Thursday.
The team cleared out around 5:15. Barnes locked his office and told us to make sure the pool cover went on when we were done. "Don't stay past six," he said, which meant he trusted Liam, which meant we were alone.
The natatorium sounds different when it's empty. During practice the noise is constant, this wall of splashing and yelling and whistles and lane lines clinking against the gutters. When everyone leaves it's just the water moving. The filter hum. Your voice bouncing off the ceiling and coming back to you a half-second later like someone repeating what you said. It's quieter but it feels louder, if that makes sense. You hear everything. Including your own heartbeat, which I could've done without.
We started on the blocks. The relay exchange is all about timing. The incoming swimmer touches the wall and the outgoing swimmer has to leave the block at almost the same instant. Too early and it's a false start, DQ, the whole relay is done. Too late and you lose tenths that add up. The sweet spot is a split under 0.10 seconds, which means you basically have to go before you see the touch. You have to trust the rhythm.
Liam stood behind me while I was up on the block. "You're leaning too far forward," he said. "Drop your hips." And he put his hand on my hip. Just above the bone. His fingers spread wide enough that I could feel his pinky on the skin below my jammer. He pushed down and back, adjusting my center of gravity, and his hand was warm and his grip was sure and I thought about splits. I thought about seed times. I thought about the 200 free seed times for Jefferson, specifically, which was not relevant to what we were doing but was the most boring thing I could come up with on short notice.
"There," he said. "Feel the difference?"
"Yeah." I felt a lot of differences. None of them were about my center of gravity. I was very glad I was wearing a jammer and not a brief.
He crouched and adjusted my foot position on the block. His fingers on my ankle, moving my heel a centimeter to the left. "You want your push coming from here, not here." He tapped one spot, then another. Totally normal coaching stuff. Relay partners do this. Older swimmers help younger swimmers with their starts all the time. There was nothing unusual about Liam's fingers on my ankle. I was being very normal about Liam's fingers on my ankle.
We ran exchanges for forty minutes. He'd swim in from the flags, touch the wall, and I'd go off the block. Then we'd swap. The timing got tighter. By the end we were hitting 0.09, 0.08. The best one was 0.07, which was almost perfect, and when I surfaced after that one Liam was standing on the deck grinning and he said "that's the one" and I felt stupid proud. Like embarrassingly proud. Over a relay exchange.
There's this thing that happens during the exchange where both swimmers are touching the wall at the same time. It's a fraction of a second. The incoming swimmer's hand is on the touchpad and the outgoing swimmer's feet are still on the block and for that sliver of time you're connected through the wall. You're both touching the same surface. I know that's not the same as touching each other. I know that. But I started noticing it. The moment of overlap. His hand going under as my feet pushed off. Connected and then not.
I noticed it more than I should have. For a person who was being very normal about everything, I was noticing a lot.
After, we climbed out and sat on the deck for a minute. Feet in the gutter. Not talking. The pool cover wasn't on yet. The water was still moving from our last set, little waves bouncing off the lane lines, and the late afternoon light was coming through the windows on the west wall and hitting the surface so the whole ceiling was doing that rippling thing. You know the one. Where the water reflects the light and it moves on the ceiling like it's alive.
Liam was sitting close enough that I could feel the heat coming off his skin. Swimmers run warm after a set. It's a thing. I was aware of the heat and I was aware of the distance between his knee and mine, which was about four inches, and I was aware that I was aware of it, which was a problem, because normally I don't track the distance between my knee and another guy's knee. Normally that's not information I need.
"We should do this every week," he said. "Thursdays."
"Yeah. Sounds good."
Every week. Thursdays. Just us.
We pulled the cover on and went to the locker room. Empty locker room. No one's speaker. No banging lockers. Just the shower dripping and the vent fan doing its thing, which was mostly just pushing the mildew smell around.
Liam went to the showers. He didn't bring a towel. Just walked across the tile and turned on the third head from the left, the one with the best pressure, and I heard the water start and I stood at my locker and took a very long time finding my shampoo. I own one bottle of shampoo. It's in the same pocket every time. It took me thirty fucking seconds to find it. I mean, what was I doing. I knew what I was doing. I was stalling. Whatever.
I went to the shower at the other end. Towel over the bar, within arm's reach. I faced the wall and washed my hair and I did not look in Liam's direction. I looked at the grout. Studied it, honestly, like it was going to be on a test. The grout between the third and fourth tiles had a crack in it; I'd never noticed before. I thought about the crack in the grout for a while because that was better than thinking about anything else.
I looked once. Maybe twice. Look ... the showers are open. There's no divider. If you turn your head even a little, you can see the whole row. Everyone looks. That's just how locker rooms work, right? I turned my head a little. He was facing the wall, head back, water running over his shoulders and down his back, and the light in the shower is this flat fluorescent nothing but somehow it was still doing something to the way the water sat on his skin. I looked for maybe two seconds and then I looked at the grout again. Two seconds. That's what I told myself then. Looking back, it was probably longer. Felt longer, anyway.
He was out before me. I heard him shut the water off and walk back to his locker, no towel, feet slapping on the wet floor. I stayed in the shower longer than I needed to. The water was getting cold. I stayed anyway.
By the time I came out he was dressed. Jeans, hoodie, hair still wet and pushed back. He was leaning against his locker looking at his phone and he looked up when I walked past and said "you going north?"
I live north. Liam lives east. I knew he lived east because I'd looked it up on the team roster. Rosters are informational documents. I had totaly normal reasons for checking.
"Yeah," I said. "I'm north."
"I'll drive you. Save you the gas."
He lived east. I had my own car in the parking lot. He knew I had my own car because he'd parked next to it.
"Sure," I said. "Thanks." I gulped and hoped he didn't see.
We walked out together. The parking lot was empty except for my Civic and his Tacoma. November, already dark at 5:45. Cold enough that my wet hair felt like ice against my neck. He unlocked his truck and I got in and it smelled like him. Not the Speed Stick, something else. Just the way his truck smelled. Warm. Lived in. A Gatorade bottle in the cupholder. A TYR bag on the backseat.
He started the engine and pulled out and I sat in the passenger seat. Didn't want to fuck it up by making it into a thing. And, honestly? I had a semi and I was wearing sweats and I needed to keep my bag on my lap for the entire ride. So asking questions was not high on my priority list.
I didn't ask because I didn't want the answer to be something normal. And I didn't ask because I was afraid it would be.
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