Page 74 of We Were Never Lovers
Sean Hillerlit up his screen as the contact and he almost dropped the phone in his haste to pick it up. He stopped justas he was about to slide the message open—what if it was an insult? It was definitely an insult. Sean had been radio-silent on his phone for years and even leaving aside what happened in the locker room, there was no way Sean was texting him something nice. He held his phone, stared at the little notification, the green box withSean Hillerstaring up at him until the screen went dark.
How much worse could it be though? Compared to all the other shit over the season. And after what’d happened… maybe there was hope.
He tapped his phone and opened the message.
Nice thirst trap.
Jack blinked. Was that sarcasm? Of course it was fucking sarcasm. He huffed a laugh. Of all the things he imagined Sean sending him after all these years, it wasn’t an insult toeing the line of humour. Unless it was an insult? But, no, he didn’t think so. Still, he was hardly posting thirst traps—him lifting a barbell in the gym in shorts and a singlet, sweaty and heaving, was not something people got all worked up about.
Thirst trap, he wrote back and added a laughing emoji.Nice one.
He hit send and saw the read notification appear immediately. His heart was pounding, his stomach filling with butterflies as he watched the text bubble pop up as Sean typed.
Mate, that’s a fuckin thirst trap. Who u tryin to pull?
Jack blushed and thought:you.
Except that was ludicrous. He wasn’t posting sexy content. He chuckled, bit his lip, and wondered how to reply. Honesty usually worked.
It’s a workout tip, he wrote.Got a lot of young followers.
He hit send and got an immediate screaming laughing emoji for his troubles.
Followed by:I bet u do.
Then:ur form sucks.
Jack recoiled with further embarrassment at the implications of the first response, couldn’t help his laugh at the second.
Sean sent him a link—it was a workout video. Jack scoffed. Sean followed it up with:ur knees r gonna thank me.
Jack watched the video. Sean had a point.
He typed a quickthank you.
And got an eye roll in reply. He waited for more, but there was nothing.
He’d followed all of Sean’s socials for years, careful not to like anything lest he piss him off, so he knew Sean didn’t post anything workout-related. He didn’t post much at all. Just the odd picture of him and his mates and family at a BBQ or fishing or out hiking somewhere in the offseason. He clicked over to them now to see if he could find anything to keep the conversation going. Sean’s latest post was him and his brother on top of Boyagin Rock near their hometown. Jayden had his arm outstretched to take the photo, Sean grinning under his other arm in the corner of the frame. He liked the picture and left it at that.
He’d been antsy for the next few days, wondering how he could keep it going. Sean didn’t post anything. But then Jack usually posted every few days, and he was thinking about Sean when he got his phone set up, even though he was pretending he wasn’t. There was nothing sexy about what he was about to do: he was at the athletics training facility on the running track. He used it with a few other athletes to do interval running. His outfit wasn’t sexy—loose shorts and a white singlet—and the video, if it looked any good, would just be him sprinting, coming from a distance and belting past the camera; then he’d cut it and take the clip of him doing the ten second jog before he accelerated again. He was happy with it when he watched it, and he tapped out the instructions after he uploaded the video. He was rubbingsweat off his forehead with his towel as he hit post, tucked his phone away and hit the showers.
His phone was pulsing with notifications when he opened his locker and his heart gave a hopeful thump thinking one of them might be Sean. He told himself to stop being ridiculous—Sean had his own offseason to worry about, he wasn’t sitting around waiting for Jack to post shit. His excitement overwhelmed him as he picked up the phone anyway.
“Same time next week?” came from behind him, and Jack fumbled his phone, shoved it into his gear bag like he was doing something wrong.
He looked up at the smiling face of Callahan—a runner who specialised in the ten kilometre event internationally, Olympic hopeful, and Jack’s training buddy.
“Yeah, sounds good,” he said easily.
“Cool,” Callahan smiled, “nice vid. Thanks for the shout out.”
“Yeah, course, thanks for the session,” Jack replied.
Callahan grinned, gap-toothed, winked and sauntered out with a little wave. See? Jack wanted to say to Sean, these were just workout videos, athletes appreciated them.
He pulled his phone out again, telling himself Sean wouldn’t have messaged when he saw it: a single text message notification. All the other notifications were from the socials. He slid it open, held his breath.
It was the video. Jack frowned and hit play. Sean had put slow motion on it and Jack continued to frown and then went scarlet at what the slow version emphasised—it was hard not to notice the way his dick and balls moved against the thin material of his grey shorts. Jack swallowed, mortified.
