Page 33 of The Road to Home Base
He bobbed in the deep end. “Did you get it?” he asked.
“One for the record books,” I said as I lowered my camera and slipped it back into the case. I slid the case under the umbrella-shaded table. The afternoon heat of a cloudless August sky would bake anything it touched. I had already turned red after only twenty minutes of exposure.
“Okay good. Enough stalling. Get in, already,” Rome said as he splashed the surface to get me wet. I danced back just in time.
I don’t know why but I had a sudden case of shyness when we strolled through the gate wearing flip-flops and towels hooked around our necks. Rome wasted no time stripping his tank top off, which gave me plenty of time to ogle his hardened, athletic body. But me? Yeah, I was a runner. But I was a noodle compared to this guy. Would he judge me for a flat chest where he had over-pronounced pectorals? Or my tubular arms wherehis were all bulk and cut lines?
“I’m not stalling,” I said as I put my hands on my hips.
“You’re stalling,” he retorted as he swam toward the shallow end and stood up. “Because you’re suddenly shy and I can’t for the life of me figure out why.”
He said that while standing with the water at his waist line, dripping and soaking, musculature glistening in the blaring sun. Then, he let out a frustrated sigh and made a dramatic show of turning around.
“Okay, okay. See? I’m not looking.”
“Oh, stop,” I said and stripped off my shirt, then strutted to the deep end. I presented myself to him in all my scrawniness, then shallow-dove from the edge and speared through the water toward him. I came up when I brushed by his legs and wiped the water from my eyes.
He had been smiling mischievously. “You run marathons, don’t you?” Rome asked.
I had been in the process of dipping back into the water to keep my body under the surface, but stopped. “How… how did you know?”
My running had come up in conversations before, but nothing more than me revealing that I liked to hit the pavement to relieve stress.
Rome shrugged. “Your legs. Your thighs. Flat tummy. So I’m right?”
“Very good. You are indeed right.”
A satisfied smile. We both slipped below, up to our shoulders, knees on the bottom of the pool. “Ever run the Boston Marathon?”
I held both arms out of the water. “That’s what these represent.”
His eyes went wide. “Get out! That is seriously impressive. You got one every year you’ve run?” I nodded as his eyes trackedand counted the rings. He knee-walked in the water to get closer and gently took my forearm. His finger ran along the rings that started at my elbow. I shuddered when his finger pressed against the inside of my elbow, something soft and sensual.
His finger came to a spot where I knew it would. Twelve rings total, six on each arm, all of them black. Except for one.
“Why is this one red?” Rome asked. I didn’t answer. His brow scrunched, then lifted. “Oh.”
When most people figured out what the red line meant, they had the same question. “Were you near the finish line when it happened?” would always come out of their mouths. Then they’d ask if I heard the explosion. If I knew anyone who died. If I saw the bombers. If I helped out the victims.
But Rome didn’t ask that. He pulled me by the arm with the red ring and wrapped his arms around me. “I’m sorry you went through that. It must have been so hard.”
I was so stunned that for a moment, I didn’t hug him back. My arms eventually draped across his back. “Thank you. It was difficult.” I pulled out of the embrace first. “That’s sweet of you to say that, though.”
Without preamble he leaned in for a kiss. He put his arms back around me and his hand cupped the back of my head. Our tongues danced slowly, a meandering waltz that had me spinning by the time Rome pulled away.
“I’ve been talking too much about myself,” he said as we pressed our foreheads together. “I should have known this about you on day one.”
I couldn’t help but grin. Hedidlike to prattle on, but I had come to find it comforting. “Well what else do you want to know? You’ve seen my favorite pictures. My apartment. You know I run marathons…”
“Hmm…” His hand slipped under the water and suddenly pinched my sides. I leaped in place with a yelp and swamsuddenly backward. “Ticklish. That’s something I wanted to know.”
“And areyou?” I dove under the surface and launched myself at his waist.
We wrestled in the water for awhile until it became too difficult to hide our tented swimming shorts. By unspoken decree, we cooled down on separate ends of the pool to toss a toy football. Our conversation idled on random facts about each other that we thought might be interesting. I steered clear of my childhood, not yet ready to dive into how those years had such an impact on not only me, but on the close relationship with my brother Devin.
After about an hour in the pool, we climbed out and air dried on the short walk back to Rome’s house, our flip-flops squeaking and squawking from watery feet. The sudden blast of glacial air inside the house had me instantly seizing up and covering my still bare chest with a towel. Rome laughed, grabbed a few seltzers from his fridge, and led me to his personal back patio that overlooked a green lawn bordered by thick forest. Together, we plopped down on cushioned patio furniture. I draped one leg over his thigh.
“Have you picked a date yet?” I asked as I sipped at the seltzer, a raspberry and lime mixture. This would have been the perfect situation for a light, crisp beer, but I was beginning to figure out that Rome didn’t drink much, especially when in between games.
