High School Hero

It is time.  I leave the dressing room area and head down the corridor in the other direction.  The smell of chlorine is now noticeable and getting heavier in the air.  I check my watch.  Thoughts of those emails come flooding back.

I push through the double doors leading into the pool.  They should be locked.  For safety purposes, all entrances to the pool are locked by the last PE teacher to leave.  But they’re unlocked tonight.

I walk out onto the cement deck that surrounds the pool.  The light is dim, and the chlorine smell is stronger.  The water is moving slightly.  I’d thought it would be still, but there are small ripples.  Then I see why.  Someone has just gotten out.

He’s at the far end of the pool from where I’m standing.  I start to move toward him, my eyes focused on him as I do.  He’s tall and slender, like swimmers mostly are.  In the dim lighting his hair stands out, picking up what light there is, which highlights its bright, blond color.  He stands still, watching me approach.

He is wearing a pair of Speedos, the very brief ones swim teams use.  His are dark on the sides, which extend down his hips where the suit is the narrowest.  They’re white across the middle where they need to be covering stuff.  I’m not close enough yet to see, but I imagine how maybe the lighter color could make it easier to better see the size and shape that’s inside.  Madison’s colors are navy and white.  I’m surprised they didn’t put the navy in the middle, white on the hips, but I’m pleased they didn’t, too.  I grin.  I’m already thinking like a gay boy.

I’m closer now, but it’s just too dim to see much definition in the suit.  I can see him, though, really see him, see how he’s grown in the past year, how he’s changed.  His arms are muscled.  His bare chest is wide, hairless, and appears to be toned and strong.  It tapers to a tight lower torso and then widens again at the Speedos.  Beneath them are long, well-built legs.  He appears to me to be 6-feet, maybe even a bit taller.  He’s smiling but looking nervous.  There are water drops from the pool decorating his body.

I stop walking a few feet away from him.  “Noah,” I say, my voice breathy. 

He doesn’t reply.  He merely rushes forward and into a hug.  I hold him tight, and he’s trembling.  “I, I . . .”  He suddenly seems tongue-tied.

I giggle, a little self-consciously, a little giddily.  I hug him tighter.  His skin on his back is cool from the pool.  I slide my hands up and down over his skin, feeling the muscles underneath, the softness of the skin itself.  He responds, wrapping his arms around me tighter, too, pulling us even closer.  I feel myself hardening.  I feel him doing the same.

I drop my arms and take a step back.  He watches me, and I can see he’s flushed.

“You’ve grown,” I say.  “You look fabulous.”

His voice is soft, his eyes lustful, something I’ve seen before.  Duncan’s eyes had the same look during my last massage.  I knew what it meant then; I know what it means now.  “Second growth spurt,” he says.  “Lost a lot of baby fat.  Took up swimming to try to get into shape and found I was a natural.  I swim on the team.  The coach gave me a key tonight and told me not to drown; it would be his ass if I did.  He likes me. I’d told him why I needed it.  Not your name, but I’ve talked about you so much, he probably guessed.”

I nod.  “Dr. Sanders gave me a key, too.  Didn’t want to, I could tell, but I talked him into it.”

“You look great.”  Noah runs his eyes over me.  “I got that Sports Illustrated cover of you framed.  It’s on my bedroom wall.”

“They gave me a copy of the picture without all the writing all over it.  I can get it enlarged and give it to you if you want.”

“Want?  Whit, you probably don’t believe it, but I’ve been in love with you since my sophomore year.  I had a crush on you when I was a freshman.  By my sophomore year, I knew who you were—being with you every day at lunch, seeing how special you were.  One of the reasons I got like this—” he gestures at his body with his hands “—was to maybe get you to notice me when you came home.  I guess I didn’t need to, though.”

Seeming unable not to, he steps forward and then is in my arms again.  His skin is still soft; his body feels so right in my arms, up against me.  I’m still hard.  Just looking at him has that effect.  I press into him.  He presses into me, too.

“No, you didn’t need to,” I whisper in his ear.  “I fell in love with you while getting to know you through your emails.  Hey, we should get out of here.  Go somewhere we can sit down at least.”  I say it but continue pressing into him.  It feels so, so good.

“Well, not yet,” he says, whispering in my ear as well.  Well, toward my ear.  I’m still at least a third of a foot taller than he is.  “We have to do something else first.”

“What?” I frown, confused.

He steps back from me.  “Go swimming.”

“Swimming?  I’m not that great in the water, and anyway, I don’t have a suit.”

He smiles, then slowly reaches down and lowers his Speedos.  When they’re halfway down his thighs, his hard-on springs out.  He isn’t embarrassed, not at all.  He has nothing to be embarrassed about!  His smile turns into an impish grin.  “You don’t need one,” he says. 

I’d wanted to see him aroused when seeing him naked at our senior campout, seeing him in the flickering light from the fire.  Now I am seeing him aroused, and he’s glorious.  I’m naked in about five seconds, and I’m in the same state he is.  He reaches for my hand and takes me to the steps leading down into the shallower end of the pool.  It’s not really shallow; it’s four-and-a-half-feet deep so competitive swimmers can make their turns at the end of their lanes without scraping the bottom.  The water is warm enough to be comfortable.

When we’re in it and standing away from the wall, he comes back into my arms again.  We kiss this time.  I can feel him below the water poking me.  His kiss is passionate, and I get into it with the same enthusiasm he has.  He knows how to kiss.  Maybe from the boys he dated.  The boys I never did.

I’ve kissed before, but only Beth.  Not a boy—and not someone I had the feelings for that I do for Noah.  I am sure now that I love him totally.  I’d thought I would love him, but I hadn’t seen him in about a year and hadn’t been sure.  I mean, I loved what I saw in his emails: the boy—no, the young adult—behind them, writing them, pouring himself out in them.  But what about physically?  I’d wondered: would I love him physically?  There is more than just the philosophical, intellectual side of a person.

The young man I am kissing is real, is flesh and blood, and I have no doubts now.  The kissing is leading somewhere, even if we are in a pool of water up over our waists.  I find myself thrusting my lower body forward, and feel him doing the same.  I become more insistent with my thrusts, as does he.  My tension is rising with my lust.  I’ve never, ever felt with my entire body, my entire being, what I feel now.

I pull my lips off of his.  “Wait.  Do we want to do this here?”

He has a very good answer.  “Shut up.”

Having a boyfriend, yeah, I know what everyone thinks, hearing that.  Sex.  Boyfriend equals sex.  Well, it does.  But I now know it’s so much more than that.  So much more.  It’s talking freely, not holding anything back, and there’s an intimacy involved.  It’s incredible.  You have fears; everyone has fears.  But most boys and young men can’t talk about them.  With a boyfriend, you can!  You know how incredible that is?  You can do things you’ve never liked before because now you’re looking for ways to make him happy, and if he likes doing something that you don’t, you still suggest doing it.  And you often find you don’t hate it after all.  He respects your moods, and you his.  If you want to be silent and reflective, he seems to know and gives you your space.  He knows intuitively.  He knows because he knows you.  There’s mutual trust and love.  That’s what having a boyfriend is.

I have a boyfriend now.  He’s everything I could want.  He’s as into me as I am into him.  He’s going to join me when I begin my second year at my university.  He’s already applied for early admission and been accepted.  I’m still young, a kid at heart.  In many ways, he’s the mature one, though he’s a year younger than I am.  He’ll help me keep my feet on the ground.

I’m looking forward to finding out for myself if Jake had been right.  He’d said when the right souls meet and intertwine, love gets stronger the more time you spend together.  Sex is great, but love is more than good sex.  Love makes good sex better, not the other way around.  You don’t know how strong love can be right away.  It takes time for like souls to wrap themselves around each other. 

I love Noah totally and without reservations and have from that first night at the pool, but then, I’d known him rather intimately for much of a year of each of us revealing our souls to each other.  When we met in person, we already knew who each other was.  We already were in love.  But it was a beginning love.  It was nascent, without the depth it would reach with growth.  But according to Jake, each day it would get stronger.  Deeper.  Fuller.  The process would mature and enrich us.

For us, it’ll start in just a few months.  I’ll be home for the summer, and Noah will be there.  Then, when I return to school, he’ll come, too.  It kind of feels like next year is when my life will begin, the adult part of it. 

I’m back at school now, and everything seems different.  I feel different.  I realize Noah was right: I feel a happiness that’s filling me up, something that I never felt during high school.

My coach keeps talking about a national championship, about how it’s in reach.  I guess he expects that to be everyone’s main focus.  I let him think that it’s mine, too, so he’ll be reassured.  I actually do need to get my mind back on that. 

But football will never again be the main thing in my life.  That spot is reserved for Noah.