will redirect the blood currently migrating south back to my brain, where it belongs.
“Do you remember what you told me about pool water?” I blurt.
Oliver blinks, mid-tread. “What?”
“At the Westbrook Community Pool during our first swimming lesson. You told me the water was thirty percent pee.”
His face breaks into a grin that is sure to make the angels sing. “Oh my God. I did say that.”
