I Needed to Taste Him Again Before Sunrise
The Rival, Part 3: By morning, I knew what he’d been hiding, and why neither of us was ready to let the night end.
What Morning Revealed
By 5:00 a.m., a single line of light slices through the blackout curtains, splitting the room in half and casting a faint diagonal stripe across the unmade bed. I’m cross-legged beside Ethan, back in last night’s briefs, the evidence of our night soaked through the front of my Calvin Klein underwear.
Ethan is propped up against the headboard, his right arm resting across my knee as I position athletic tape around his wrist. The air around us carries the pungent smell of cheap hotel soap, bleach, and something warmer, saltier.
I work the tape around his injury, carefully cradling his arm while I keep the loose end anchored against his skin. Slow and patient, wrapping and pulling with just enough tension, one layer at a time.
Ethan watches me work, eyes narrowed, mouth pressed into the same flat line he wears before a dive. When I glance up, I see his jaw clenched hard enough to crack a tooth. He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t move. The ultimate exercise in restraint after a night spent abandoning it.
Ethan’s wrist looks worse than it did the night before: mottled red and purple, the tendons on the outside standing out like cords. The joint is swollen, maybe half again its normal size. I want to wince, but I don’t give him the satisfaction.
I run my fingers gently along the edge, not pressing, just mapping the contour. The heat coming off it is almost alarming, but I keep my tone steady. “How long’s it been like this?”His jaw ticks, barely. “Since February. Tucson meet.”
I glance up, searching his face for any sign he’s bullshitting me. “You didn’t take a hit in Tucson,” I say, surprised at my instant recall for everything related to Ethan. “Not on the board,” he says. “Bad entry on the second dive.”
He shrugs with his good shoulder, which says everything.
I make a noncommittal noise. “And you kept diving on it.” He flexes his fingers slowly, like he’s not sure they’ll obey. “I didn’t have a choice.”
I finish the final wrap, ripping a piece of tape off between my teeth while keeping the loose end pinned against his skin. I smooth it into place, then surrender his wrist back to him after administering a gentle kiss to the wounded area.
“What technique,” he jokes, assessing my handiwork. “Much better than the athletic trainers. They work with brute force.” I chuckle. “I can do brute force if you want. But it’ll cost extra.”
He doesn’t smile, but the corner of his mouth twitches, which I count as a victory.
I lean across him, tossing the pseudo-medical supplies back into his dive bag, now unzipped beside him on the bed. As I settle back into my position, he looks at me. Not at me, exactly. Into me.
His eyes are darker than usual, the tiredness in them edged with curiosity, as if he’s trying to decode me while I am completely unguarded.
A wanderless series of questions runs through my mind: I want to ask why he didn’t say anything. I want to ask why he let me believe he was untouchable, when the truth is he was falling apart. But I know the answer, because it’s the same one I’ve used a hundred times: if you admit to the weakness, it becomes the only thing anyone ever sees.
I slide my fingers along the inside of his wrist, where the skin is softer. I don’t pretend I have anything useful to say. Instead, I ask, “Does it hurt right now?”
He shrugs again, eyes still fixed on me. “Only when I use it.”
The line of light from the window has shifted, tracing the edge of his arm in a faint golden outline, the veins beneath his skin like a roadmap I want to follow. Down his arm, through the valley along his abs until it disappears beneath the waistband, to a place I crave to taste again.
I wonder how many times he’s retaped this wrist in secret, how many nights he’s spent icing it instead of sleeping. I wonder how many times he’s run through the math of whether to quit before it quits him. But after a few moments of silence, he quips, “No lecture? You’re not going to tell me I’m an idiot?”
I shake my head softly. “No … You already know.” This time he does smile, but it’s bitter. “Thought so.” I rest his hand back on my knee, careful to keep his wrist stable.
“The thing you’re afraid of losing,” I say, “it’s not what makes you worth paying attention to.”
His eyes cut over, sharp. “You sure about that?”
“Yes.” I hold his gaze. “I may have noticed you because you were my competition, but I kept paying attention because you became something else.”
Ethan looks down at his own hand, then back at me. He doesn’t argue. He just lets the words sit between us. For a long minute, we just sit like that.
His arm on my knee. My fingers brushing slow circles against his skin. The line of dawn inching its way up the bedspread. There’s no noise but our breathing, the occasional creak of the A/C cycling, and the faint, insistent pulse in my ears.
The Second Time Wasn’t About Winning
The light in the room grows by degrees, blue to gold, and with every passing breath, the space between us seems to disappear with it.
At some point, without either of us acknowledging the shift, we reposition on the bed and fold into one another. My head rests against his chest, one arm stretched across his stomach as he runs his fingers lazily through my hair. It feels comfortable. Almost instinctive.
“You’re not the only one who notices the small stuff,” I hear him whisper overhead.
I tilt my head back slightly to catch his gaze. “You scratched your third dive at San Diego last October,” he continues. “Came back on your fourth with the cleanest entry I’ve ever seen you throw. Judges said it was a nine, but you barely got out of the pool before you threw up.”
I grimace and bury my head into his armpit, caught off guard by the specificity.
“It was the burrito … a very bad call on my part.” He laughs before continuing through the itemized list of Caleb-specific minutiae he’s apparently been tracking for years.
“You always roll your left shoulder twice before you step onto the board. I don’t think you even know you do it. Like you’re setting a watch.” I try to remember the ritual, but I can’t. Muscle memory doesn’t keep a diary.
“Maybe it’s superstition?”
He shakes his head, not disagreeing so much as cataloging.
“And you wear that gray USC hoodie at every meet. The one with the frayed cuff. Three seasons, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen you without it.” “It’s comfortable,” I say, but my voice comes out smaller than I intended.
He pulls me tighter against him.
I think of all the times I’ve performed, on deck and off, convinced no one would care enough to register anything that wasn’t screaming for attention. The answer is obvious now, lying beneath me with a swollen wrist and a memory sharper than my own.
“Is this you coming clean?” I ask. “Confessing to years of surveillance?”
“You make it hard not to pay attention,” he admits.
I want to deflect, to make a joke, but it’s harder after last night. Harder still after being seen this precisely. I’m not sure what to do with it. “Have you been keeping notes?” I ask, half teasing. He shakes his head slowly. “Just for you.”
My fingers find the edge of his jaw, soft at first, just to see if he’ll let me. He goes still and lets me touch him, lets me trace the line from his chin to the scar above his eyebrow. His stubble is uneven, a little rough beneath my fingertips, and for the first time I get the sense he isn’t sure what happens next.
“It’s not a competition anymore,” I say.
“You don’t think so?”
I lean in, not fast, not to prove a point. Just to close the distance I no longer have to pretend I don’t want between us. My lips find his, and this time he doesn’t brace for it or pull away. He just lets it happen, mouth opening beneath mine, breath warm and slow. His good hand finds my wrist, not pulling me closer, just holding it. Reassurance that I’m real. That this is happening.
The kiss is exploratory, slow, the way you test the water before jumping into the deep end. The urgency from last night has settled into something quieter. The want is still there, but no longer demanding to be satisfied all at once.
It’s better than I remember, even from a few hours ago. Softer, maybe, but also more honest. I pull back just far enough to speak. “Is this okay?”
He nods once. His hand slides to the front of my neck, resting there, his thumb against my pulse.
I go back in, and this time he meets me halfway. I swing a leg over until I’m straddling his lap, not to dominate but to anchor us both. Every point where our bodies meet suddenly feels electrified.
Our mouths linger longer, the contact shifting from exploratory to certain. I let my hands wander, greedy for the sensation of him. There’s no hurry this time, no rush or contest, just the slow discovery of skin beneath my hands. My palms skate up the flat plane of his stomach, finding the curve of his ribs, the flex and settle of each inhale. He’s so lean it’s almost architectural, every tendon and muscle engineered for efficiency, but the skin over it is impossibly soft, a contrast I want to get lost in.
I want to learn every inch, so I take my time, hands following the hard lines of his obliques and the sharp V at his hips. My finger traces circles around his navel; he makes a small, involuntary noise. It’s such a tiny sound, but it goes straight to my chest, then lower.
I keep going, absorbing every twitch and goose bump, cataloging what makes him tense and what makes him melt. He’s taut everywhere; even relaxed, Ethan is a collection of small, controlled fires. I want to know what finally makes him lose that control.
He shudders, just barely, but I catch it.
I smile into the next kiss, and he bites my lower lip in retaliation. I let him. I want him to.
He grabs me, then runs his hands down my sides, feeling every rib, every muscle. His touch is a little shaky, not from nerves, but from holding back. I can feel the discipline in him, the effort it takes to stay controlled, and I want to see what happens when it slips.
I shift my hips into him as he grows against me, and he gasps against my mouth.
His hands reach up my back, his lips parted, his breath gone ragged. I feel him, thick and insistent, a pulse straining through the thin cotton of his briefs. He tries to angle his hips away, tries to hide the obvious, but I’m not letting him out of this anymore. The hard line of him presses under me, and for a second I can’t think about anything except the way his self-control is finally cracking open, like a dam beginning to give under too much pressure.
With one hand, I reach between us and graze the front of his underwear. My touch is light, barely more than a tease. His breath catches, a sharp little inhale that goes straight through me. I do it again, slower, and this time he can’t help himself; he bucks up into my palm, the control gone, replaced by something hungry and out of his hands.
