“Sure,” I say, too fast.
We towel off, collect our shit, and walk to the locker room.
The corridor is lined with motivational posters, some featuring guys we actually know.
One of them, the former Steelhawks captain, is dead now. The poster is still up. Neither of us comments on it.
In the locker room, we each claim a bench and undress.
I try not to look, but it’s like telling a dog not to eat food dropped on the floor. I let myself glance, quick and surgical, memorize the curve of his back, the constellation of scars on his left hip.
He catches me, just for a second, but doesn’t say anything. His body is all function, no wasted ornament.
I want to see what it looks like when it isn’t braced for violence.
We wrap towels around our waists, pad down the hall to the steam room. Inside, the air is thick enough to drink, and the heat slams into my face like a palm.
We sit on opposite tiers, not touching, but the small space makes every breath shared, every movement amplified.
For the first five minutes, neither of us talks.
I close my eyes, try to let the steam strip away the ache in my muscles and the static in my brain. It almost works.
Darius is the first to break the silence. “You ever talk to anyone about it?”
It. The shooting. The dead teammates. The way the world went sideways and never righted itself.
“Therapist,” I say. “She’s nice. Good at pretending I’m the most interesting case she’s ever had.”
He snorts. “Mine just tells me to meditate.”
“Does it work?”
“No,” he says, and laughs. It’s soft, and it cracks open something in me.
We let the silence settle. After a while, he says, “You want to get food after this?”
“Yeah,” I say, even though my stomach is still a knot from the last set of Russian twists.
We leave the steam, shower, and get dressed in parallel, like two lines destined to never intersect.
He waits by the door for me, hands in pockets, casual, but I can tell from the way he rocks on his heels that he wants to say something.
Instead, he walks me to my bike, even though his car is parked the other way.
At the rack, I fumble with my lock, fingers too shaky from fatigue or something else.
Darius stands with his hands braced on the handlebars, looking at me with an intensity that makes my skin buzz.
“See you tomorrow?” he asks.
I want to say, See you tonight, or, Stay, or, Please don’t go back to a life that has no room for me. Instead, I just nod.
He reaches out, squeezes my arm, and walks away.
I watch his back until he turns the corner.
Then I climb on my bike, legs rubber, and pedal home in the gray dawn, cataloguing every second, every touch, every word, and trying to convince myself it’s just a workout, just a friend, just nothing.
