Page 15 of Unlocked Dive
For the first time in my life, I want to bebad.To forsake every cautious warning, every moral binding, and immolate myself on everything he offers up.
From the beginning, the nights are the worst. Finally, blessedly,horriblyalone, I lie awake and imagine I can feel him breathing through the walls and empty house between us. Behind my eyelids, he’s fresh out of the shower—my shower—wearing nothing but a towel and his wicked smirk, daring me to watch, to covet. His runaway mouth plays on repeat in my ears, teasing as I make our dinner, and a brazen, savage creature stirs and coils low in my gut. I taste the cigarettes we share on the deck in the evenings, where he marvels at the Milky Way as I watch the smoke curl over his lips and tongue with hopeless envy.
I haven’t touched myself this much since I was a teenager, and it does nothing to quell the relentless tension.
In the mornings, he pads barefoot through my kitchen, shirtless and tousled from sleep. He eats cereal standing at the counter, heavy eyed and elfin, while I drink in his tattoos with my coffee and wonder if he’s real.
j-flip 8/09/14
unlocked dive 4/18/15
single-coil wheel up 12/06/17
pirouette 2/20/18
double pirouette 6/25/23
Star drops and bombs and saltos and so many more.
A litany of tricks and their dates of mastery scrawled along his ribs and over his biceps to the crook of his elbow. A private record, triumphs carved in pain, and I can measure in heartbeats exactly how close I need to be to read the words.
Only his forearms are different, wrapped in angel wings of black and blue. On the left, whole and perfect; on the right, crumpled and broken, with one word in flawless calligraphy carved starkly into the pink flesh of a new scar.
“Fallen.”
If Echooffthe rope is one kind of torture, Echoonthe rope is another.
He walks into my living room the first morning like temptation wrapped in thin, pale jersey, all fine skin and black ink—his lean muscles born of talent, rather than hours pumping iron in front of a mirror at the gym. Once I’ve recovered from the sight of him, I run him through the basics, letting him get a feel for the rope and the space.
He’s good, of course—more than competent—but the genius Reggie gushed about is as absent as the cocksure attitude that flees every time his fingers touch the rope. I could look past some loss of strength or lack of stamina. There’s plenty of time to build those back. What I don’t know how to kindle is the missing spark.
Eventually, I download his audition video to see what Reggie saw and try to make sense of what I’m missing. And then I scroll through every single one of his Instagram videos, and I start toget pissed. Something happened to this gorgeous dynamo with the reckless mouth to crush more than his wrist.
For weeks, I watch and nudge and, with gentle patience, suffer a loss he has to mourn. Here is heartbreak in the bones, and every day, I ache with him, caught between what was and what should be in a helpless now.
“Try it again from the hipkey.”
We’re working on his unlocked dive. It’s a half-release move that shouldn’t put more pressure on his hand than he’s ready for, although, since it’s basically a falling front flip, it does require a certain leap of faith.
Instead of the static hipkey this time, he goes for a dynamic entrance—a quick back beat for momentum and then a smooth threading of the outside leg through his staggered grip on the rope. A little slack to slide into position, and he’s poised for the dive, one hand gripping the tail at his abdomen and the other hooked above his head.
“Nice,” I say with a smile. Split-grip beats put a lot more pressure on the top hand, and his confident execution is a good sign. He grunts without looking my way and releases the pole. Like every time before, he makes the grab and pikes perfectlythrough the drop, but the second he catches his full weight, he lets go, landing on his feet and breathing in tight gasps.
“Does it hurt?” I’ve asked him this a hundred times, and the answer is always a reluctant “no.” I don’t think he’s lying, but his continued refusal to tell me what’s going on is seriously starting to grate.
Maybe he can hear the frustration in my voice because, this time, he finally snaps.
“It doesn’t fucking hurt, Byrd. It just doesn’twork.”
Bullshit.
“It works fine for beats,” I throw back at him, fighting my own temper. “It works fine for windmills and lassos and candy-cane toe climbs.” All things that put pressure on the dominant hand.
But none of those require letting go.
“It works fine for jacking off too. Wanna see?”
“Cut it out. I’m not letting you distract me this time.” His favorite way to end a session is to flirt until I flee.
