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He continued, “Okay, I guess we’re all—” then paused. “One more thing, actually. I got a bit sweaty practicing with you. Can anyone direct me to the showers?”
Oh no. I knew what was about to happen, and I also knew I couldn’t stop it.
Nora sung, “Sure thing, Coach. Here, let me show you the way.”
She walked closer to him, then in a voice too low for me to hear and hand motions too vague for me to make out, gave him some directions.
While she was doing this, Grace began to snicker.
“Come on,” I said to her. “Give him a break, we don’t have to do this every time.”
“Sure we do,” she replied.
“It’s usually only for other teams,” I protested. “Not for our coach.”
“It’s tradition!” Grace giggled.
I gave up. This wasn’t a fight I could win.
See, the Stallions have this stupid old tradition that, as a way of rather benign hazing, that we — really, more like they — sent a newbie, unfamiliar with the campus, to the showers of the opposite gender. Personally, I think it was a weird, fairly binary remnant of another era, but I was also only human, and do get a good laugh out of seeing men’s football teams from other top schools shriek in horror when they realize they were in the women’s locker room, and all the women — who knew they would be there — were screaming with laughter.
It was kind of like an inversion of those raunchy comedies from the ‘80s, and while the sexual politics remain iffy, the prank has stayed the same. We hadn’t had a new coach in fifteen years, and we didn’t usually prank women’s teams by sending them to the other locker room. That seemed altogether too mean spirited. We would do it to their male coaches, though. Finally, at long last, it was our turn.
Phew, that was a long thought. All of which to say — Simon had been sent to the women’s locker rooms to take a shower. The field is a labyrinth, the doors aren’t clearly marked, so on and so forth. He wouldn’t realize until it was too late.
“Aren’t we getting a little old for this?” I pleaded with Grace, and everyone else in our vicinity.
Neidin huffed, “Don’t be a bummer, Catya. Let’s just enjoy the show, m’kay?”
“Yeah, girl,” Riri seconded. “Are you telling me you don’t wanna see what Coach is packing?”
Well, damn. They had me there. As much as I might be opposed to the outdated implications of the prank, I did very badly want to see the rest of Simon. Running into him bare-chested this morning was tantalizing enough. Now I hungered to learn what lay beneath those innocuous gray sweats.
My face must have said it all, because Rose yelled triumphantly, “Catya’s on board, everyone. Let’s go see Simon’s sweet ass!”
They began running across the field. I blushed, and in a moment of weakness, broke into a sprint and followed suit.
I never said I was a good person.
Chapter 8
Simon
Thanks to Nora’s instructions, I found the locker room in no time. I went through the unassuming double doors, and found a high-tech facility with shiny lockers, plasma screens throughout the space and waterfall showers. I whistled low beneath my breath. This was the good shit.
The place was empty, so I stripped off my clothes and left them on a nearby bench. My nose caught a particularly appealing scent — maybe some vanilla? Whatever it was, it smelled far better than any locker room I’d been in before.
Nice, I thought to myself. You’re moving up in the world, to bigger and better smelling locker rooms.
Unfortunately, the shortage of other men in the facility meant I had no idea where to get a towel. I searched high and low, but eventually resigned myself, realizing that in a place this sprawling, it would be unlikely for me to hunt them down without help. Thinking quickly, I grabbed a small rally towel from my bag. It would have to do.
Did they have rally towels in America? They were basically just tiny towels that people whip around at sports events because… well, tradition, I guess. They usually have the team’s name printed somewhere on them, and occasionally, the merch overlords will release limited-edition rally towels for special games. My rally towel was from the championship game I’d played in high school, in which I’d led my team to a decisive victory over our rivals. It had been a wildly satisfying day, and I kept the towel as a small piece of memorabilia, not as a proper shower towel.
But today, I was stuck with the rally towel. With a small sigh of frustration, I made my way into the showers, flung the towel over a nearby ledge, and began messing with all the silver knobs, trying to decipher which button would produce hot water. At last, a strong stream of hot water burst from overhead, and I dipped my head underneath, soaking my hair and allowing water rivulets to flow down my face and back.
