Chapter Five
Banks
“I mean, you’re wearing a pride tee, bro.”
Banks nudged Harper’s foot beneath the table, the first contact they’d ever had.
Not just since the pep rally, but ever. Harper flinched, remnants of the shy, hunched over, aloof former swimmer that had prowled the halls of Sagebrush High, hiding from his classmates in his daily uniform.
“Fresh start, remember? It’s me. We’re here.
Far from home and absolutely, utterly alone. You can tell me anything.”
As if to prove it, Banks glanced around the empty coffee shop, funky, hazy, festival jam band antics still chugging away on the overhead speakers and the barista flipping the pages of a magazine behind the empty counter.
Harper was unimpressed. “What, Banks? So you can text all your clown buddies back home and tell them all about it. I shouldn’t even be sitting with you right now. What was I even thinking?”
Banks gave him a playful growl, as if they were squaring off against each other on the old gridiron.
“Harper, are you ... do you see any of my old friends around? Have you even seen me on my phone at all since Orientation? Why do you think I applied to Piedmont in the first place? I haven’t talked to most of those guys since we graduated, and by now they’re all at state, banging coeds and pledging frats as we speak. ”
“Still,” Harper murmured, almost to himself, as if narrating his own reluctance to confess.
“You aren’t the only one wanting a fresh start here, Harp.” Banks slid his phone out of his backpack side pocket, sliding it on the table and beaming with unearned pride. “Besides, I got a new number and everything. Total anonymity from here on out, bro.”
Harper looked impressed, if still defensive. “New school, new phone?”
“New beginnings, dude. Look, just because I’m not wearing rainbows on my shirt doesn’t mean I’m not sympathetic to your cause, okay, Harp?
And forget it, if you think I’m still some kind of immature dumbass who’d text your secrets to the—what?
—maybe two or three friends I added to my contacts list, then good, fine, super. ..”
Harper smirked. “Jesus, Banks, fine. I’m supposed to be the dramatic one, remember? Just put your phone away. It’s not like I care what those douchebags think of me anymore anyway.”
Banks risked a glance at the word spelled across Harper’s flat, broad chest. “Obviously.”
Harper rolled his eyes, glanced around the room and sighed. Heavily. “What the hell, right? I mean, we both know how this is gonna go, right?”
“How what’s gonna go?”
“You, me, here on campus together.”
Banks nudged his foot again. This time? No wince. Also this time? Banks left it there, lingering far longer than the first time. “Enlighten me, Buddha.”
“You saw me today,” Harper predicted. “And you haven’t met any new brotastic buds yet, or coeds who have yet to hear of your legendary prowess in the bedroom, so you’re alone for exactly one day, see somebody from home and pounce on it.
But by tomorrow? Or the next day? Definitely by next week?
You’ll have found your new tribe on campus, or hooked up with some voracious nympho sorority slut and you’ll forget all about me and that will be the end of our little bromance, so .
.. not sure why I’m even flexing all this anyway? ”
Banks seemed profoundly disappointed. “That’s literally four thousand percent untrue, Harp.
You have no idea who I am, and if you keep this kind of blatant slander up, I’m afraid you never will.
” Banks crossed his arms over his chest for good measure, as if to solidify the fact that Harper wasn’t the only drama queen at the table.
“I mean, I could be wrong, but that’s the narrative I’ve created for our little reunion, so ... prove me wrong?”
“I intend to, bro, just as soon as you spill the beans about bailing on the swim team, remember?”
“Why do you even care, Banks?” Harper’s voice had changed, subtly, from the false bravado of defensiveness to the playful storytelling of their shared campus life to something new, grounded, sincere.
“Because I’ve been an athlete, Harper. Obviously.
And I know what perks that life can bring, and I know how reluctant I would have been to give all that up.
So I’m just wondering what made you not only give it all up but go the other way and try to blend into the actual walls of our high school. The one we went to together, remember?”
“I remember,” Harper sighed, picking up his coffee cup before quickly setting it back down. “And it wasn’t a ‘what’ that made me give up swimming, it was a ‘who.’ As in ... Chaz Farmer.”
Banks racked his brain for a moment, then remembered. “The exchange student?”
“He was from France, but not Paris. He used to say that to everyone who asked, like being from Paris was so bad? Anyway, it was sophomore year, I was just hitting my stride. Moved up to varsity, breaststroke was my thing, we were supposed to go to an away meet, my first. Anyway, Coach kept me late one day after practice and the rest of the team had all kind of drifted away except for Chaz. He had taken a shower but was still drying off when I walked into the locker room. I wanted to back out, but...”
Harper’s voice trailed off slightly, making Banks have to hunch a little forward to hear better. “Why?”
“I dunno,” Harper confessed, eyes sad and quiet in the shadows beneath the brim of his hat.
“He just always gave me the creeps. He was older, too, a junior maybe, but like maybe the grades were different in France and he probably should have been a senior? And wiser and way more fluid than the rest of the guys in Sagebrush, for sure. That European thing, I guess, where it was okay to stand around in the locker room and dry his junk off for five minutes while I stood around, not quite wanting to undress in front of him.”
“Where was Coach?”
“Long gone by then, so it was just the two of us. And I couldn’t help but feel like he had waited for me.”
Banks met Harper’s sad, wistful gaze. “So, that shirt you’re wearing? Is it just for show, or...”
Harper smirked, the sad smile better than his sad eyes. “Yeah, well, just because I was into guys didn’t mean I was into every guy.”
Banks was almost relieved. “So he just wasn’t your type?”
“Creepy isn’t my type, Banks. I didn’t know what my type was back then. I suppose I still really don’t, but creepy? Will never be my type.”
Banks nudged his foot again. “Duly noted.”
“Anyway, he didn’t seem to mind that I wasn’t getting in the showers right away. And it turns out he had waited for me. Chaz had found out the room assignments for the away meet and we were rooming together.”
“Oy.”
“Oy is right. And while he said it, he was rubbing himself and he was ... was...”
“Don’t say it.”
“You asked, Banks.”
“Hard? He was hard?”
“Way hard! And he kept letting the towel slip slightly, then not so slightly, until it fell to the floor at his big, stupid, hairy feet and it was like he wanted me to look at how hard he was. And I guess I did, it’s all a big blur, but not in a good way and ... and...”
Banks reached out, gently, but insistently, covering Harper’s big hand with his own.
It was clenched, like a fist, and he covered it with his palm like fondant icing over a cupcake, resting it there until he could feel Harper’s grip loosen just a smidge.
“It’s okay, Harp. You’re here now, way far away from there. Did he...”
“No, no, he never touched me. I never touched him. It wasn’t anything like that, but it was almost worse because I ran and as I ran, all I could hear was his laughter down the hallway, big and stupid and loud and cocky and European, and the next day?
I told Coach I couldn’t go to the away game.
He got pissed, said it was a dealbreaker and if I didn’t go, I’d be off the varsity team until tryouts the next year.
I told him so be it and just never looked back. ”
Banks felt the resistance loosening beneath his hand and slid it, reluctantly, away.
It had been so long since he’d touched someone else, and the rush of human contact left him wanting more.
“That sucks, Harper. Honestly. That someone did that to you, took away your dream of swimming varsity, right at your prime.”
Harper gave a little chagrined shrug. “I mean, it wasn’t my dream dream. I was pretty good at it, I think, but it was never going to get me a scholarship or anything. I mainly did it because my stepdad insisted I play a sport and that was the easiest one I’d found.”
“Still, Harper, you know what I mean.”