Chapter 1
Chapter One
Zeke
One, two, three … breathe.
One, two, three …
My arms slice through the water in a rhythm that’s so familiar to me it’s automatic. I stay on beat, keep all the distractions out of my head, and just focus on what I’m here to do.
Swim.
Because fuck knows LA hasn’t been good for much else.
Nope. No distractions.
No grampies or Charlie or homophobic comments in the locker rooms down here.
Just me, the water, and my coach waiting at the other end with a stopwatch.
I can do this. Just one second off my last time, and I’m almost guaranteed to qualify.
This is my dream. The thing I’ve worked for, have hid my relationship for, have sanitized my college life for.
The Olympics have to happen. They have to.
Otherwise, all that other shit was for nothing.
I hit the final stretch and give it my all.
Push through the burning in my shoulders, the way my legs want to give up, how my chest is begging for just that little bit more oxygen.
My hand hits the wall, and I reemerge, gulping down air as I look up at Coach towering over me, waiting for a response.
He glances at the stopwatch again, then nods.
“Not quite the full minute. Forty-seven seconds is still impressive.”
“But will it be enough?” I ask through the disorienting rush a strong swim gives me.
“We’re not going to speculate either way. This time puts you in with a very good chance though.”
A very good chance. Not the guarantee I was after, but it just tells me that once I get there, the second I hit the water for that qualifying swim, I have to leave everything else behind.
Physically, I’m ready. I’m in the best shape of my life, I’m training every day, I’m hitting the strokes to perfection, but mentally, that’s where I’m weakest.
It doesn’t help that I have so much shit taking up that real estate in my brain, so pushing it out is harder than it should be. I’d known that settling down with someone before I hit the Olympic pool was a bad idea, and this is exactly why.
I don’t regret it though.
Charlie is my everything.
It just pisses me off that the rest of the world can’t know that.
It’s starting to eat at him as well.
Some of the other swimmers congratulate me on beating my time, but I don’t hang around to chat with them.
I never do. I’m sure I’m getting a reputation for being an unsocial asshole, but making friends with people when I can’t even talk about my actual life outside of this place isn’t something I’m interested in doing.
The fewer people I talk to, the less I feel shady about hiding Charlie from them.
After my cooldown, I get changed and head home, head still full and buzzing with everything I wish I could change, instead of focusing on the tweaks I could make to my swim.
I reach my building, and some of those irritations fade.
Thanks to Charles, we’re living somewhere I never could have afforded on my own.
His dads were determined that wherever we ended up, it was in a safe neighborhood with security, and no matter how many times I told them I didn’t want them to feel like they were funding my life, they did it anyway.
I couldn’t fault their logic either. They want the both of us focused on our futures and making each other happy.
Deep down, I’m grateful. It’s a huge thing to not have to worry about where my rent is coming from next month, even if I do feel a little guilty about not contributing myself.
It’s helped make me more determined than ever to ensure that I make that damn Olympic team so I can take over supporting my man.
I take the stairs just to keep my blood flowing, and once I make it to our apartment, I find my beautiful mess where he always is. In the home office, bent over his schoolwork. I creep inside so I don’t startle him and press a kiss to his head.
He immediately leans into me.
“Hey. Still going?”
Charlie’s fingers pause over the keyboard. “Yeah, I made a schedule for myself today and worked out if I can maintain this level of productivity, then I’ll be done with my degree three months early.”
“You’re going to kill yourself to buy three months?”
Something weird crosses his expression. “You’re going to make the team, so you’ll be gone for most of that time. It’s not like I’ll have anything else to do.”
Well, that hurts my heart. I wheel his chair away from the desk and move to kneel between his knees. “Is this too much?”
“No! I swear.” He clutches at my shoulders like he’s worried I’m going to walk out on him, but I’m not going anywhere. I’m so in love with him it hurts.
“You can tell me,” I say, sweeping his curls off his forehead. “If it makes more sense for you to move home, where you have family and friends around, then we’ll—” I close my eyes for a second, hating how much that thought hurts. “We’ll make it work. I don’t care. As long as I know you’re happy.”
His face crumples. “You want me to go?”
“Fuck, no. Coming home to you is the best part of my day.”
Some of the anxiety eases from his shoulders. “You sure? Because I won’t stay if it’s going to complicate things for you. This is your dream.”
“You’re my dream.” It’s wild to me how much I mean that. “The only complicated thing is keeping us quiet, telling people I have a roommate.” My mood takes an uncomfortable dip, like it always does when this comes up.
“Too bad.” That’s his decisive voice. “We have a plan. We knew it would be hard. You’re making that team, and I’m getting my degree, and once we’ve bumped those two things off our list, we’re moving on to the next. Got it?”
I manage the smallest smile, loving that he’s so good at being the voice of reason, and drop my head to rest on his thigh. Charlie immediately combs his fingers through my hair. “Got it,” I say.
“I’m not sure you do.” His tone shifts to teasing. “You posted another picture of me this morning? People will think you’re obsessed.”
“Good.”
One of our sorority sisters at college started an official social media for me.
The plan was to sprinkle photos of me and Charlie in between all the swim stuff so that when I do come out, it isn’t this huge shock.
Make people speculate, she said. But don’t confirm it.
That way, if I do run into homophobic coaches or team members, I have the ability to deny when I need to.
It makes sense.
I hate that it does.
Even with professional swimmers before me coming out and making a name for themselves, I’ve still heard the “f” word dropped too many times in locker rooms to be comfortable.
I’d thought LA, being so liberal, would be different, and while I know that there’d be no outward backlash within the swim center toward me, that doesn’t mean that the subtle homophobia won’t come through.
Fewer coaching hours. Fewer one-on-one assessments.
Maybe even dropped from the team for stupid, bogus excuses.
You just never know.
It’s not a risk I can take.
And I’m so fucking lucky that Charlie understands all that and is stubbornly making me stick to my plans.
I don’t know what I did to deserve him.