Chapter 6: The Shower Door
The cold water did nothing. It needled my skin, but the heat was buried too deep, a stubborn fire in my gut and lower. I braced my forehead against the slick tile, eyes squeezed shut, trying to force the image of his knowing gaze from my mind. Trying to erase the feeling of his hands on my thigh, the exact pressure of his thumbs.
A hiss, a clank of pipes, and then the rush of water from the adjacent shower stall. Through the frosted, segmented glass, a blurry silhouette materialized. Tall, lean. He braced his hands high against the wall, his head dropping between his shoulders. Water cascaded down the vague outline of his back.
Silence, except for the twin sprays. Then, a low hum. A tune I recognized from college. He was always humming that damn song.
“Ben?” His voice was casual, but it cut through the steam and water sound, intimate and too close. “That ice-cold therapy helping?”
I couldn’t form words. My throat was sealed shut. All the blood in my body seemed to have pooled, aching, between my legs. The betrayal of my own body was absolute. I looked down at myself, at the full, rigid proof of it, disgust and a terrifying thrill knotting together in my chest.
His silhouette shifted. A hand moved, maybe to reach for soap. My breath hitched.
It happened without conscious permission. My hand, moving of its own volition, wrapped around myself. The touch was electric, a jolt that made my knees weak. I bit down on the inside of my cheek to keep silent. The water pounded my back, my shoulders. I began to stroke, slow at first, then with a rhythm dictated by pure, desperate need. The friction was almost painful, overwhelmingly good. I thought of the lake, his body cutting through the dark water. I thought of the gym, the sweat tracing the lines of his spine. I thought of his hands.
A low, shaky exhale from the other side of the glass. Not part of the humming. Different.
Then another. Deliberate. Controlled, but losing control.
The sounds syncopated with the rush of water—the slick, sliding noise from my stall, a corresponding, muffled rhythm from his. He was right there. Doing the same thing. Knowing I was here, doing it. The glass was the only thing between us, smeared and opaque, hiding everything and revealing everything at once.
My movements grew frantic, selfish. This wasn’t about my wife, or my fatigue, or the confusing mess of my life. This was crude, biological, a release valve for a pressure I could no longer contain. Heat coiled tightly at the base of my spine. The sounds from his shower grew sharper, a choked-off gasp that was my name, or a curse, or just a release of air.
It tipped me over the edge. I came hard, silently, my body buckling as I spilled over my own fist, the evidence vanishing instantly in the relentless cold spray. I slumped against the wall, spent, hollowed out, a wave of immediate and crushing shame washing over me.
The water next door shut off first. I heard the squeak of his hand on the faucet, the drip of his body, the rustle of a towel. I stood there, paralyzed, waiting for him to leave.
He didn’t. His voice came again, quieter now, clear through the stall divider. “Meet you outside. Don’t overthink it, man.”
Then his footsteps receded.
I finally moved, scrubbing myself raw with generic gym soap, as if I could scour the last hour from my skin. When I walked out into the cooling evening air, he was leaning against the passenger side of his truck, dressed in clean jeans and a grey hoodie, looking up at the first stars. He tossed me the keys. “You drive. I’m beat.”
The drive back to the cabin was steeped in a new kind of quiet. Not the tense silence from before, but something thick, saturated. The things we hadn’t seen, but had heard, hung in the air between us. My knuckles were white on the steering wheel.