Chapter 10 #3
“Oooh, that’s the stuff,” Myrtle says, taking the first sip of her extra bubbly drink.
“Okay, see you soon, Leonardo!” Shimmying her shoulders as she continues sipping her drink, she strolls away from the bar and Leo is, truthfully, relieved that she didn’t hang around longer, considering his line is now stretching back to the tennis center’s entrance. Gabe’s, not so much.
“Leonardo?” Gabe asks, uncorking another bottle of wine with an eyebrow raised. “I didn’t know that was your full name.”
“Oh, it’s not,” Leo says. He feels his ears turn as red as the Aperol he’s currently pouring. “My mom called me that when I was little. Myrtle was one of our neighbors. She and her husband were over at our house a lot, so she kinda started saying it, too.”
“Can I get an Orange Slice?” the next woman in line asks Leo, eyes shining. “And would you mind signing a couple tennis balls for us?”
“Of course!” Leo says, thrilled to move on from sharing tidbits of his childhood with Gabe. He scribbles his signature and poses for a selfie with the woman and her two kids.
“Hmm, that’s a bummer,” Gabe continues, now crouched down and looking for another wine bottle on one of the bar’s lower shelves. “It’s kind of a hot name.”
Always the first to play it cool, Leo turns around after the selfie and knocks a nearly full, open bottle of Aperol onto the floor behind the bar.
“Shit, sorry, fuck,” he says. “Did I get you?”
“No, Leonardo,” Gabe says, deadpan. “Not a drop.” Wearing a beachy white-and-blue striped button-down—short-sleeved, tight around his arms—he looks like he was shot.
“Oh my God,” Leo says, seeing the bitter red liquid splattered across the shirt. He scrambles for a towel. “I’m so sorry. We can use some of the club soda. It’ll come out.”
“I don’t think I’m gonna make it,” Gabe says, touching Leo’s arm and pretending to go all woozy. “No, it’s fine, don’t worry about it. I have a tank underneath. I’ll just take this off.”
As he takes the button-down off, Leo sees that he has a white, ribbed tank underneath, gripping his torso and riding up just high enough as he removes the button-down that it exposes the band of his underwear, which, of course, reads “Calvin Klein.”
It’s not like Leo has never seen Gabe’s body before.
They’ve been in the locker room together hundreds of times over the years.
But he doesn’t usually allow himself to look closely—not just at Gabe, but at any of the men, naked or nearly, entering and exiting the showers.
He’s always wanted to protect himself from suspicion, as if staring at the floor or into his locker with rigid focus isn’t the most conspicuous move in the book.
But more than that, he’s always told himself that these men are off-limits.
Gabe is off limits. He already distracts Leo enough with his curving slice and sloping topspin.
He doesn’t need to study Gabe’s body in the locker room, too, with all its curves and slopes, with the kind of V muscles that Leo wants to trace down and down and down.
Ahem. He’s always been committed to keeping matters of the heart and dick out of his career.
There’s no room for distraction in tennis.
There’s no room for love, except on the scoreboard.
But just this once, behind the bar, up close, Leo allows himself to look—at Gabe’s soft skin, the dark hair peeking out of his armpits, the scar on his shoulder from a surgery Leo now remembers him getting a few years back, the way his tank hugs the curve of his pecs, the way a trio of freckles below his collarbone resembles Orion’s Belt, the way that fucking collarbone could get Leo to drop every grudge he’s held ever against him.
Ah, fuck. Leo doesn’t think he’s gonna make it, either.
With just a few guests approaching the bar from time to time—the kids across the grounds getting tuckered out and the adults getting sufficiently sloshed—Leo pours himself what he believes to be a much-deserved, nearly overflowing glass of prosecco for surviving both this bartender gig and that close encounter with Gabe’s body.
“You want some?” he asks Gabe, who’s glued to his phone during the lull in fans visiting the bar. Leo assumes he’s texting a guy, which is totally cool and doesn’t actually really affect him at all, as an objective, empathetic, non-publicly queer person. Haha.
“Thought you’d never ask,” Gabe says, shoving his phone back in his pocket.
“Cheers,” Leo says. He hands him a glass and clinks his own against it.
“Wait, wait,” Gabe says, as Leo is about to take a sip. “You have to make eye contact while you clink or it’s bad luck.”
Sigh. Leo knows there isn’t anyone more superstitious than a tennis player, who would rather die than tweak their rituals, just in case.
“Okay, sure,” he says. Breath caught—no, lodged, wedged, stuck—in his throat, he locks eyes with Gabe’s, another place he doesn’t allow himself to look if he can help it.
Even at dusk, Gabe’s brown eyes are bright, inviting, warm.
His irises are tree trunks, holding history in each of their rings.
“Salud,” Gabe says, staring into Leo’s soul as if he has any right to do so.
“Yep, cheers,” Leo says, and tosses back most of the prosecco.
It hasn’t dawned on Leo that this bartending gig has kept them from eating anything in hours, which explains why they’re now sitting on the floor of the bar, backs leaning against it, legs outstretched, a third glass of prosecco in their hands.
At first, they only wanted to hide from serving more fans, but now they’re comfortable and buzzed and chatty.
It doesn’t take much for Leo to get tipsy and, sure, Gabe is an asshole, but now that Leo’s allowed himself to look, it feels impossible to tear himself away.
He’s trapped in Gabe’s orbit at the moment and, like his head with all this prosecco, he’s gently spinning.
“People started tipping after you took your shirt off, by the way,” Leo says, failing to hide his smile. “Did you see? There’s some money in a glass on the bar.”
“Seriously? Who even put that there?” Gabe says. “That’s fucking hilarious. You should take it. You’re the reason I had to strip down, anyway.”
“Oh, no, no, it’s all yours,” Leo says and, recalling his strategy to be on his best behavior for once, he avoids making some wisecrack about how Gabe could use the money since he’s going to lose in the first round of the tournament. “That chest worked hard for the money.”
“Really?” Gabe asks, puffing out his chest and looking back and forth at his pecs. “You think it was the girls?”
Leo snorts. “Ow,” he says, grabbing his nose. “Bubbles.”
Gabe’s smiling now, too. “I think I’ll actually just give it to the tournament committee,” he says. “But this was an important lesson. When I retire from tennis someday, I think there might be a real future for me as a bartender in suburban Florida.”
“I think you might be right,” Leo says, chuckling. There’s a long silence, in which he feels as if the bubbles and banter are making him levitate.
“I think you were right, by the way,” Gabe says eventually.
“Thanks,” Leo replies, then pauses. “Wait, about what?”
“About,” he says, shifting uncomfortably and seemingly forcing the words out of his throat, “the whole, you know, tipped ball thing. I watched it back, and I think you were right.”
Leo gasps dramatically and it turns into a hiccup and both of them are giggling again, their third glasses of prosecco polished off.
“Admit it—I was right about that ball being out in our juniors final, too!” Leo shouts.
“No comment,” Gabe says, smirking.
“Hold please,” Leo says, pulling out his phone and putting it up to his ear.
“Sorry, what’s up?” Gabe asks.
“Just calling the ATP really quick,” Leo says. “Reporting you for cheating.”
“Oh, you are such a little teacher’s pet!” Gabe says, laughing and lunging to grab Leo’s phone. Gabe’s body is reaching across Leo’s now and his familiar, fresh scent of cedar is there again, and Leo doesn’t own an inhaler but, wow, maybe he should consider purchasing one.
“I’m not actually calling them,” Leo says.
“I know, doofus,” Gabe says, pushing Leo’s shoulder as he sits back in his spot.
“You really think that, though, don’t you?” Leo asks, liquid courage doing its job.
“What? That you’re a doofus?” Gabe asks. “Yes. Absolutely.”
“No, that I’m some, like, goody two-shoes daddy’s boy who’s horny for the rules.”
Gabe raises an eyebrow. “You want to know if I think you’re horny?”
Okay, yep, inhaler stat. He clears his throat. “Okay, seriously, I just want to know,” Leo says, because if Gabe can address the elephant in the room, so can he. This confrontation is brought to you by Alcohol. “Is that what you think of me?”
Gabe heaves a sigh. “Leo,” he says, tilting his head back against the bar. “Don’t make me do this. What do you want me to say here?” He pauses. “Look, we’ve known each other for a long time. But have we? Really?”
Leo is entranced.
“You said it yourself on Instagram. We can’t possibly know everything going on behind the scenes in a player’s life. You were right about that, too.”
Leo, still entranced.
“I’ve had my … opinions about you over the years, yeah, I won’t lie to you.
I’m sure you’ve had yours about me, too.
But if I’m admitting things here tonight, and I can’t believe you got all this out of me with some fucking prosecco, you asshole, I’m willing to admit that I probably don’t know you as well as I think I do. ”
Leo, sweating.
“So, maybe we won’t ever totally understand each other, but I hope we can put our claws away, at least,” Gabe says. “Is that okay? Does that count as an answer?”
Leo is in the midst of the most adult conversation he’s ever had with Gabe, on the floor of an outdoor bar stand, three glasses of prosecco deep, hiding from drunk Delray moms. He can’t say that he had this on his bingo card for the year.