20. George
George
Saturday afternoon at Bayfront Stadium is loud as hell.
Sixty thousand fans are on their feet, the roar vibrating up through the concrete under my boots.
Vince Holloway just hauled in a forty-yard bomb and spiked the ball in the end zone like the field belongs to him.
The sun beats down hard. Bay wind cuts through the stands, carrying the smell of grilled onions, beer, and too many bodies packed tight.
We sit fifteen rows up from the fifty, courtesy of Vince.
We’re close enough to actually see the routes break and the blocks set instead of just watching helmets crash.
Lance is right beside me, Adrian on his other side, then Trevor and Becca anchoring the row.
All of us in the jerseys Adrian shipped out last month, blue and silver San Francisco Tritons kits with Holloway across the back and number seventeen stamped beneath it in bold lettering.
Adrian’s been pacing his energy since the opening kickoff two hours back, keeping it tight.
Lance can’t stay in his seat. Every big play, he grabs my left arm, fingers digging in without thinking. The splint came off days ago, but I still feel the old injury when he gets too excited. I don’t pull away.
I notice every single touch now.
He calls out plays like I need the commentary. I listen anyway. When Portland finally scores, he groans and tips his head all the way back. The line of his throat catches the sunlight. I force my eyes back to the field.
In the fourth, with the Tritons up big, the jumbotron sweeps our section and locks onto our row.
The crowd around us starts pointing and laughing.
Down on the sideline, Vince glances up, and I watch his face fight a grin and lose.
The camera zooms on Adrian, who waves like a maniac with both hands.
Trevor grabs the side of his head and holds him there like he’s showing him off to Vince on the field.
Becca smacks Trevor’s arm. Adrian laughs and tries to squirm free.
The shot catches all five of us before it moves on.
“We’re on TV,” Lance says, smug. “I looked good, right?”
“You looked fine.”
“Fine?” He turns, grinning wide. “Come on, give me something better.”
I meet his eyes. “Looked real pretty up there, Lance Bradford.”
His grin slips for a second, then he drags it back into place. “Thanks, G.”
The Tritons close it out 42-28. When the final whistle blows, Lance launches himself at me. I catch him around the waist and lift him off the ground, right hand flat against his back. He laughs into my neck, arms tight around me.
“Holloway’s a fucking star!” he laughs.
I set him down easy and he slides to his feet. We’re still too close. Awareness hits him and he steps back, face flushed red.
“Sorry,” Lance says, voice lower now. “I keep doing that.”
“Don’t apologize.”
He swallows. “I’ll try to keep my hands to myself.”
“I said don’t.”
The words come out harsh, urgent. Lance’s eyes flick down to my mouth for a split second, then back up. He looks like he wants to say something else, something heavier, but he bites it back. Instead he just stares at me, the air between us suddenly thick and charged. Neither of us moves.
Trevor starts herding everyone toward the aisle, yelling something about beating the rush to the locker room. The moment breaks, but the heat in Lance’s eyes stays with me all the way down the concrete steps.
The next morning, we leave Pacific Heights. Vince and Adrian walk us out to the truck while Trevor and Becca load their bags into the Uber that will take them to the Embarcadero BART station.
Adrian pulls Lance into a quick hug. “Thanks for coming up.”
Lance returns the hug and claps him hard on the shoulder. “Appreciate you letting us crash, man. And for everything else this weekend…” He smirks. “You and Vince really went all out on us. And congrats on the win, Holloway.”
Adrian pulls back with a wicked grin. “What can I say? We like spoiling our favorite idiots.”
Lance’s laugh fades into something warmer. He nods. “Yeah…thank you.”
Adrian’s grin softens. “Anytime. Door’s always open for you two. Don’t be strangers.”
Vince walks with me around to the driver’s side. I glance over and see Lance laughing at something Adrian says, throwing his head back.
Vince stops by the tailgate and rests a hand on it.
“Wouldn’t have thought of it in a million years,” he says, following my gaze. “But I can’t unsee it now.”
I don’t reply. I just keep looking at Lance for another second before turning back to Vince.
“Learned the hard way that waiting costs more than you think,” Vince continues, his voice carrying the weight of years. He sighs once. “Some things you don’t get back if you drag your feet too long.”
Vince has never been one for long speeches, so when he says something like this, it hits differently.
I give him a short nod. He holds my eyes a beat longer, then claps me on the shoulder.
“Drive safe.”
We climb into the truck. Lance pulls back out into traffic. Sunday traffic out of the city is its usual nightmare, but once we clear the bridge, it finally opens up. It’s just the two of us now.
He sits in the driver’s seat with his left knee cocked against the door panel, both hands loose on the wheel.
He looks way too comfortable in my truck.
The manual transmission can be stiff as hell, something he’s bitched about plenty of times, but he handles it fine anyway.
He always figures shit out fast. It annoys me about half the time.
He doesn’t say anything for a while, and neither do I. The 101 on-ramp appears ahead and he merges. He knows this truck well, knows its blind spot on the right. I notice how much he knows about me and my stuff without either of us ever wondering about when it started.
The bridge cables cut across the gray sky and the bay sits wide and flat on both sides, dark water with white chop running east. Lance has both windows cracked. The cold air coming off the water smells like salt and diesel.
The Calling drifts through the speakers with ‘Wherever You Will Go’, warm and worn from a hundred plays.
“You’re the only person under sixty who still has a tape deck.”
“It came with the truck.”
“You could have had the dealer swap it,” he counters.
“Why the hell would I do that?” My tone makes it clear how ridiculous I think the idea is.
Lance glances at the dash, at the tapes visible in the holder on the sun visor. He reaches up and thumbs through them. “All handwritten labels.”
“Yeah. Most are from my dad’s collection. Blue ink is his. Black is mine.”
He pulls one free and reads it sideways. “Nineteen ninety-one. That’s before we were born.”
“His taste always ran behind the times. He kept buying tapes into the mid-nineties when everyone else had moved to CDs. Said the sound was better.”
Lance turns the tape over. “Was it?”
“Different. It’s warmer. He said digital was too clean.” I keep my eyes on the road. “He wasn’t wrong.”
Lance slots it back and leans against the headrest. The skyline of San Francisco shrinks in the mirror. “How many have you made?”
“Close to two hundred total, counting my dad’s. Maybe sixty that I made myself.”
We stop for gas in King City. Lance comes back with chips, soft pretzel bites, and two large coffees. I take over driving. ‘Wonderwall’ by Oasis comes through next.
We’re past San Luis Obispo now, working down toward the central coast and into the valley. The traffic has thinned out and the hills on either side are dry brown in the way they go by September, grass long since burned off. Lance finishes his chips and stuffs the empty bag into the cupholder.
We’re coming off the 5 when I take the Ortega Highway exit heading east.
Lance notices it fast. “George, that was the exit.”
“I know.”
A second later the excitement hits Lance’s voice. “We’re going to the ridge?”
“We’re going to the ridge.”
“Yes.” Lance turns the volume up and settles back, shoulders dropping.
The road narrows and climbs through oak and chaparral. Gravel snaps under the tires. The valley shows in quick breaks between the ridges, then opens all at once at the pullout we found years ago on a wrong turn.
Lake Elsinore sits below, silver under the light. The Santa Ana Mountains stack out in layers through the haze. Warm sage-and-dust air rolls in when Lance drops his window. A hawk rides a thermal overhead, circling slow.
Most people miss the turn.
The view hits the same way it always does. Doesn’t matter how many times. It’s almost always like the very first time.
Clouds have broken just enough to let the light come through in long, flat bands.
Where it hits the lake, the surface shifts from gray to something like hammered steel.
Bright in one stretch, darker in the next, changing as we watch.
Further out, the valley spreads into a wide basin, towns scattered across it, small from up here.
Beyond that, the horizon keeps going longer than it should.
The chaparral on the slopes carries that dry sage smell, sun-warmed, drifting in through the open window.
Lance has both arms braced on the dash before I’ve even stopped moving, already looking. His face goes open, unguarded and younger somehow.
Savage Garden’s “Truly Madly Deeply” plays on from the tape deck. Of all the damn songs.
“This view, man,” Lance says, grinning at it like it personally did something for him. “Gets me every time. It’s just…beautiful.”
“Yeah,” I say, my eyes still on him. “It is.”
I’m not talking about the view.
He rolls his window all the way down and warm air moves through the truck. Neither of us talks for a while. The tape runs on low.
This is the thing about this ridge. We’ve ended up here after bad weeks at work and good ones too—in rain, fog, and once in near-dusk when neither of us felt like heading back.
Lance adjusts a little in his seat, still looking out at the valley. “How long since the last time we came up here?”
“April, maybe, before your schedule got stupid.”
“My schedule’s not stupid.”
“You picked up three overtime shifts last week.”
He doesn’t argue that one. He keeps his attention on the view without saying anything. The light changes as the clouds move, the valley changing from silver to a deeper shade, the far ridgelines fading toward purple in the haze. The towns below catch the light at the edges.
He turns to look at me with that easy, boyish grin still on his face, and something about being on the receiving end of it while we’re sitting up here with the whole valley behind him does a number on me.
“Thanks, G,” he says.
I put the truck in reverse. “Now you’re ready to go home.”
“Now I’m ready to go home.” He faces forward and rolls his window halfway up.
We’re back on the 5, heading south. “Iris” by Goo Goo Dolls is playing now. Lance sets his hand on my thigh, palm down, slightly above the knee. It’s like he’s thought about whether to do it and decided yes.
I keep my hands on the wheel and my eyes on the road. He doesn’t move.
I know he’s not trying to start anything. The whole experiment we’d agreed to, whatever word fits what we’d set out on his couch that day, it was just that. An exploration.
He’s been here before, in pieces. Knows what a man’s hands feel like on him, what it’s like to touch and be touched. We all did back at Azure Tides. That night on Vince’s couch this weekend had its own rules.
But this, right now, feels different. There’s no crowd to hide behind and no easy context to lean on. It’s just him choosing it here, in the quiet space between the truck, the low hum of music, and the long stretch of highway ahead.
I put my hand over his. My fingers slot into his like they’ve done it before, easy. Neither of us looks at the other. Eyes stay on the road while the tape plays. I know him well enough I don’t need to look to know he’s smiling.
We stay like that until the Spring Valley exit. I need both hands for the off-ramp and he lets go without being asked.
I pull into his parking lot and kill the engine. Lance gets out and pops the tailgate to get his bag from the bed.
He swings it over his shoulder and faces me. The afternoon light is flat and gray. He stands there like he’s trying to decide what to say versus what to do.
“Thanks for the drive,” he says.
“No problem.”
His grip fidgets on the strap. He adjusts it twice, like he’s buying himself time. His eyes flick to mine, then away again.
Finally, he nods once, like that should be it, and starts to go.
“Forgot something?” I ask.
He stops mid-step but doesn’t turn right away. He exhales like he’s annoyed at himself.
“Nothing,” he says. He hesitates half a moment longer, then starts to move again. “Later.”
I grab his arm.
It’s not really a decision. My hand hooks him and turns him back in a single motion, then slides to the back of his neck. I pull him in the rest of the way and meet his mouth with mine. His bag hits the pavement.
He opens for me without hesitation, like there was never going to be another answer.
I don’t rush it. I take my time kissing him, because I’ve been sitting on it all day and finally stopped pretending I wasn’t.
He tilts in and follows me, his hand snapping up to my jacket, gripping at the collar like he needs something tangible to hold onto. He’s not resisting or pulling away, but he’s leaning into it right there.
After a while, I let go.
When he pulls back, his eyes are a little unfocused, mouth slightly red, breath coming slower now. He lets go of my jacket and drags his palm down it once, like he’s resetting himself.
“Okay,” he says softly. “Was that for me or for you?”
“Both,” I grunt.
He nods once, chin dipping, the small accept-it nod. After a beat, he steps back, picks up his bag, and walks toward his building without looking back.