Page 8 of Sweat

“Uh, yeah. Why?” He looks confused, probably because we’ve hardly exchanged words before beyond a cordialwassupin passing. I know everyone on the team’s name by heart, the schools they came from, and their start-of-year stats. Starters, backups, second string, third string, everyone. Doesn’t mean I want to bro out with them or start a book club.

“You play there with a guy named Tommy? Tommy…something or another. Shredded guy. Baby face?” I’m trying to play it cool and inadvertently announced to this backup two things I can’t keep out of my head about Mr. Mathison. That hard body and that soft, doe-eyed face. Because Malik is in only a towel, and nearly as shredded as Tommy, I face my locker and focus on getting it unlocked.

From a few locker spaces down, Malik says, “Tommy Mathison? Yeah.”

“He good?”

“Good? Like, good with a ball? Yeah, he’s great. Was, I mean. He left the game behind after high school.”

“Why?” I get my locker open and stick my half-downed Gatorade into it before tugging off my shirt.

“Dunno.”

Balling up my shirt, I eye Malik like I know he’s lying. Guy doesn’t trust me, I guess. Funny how all these dudes trust me with their lives as soon we’re on that field, but off of it, I’m like their parent, stuck in a revolving door of anxious half-truths.

Am I scary or something?

“You know where he hangs out?” I ask.

“You lookin’ for revenge or something?”

I fling my shirt ball into my locker and finally allow myself to sit on the long bench behind me. “What? Oh, that.” I roll my eyes and tug at my shoelaces.

“He really clocked your ass, huh?”

Now I’m hoping the glare I shoot Malik scares him, but all it does is make him fold his lips and hold back the laugh vibrating his throat.

“Not looking for revenge,” I say, but now I sorta want it. Maybe I’ll save a piece for Malik too. “Just wanna chat about his glory days a little.”

“You fucked the dude’s girl, man. I don’t think he wants to chat with you about dick.”

“I didn’t—” I stop myself from arguing the different between head and fucking, because it’s a moot point thatwould only raise more questions. Like, why didn’t I fuck her? Aaliyah, or whatever her name is, must be pretty hot if Tommy is wasting time on her, and she was majorly down-to-fuck. Like Levi said, only a homo would turn that pussy down. “I didn’t know she had a boyfriend.”

“It’s all good. Annalese just been doing Annalese past couple years. Maybe now she’s dipping her pen a little too close to home, Tommy will get it through his head that she’s not wife material. Woman just wants to party.”

Seems like Tommy hates partying even more than I do. I pry his routine out of Malik and it’s monotonous as hell. Gym, classes, work, gym, home at dusk, lights out before midnight, rinse and repeat. No one sees much of him except in passing, and his social media presence is scarce to none. I’d think a gym rat would be posting reels of his reps on the daily, if only for the boost in quality DMs. It’s the dude version of thirst-trapping.

It takes a week for me to spot Tommy. He’s leaving the Humanities building at the same time I’m waiting on an order of corn dog bites at the Quick Stop window outside the Student Union. These deep fried babies are an integral part of my weekly cheat day, so I give it a few seconds, and as soon as I’ve got my dogs and a handful of mustard packets shoved into my sweatshirt pocket, I bolt down the East Quad steps and snake through the counter-current of late morning foot traffic.

“Yo!” I holler, clipping some rando’s shoulder as I keep my eyes trained on the tip of Tommy’s head poking out from the crowd. His honey-brown hair wafts upward in the breeze, and his backpack has a teal water canister shoved into the side pouch.

I get closer, and the crowd size dissipates as Tommy turns onto a wider thoroughfare. “Yo, babyface!”

The big dude slows, but he doesn’t stop. He glances oddly over his shoulder, spots me, and that odd expression turns downright startled.

“Damn, Tommy.” I catch up to him, laughing at how quick he is when he’s not even trying. “Almost lost my dogs chasing you down.”

“What do you want?”

The coarseness in his voice quickens my heartbeat, but it’s the softness in his tone that has me pulling my focus off my corn dogs. Only difference between Tommy at night and Tommy in the daylight is that the sun makes his hair glow golden on the ends, and it’s easier to see how blue his eyes are and how smooth his face is. He sure as hell isn’t the lanky kid I played against in high school anymore. Now, he tilts his chin up and looks at me from the bottoms of his eyes, like he wants me to know I’m shorter than him. As if that’s not obvious.

There’s still a timidness to him, though. Something tells me it’s so ingrained in him he’ll never grow out of it, whether by age or by reps at the gym. When I ask him what he’s doing tonight, he grips the straps of his backpack like it’s a jetpack and glances left and right, like I’ve got him on candid camera or something.

“Why?” he asks.

“You know the intramural field next to the campus gym, behind the psychology building?”

“Yeah?” He draws out the word like he’s not sure, but it’s probably just that he doesn’t trust me.

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