Page 11 of The Brotherly Shove

"Exactly!" I lunge towards him, arms spread wide and ready to tackle. Tyree avoids the sack, ducking and weaving under my arm like a pro.

"Rookie, tell your boy to keep his slimy ass away from me!" he calls out, and I turn to see Breaker standing at the end of the row of lockers, fresh from the shower. His wet hair is combed back and out of his face and his skin is flushed pink from the water I know he had set to 'scald your balls off' hot. My eyes travel down his body to his six pack abs, right down to the deep cut Adonis belt muscle that points straight to where his white cotton towel is wrapped around his hips.

I quickly avert my gaze, trying not to come off so suspicious. I'm a professional football player. I see half naked and naked dudes all the time. Hell, I've seen Breaker naked a hundred times. I just stopped looking once I realized how hard it became to look away.

It's a shame I wasted all that time staring at the floor instead of him. He's goddamn beautiful.

And see? That thought right there is what had my mind all twisted up in knots last year. I always just assumed that I was straight. I could appreciate the male form. I'm an athlete, I see a guy who clearly takes care of his body and I respect it because I know how hard he must work to keep his physique looking that way. Never did I see a guy and think 'yeah, that gets me going'. Not until Breaker.

The first time I got hard over him, he was putting on a belt after an away game in Chicago. It was during my junior year. I mean sure, his hands were near his groin, but what did it for me was the way those hands moved as they fed the leather through the silver coated buckle, the way he nudged the prong through the third notch from the center with the his knuckle, the prominent veins on his hands that disappeared under the edge of the hunter green long sleeved tee with the frayed edges that he was wearing that day. He wore that shirt a lot, and during football season, it always stretched a little tighter across his chest from the extra lifting he would do.

Okay…maybe I noticed Breaker on a different level sooner than I remember.

Anyways, the belt. His hands. It was so ordinary, something I'd seen him do a dozen times, but for some reason on that particular Saturday afternoon, Breaker buckling his belt was the sexiest thing I had ever seen. My mouth went dry and my cock thickened in my pants and I ran out of the room so fast I nearly tripped over the lip in front of the hotel bathroom door. To topit off, he called to me from the other room telling me he made a reservation at a place that served deep dish pizza. He always hated deep dish pizza, but he knew how much I loved it. He did that for me.

Not putting my hand down my pants and rubbing one out to the thought of my best friend's considerate as hell act was a feat of strength I was most definitely not capable of.

It's clearly notjusta sex thing, though I have done my fair share of one handed research on the other side of the porn fence in the last year and…yeah. There's definitely some all guy stuff that gets my gears going. I haven't actually hooked up with another guy before, and I'm not at a point where I can feel like I put a label on my sexuality, but I can say for certain that I am not straight.

"Lennon," Breaker snaps in my face.

"Huh?" I shake my head, trying to clear my thoughts. Breaker put on pants at some point while I was daydreaming. I'm sad to see the towel go, but I'm happy to have missed him changing. His bare ass is the last thing I need to see right now. "Sorry, I was thinking."

"Yeah, I know that's tough for you, big guy." He pats my shoulder in mock sympathy.

"Fuck off. I think good as shit." He snorts as he pulls a gray t shirt over his head, but he doesn't say anything else. It's awkward, and I don't know why. Breaker and I don't have uncomfortable silences, we have conversations and inside jokes andcompanionablesilences. I could blame it on the fact that I was just thinking about his bare ass, but that's not it. I did that plenty when we were still playing college ball together, and it was never awkward. Maybe it's the time we've spent apart? I try to think of the last time we had a conversation that lasted more than a few texts back and forth.

It had to have been almost a year ago.

That just won't do.

"You wanna go grab a bite, catch up a bit? The chicken and veg they gave us for lunch did absolutely nothing for me." I rub my belly for emphasis, and to try to squeeze one of Breaker's signature giggles out of him. The 'big boy belly rub' move almost always works.

"Nah, not tonight. I'm still unpacking and trying to settle into the new place. I'm just gonna go home," he says, packing up his bag. Not a giggle to be heard for miles.

"No big. Tomorrow? There's this Japanese place a few minutes away. They've got some killer sashimi, so we can go hard and don't even have to worry about the team dietitians coming after us for our carb intake."

"Maybe some other time, Lennon," he says without looking at me. He turns and walks out of the locker room without saying goodbye, and a lump forms in my throat. Shit, I was afraid of this. It all hits me at once. Every missed FaceTime call, every missed text message. It all validates what I felt the night of our last college championship win together, the night where he looked like he'd rather be anywhere but in that hotel room with me.

Breaker is pulling away from me, and he's taking my heart with him as he goes.

CHAPTER 7

BREAKER

Now

San Francisco, California

"Shit, fuck, mother fucker, god dammit," I hiss as I slowly sink down into my chair. My thighs have completely seized up on me. Even after my post practice stretch with the trainers and a dip in the ice bath, my muscles took a brutal beating today.

"Breaker Lawson, watch your fucking language," Ma scolds me from the iPad I have propped up on the table. Even though it's already nine at night back in Philly, and she'd usually be in bed with her Kindle and a melatonin gummy right about now, I promised I'd call her after my first day of practice. So instead she's sitting at the kitchen island in my childhood home, twisting the top off of Oreos and dunking them in milk while I try to regain function of my legs.

My signing bonus wasn't much by NFL standards, but it was enough that I can afford to rent a nice enough one bedroom apartment in Downtown San Francisco, only a thirty minute drive from the training facilities. That and the fact that my 2017 Honda Civic is completely paid off and still going strong, I've managed to keep my cost of living relatively low. The last thingI want to do is get a big head and start spending outside of my means. Just because I have a job right now doesn't mean anything. Life in the pros can change in the blink of an eye, and while I have a degree in software engineering to fall back on, I don't plan on being a washed up ex athlete talking about the glory days to his eight roommates when I'm forty years old.

“Ma, if you had any idea how tight my quads are right now—” I start, but she cuts off my complaint with a flick to her camera.

"Well, maybe you should've done a little more training and a little less sulking in the off season, oh darling son of mine."

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