Darius comes out a minute later, towel cinched tight, face set in an expression I can’t read.
He doesn’t look at me. He sits on the opposite bench, back to me, and gets dressed in perfect silence.
I can’t stand the tension, so I deploy the worst weapon in my arsenal: the bad joke.
“You ever notice the old guy who showers with his hands on his hips? Like he’s saluting the troops with his dick?”
A pause. Then, without turning, Darius says, “Maybe he’s just proud of his service.”
I snort, because it’s better than dying of shame. He snorts too, but it’s just air, no laugh in it.
We finish getting dressed.
My hands are numb, my heart is still hammering. The air between us is so thick it’s like trying to breathe underwater.
At the exit, Darius says, “Need a ride home?”
I should say no. I should say I have errands, or a call, or literally anything else, but what comes out is, “Yeah. Thanks.”
We walk to the car in silence.
The air outside is cold, colder than it’s been all week, and the shock of it resets my brain, just for a second. Darius unlocks the car with his key fob, and I slide into the passenger seat, pulse drumming in my wrists.
The ride is eight minutes, start to finish, but it feels like a year. Darius doesn’t put the radio on. He doesn’t talk.
He taps the steering wheel at every red light, fingers drumming out a pattern that never repeats. Every time he glances over, it’s a surgical strike, in and out, gone before I can catch it.
I try to think of something to say, anything to sand down the edge of the moment, but all I can think about is the shower, the look, the raw fucking honesty of it.
We pull up outside my building. I go to thank him, but the words jam up.
“See you tomorrow?” he says, voice perfectly flat.
“Yeah. Tomorrow,” I say, and slam the door too hard on my way out.
Upstairs, I unlock my apartment and walk straight to the kitchen, hands braced on the countertop until the tremors in my arms die down.
I tell myself, It was nothing.
It was the endorphins, or the post-workout pump, or the way showers just do that to some guys. He was probably thinking about Nia, or about winning the next game, or about literally anything else.
I try to eat. I nuke a frozen burrito and take two bites before it tastes like cardboard.
I try to watch TV.
I put on the dumbest, loudest thing I can find, but the voices just turn into white noise, every laugh track replaced by the echo of Darius’s voice saying push, or one more, or see you tomorrow.
I check my phone, but the team group chat is dead.
There’s a meme from O’Doul, a photo of some toddler in a Steelhawks jersey, faceplanted on the floor with the caption “CURRENT MOOD.” I almost reply, but what would I even say?
I pace the apartment, look at my hands, at the scars and the calluses and the faint pink line on my wrist from the time I tried to fix a garbage disposal with a kitchen knife.
Every nerve is lit up. I want to do something, break something, throw myself into bed and sleep for a year.
Instead, I strip down, climb under the covers, and stare at the ceiling until my eyes go blurry.
For a while, I replay the scene in the shower.
