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When my stomach stops cramping, I limp back to the couch and use the blue glow from the TV to find my phone in the cushions. Squinting in pain as I urgently try to turn down the screen brightness, I flick through my notifications. No messages, no texts. Just an email advertising a 50% off sale on some office chair I bought six years ago. The blackout curtains I hung up must be doing their job, because my phone tells me I slept until eleven A.M. without a speck of light invading my cave.
My body gives up, and I flop sideways with my face buried in the massive leather couch. Why do couches have to have so many seats? My ex and I picked this one out so we could both fit with four dogs. He took all the dogs when he left, but not the fucking couch, and now I feel pathetically small perched on one end.
“...the role on the relay team previously occupied by veteran swimmer Tate Vaughn…” When the elderly TV host says my name again, I free my face from the musty leather to stare at the screen, struggling to blink the haze out of my eyes. I recognize Eric Walsh, one of Seattle’s local news hosts, sitting across from…
Oh, Christ. I’m hiding in a walk-out basement den in a rural house near Poulsbo, Washington, and somehow I’m still confronted by the one brash, smirking face I never want to see again. A digital banner reads Dare Matthews, NCAA Champion Swimmer, underneath everyone’s cocky little all-American lifeguard wet dream, with his sun-bleached tousle of hair, unnaturally blue eyes, and mouth-watering tan.
“Your name is Darius, you pretentious twat,” I mumble, feeling around unsuccessfully for a bottle of alcohol that isn’t empty. “No one names their kid Dare. I wouldn’t even name my dog Dare.” If I still had a dog.
“How has it been, replacing someone with eight years’ more experience than you on the relay team?” the host asks. I look away from the screen when it flashes a picture of my three teammates with their arms around Darius. As the four fastest members of our Seattle-based swim club, my friends and I did relays together for three years. I was always good at swimming, but I never loved it until I discovered relay racing, the intricate puzzle of synchronizing your bodies while trying to get more speed out of every transition. Watching myself get older and my times slow down, I silently decided to retire once I couldn’t do relays anymore.
If my teammates had known, maybe they wouldn’t have celebrated when a swimmer I’ve hated for years joined the club. Maybe they wouldn’t have gone on about how nice it was to have fresh blood when his times pushed me off the relay team. Maybe when my ex left me the week after Darius joined, they would have texted or called to see why I dropped off the face of the earth.
Or maybe not. I’ve always been the forgettable one who doesn’t break records. The chump who wins awards like Best Team Player, even when swimming isn’t technically a team sport.
Vaguely, I realize Darius is still talking in his lazy, almost husky voice. “...Tate swam in second position, but since I’m so much faster I’ve moved to anchor the team in fourth.”
“Fuck.” Struggling upright, I grab the remote. My head finally clears enough to process the compression brace strapped around Darius’ left shoulder, over his slightly see-through white tee. The host gestures toward it like he’s reading my mind. “Since your shoulder inflammation means you can’t compete for a while, is Tate going to swim the relays at the Seattle meet next month?”
“Wait, what?” I drop my phone and have to crawl on the floor to find it. Tossing the remote aside, I dial Ross, my closest friend on the team.
“Hey, man.” He doesn’t ask how I am, where I am, or if I’m okay, even though my ex slathered the breakup all over social media. “What’s up?”
“I just saw Darius’ injury. Do you need me to step back in?” I shouldn’t have to ask; I haven’t officially retired yet, so the spot belongs to me by default if Darius is out. But I’m trying to be a supportive team player—fuck, there I go again.
My heart sinks when he hesitates, then sighs. “We have this whole training plan worked out with Dare, so it would be awkward to have to learn a new rhythm again. We asked Coach to let us drop the relay races and just do the individual events.”
“You…” I sag back against the couch, staring blankly at the TV. “What new rhythm? We had a rhythm, Ross. I’m sorry if it wasn’t set by some fucking hotshot twenty-three-year-old with the sloppiest form I’ve ever seen, but it worked for us.”
“You sound really bitter, man,” he snaps.
“Wow, can you not imagine why? To find out after three years together that you’d rather not swim at all than swim with me again?”
“He’s better than you. If you can’t get over it, then just retire.”
Hanging up, I toss my phone on the table and look around the dark, cavernous room. I’ve barely been upstairs in days. It’s not like there’s anyone around to tell me I need sunlight.
None of this is really Darius Matthews’ fault, I remind myself, but that’s the exact moment the prick makes eye contact with the camera and says, “If you bought a new sports car and it had to go to the shop, you wouldn’t drag your old, broken-down car to the raceway in the meantime, would you?” There’s the asshole who always finds a way to cut me open without even knowing me. He probably spent all week coming up with that line.
The host almost does a spit-take with his water and shoots the camera a nervous glance, trying to figure out if he should laugh or not. Then Darius’ flat, challenging stare is cut off by a sports car ad, of all things. When I switch off the TV, I’m dropped back into the complete darkness I’ve inhabited for days, like an unending dream.
I open the folder on my phone where I’ve screenshotted every social media interaction between Darius and me for the last three years, the war we’ve waged behind screens without ever meeting face-to-face. Three years ago, he broke some long-standing records at a collegiate competition, including one of mine, and vague-tweeted something about taking out the trash. The blatant disrespect set me off, especially when combined with his insufferable handle–@justdare2believe–and the profile picture of him sticking out his tongue while a girl kisses him on each cheek. I spent an hour watching every video of him I could find, then responded with a breakdown of his sloppy form and lazy technique.
We’ve fought off-and-on ever since, trash talking, using passive-aggressive emojis, and taking cheap shots that get laughed about on the local sports news. When we ran out of things to say about each other’s swimming, it got personal. He hasn’t blatantly made a dig at my sexuality, and I haven’t openly called him a man-whore, but we’ve both walked the line. And in those three years of fighting, while he graduated and went pro and I neared retirement, he slowly swallowed up my records, my friends, and my spot in the club. It doesn’t matter who gets the last word, because he’s already won. The last tweet I saved was posted a month ago, when I accepted a sportsmanship award at a local athletics fundraiser:
@justdare2believe: Congrats to @tvaughnswims. What a nice way to finally see the view from an awards podium.
He thinks he’s a shark, prowling around an oblivious, gentle sea otter that he can just bite in half.
Maybe I am a forgettable, second-rate swimmer.
But I’m not gentle. Or decent, or innocent.
Opening a second folder, I flick through photo after photo of Darius Matthews. He’s obsessed with curating his Instagram, so I have thousands to choose from. The thing that always gets me is how careless he is, all lazy grins and messy, golden hair. Like his actions have never had consequences. As I study his perfect features for the millionth time, my hand slips down to gently massage the front of my sweatpants.
He loves to post wet shirtless pics, first-thing-in-the-morning sultry faces, and so many women in bikinis, like there’s a quota to fill. I skip them and go straight to my favorite. He’s sitting on the edge of someone’s backyard pool with his back to the camera, wearing nothing but a speedo that bares half his ass. Water gathers along his powerful shoulder blades, highlighted by an orange sunset glow. Someone must have just called his name, because he’s twisted around to look back, eyes confused, stripped open for a second into something vulnerable and unsure and searching.
I prop my phone against the leg of the coffee table and push my hand into my sweats, no underwear to get in the way. My breathing sounds ragged in the still, silent room, catching as my fingers circle my half-formed erection. It’s easy to imagine making him kneel and beg to suck me in front of the whole party, bright eyes desperate with shame because the speedo does nothing to hide how turned on he is by the humiliation. I groan fuck softly and shudder, my vision going hazy. I’ve come to this picture before, but today breaks some kind of speed record.
