The Art of Drowning

1. Callum

ONE

callum

THEN

Do not stare at Damien Flynn. Do not stare at Damien Flynn.

Do not stare at Damien Flynn. The summer my parents put in a swimming pool was the best, and worst, summer of my life.

The best because, hell yeah, a pool. The worst because my younger brother Sam’s best friend, Damien, practically lived at our house, which meant that he’d be there all summer.

Shirtless. Shirtless and wet. Shirtless and wet, and my stomach did funny backflips whenever he looked at me.

I thought briefly about avoiding the pool, but not only would the oppressive heat wave not allow that, my stupid teenage hormones wouldn’t either. It was the summer before senior year, the last high school summer of my life, and I wanted to soak up every minute of it.

I had a job working one night a week with a cleaning service, but other than that, my time was mine. Sam worked for a landscaping company on a casual basis, meaning sometimes he randomly disappeared for the day. And Damien would still be there.

Damien didn’t have bad parents, but he had absent ones, and I lowkey didn’t blame him for not wanting to be home alone literally all the time, so I never gave him grief for spending so much time at our house.

That didn’t mean I wanted to hang out with him, though, especially when Sam wasn’t there.

Especially because of the confusing feelings he stirred in me.

I woke that morning to the sound of my brother crashing around in his room.

Through the thin walls, I heard him tell Damien that he’d been called in to work, but he could totally hang out here.

Damien’s answer was muffled, and whatever he said made Sam laugh.

Then his bedroom door opened and shut, and Sam thundered down the stairs.

It was a weird kind of torture to have Damien around without Sam to act as a buffer. Without Sam, Damien and I had to make small talk. We had to try and coexist in a space meant to be occupied by three people.

At first, Sam’s absence had been keenly felt.

Damien was quiet and withdrawn, and I… well, I didn’t have much to say either.

I was a whole year older than them. A whole three-hundred sixty-five-plus days older and wiser than Sam and his best friend.

But I still felt utterly, completely stupid whenever Damien climbed out of that pool.

The sight of water running down Damien’s body, the way it dragged my eyes to the wet swim shorts clinging to him, changed something inside me. Or maybe it woke it up. But suddenly I could barely even look at Damien.

My heart hammered in my chest. Girls had always been nice to look at, but they didn’t stir anything inside me. They didn’t make my heart pound. They didn’t make me trip over my words. They didn’t even get my dick hard, though I’d tried. I’d tried so hard to feel anything.

But my body had a one-track mind—and it was stuck on Damien Flynn and his blonde hair that got darker when wet. The piercing in his eyebrow haunted me because it kept grabbing my attention, making me look at him. It was a new addition, and I couldn’t stop obsessing about it.

“Did that hurt?” I broke down and asked him.

Sam had been at work practically all day, and it was stupid to try and ignore Damien completely.

He’d shown up last week with the brow piercing.

He’d had his ears pierced for a long time, and I didn’t think much of them either way.

But I couldn’t stop looking at his face, at his eyebrow ring.

I couldn’t stop thinking that it made him even better looking.

And then I’d quietly freak out because if I didn’t like girls…

and I couldn’t stop looking at Damien… it meant something. Something I was terrified to admit.

“Only for a second. The anticipation is worse than the actual piercing.” Damien lowered himself down to sit next to me.

Our feet dangled in the pool, and he started swinging his around in circles in the water.

Every so often, his foot would brush against mine and even that small contact had my cock perking up.

“I don’t know. Anticipation sounds pretty painless to me, at least compared to getting a needle shoved through my body.”

“Anticipation is worse because it lasts longer. You spend so much time building this up in your head, and it becomes this huge… thing. And then it’s over before you can blink, but you spent all day thinking about it.”

“I guess.”

“Anticipation isn’t all that bad, though. Depends on what you’re waiting for.”

Damien’s words were purposely cryptic and before I could ask about them, the patio door opened and Sam walked out. He was wet from the shower and dressed in his swim trunks, his skin more tan than it had been this morning when he left.

“What’s up, fuckers?” Sam asked before plunging into the water. He popped up a few seconds later and swam over to where Damien and I were sitting. “Did you two have fun without me?”

“There is no fun without you,” Damien said.

For some reason, those words cut me. Sure, Damien was Sam’s friend.

His best friend, he was practically a brother to Sam.

But to be shoved in the no-fun category wounded me.

I deserved it, probably, because I spent a lot of time avoiding Damien, and avoiding my friends, who were always pushing different girls at me.

Emily, with the braces. Lindsey, with the pretty red hair.

Ashley, with the body my friends apparently thought was worth making a bunch of lewd comments about when she wasn’t around.

None of them did anything for me. Even though I pretended.

I said all the right things. I tried to act the right way.

But it always felt like wearing my shoes on the wrong feet.

Like it was doable, and I could function, but it would never be comfortable.

Sam pulled Damien into the water, and they wrestled around in the shallow end. Damien wasn’t the best swimmer and the deeper water made him nervous, even if he’d die before admitting it. But it was something Sam had obviously picked up on because he never made him go where his feet couldn’t touch.

I could teach him to swim.

The thought entered my head as I watched Sam break free and propel himself to the deep end to escape Damien, who was easily beating him in their wrestling match.

I could teach Damien to swim, and maybe he’d wrestle with me. That meant that he’d put his hands on me. All over. I’d watched the way he and Sam grappled and grabbed at each other. Their bodies were pressed together, slippery in the water.

Without meaning to, I’d let my thoughts wander too far. I let them get too close to the truth, and now I had a problem. A problem that was roughly six or seven inches and about to embarrass the shit out of me.

Thankfully, they were distracted, and I used the opportunity to stand up and slip away, back into the house.

Up the stairs, leaving wet footprints on the floor.

I’d clean them up later. For now, I had to get away from Damien.

Away from those thoughts. Away from myself and the truth that I couldn’t yet put into words.

Because even if I was gay, Damien wasn’t. I’d seen him at school with girlfriends. He never had to try to look interested in them. He never had to work up the courage to kiss them or hold their hand. And I bet those things made him feel good.

They just made me feel empty. And kind of sad. Because I wanted those things too, but not with Emily, or Lindsey, or Ashley.

I was a boy, and I wanted to hold hands with another boy. And that boy wanted to hold hands with girls. I didn’t know much about being gay. I wasn’t even sure I was doing it right, but I did know that it was like a rite of passage for a gay man to fall for a straight one.

Lucky for me, he was Sam’s best friend and completely off-limits.

“The fuck is up with you?” Sam asked a few days later. I’d slowly come to terms with the fact that I was gay, definitely, irrevocably, unchangeably gay, but I didn’t know what to do with that information.

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve barely spoken in days. You avoid everyone like the plague. Even Damien noticed that you’ve been weird.”

My heart went wild in my chest. Damien noticed me. But then it fell, crashing to the pit of my stomach. He noticed and thought I was being weird.

“I’m not weird.” I couldn’t help but feel hurt and kind of defensive over Damien’s opinion.

“No one said you are, dork. I said you’re acting weird. Acting weird isn’t the same as being weird.”

I scoffed, feeling no better. “Says the one who wasn’t accused of being weird.”

“Seriously, dude, don’t make me tell Mom that you’re being weird.”

I shuddered. Mom was a good mother. She taught us how to clean up after ourselves, even if we didn’t always do it.

She taught us how to cook, and she always had our backs.

She was also a therapist, and most of the time she was good at being just our mom and not our counselor, but every so often she’d let her inner therapist out and it drove both Sam and me insane.

“Don’t tell Mom,” I begged. I’d die if I had to tell Mom that I was being weird because I was gay. And that I only knew I was gay because watching Damien get in and out of our pool all summer had cemented my sexuality once and for all.

“So you are being weird.” Sam sounded a little smug, a little triumphant.

I almost didn’t want to tell him, but the secret was starting to claw at my insides.

It wasn’t going to be a secret for long or for forever, but the idea of telling Sam…

what if he told Damien? What if it made Damien stop coming over?

I didn’t think it would; Damien wasn’t like that.

But maybe… and if it did, at least he wouldn’t be around to torture me anymore.

“I—Sam… fuck. I—” The words were bricks in the bottom of my stomach. “I’m…” I paused and took a deep breath. My head spun a little, either from the heat or from the stress of the moment.

“I’m not weird,” I managed to say. “Just… going through some stuff.”

Sam was quiet for a second, and then he laughed. “Who isn’t? You’re not special, you know.”

Sam’s laughter had an edge to it, but it was still classic Sam, finding humor in stressful situations.

“Do you need, like… help or something?” Sam looked like the question came out involuntarily, and like he hated that he’d asked to begin with.

“I think I just need you to stop calling me weird is all.”

I shook my head, horrified as the thought of coming out to Sam crossed my mind. I wasn’t ready for anyone else to know. I’d barely admitted it to myself.

“Lame.” Sam rolled his eyes. “But I guess I can cut you some slack, weirdo.”

He winked and, for the first time all day, I was able to exhale. Maybe I’d be okay after all.