Chapter 1 #2
Clearing my throat, I drop my bags to the floor and turn toward Artie. “Thank you so much for the hospitality, sir. Please, let me know if there’s anything I can do to help out around the house.”
Despite the lowering of the man’s hard brow, Artie’s smile is soft, and he claps my shoulder with deceptive warmth. “All you have to do is continue doing right by my daughter.”
On his way out the door, Artie turns his chin over his shoulder and says, “Oh, Connor. Be sure to wash up before dinner. My wife has a strong nose.”
I pinch my shirt at the armpit and sniff. It’s not terrible.
Rubbing my spine, Thalia purrs, “How ‘bout we shower together?”
I must be really in my head, because no part of getting naked and wet with Thalia piques my interest right now.
Even in my smelly clothes, I feel stripped bare.
Even in this luxurious bedroom, I’m suffocating.
If I thought Thalia was only wanting to save water, I might be down, but my girl has a very specific washing regimen which she only allows me to infiltrate when my body parts become part of that regimen.
With all the nervous sloshing in my stomach, I think I’m more likely to puke down the drain than pop a boner.
“That’s alright,” I say. “We probably shouldn’t do that since we’ve gotta share the bathroom with your brother. It’s not good manners.”
Thalia laughs. “Babe, he’s not even here.”
“How do you know?”
“Trust me. If Dane is ever home, you’ll know.”
If Thalia is telling the truth, that means Dane doesn’t come home until after midnight, because that’s when I’m jolted out of my REM cycle by an erratic series of clambers echoing from behind the bathroom door.
It takes a long minute to orient myself.
My senses come back one by one: the cacophony of mismatched sounds that can only be Dane’s doing, the green numbers on the nightstand clock showing 2:19, and the sixty-nine degree air chilling my face while body heat cradles me between expensive sheets.
I stretch my arm out all the way and touch my girlfriend’s warm body.
Back in Sacramento, I slept on a double wedged up to the wall.
Whenever Thalia slept over, our limbs overlapped more often than not, even when it was too hot to cuddle.
In this bed, she’s half my wingspan away and taking full advantage.
The mattress is of the Tempur-Pedic type.
No springs to move and creak and wake Thalia up when I swing my legs over the side of the bed and sit up.
A sliver of yellow light seeps from the bottom of the bathroom door.
I blink at it in a half-daze, wondering if I should knock and see if everything’s alright.
Water sluices, caps snap, and solid objects clang against hard surfaces. Heavy footsteps, clapping cabinets, and the deep grumblings of a male voice.
Dane’s absence at dinner surprised no one. Actually, I was the only one who’d asked about him, but the answers I got only enhanced the suspense.
“Dane comes home when Dane comes home,” Artie had said, a bitter tone with a look of relief. I didn’t mention the prodigal son again after that.
But now he’s home, I can only assume. Unless Artie is being robbed by a clumsy, grumbling man whose only interest is in our Jack-and-Jill bathroom.
Either way, I’m too sleepy to care. Before I decide to knock on that door or not, I drift sideways and then to sleep, as soon as my cheek sinks into the pillow.
The next time I wake up, the room is alight with a golden morning glow, and Thalia is still asleep.
It’s awkward wandering the house when I feel like a trespasser, so I rest my eyes a while longer before killing the boredom scrolling Reddit and checking the Instagram stories of my Sac State boys.
Two of them just announced they’re getting married…
to each other, which is super fucking weird.
I like the post and offer a hearty congrats, feeling more evolved with each character I type.
I’d never had gay friends before them, and it’s nice having proof to point at when I claim to be an ally, even if it’s a bit strange.
A heaviness in my bladder gets me out of bed and into the bathroom. It might’ve been a dream, but I swear I heard noises coming from this room last night that could only have been Thalia’s brother.
Once I’ve relieved myself into the fancy, self-closing toilet, I wash my hands with soap that smells like lavender and mint, then reach for my—
Huh.
My electric toothbrush is gone from where I’d left it charging on its port. Actually, nothing that I left on the counter yesterday is here now, and neither are the things I stashed in the medicine cabinet. Even my EpiPen is gone from the shelf.
Blood pressure rising on a dime, I squat down and pull open every cabinet and drawer that make up the long vanity until I find all of my belongings tossed haphazardly into the very bottom drawer against the wall.
Not just my toothbrush and charger and my spare EpiPen, but my razors and shaving cream, the putty I put in my hair to make it smell coconutty, and the soaps I’d left in the shower.
I squint at Dane’s door. This is what he was doing three hours before dawn? Rounding up my shit and hiding it in a junk drawer? Who the hell does he think he is?
He probably thinks he’s Dane Calvo, son of Artie Calvo and original resident of this house, who might not appreciate having to share his space with some random dude he’s never met.
Still, there has to be an addendum in the bro code that says never to touch another man’s toothbrush. The bristles are wedged up against my deodorant!
I wash the head thoroughly in the sink, and once I’ve done a good two-minute job on my teeth, I sit my Oral-B back on the charger, on the counter, under the outlet, right where I originally put it.
Out of sympathy for Dane, I’ll keep the rest of my things in that drawer.
Thalia will call me soft if I tell her, so I’ll just keep her brother’s pettiness under wraps until I can have a conversation with him about boundaries.
God, that’s going to be awkward.
This whole thing is awkward. I don’t even know what to do with myself here, so my instinct is to flee. When I’m dressed, keys in hand, I kneel beside Thalia’s side of the bed and jiggle her shoulder until her drooling mouth shuts and her bleary eyes open.
“Hey, I’m gonna go for a drive.” I sweep some of Thalia’s fine, gold-brown hair off her face.
A low, sleepy groan makes way for the question, “What time is it?”
“Almost eleven.”
“Shit.” She picks herself up on her elbows, looking like she went to hell and back. That’s my Thalia. Sleeps like the dead and rises like a zombie. “Lemme get dressed. I’ll come with.”
“No, no, that’s cool. I, uh, was gonna call my mom.
” It’s not a lie, since I do want to call Mom and let her know I survived my first night in a new city, and I know how annoyed Thalia gets waiting for me to finish a call with my folks.
Our goodbyes alone can take a dozen minutes, and that’s when we lived only four miles from each other.
She snickers and shuts her eyes, settling back onto her pillow. “Such a mama’s boy.”
“I’ll be back later.”
With no sense of direction in this city, I set my GPS for what I’m sure is what draws most people to this neck of the woods: the beach.
I cruise a while along the coast until I find a spot that looks hip but not crowded.
The sun is just as high here as it was in Sacramento, but the ocean breeze tightens my arms with goosebumps.
There’s a taco truck in the parking lot where I left my Jeep, and my stomach rumbles as soon as I smell fresh cooking.
I figure the Mexican food down here must be off the charts, so I’m not about to pass up the opportunity for street tacos.
I eat with my ass leaned up against a short wall dividing the parking strip from pale sand, and I revel in the sight and sound of the sea hurdling waves up the shoreline.
There’s a slew of sunbathers and a few joggers, but what my eyes immediately draw to are the specks of people down the beach in what looks like an informal soccer match.
These past months have been the longest I’ve gone without kicking a ball across a field since I started playing at six.
Soccer was never my end all be all, but it was something I loved.
I still love it, even if it was no biggie giving it up.
I exhausted my college eligibility, declined to go pro, and I’ve never had an inclination to coach. Still, I miss it.
After tossing my taco foil into the garbage, I decide on a walk. Sand seeps into my sneakers as I meander in one direction. With my head down, I fiddle with the settings on my camera until the exposure is just right.
Beach shots are a cliché, but I take some anyway. It’s my first full day in San Diego, after all. Not all pictures have to be art. Some can just be pictures.
What I prefer is photographing people. People during moments of strife, panic, melancholy, bliss, and every emotion in between. It’s the main reason I love sports. Even more than the competition and the camaraderie, playing soccer is when I felt alive.
Adrenaline, anxiety, euphoria.
That heart-thumping, gut-twisting, head-spinning feeling that romantics call love… That’s soccer. I've always wondered if I'm the only one who experiences that from kicking a ball around with my friends.
Do these guys feel that now, kicking their orange and white ball across the beach terrain? Sand flutters behind their heels as they run barefoot, and sweat clings to their bare torsos the way humidity clings to a water glass.
I lift my camera toward the match.
Five on five, and all the men look around my age, maybe younger. College kids, most likely. My mind runs wild as my viewfinder follows the action, and my forefinger hits the shutter when my reflexes tell it to.