Chapter Eighteen
By lunchtime, though, I was wishing I’d just gone back to bed.
The presentations weren’t dull, just long, and I wasn’t really in the right frame of mind to make the most of them.
On the few occasions I managed to at least start to concentrate, the thought of Kai in his trunks distracted me.
When they finally applauded the last speakers off the stage, I practically bolted to the door.
As I got to the pool area, I was all but convinced that Kai had the right idea.
Two pools, in fact, surrounded by palm trees, tables, and loungers.
Clearly this was where the “plus one” crowd hung out while us suckers were in sessions, given the number of occupied chairs and the amount of people either swimming or just floating in the water.
It was barely noon, but that hadn’t dissuaded a number of them from consulting the cocktail menu.
I glanced around, then saw Kai sitting with his back to me at a table across the room. The wide set of his shoulders unmistakable. Picking my way through to him, I saw that his hair was wet and messy, evidence that he had indeed been swimming.
Pulling up behind him, I rested my hands on his shoulders. Chuckled as I felt him jolt a little in surprise; smiled when he craned his head around and saw it was me.
“It looks like your morning was more fun than mine,” I observed.
Kai grinned. “I’m happy with our division of labor, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Settling down in the seat opposite, I stretched my arms up over my head and groaned. “How can sitting in a room, listening and pretending to take notes be so exhausting.”
“Are you sure you can’t skip out on this afternoon and spend it with me, instead?” The look of eager hopefulness on his face was adorable.
“I really can’t,” I protested, weakly. “I’m already planning to do the bare minimum as it is.”
He sighed. “Isn’t there, like, a friend you can just ask for the notes afterwards?”
I rolled my eyes. “This isn’t high school. And anyway, I’ll have you know I never did that.”
“Well, weren’t you a good boy. I did do that, and now they’re going to let this mediocre student be a doctor.” He smirked at me. “Eventually.”
“Remind me to never come see you if I’m feeling sick,” I teased in return.
His expression turned lascivious. “Oh please, like my hands haven’t always made you feel better.”
I nodded, conceding the point.
“Well,” he continued, “if you change your mind - or if you can just stick around for a while now - I brought your stuff down with me.”
Suddenly the idea of being enveloped in cool, crisp water sounded like the only thing I wanted to do in the world.
Unlocking my phone, I checked the calendar of sessions for the afternoon. Depending on how short I was willing to cut lunch, I could probably fit in a swim.
“Do you mind waiting to eat?” I asked Kai.
His face lit up. “No, if it means you can come in the pool with me now!”
I smiled back at him; his enthusiasm was contagious. “Okay, where do I change?”
He pointed across the patio, then tossed me one of the hotel dry cleaning bags. “You’ll need this, though.”
“Oh, so I can’t just wear these?” I replied, sarcastically, gesturing down at what I was wearing.
Kai stuck out his tongue. “Sure you can. But you’re gonna make weird squelching noises all through the afternoon sessions, and the smell of chlorine might put people off sitting near you.”
“So you’re saying there’s good and bad, then,” I mused.
“Stop procrastinating and get changed!” he demanded.
I raised my hands in defeat and headed off to the locker room.
#
For some reason I’d expected to find my old running shorts in the bag.
Indeed, I’d packed them in my suitcase, with the express intention of wearing them to the pool here.
Clearly Kai had decided otherwise, since he’d brought the much tighter, much more revealing gray suit that I’d bought at his instruction.
I grit my teeth. On the one hand, I really, really wanted to get in that pool.
Just accepting it was going to happen had seen some of the morning’s stress melt out of my shoulders; the idea of changing my mind and not getting to float in the water without a care in the world - okay, for thirty minutes at most, but that was still better than nothing - was suddenly heartbreaking.
At the same time, this would be the first time anyone other than Kai had seen me wearing something so.
.. skimpy. I’d just about got used to him watching me when I was in it, and even then whatever degree of comfort I felt was more about enjoying his inexplicable but still obvious attraction, than it was feeling relaxed in my own skin. And there was a lot of skin on show.
In the end, the need to wash away the morning - and that creepy conversation in the restroom - won out.
Quickly I stripped out of my shirt and pulled off my pants, folding them as neatly as I could and then putting them into one of the empty lockers.
Pushed down my boxer-briefs next, and then, before I could second-guess the decision, stepped into the swim trunks.
Like always, I was struck by their clinging softness. Somehow silkier than silk, even. Glancing to the side, I found myself in profile in a full-length mirror. Instantly looked away, only for my eyes to be tugged back across.
I was no Kai. That part really didn’t need to be acknowledged, but I couldn’t stop my treacherous brain from making comparisons, even if it knew I’d always come out in distant second place. A placement I’d still only earn because there were just two competitors.
All the same, I clenched my stomach and tried to puff my chest out, and pretend that what I was seeing wasn’t making my eyes itch with discomfort. Attempted to look at myself with what I imagined was Kai’s gaze, when he looked at me.
Even with my glass-half-empty perspective, I could see that I looked better than I did a couple of months ago.
No model, sure, but in the hands of my relentless swimming instructor I had at least toned up some.
Though I hadn’t been fat after the breakup, the most generous way to describe me would’ve still been “undefined.”
Now though, I had actual visible shape to my arms. Not bulging muscle, but I didn’t look like a collection of generic shop mannequin parts that had been jumbled together, either. I was considering that a win.
I chuckled at the thought, then self-consciously looked around to see if there was anyone to hear me. Thankfully not. Twisting the key in the locker and snapping its tethering rubber band around my wrist, I took a deep breath and padded barefoot to the door.
It was no busier outside, but I couldn’t escape the feeling that people were quietly watching - and judging - me.
Wondering who the asshole in the trunks was, and who he thought he was, wearing something so revealing.
My jaw was starting to clench, and the urge to turn right back around to get changed again was close to overwhelming.
“Are you gonna stand there or are you coming in?”
I turned in the direction of Kai’s voice; found him looking up at me, grinning, from the pool.
Arms crossed on the edge. I tried to focus on his face and nothing else around me, to let the projected doubt and negativity fade as much as it could.
That’d always felt like an unreachable theory, before, but somehow Kai’s smile made it easier to believe in.
Quickly I crossed over to the water, and lowered myself in. This didn’t seem like the “big splashy jump” sort of place.
Kai let himself drift away from the side, gently bobbing in place in front of me. “Nice, right?”
Slowly kicking my legs, I ran my hands through my hair and nodded. “Really nice,” I conceded.
His face lit up in a smile. “Excellent. Maybe those all-important sessions this afternoon don’t seem quite so important now...”
I rolled my eyes at him. “You don’t give up, do you.”
Kai shrugged, or at least tried to while floating. “If it’s wrong to want to keep you here, all wet and slippery, then I don’t want to be right.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Which reminds me, what happened to my shorts?”
“I checked your deck, thinking you might’ve forgotten your suit, and sure enough you had. Accidentally, I’ve no doubt.”
“Very helpful of you,” I observed, dryly.
“Hey, I like seeing you in the gray ones,” he said, with a smirk.
It was tough to be too frustrated with him, when he was being so flattering. I decided to cut my losses. “Fine. But don’t get any ideas about doing actual laps. This is purely for relaxation, okay?”
Kai rubbed a wet hand across his face. “Sure, fine, whatever you say. I won’t push my luck.”
True to his word, he didn’t. Instead we drifted on our backs for a while, interrupted by an impromptu game of tag when he splashed me and I retaliated, before finding ourselves braced on the edge of the pool on the far side from the restaurant.
Maybe it was the lunch rush, but it seemed like most people were more interested in eating than they were swimming.
Aside from the two of us, there were only a small handful of other people actually in the water now.
“I was thinking about last night,” Kai said, suddenly, breaking into the companionable silence.
“I know we said we’d table the whole ‘what exactly is this’ conversation for a while, but I feel like there’s probably never going to be an actual chunk of time with nothing else to think about.
Maybe we just try to figure it out piecemeal, and live with whatever discomfort might come with stretching the whole thing out. ”
I thought for a moment. “So, like, slowly tugging off the sticking plaster over an extended and probably excruciating period of time?”
Kai laughed. “Better than leaving it on forever, and never seeing what’s underneath, though, right?”
Grudgingly, I had to concede that he might have a point.
He gave me a slightly pitying look. “Do you want me to go first?”
I gnawed on my lip, then nodded. Ashamed at myself for my cowardice.
Kai nodded, like my reticence came as no sort of surprise. “Well, first off, I’ve really enjoyed being with you, and I’m glad I almost gave you a coronary from shock that day we first met.”
Despite my ominous feelings about the topic at hand, I had to chuckle at the memory. Back then it seemed like I was very much caught up in my own little bubble of introspection; having Kai puncture it really had been a surprise.
“Anyway, since then the sex has been really great. Like, really, really great.”
I glanced at him, to find he was already giving me a salacious side-eye. Grinning, I gestured at him to continue.
“But it’s also been good to get to know you,” he added. “I mean, I wasn’t expecting or intending to meet someone on my break.”
“You just wanted a pool, yeah?” I teased.
“A pool and a dick, please,” he corrected.
I shook my head in mock-dismay.
“But yeah, that wasn’t the plan. And now I can’t help but feel a little nervous because, well... the break is almost over.”
It felt like a cold hand, fingers of ice, closed around my guts and squeezed.
Draining all the sensation from me, and leaving me feeling heavy as stone.
Instinctively I tightened my grip on the side of the pool, suddenly afraid that if I didn’t hold on I’d sink, straight down and fast, to the very bottom.
Of course, he’d have thought about it. Had the calendar pages flipping in the back of his mind while we were together, counting down until the day he went back to his normal life.
Hurriedly, I tried to rewind back through my memories of the time we’d spent together; not the sex, but those moments in-between.
The times I might’ve led him to think I expected more, or was getting too attached, too needy.
The times that would be making him nervous now, fearing I’d make a scene as he said goodbye.
“You don’t have to worry,” I blurted out, before he could continue. My voice a little louder than I intended, trying to steady my anxiety with sheer volume. Thinking that, despite all he’d said, maybe I could just tear off that sticking plaster and make it so much easier for the both of us.
His gaze on me had a weight of its own. “I don’t... I don’t understand what you mean,” he said, eventually.
My smile felt tight. Brittle. “I’m just saying, we both know the score.
School is starting back up and this was the summer thing.
But...” I took a deep breath; forced myself to turn to him and fix something I hoped looked like a placid expression onto my face.
“But we both knew this wouldn’t be forever, right? ”
It was difficult, almost impossible even, to keep the smile in place under the intensity of his stare. I could feel the muscles at the corners of my mouth twitching.
“I... I mean, if that’s...” Kai paused. “Okay.”
He looked away, then, and for a while we just bobbed alongside each other in the water. The sounds of the lunch crowd beginning to thin out now, as people went back to the rest of their day. The time for fun over; the real-world unavoidable.
I looked up at the oversized clock on the wall. It was closer to the next session than I’d thought.
“I need to go back,” I told him, glancing around us for the closest ladder. He made to move, but I stopped him with a hand on his forearm. “It’s okay, water-baby. You can stay in.”
It was hard to look him in the eye, what with the feelings boiling inside of me. Emotions of an intensity I wasn’t prepared for.
Kai nodded, slowly. “Sure, Tate. Okay.”
Every time I tried to look at his face directly, the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach made me turn away. I couldn’t handle him trying to say something comforting.
Instead I kicked away, over to the ladder, and pulled myself out of the water. Waved at him, and got a small wave in return. Then tried not to turn back as I walked over to the locker room.