Bishop nods. “Before dawn.”
“And this is about the water,” I say.
Bishop’s answer is quiet. “Then it’s about the water.”
The next morning, the swim building feels colder than it should. The halls are dim, and the locker room lights buzz overhead while Bishop sets the blocker on a clean towel by the sinks. Hollis sits on the bench a few feet away, elbows on his knees, hoodie inside out, hair a mess. He looks like he barely slept, and when I sit down across from Bishop, his purr starts before anyone says a word. Some part of me wants to curl back up in his lap like I did the other night but that would defeat the purpose of staying focused.
So, I start my ritual first by checking the tube of blocker. Seal intact. Label right. Expiration fine. Texture right when I squeeze a little onto my finger. My hands shake, so I check it again.Bishop waits until I hand it over, then repeats the same checks where I can see them. He shows me the tube, caps it, uncaps it, and waits for my nod.
“You can do it,” I tell him.
Hollis’ purr deepens from the bench as Bishop moves in front of me, close enough to touch but angled so I can still see Hollis if I want to. “Throat first?” he asks, and when I nod, he waits for me to tip my chin up before his fingers touch my skin. I flinch at how cold the blocker is and Bishop stops immediately, hand suspended near my neck, eyes on my face. I take one breath, then nod again, and he starts over with slow passes across my throat.
The wrists are easier. I offer them one at a time, watching Bishop’s face instead of his hands. Behind my ears is worse. My shoulders lock before he even gets there, and Hollis shifts on the bench like the movement hurts him. Bishop glances at him once, then back to me. “Left side first,” he says. “Then right. Then you cap the tube.”
He does exactly what he says, no extra touching, no surprises. When he’s finished, he places the tube in my palm. I cap it myself, the click sounding too loud in the empty locker room.
Then Bishop hands me the verification form, a new start to the world of swimming. Hollis stands only after I hand back the form, hands shoved into his hoodie pocket like that’s the only way he trusts himself. We pass Marsh’s office on the way to the deck, the coach looking up through the glass and gives one short nod.
I walk toward lane three without meaning to and stop hard enough that my toes curl against the tile. Lane three. Of course my body finds it before my brain can stop it. For a second, the whole place tilts, and I’m back at the wall with the noise changing around me.
Hollis drops his hoodie on the bench and gets into the next lane before I can decide whether I’m leaving. He surfaces at the wall, arms folded on the gutter, water running down his face. “I’m here,” he whispers. No promise that nothing bad can happen, no plea for me to be brave.
Bishop sets the clipboard on the timing chair and moves into my line of sight. “Ladder, sit entry, dive, or we leave. All of them count.”
I let out a small laugh as Hollis’ mouth twitches, and the purr starts again, faint through the gutter and the tile. I pull off my shirt before I can think too long, then climb onto the block. My legs shake the second my feet settle. The water stretches out in front of me, my chest tightening around the memory of the crowd, the hands, the empty pocket in my bag.
It takes me several deep breaths as I try to tell myself that this isn’t then... and then, I just dive.
The water closes over me, and everything goes quiet. My body remembers before fear catches up. My stroke is rusty and too tight, but it’s mine. The lane is mine. The water is mine.
I touch the wall hard and grab the gutter with both hands. Hollis is beside me, grinning so wide it should be illegal this early in the morning. “Your streamline is still better than mine,” he says. “I’m taking that personally.”
A laugh breaks out of me before I can stop it. It sounds wrecked, and I press my forehead to the tile while Bishop crouches near the wall, close enough to be there and far enough to let me breathe. I missed this. I missed the water so badly it feels like grief.
hollis
After-hourspracticebecomesthebest part of my week and the worst thing that has ever happened to my self-control. Jude is back in the water for the third time, and I still don’t know how to look at him like a normal person.
Bishop always hangs on the edge of the pool with his feet in the water, stopwatch in one hand and clipboard balanced on his knee, acting like this is only a practice set and not a miracle happening three lanes from the office where Marsh keeps pretending he isn’t checking on us through the blinds.
Jude floats near the wall with his goggles on his forehead, shoulders bare, hair wet and curling at the ends from his cap. He looks smaller on deck, sometimes, guarded, sharp, and ready to slip sideways if the room asks too much of him. In the pool, all that caution turns into something smooth and fast enough to make my chest ache.
Bishop notices me staring before Jude does, because Bishop notices everything I’d rather he didn’t. “Hollis,” he says without looking up from the stopwatch, his voice calm enough to be dangerous, “if you miss another interval because you’re watching lane three, I’m adding distance.”
Jude’s head turns toward me. One eyebrow lifts above the edge of his goggles, and my face gets hot fast enough that the chlorine should start steaming off my skin. “I wasn’t watching,” I say, which is insulting to all three of us because I absolutely was.
“You were gazing,” Jude says, and then shoves off the wall before I can recover. I follow a second late, mostly because my brain catches on the word gazing and makes a whole disaster out of it. Bishop lets me suffer through the fifty before announcing that Jude’s turn was dramatic but mine was lazy, which is unfair because I am being personally victimized by feelings during an athletic activity.
The banter makes Jude softer, the pool giving him somewhere to put his hands, his breath, and the restless edge he carries on deck like a blade under his tongue. Bishop gives him corrections without softening them too much, and Jude argues like every note is a personal attack even when he does exactly what Bishop says on the next lap.
I heckle from lane four because it’s my duty as a teammate, my version of a courtship, and a man who has never believed silence improved anything.
“Such a fucking tyrant,” Jude calls out after the third drill, though there’s a smile plastered on his face. I hope we get moreof those smiles. The Omega swims up beside me in my lane, his gaze sweeping over my face. “You’re a beautiful disaster, you know that?”
I just stare at him, unconsciously leaning toward him when Bishop gently grabs my shoulder. I huff out a frustrated sigh, but pull back anyway. Jude clocks the movement, still as intrigued as the first night Bishop did that at the after party.
“He really always does that for you, doesn’t he?”
