Page 11 of The Try Line

Just like that.

Time heals nothing. He still hates me for what I did, and nearly twenty years later, I'm more pissed about it than I probably should be.

I'm reminded of the way his eyes once bored into me in a completely different way. With tenderness. With love. I remember the weight of him on top of me, the way he felt beneath me. Inside me.

When I can't stand it anymore, I tear my eyes away from his and trudge past him into the house without saying a word. Dizzy with memories and emotion, and probably heatstroke, I nearly choke when the smell of grass and musk flushes over me. He still smells the same, and I'm struck with the memory of wanting to shove my face in his armpit and inhale his sweat. I was so hopeless then.

Not that I’m much better off now, judging by the way my body reacts to his proximity. My dick gets hard, and my eyes fill with tears. As soon as the front door is shut behind me, I run up the stairs as quickly as possible and shut myself in the bathroom. I run past Janel, barely noticing her until she knocks on the door after I've slammed it shut.

"Mik? Are you okay in there?"

"Uh, yeah. Just needed the bathroom," I say quickly, trying to keep my voice even. I have to hold my breath to keep from sobbing until I hear her footsteps move away from the door. I turn on the shower to drown out the sounds of me falling into a sinkhole, every moment of my pathetic life flashing in front of my eyes.

Truthfully, my life isn't all that bad. My son is the light of my life and even though his conception turned my life upside down, I can't imagine not being his dad. I have a job I love, directing intramural sports for the local rec center, and I get my pick of teams to coach. I play rec league rugby and pick up shifts in the used bookstore that Janel and I now own, the same one that I worked in as a teenager. The previous owner was diagnosed with some health issues and had to give it up, but she basically gave it to me. All I had to do was take over the lease for the space.

The little town we live in has grown exponentially, so the leasing costs have gone up dramatically, but Janel and I, with some help from her family, were able to expand to include a coffee shop that's become quite popular with the locals. Janel stopped working as a paralegal and took over running the day-to-day business. She loves the small-town celebrity of being local business owners, our names emblazoned on the back of every rec team shirt and school event that we can sponsor. My position at the rec center sounds more prestigious than it is, but it allows me to do something I love while also appeasing her family’s need for status.

Janel and I have a content, if not monotonous, marriage. It's not loveless exactly, but I've never been in love with her, and I don't think she's ever been in love with me, either.

It's not a bad life. But it's missing something integral.

It's missinghim.

Sometimes I wonder if we would have been better off if we'd never admitted to our feelings. If we'd never shared those fleeting nights of passion. Maybe then I'd still have my best friend by my side, and although I'd always want him, I'd never know what it felt like to be loved by him. To be touched by him.

I step into lukewarm water and try not to think of the night I begged him to fuck me for the first time. The mere touch of my hand on the tile wall of the shower is enough to have me flashing back to that night, to the way he held me against him and carefully, reverently opened me up to take him. To the way he whispered in my ear, making gooseflesh erupt all over my skin. To the way he gently guided me up and down his hard length until I was trembling with need.

My hand wraps around my stiff erection, fingering the barbel at the base of my cockhead, wondering what he’d think of the piercing. If he’d play with it with his tongue and teeth. I close my eyes, remembering the heat of his mouth. The way his tongue swirled over my crown. The way his impossibly light blue eyes watched me, categorizing my every response to his touch.

He was always so careful, so concerned that I'd run away. He never let loose, never lost control and gave in to his own lust. And thenhewas the one to run away.

I pump my fist to thoughts of him, like I have for the past eighteen years. And like every orgasm since the night we were together, I'm left unsatisfied and yearning for something more.

CHAPTER 3

JASON

"Are we gonna go play, or what?" Jase calls out, eager to meet some of my old teammates for a game in the park.

This morning, I woke up excited to spend the day with my nephew and looking forward to catching up with old friends, some of which I haven't even spoken to since I left the country.

But then I saw him. And I realized that being around him is going to be even more difficult than I thought. And if I’m supposed to be going out to meet my old teammates, he’ll be one of them. I’ll have to be on a field with him. With all those memories and a tension thicker than the humidity.

He must have realized it too, because I overhear him making hushed excuses to Janel in the kitchen. I move closer to the entrance to the kitchen and watch as Janel places a hand on Mik's chest. I can't see his face or read his body language from here, but I have to remind myself that jealousy is stupid. Mik’s been married to my sister for all these years.

I have no right to these feelings. I had him for a week once upon a time, that's all. Never mind that I spent that week imagining our lives together. That life doesn’t belong to me, it belongsto her. He’sherhusband. My sister has the life I wanted. She gave him the family I never could have given him, and she has the love I wanted from him. This is reality. There's no point in pretending it could have ended any other way.

"Don't do this," she says, her voice hushed. "I know there's some bad blood between you and my brother, but Jase has been looking forward to this for months. Do it for him."

I clear my throat, and Mik jumps away from his wife like he's been caught doing something wrong and spins around.

"She's right, Mik."Jesus, why is saying his name so hard?"I think we can be adults and play nice for a few days, right?"

His jaw ticks, but he gives me a clipped nod. "I'll just grab my cleats."

I pull back so it isn't as obvious that I'm watching him walk away. He looks so different from the boy I knew so long ago. I'm having a hard time reconciling that it's truly Mik I'm seeing, and not his father. The Sanders genes are strong, that's for sure.

I see more of the boy I once knew in my nephew than I do the broken-down man in front of me. I can still tell it's him, of course. I can even see a hint of my best friend lingering in his sad eyes. When he was staring at me earlier, huffing and red faced from his run, I thought I saw a flash of the passion I'd experienced before everything fell apart. At first, I brushed it off. Surely, I was making up what I wanted to see, not that anything could come of it.

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