Chapter 2: The shower scene
The silence after her words was a physical thing, a cold weight on his chest. The fervor of their coupling still prickled on his skin, but it was receding now, replaced by the hard reality of the floor and the time. Seven a.m. He didn’t ask where she was flying to. It didn’t matter.
“Shower,” Channah said suddenly, her voice clearing of its hoarseness. She sat up, the movement fluid. “I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck. In the best way.” She glanced at him, a ghost of their earlier smirk on her lips. “You look like you lost a fight with a motorcycle.”
“Feel like it.” He pushed himself up, his muscles protesting. They gathered their scattered clothes, not speaking, the echoes of their cries still haunting the air. Naked, they walked past the empty ball hopper, the forgotten bench, toward the heavy metal door that led to the locker rooms.
The fluorescent lights here were stark and buzzing, a brutal shift from the court’s golden gloom. The men’s locker room was a tomb of chipped blue lockers and long benches. Their footsteps echoed on the damp concrete floor as they passed through into the shower area.
It was a cavern of white tile, steamy from some distant use. A row of showerheads protruded from one wall, a communal, open space with a rusted drain in the center. A faded poster of a mountain climber with the word “PERSEVERE” was peeling in the corner. The air smelled of mildew, bleach, and the ghost of a hundred teenage boys.
Channah went to the far wall and twisted a knob. Water exploded from a showerhead with a percussive cough, then settled into a strong, steaming spray. She stepped under it, hissing as the heat hit her skin, tipping her head back. The water flattened her red hair against her skull, sluiced over her shoulders, her breasts, the curve of her stomach, down between her legs, washing away the evidence of their sex. She watched him over her shoulder.
“Well? You planning to watch, Professor?”
He joined her under the spray, the water almost scalding. They stood facing each other, the water cascading between them, a translucent curtain. He could see the pale, faint stretch marks on her hips, the fine lines at the corners of her eyes, the spray beading on her eyelashes. She was magnificent, real, and temporary. The thought was a cold knot in his gut.
She reached for a wire rack holding a sliver of generic, industrial soap. She lathered her hands and began to wash his chest, her slick palms sliding over his tattoos, mapping the new ones. Her touch was clinical at first, then slower, more deliberate. She traced the rampant lion on his pectoral, the intricate geometric band around his bicep.
“Tell me about this one,” she said, her voice softer under the roar of the water.
“Got it in Oslo. After a conference.” His own voice was rough. “I was thinking about things I hadn’t done.”
Her eyes met his. “Yeah.” Her soapy hand drifted lower, over his abdomen, and she wrapped her fingers around his cock. It was soft, spent. She soaped him gently, thoroughly, her thumb working over the head, cleaning the slit. “We haven’t done the shower yet.”
A jolt went through him, and he began to harden in her hand, responsive as a teenager. “The fantasy had notes on the shower?”
“It had notes on every surface in this building.” She pumped him slowly, her grip firm. “I specifically remember a mention of being pinned against these very tiles.”
She turned him abruptly, pushing his chest so his palms slapped wetly against the cool wall. The tile was a shock against his feverish skin. The water pounded on his back and the crown of his head. He heard her knees splash softly in the shallow water on the floor.
Then her mouth was on him, from behind.
He groaned, his forehead pressing against the tile. The angle was different, intense. She couldn’t take him as deep, but she made up for it with devious, swirling licks along his underside, lavish attention to his balls, which she cupped and massaged with one hand while the other stroked the base of his shaft. Her tongue was a slick, relentless probe, lapping away the last traces of soap and their earlier frenzy. The sound was obscene: wet, sucking pulls mixed with the constant drumming of the shower.
“Fuck, Channah…”
She drew off with a pop. “Tell me what you want.”
“I want to fuck your ass again. Right here.”
“Then do it.”
He turned. She was on her knees, looking up, water streaming down her face. He hauled her up, his mouth crashing down on hers, the taste of himself and chlorine on her tongue. He walked her backward until her back connected with the tile. He lifted her, and she wrapped her legs around his waist, her arms around his neck. He was rock-hard, pressed against the swell of her stomach.
“Lube?” he gritted out, the practical thought a intrusion.
“We don’t need it.” She reached between them, guiding him. The water was their lubricant, making everything slick and hot. She positioned the head of his cock at her back entrance, still loose and used from their last time, but tighter now. She bore down, impaling herself on him with a desperate, rocking grind.
He cried out, a raw, animal sound lost in the shower’s roar. She was unbelievably tight, the clenching heat of her a vice around him. The water poured over them, making their skin frictionless, transforming every movement into a slick, desperate slide. He drove into her, the pull and push of it made effortless and feverish by the water. Her back slid up and down the tile with a wet, squeaking sound.
“Is this it?” she gasped into his ear, her teeth nipping his lobe. “Is this the shower fantasy?” Her voice was ragged, competitive even now.
“It’s part of it.” He pistoned into her, the slosh of water around their feet keeping time. “The part where I make you come so hard you forget your own name.”
“Prove it.”
He shifted his angle, pulling her tighter against him, and hammered up into her. His thrusts were shorter, harder, aiming for that deep, punishing spot. Her eyes flew wide, her mouth a perfect ‘O’ of stunned pleasure. Her nails dug into the old scars on his shoulders. The orgasm took her violently, a series of sharp, clamping spasms that ripped a guttural scream from her throat. He felt it everywhere, the fluttering, relentless pull.
It tipped him over the edge. He buried his face in the wet junction of her neck and shoulder as he came, his own climax a silent, seismic event that ripped through his core. He pulsed into her, jet after jet, each one wringing a ragged groan from his chest. He held her there, pinned between his body and the cold tile, until he was spent, until the water began to feel chilling.
Slowly, he let her down. Her legs were unsteady. They stood under the spray, breathing heavily, foreheads touching. The water ran clean.
She reached out and turned the knob. The sudden silence was deafening, broken only by the drip of water from their bodies and the distant hum of the building.
They didn’t speak. They towelled off with rough, threadbare towels from a stack on a shelf. They dressed in their damp clothes from the court, the fabric sticking unpleasantly to their clean skin. The mundane acts felt surreal, a silent comedown from a shared fever dream.
He walked her out through the empty lobby, their footsteps echoing. The main doors slid open with a buzz, releasing them into the cool, pre-dawn air. A streetlight cast a pool of sodium-yellow light on the wet pavement. A taxi idled at the curb, its roof light on.
She turned to him. There were no words that could fit. Twenty years, and now a handful of hours. She reached up, touched the side of his face, her thumb brushing his stubble. Her eyes were unreadable in the gloom.
“Ryan,” she said. Just his name. It held everything.
Then she got into the cab. The door shut. He watched the red taillights disappear around the corner, taking the last of the warmth with them. The sky was beginning to lighten, a pale smear in the east behind the university’s Gothic spires. He stood there until the chill bit through his damp clothes, until the mundane sounds of the waking city began—a distant garbage truck, the first bus. The court was locked behind him, a hollow vessel now, full of nothing but echoes. He shoved his hands in his pockets and started the long walk home, the memory of her clasped tight around him, tighter than any touch.