5. Callum
FIVE
callum
THEN
We never brought it up around Sam. Damien’s swimming lessons were our little secret.
Sam and I used to be closer, but slowly, over time, he pulled away.
He’d always had his own friend group, so it wasn’t entirely surprising when he stopped wanting to do things together.
But it still stung a bit. He was by far the more outgoing one of us.
The one who treated home like a mandatory inconvenience.
Sam had a definite do-not-touch policy in place regarding anything of his. He was weirdly territorial. I’d even tried to bring it up to Mom and Dad once, but they just exchanged a look, shrugged, and said Sam was Sam, and it was probably best if I just left it alone.
I was fairly certain that his do-not-touch policy would extend to his best friend, who would come over and jump in the pool and let me teach him how to swim.
It wasn’t that Damien’s family couldn’t afford lessons, but we both knew his parents were never home.
Damien pretty much raised himself. He fed and clothed himself, and he got himself to school and cared about his own grades.
And when report cards came out, my mom was there with her hand out, asking to see his. When he got an A, she pinned it on the fridge next to Sam’s. Damien was family, she said. I hadn’t paid much attention to that then, but any feelings I had for Damien now were definitely not familial.
After the near-drowning incident, it took him another three days to make his way back over without Sam around. Sam was still working at the landscape company, putting all his money away for some secret reason. If Damien knew, he wasn’t saying.
As each day had passed, I had all but convinced myself that I’d hallucinated the whole thing. The near drowning. The way I’d saved him. The way I’d gotten to touch him and how it made my heart burst into a million butterflies. I’d done nothing but think about it ever since.
I was stretched out on my stomach on a lounge chair, a book resting on the ground below my face, and I’d been pretending to read it all morning. I’d intended to read it. The book wasn’t some elaborate ruse to make me look nonchalant; I was just bad at not thinking about Damien.
The patio door opened and I heard it slide shut again a second later.
Awareness danced up my body. Was it hot out here or was it just me?
Slowly, I rolled over, trying to move in a way that wouldn’t highlight my sudden erection.
God, I hated my dick sometimes. It was like the moment Damien was around, it didn’t know how to act.
That made two of us, apparently, because I sat up and just sort of stared at him for a moment too long. Damein’s gaze darted away and color rose in his cheeks.
Shit. Was I being obvious? Or worse… was I being weird?
I wasn’t used to having crushes on people. Not really. Not like this. Not the kind of crush that made me want to touch them. That made me wonder what it would be like to run my fingers through their hair or to kiss them. I never wondered what someone’s mouth tasted like. Until Damien.
“Sam’s at work,” I said stupidly.
Damien blinked at me. “I know.” His voice was quiet, unsure, and entirely not himself. “You said…”
He motioned to the pool and my dick finally let my brain have some of its necessary blood flow back because I remembered my offer.
“Right. Swimming lessons.” I pushed myself to my feet and tried not to obsess over the fact that Damien and I were the same height.
Well, he was a fraction of an inch taller than I was, but Sam had recently shot up several inches, making him taller than me now.
Something he seemed to be secretly pleased with.
I wondered if Damien would get taller than me too.
Needing the coolness of the water to stop my brain from overheating, I jumped in the deep end. After I surfaced, I swam to the shallow end and waited for Damien to get in the water.
“How much do you know?” I asked as he used the stairs to get in the pool.
“I can dog paddle. Sort of.”
Damien’s skin was pink but not from the sun. He couldn’t meet my gaze, clearly mortified by his lack of knowledge.
“We’ll start out with floating and treading water, okay?”
Damien nodded. “I’ve tried to float, but I’m better at sinking.”
“It can be tricky to get the hang of it. It’s like a trust fall but wetter.”
Damien let out a laugh. It was small and stifled, like he knew he was Sam’s friend and therefore wasn’t allowed to laugh at my jokes but couldn’t resist anyway.
“Let’s go with treading water first then. But you’ll have to go in a bit deeper.”
Damien looked at me with wide, worried eyes.
“We can stay near the edge today. Don’t worry.
” To prove my point, I went to the edge of the pool and used it to pull myself along the side until I was in the deep end.
It would be a little above his head at this level, but he’d be able to touch the bottom and sort of propel himself to the edge or to the shallows if he needed to.
Damien made his way over to me, and I tried to think of how to demonstrate. Pushing myself up on the side of the pool, I sat on the edge and started moving my arms to show him what to do.
“You need to move your arms back and forth like this, and at the same time that you’re doing that, you’ll want to kick your legs.”
Damien kept one hand on the edge, but started using the other arm to slice through the water. “Like this?”
“Yeah, like that. Now kick your legs. Not hard, you don’t need to like thrash and stuff. Treading water should be calm. Steady movements. And you want to keep your body upright, like you’re standing.”
I hopped in the water and showed Damien that it could be done. He still had a grip on the edge of the pool, though.
“You need to let go, D. You can do it. I’ll be right here to help if you need me.”
Damien looked at me, and I thought for sure that he wasn’t going to let go, but then he did. He let go, and he moved both his arms and kicked his feet, and when he realized he was doing it, he smiled at me. So big and so bright that it was like Damien became the sun.
“Well, this is easier than I thought.” Damien let out a laugh, relieved and embarrassed all at the same time.
“It uses a lot of energy, though,” I warned him. “It can be hard to do for extended periods of time, but it’s a good skill to have.”
“You mean for when you end up in the deep water by accident and your best friend’s brother has to save you from drowning?”
I grinned at him, warmed by the memory and comforted by the fact that he couldn’t see the effect he had on my body.
“Something like that.”
Damien reached out and grabbed the edge of the pool again.
He pulled himself to the side and stopped treading water.
He folded his arms on the edge of the pool and put his head down on them, closing his eyes.
For a moment, he looked so peaceful, so vulnerable.
There was a strand of wet hair clinging to his face, and I wanted to brush it away.
My eyes tracked a water drop that ran down his back, and I wanted to follow it with the tip of my finger.
Or maybe my tongue. I wondered what his skin would taste like all wet from the pool.
Damien moved, tugging himself toward the shallows, and I realized that I’d been staring like a creeper. At least Damien didn’t notice or didn’t call me on it.
“Are you going to teach me to float?” he asked. Now that he could touch the bottom again, he propelled himself around the shallows by pushing off the bottom with his feet.
I followed him to the shallows, suddenly aware that I’d follow him anywhere.
“The trick to floating is to arch your back. Don’t try to keep your head up. Your ears should be in the water, but your face will be out in the air. And you need to spread your arms and legs like a starfish.”
Damien leaned back, and he tried to get on his back, but it was like his foot was glued to the bottom of the pool. After a few attempts, I gave in and swam closer. Standing next to him, I bent my legs. “Try again,” I said. “I’ve got you. I’m right here.”
It still took Damien another couple tries for his body to listen to his brain. He kicked out and I held him up, my hand sliding against his skin under the water. Was it hot in this pool all of the sudden?
“Arch your back,” I told him. “And relax everything else.”
“Easy for you to say.” Damien laughed and his hips sank like a rock. He stood and swiped the water off his face. “Again,” he said with fierce determination. “I think I almost had it.”
Damien did not almost have it. His hips kept sinking.
Or he’d have it for a few seconds and then he’d drop like a stone.
It was torture. The kind of torture I was going to jerk off to later.
Damien, close to me. My hands on him, touching him.
Showing him how to hold his body. Secretly dying over how perfect this day felt and how he didn’t feel like Sam’s.
He felt like mine.
The moment that thought crossed my mind, I tried to banish it, but then Damien whispered to me.
“I’m doing it.”
I looked at him. Arms and legs out like a starfish. He floated effortlessly, and I moved away from him, giving him space to enjoy the new skill he’d acquired.
“You sure are,” I confirmed, my voice full of pride.
“I can’t believe it was this easy the whole time.”
Damien laughed, and I hoped he’d have stayed floating on his back, looking at the sky. He was beautiful like that. Carefree. Happy. And I’d helped him achieve that.
Damien might be Sam’s, but from now on, whenever he got in the water and flipped onto his back, he’d think of me. It felt like I won something. Something important. Something money couldn’t buy. Something I couldn’t even name yet.
“It’s easy because you’re a good listener,” I told him.
“It’s easy because I have a good teacher.”
I shook my head. “I’m not a teacher. I’m just a guy who knows stuff.”
Damien snorted at that. “That’s basically what a teacher is.”
Out of nowhere, he sliced his arms through the water and splashed me. I sputtered through a faceful of water and wiped the drops out of my eyes to clear my vision.
“Oh, you’re going to pay for that.” I splashed him back, laughing the whole time. After he finally left, my face hurt from smiling and my whole body ached from the way I’d wanted to keep touching him but hadn’t been able to.
Yearning, it turned out, was a specifically shitty kind of torture.
Because it never stopped. Even when the object of my affection was out of sight, he was never out of mind.
I’d never crushed on anyone the way I did Damien.
And if Sam ever found out, he’d kill me.
That should have been enough to get me to stop thinking about him.
I should have buried my crush in a box and never opened it or looked at it again.
I couldn’t.