Chapter 4 Griffin
FOUR
Griffin
The campus gym at eleven thirty on a Friday night was a wasteland of abandoned equipment and flickering fluorescent lights.
Most sane people were either passed out in their dorms or stumbling through some overcrowded frat house party, but here I was, flat on my back with two hundred pounds pressing down on my chest and my arms screaming for mercy.
“Come on, Shaw,” I muttered through gritted teeth, pushing against the bar with everything I had left.
My muscles were already shot from the day’s double session of lectures and drill practice, but I’d promised myself I’d hit the gym tonight.
The cameras had been following us for three weeks now, and I was paranoid about looking soft on-screen.
Andrei stood behind the bench, hands hovering just below the bar, ready to grab it if my arms gave out. His presence was the only thing keeping me from chickening out on this last rep.
“You got this,” he said quietly, his voice cutting through the mechanical hum of the ventilation system.
I most certainly didn’t got this. My shoulders were on fire, my triceps felt like overcooked spaghetti, and there was a very real possibility I was about to become a cautionary tale about lifting without proper supervision.
But I gritted my teeth and pushed anyway, because Andrei was watching, and I’d rather die than look weak in front of him.
The bar wavered at the halfway point, my arms trembling with the effort. Spots danced at the edges of my vision.
“Grab it,” I gasped.
Andrei’s hands closed around the bar instantly, taking the weight. I felt the relief flood through my chest as he guided it back to the rack with steady control.
From my position on the bench, I had a perfect view of him towering above me.
His dark hair stuck to his brow as he leaned over the bar, and his plain gray T-shirt hung loose, revealing a strip of defined abs when he stretched to guide the weight home.
The sight registered somewhere in my brain without really registering, just a passing glance filed away with the rest of the gym’s late-night details.
I sat up, shaking my arms out, and reached for my water bottle. The cool plastic felt good against my overheated palms.
“Finally some peace and quiet, huh?” I said, taking a long drink.
Andrei stepped back, wiping his hands on his shorts, the bottom edges rolling up his legs.
I hadn’t really thought about it, never really noticed the way his legs were covered in fine, short hair down his calves, but it grew rare and invisible on his thighs.
“You know it. I still feel there’s a camera behind my back, waiting for my pants to drop before it runs over to film the embarrassment. ”
The image made me laugh harder than it deserved. It seared itself inside my mind. Andrei, lifting the EZ bar, biceps curled and tense, pants slipping. Funny. “That would definitely make it into the final cut.”
We shared a moment of comfortable silence, the weight of constant surveillance temporarily lifted. It was nice being somewhere the cameras couldn’t follow, somewhere we could just be ourselves without worrying about storylines or character arcs.
“Thanks for spotting me,” I said. “This one would have killed me.”
Andrei made a dismissive sound with his teeth. “It wouldn’t have killed you. A little strangulation can be a good thing, I hear.”
“You’re weird,” I said, and we both started laughing again.
The sound echoed off the empty walls, bouncing back to us amplified. It occurred to me that Andrei could have been anywhere else tonight. Half the campus was probably drunk by now, and there were at least three parties I knew of that he could have crashed.
“You could have gone to a party,” I said.
He looked at me with an expression of genuine confusion, eyebrows drawing together over those pale eyes. “What would I have done there?”
“I don’t know. Normal college stuff. Beer pong, terrible music, awkward conversations with people you’ll pretend not to remember on Monday.”
“Sounds riveting.”
“Come on, I’m serious. You had all day to work out, but you waited for me. You could have been developing photographs instead.”
Andrei shrugged. “Could have done that today, too.” He looked at me with that unreadable expression he got sometimes, the one that made me feel like there were conversations happening that I wasn’t privy to. “Your turn,” he said finally, snapping his fingers and gesturing toward the bench.
We switched places, and I found myself in the spotter’s position, looking down at Andrei as he settled onto the bench.
From this angle, I could see the entire landscape of his body: the broad expanse of his chest rising and falling with his breathing, the way his shirt pulled tight across his shoulders, the narrow line of his waist disappearing into his shorts, and the subtle rise and definition that his workout gear couldn’t quite conceal.
Guys checked that stuff out now and then. No biggie.
He gripped the bar and lifted it off the rack with smooth precision.
His form was perfect, controlled and efficient in a way that mine never quite managed to be.
I watched his chest expand and contract with each rep, watched the muscles in his arms flex and release, watched the concentration settle across his features.
Something tightened in my own chest, a weird pressure that made it hard to breathe properly.
My hands felt slick against the bar I was barely touching, and there was this strange buzzing energy running through me that I couldn’t quite place.
Maybe I’d pushed myself too hard on my own set. Maybe I needed more water.
Andrei’s breathing grew heavier as he worked through his reps, and I found myself matching his rhythm without meaning to. The fluorescent lights cast everything in harsh relief, highlighting the sheen of sweat across his skin and the way his jaw clenched with effort.
“Good,” I managed to say, my voice coming out rougher than I intended. “That’s good.”
He finished his set and sat up, immediately turning those big, bright eyes on me with sharp focus.
“You okay?” he asked.
My mouth felt dry, like I’d eaten a mouthful of sand. “Yeah. I’m more tired than I realized.”
“Call it quits,” he said, reaching for his towel.
I nodded, probably too quickly. “Good call. Let’s go.”
We gathered our stuff and headed downstairs to the locker room, our footsteps echoing in the empty stairwell. The shower area was tiled in institutional white, with a row of individual stalls along one wall and benches for changing along the other.
Andrei went to his usual spot and started stripping down to his underwear with the same methodical efficiency he brought to everything else.
I focused very hard on my own undressing, fumbling with my T-shirt and nearly tripping over my own shoes in my haste to get changed without looking in his direction.
We took stalls next to each other, and I tried to focus on the practical aspects of showering: water temperature, soap, getting the sweat out of my hair.
But I was dizzy, lightheaded in a way that had nothing to do with physical exertion and everything to do with the strange buzzing energy that wouldn’t leave me alone.
The shower was mercifully quick. When we stepped out with towels around our waists, I made the mistake of glancing over at Andrei as he reached for his clothes.
Water droplets clung to his skin, catching the harsh locker room light and turning it into something that looked almost artistic.
His shoulders were broader than I’d realized, back tapering down to that narrow waist, and there was a grace to the way he moved that I’d never really noticed before.
The towel hung low on his hips, and I found myself following the line of water that traced down from his collarbone to disappear beneath the terry cloth.
I jerked my gaze away and focused on getting dressed as quickly as possible.
We walked out together, but as we reached the main entrance of the gym, I found myself slowing down. The night air hit my face, cool and sharp, but it didn’t do much to clear the fog in my head.
“You sure you’re okay, Griff?” Andrei asked, stopping beside me.
I needed space to think, to figure out what was wrong with me. Maybe I was getting sick. Maybe I’d eaten something bad at dinner. There had to be some logical explanation for the way my pulse was racing and the way my skin felt too tight.
“Yeah. You go ahead. I think I’ll walk a bit first.”
Andrei tilted his head, and the lamplight twinkled in his eyes. The gesture was so unconsciously appealing that I felt that weird tightness in my chest again.
“If you say so.”
I forced a laugh, falling back on the easy humor that had always been my default setting. “Don’t worry, darling. I’ll be home soon.”
He punched me in the shoulder, harder than necessary, and we both started laughing. The moment of tension broke, and for a second, everything felt normal again.
“See you back at the house,” he said, shouldering his gym bag.
I watched him walk away, noting the easy confidence in his stride and the way the campus lighting caught in his hair. When he disappeared around the corner of the science building, I was left standing alone in front of the gym, trying to make sense of what had just happened.
The campus at midnight was a different world.
Most of the windows in the surrounding buildings were dark, and the pathways were lit by evenly spaced streetlamps that created pools of yellow light connected by stretches of shadow.
I started walking without any particular destination in mind, just needing movement and fresh air.
My thoughts kept circling back to the gym, to the feeling of standing over Andrei while he lifted, to the way the locker room steam had made his skin look almost luminous.
I’d spent my entire life in athletic environments, surrounded by half-naked teammates and communal showers and the casual physical intimacy that came with team sports.
None of that had ever affected me before.
So why was tonight different? Why couldn’t I get the image of water droplets on Andrei’s shoulders out of my head?
I found myself at the edge of campus, where the manicured lawns gave way to the natural woods that bordered the university property. There was a bench here, positioned to overlook a small pond that reflected the scattered stars visible between the cloud cover.
I sat down and tried to organize my thoughts into something resembling logic. Andrei was my best friend. He’d been my best friend for over a decade. I knew him better than anyone else in my life, knew his habits and quirks and the way he hummed under his breath when he was happy.
But tonight, watching him in the gym, something had shifted.
Or maybe not shifted so much as come into focus for the first time.
The easy physical awareness I’d always had of him as a teammate, as someone whose body I knew from years of shared spaces and activities, from years of measuring up against, years of building in each other’s company, had suddenly felt charged with something I couldn’t name.
A group of students walked past on the path behind me, laughing loudly about something that had happened at whatever party they were leaving. Their voices faded into the distance, leaving me alone with the sound of water lapping gently against the pond’s edge.
I thought about the way Andrei had waited for me tonight, turning down whatever else he could have been doing to spot me in an empty gym.
I thought about the comfortable silence between us, the way we didn’t need to fill every moment with chatter.
I thought about how he’d looked concerned when he’d asked if I was okay, and how that simple question had made something warm unfurl in my chest.
Maybe I was overthinking this. Maybe it was just the stress of the cameras and the artificial pressure of performing our assigned roles for the documentary. Maybe I was projecting some weird anxiety about the show onto my oldest friendship.
I stayed there for another twenty minutes, letting the night air clear my head and the quiet campus calm my racing pulse. By the time I walked back to the team house, most of the lights were off, and the Friday night revelry had wound down to occasional bursts of laughter from upstairs rooms.
Our room was dark when I slipped inside. Andrei’s breathing was deep and even from his bed, and I could just make out his silhouette in the dim light from the parking lot outside our window.
I got ready for bed as quietly as possible, moving carefully to avoid waking him.
As I settled under my covers, I found myself listening to the familiar sound of his sleep, the rhythm that had been the soundtrack to hundreds of nights over the past year and the occasional nights over the last decade.
Tomorrow, there would be cameras again, microphones taped to our chests, producers looking for drama and conflict and romantic storylines to feed their audience.
But tonight, in the dark safety of our shared room, I could just be Griffin, lying awake and thinking about my best friend in ways that were probably going to complicate everything.
The realization should have kept me up all night. Instead, lulled by Andrei’s steady breathing and the comfortable weight of questions I wasn’t ready to answer, I fell asleep easier than I had in weeks.