Chapter 7 Steam #2
Don’t think about the way your chest still buzzes from the way Darius spotted you, the shape of his hand, the weight of his body close behind.
For two minutes, it works.
Then a movement in my periphery, just a flicker, nothing, the kind of half-glance you do on instinct in an open shower, cuts through my focus.
Darius is two stalls over, shoulders hunched under the spray, face angled down like he’s studying the grout.
His left hand palms the soap, slow and methodical, while his right is braced against the wall at eye level, biceps flexed, knuckles white.
He looks up.
Meets my gaze, not a brush but a direct hit. For a split second, he doesn’t look away.
He looks at me.
Not at my face.
At me.
And there’s no ambiguity, no “maybe it’s the temperature” or “maybe he’s just built different.” The evidence is right there, half-hard and impossible to ignore, and my heart detonates behind my ribs so hard I nearly slip.
He sees me see it, and his whole body stiffens. He turns away fast, head ducked, one hand slamming so hard into the tile I hear the wet echo of it through the room.
The sound is primal, louder than the hiss of water, louder than my own pulse thrumming in my ears.
I look away. Stare at the blank tile in front of me and try to pretend it didn’t happen.
My hands are shaking.
My skin is so hot I worry I’ll blister.
I finish scrubbing fast, too fast, and when I go to turn off the water my own body betrays me, half-mast and urgent and every bit as obvious as what I just saw.
For a moment, I just stand there, water streaming down, watching it pool at my feet.
My thoughts tumble over each other in a tangle of embarrassment, adrenaline, and a savage, desperate kind of wanting that I haven’t let myself feel since sophomore year, when I convinced myself I’d grown out of this, that it was a phase, that no real guy wanted another guy.
I towel off, wrap it around my waist, and get the fuck out of there.
My legs are gelatin, my head is full of static.
In the locker room, I dress with shaking hands, and every time I blink I see the shape of him, the impossible line of his back, the hunger in his face before he walled it off.
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.
Then I replay it again, but change the ending. In one version, he says my name. In another, he doesn’t turn away. In the last one, I reach out and touch him, and the world doesn’t end.
I know how pathetic it is. I know I’m inventing meaning where there is none. But the harder I try to forget, the more impossible it gets.
I fall asleep with my hands balled into fists, jaw clenched so tight I worry I’ll crack a molar.
In the dream, we’re back in the equipment room, hiding from the gunfire. Except this time, there’s no shooting, no sirens, just the two of us in a silent world, and when Darius reaches for my arm, he doesn’t let go.
When I wake, it’s still dark.
The urge to text him is so strong it makes my teeth ache.
I type out three different messages, then delete them all.
Tomorrow, I tell myself. Tomorrow, it’ll go back to normal.
But deep down, I know it won’t.
———
The new rink is a joke.
They call it SoDo Sportsplex, but it’s just a converted warehouse, whitewashed cinderblock, paint flaking in long strips from the beams, and the kind of LED tubes that make your skin look like it’s made of tallow and regrets.
The air is dense with ammonia and the ventilation system recycles every bad smell from every body that’s ever set foot in this building.
Practice starts at nine, but most of us are here by 8:30, ghosts in hoodies and sweatpants, faces raw from sleep or the lack of it.
The locker room is a trench of noise, guys rehashing last night’s NHL highlights or bitching about the new sticks the league sent out.
There are nineteen of us today, nobody’s filled the empty lockers yet, and the dead guys’ stalls are still marked with tape and a strip of black ribbon.
O’Doul is already half-dressed, taping his stick with the care of a mortician. He sees me walk in and gives a two-finger salute. “Yo, Rosen. You bring the donuts?”
I flip him off, but soft, like it’s a secret. “I figured you’d be on keto by now, O.D.”
He makes a face. “Fuck off, I’m carb-loading for suicides.”
Coach Vasquez rolls in right after, hair up in a severe bun, eyes so sharp I almost want to flinch. She claps once, loud, and every head turns.
“Listen up! No half-assing today. I want full effort, full speed, and nobody misses a shift. Got it?”
Everyone nods, but it’s mostly for show. We shuffle out onto the borrowed ice, which is rough and pitted, nothing like the perfect sheet at the Steelhawk Center.
The house lights are so bright it’s like skating inside a dentist’s mouth.
We run warmups, then lines, then suicides, then puck drills. It’s the same as always, except it’s not.
Every movement is just a little sharper, every collision carries a little extra force, as if the whole team is auditioning for the role of “most alive.”
Darius is in net, a black wall with eyes.
Every time the puck comes his way, he swallows it, no rebound, no drama, just absolute certainty that nothing will get past him today.
He doesn’t say a word, but I can feel his focus, a pressure that bleeds across the ice and soaks into my bones.
During a passing drill, O’Doul decks me, full shoulder. I go down hard, helmet smacking the ice, but I’m up again before the whistle. “You fucker,” I say, grinning through the sting.
He shrugs. “Keep your head up, rookie.”
That’s the whole day, violence and recovery, pain and the proof you survived it.
After, the team herds into the break room, which is just a corner of the warehouse with a folding table and a fridge that smells like death. Someone brought Costco muffins; the box is already half gone.
There’s a radio playing classic rock, too low to compete with the voices.
O’Doul starts it. “Remember Cap’s karaoke?” he says, tearing into a muffin with his front teeth.
Raz snorts. “How could you forget? Wagon Wheel three times a night. Fucking war crime.”
A couple of the rookies try to one-up with stories of Cap’s worst pranks, but the old guys know the good ones. “He put Icy Hot in Vasquez’s chalk,” O’Doul says, eyes glinting. “She screamed like she’d been shot.”
The laughter is ugly, but real. Even Coach, lurking at the edge with her clipboard, cracks a smile.
Raz pipes in. “What about the cowboy hat phase? Two months, wouldn’t take it off. Showered in it.”
“He said it made him faster. ‘Aerodynamics, bitch,’” someone quotes, and the room shakes with the kind of laughter that’s equal parts mourning and defiance.
I look around the table. Everyone’s talking, mouths full, but underneath it is the shared knowledge that nothing will ever be the same.
The old team is dead. The new team is still figuring out what it means to live.
Darius sits next to me, close enough that our shoulders touch. He’s eating a protein bar, tearing it with the side of his mouth, methodical.
I feel the warmth of his arm through my sleeve. I keep thinking he’ll move, create distance, but he doesn’t.
The stories keep coming, louder, funnier, until every phone in the room vibrates at once.
For a moment, the conversation fractures, replaced by a collective groan as the world tries to elbow its way into our bubble.
I check my phone, NEWS ALERT. Second shooter still at large. Suspect described as “armed and dangerous,” last seen in the city limits, “believed to be targeting affiliated personnel.”
The room goes dead silent. No more jokes, no more laughter.
Coach steps forward, clipboard to her chest like a shield. “Listen up. New protocols.
Nobody leaves alone, everybody checks in when you get home. If you see anything, you say something. I don’t care if it’s a goddamn pigeon, you report it.”
Someone mutters, “Yes, Coach,” and the group breaks up, the easy warmth gone, replaced by the same old dread.
On the ice, the next scrimmage is full contact. No holds barred. I skate like I’m trying to outrun a bullet.
Every time I get knocked down, I bounce up faster. I lose track of the score, but I know I’m winning at not dying.
Darius is a monster in net, taking shots like he’s allergic to letting anything past.
At one point, I crash the crease, and our bodies collide, full speed. We both go down, and for a second, I’m sprawled on top of him, chest to chest, hearts thundering like a drumline.
He looks up at me, eyes burning, and I can’t tell if he’s furious or terrified or something else entirely.
I roll off, scramble to my feet, but the memory of his body under mine is the only thing I’ll remember about today.
When practice ends, the team trickles out in pairs and trios, nobody daring to walk alone. I wait at the exit, helmet in hand, until Darius catches up.
He doesn’t say anything. He just walks with me to the parking lot, our steps in sync.
At my car, he stops. “You good?” he asks, voice low.
“Yeah,” I say, but it’s a lie. I want to ask him what happened in the shower, if he remembers, if it meant anything, if he wants it to.
But I can’t. Not yet.
He puts a hand on my shoulder, squeezes, then walks off toward his own car.
I stand in the cold for a while, helmet dangling from my fingers, trying to make sense of the noise in my head.
That night, I go home, eat ramen standing over the sink, and try not to think about anything. I don’t watch TV, don’t check my phone, just sit on the couch and stare at the dark.
Eventually, I end up in bed, staring at the ceiling, willing myself to sleep.
But the shower scene comes back, not as a flash but as a slow-motion replay. The look. The tension. The moment we both realized it wasn’t nothing.
I’ve spent all day trying to rationalize it away, to file it under “coincidence” or “bad timing” or “just dudes being dudes.” But I can’t. Not anymore.
For the first time, I don’t shut the thought down. I let it live, raw and terrifying and hungry.
I whisper into the dark: “What if it wasn’t nothing?”
The words hang there, unanswered.
But for once, I don’t want them to go away.