Jesse

Practise runs late and I’m late for studying with Nate.

I think it’s a good idea to skip the shower and just jump straight on the bus, but as soon as I sit down, I smell myself and, yeah, it wasn’t a good idea.

No one sits next to me, even as the bus starts to fill up.

As soon as Nate opens the door, I apologise for stinking.

“I was late for our… thing, and I didn’t have time to shower at the rink.”

“You can shower here if you like.”

The offer’s thrown out there so casually, I don’t know why it makes my face get so hot.

“Won’t your mom mind?”

Nate laughs, “I’ve got my own shower, in the attic room, come on, I’ll show you.”

I follow Nate upstairs, painfully aware that I’m about to see his bedroom. The fact it’s in the attic makes it feel even more private.

I imagine a rope ladder or something, but of course, Nate’s family are rich enough to have proper stairs that you can pull down.

When we step into the bedroom, I’m surprised by how plain it is. No posters on the walls or trophies or rosettes from hobbies. I know Nate isn’t into sports, but not even a spelling bee trophy? Not even a poster of Einstein?

There’s a schedule tacked up on the wall by his computer and bookshelves full of text books, but I don’t even see any nerdy novels or comic books or anything.

“The bathroom’s just through there, there’s a fresh towel hanging on the back of the door.”

The bathroom is clean and sparce like his bedroom. A clean white towel hanging on the back of the door.

I try not to think about the fact there’s someone standing on the other side while I strip out of my clothes. I should be used to getting naked by now. I do it with an entire team of guys in the locker room, but this feels different.

Nate is a cute guy who is completely out of bounds. Not only is he way too smart for me, but he’s my captain’s little brother and Jones would kill me if he knew I was even thinking about him like that.

When I pop open a container, I get a whiff of shampoo and the realisation that this is what Nate’s hair smells like makes my dick twitch.

I absolutely cannot jerk off in someone else’s shower.

I tell my dick to behave and wash myself mechanically and get out of there as quickly as possible.

Nate’s sitting at his computer when I come back out. His eyes widen when he sees me in just a towel and I explain I left my bag with my clean clothes out there.

“Oh, yeah, sure, um…”

he stutters and as I close the bathroom door to get changed, I realise I’m smiling.

Nate can’t even look me in the eye when we go back down to the kitchen to study. For some reason, his shyness helps me to focus and I get a plan of my essay finished with time to spare.

Nate sits back in his chair, “you know , I think you understand all of this more than you realise.”

I just blink at the notebook.

“You probably don’t need me to tutor you anymore. You have your essay plan now and you know what you’re doing, I can proof read your essay for you when you’re finished, but I’m sure your professor will be happy to…”

As he talks, my heart sinks. He wants to get rid of me. I’m eating into his time. I get it. And that girl I keep seeing him with, is that his girlfriend? I’m an idiot.

“Sure, I mean… yeah, thanks, you’ve been great.”

“I mean, if you want to keep studying, we can…”

Is he blushing right now?

“Uh, yeah, I mean, sure that’d be… cool.”

Idiot.

“You wanna grab some snacks and come up to my room? I have an essay I need to work on and all my notes are on the computer.”

He wants to study with me in his room?

“Yeah, uh, sure.”

We grab some Doritos, which I don’t even think he likes, and Twinkies and head back up to Nate’s bedroom.

He tells me to sit on the bed while he works on the computer and at first, it’s weird as fuck. But then I start getting into what I’m reading in Professor Williams’ book, and with all the stuff I’ve talked about with Nate, it makes a lot more sense than it did before. Maybe I just needed to talk about it with someone who didn’t make me feel like I’m a complete idiot. Not that prof is a bad teacher, just… she intimidates the fuck out of me. Nate intimidates me too, but in a completely different way. And it’s so much easier when you’re not in that setting. A classroom or a lecture hall or seminar room. Other students all looking at you, judging your chipped tooth and broken nose and knowing you’re on the hockey team and so must be a braindead idiot.

Nate’s been staring at his computer for hours by the time I’ve had enough. I’ve ate nearly all the Doritos and like three Twinkies and I need to get outside and spread my legs.

Nate looks up from his laptop when he hears me move.

“Hey, feel like taking a break?”

He chews his lip and okay, he has nice lips.

“C’mon Nate, you need a break, you’ve been studying for hours.”

“I always study for hours.”

“Every day?”

His cheeks get pink and my stomach knots.

“Okay, break time.”

I turn to leave the room, waiting for him to follow, when he doesn’t, I remind him that I could easily carry him if I wanted. I laugh when he widens his eyes. Obviously I’m not going to pick the guy up, that’d be weird. Wouldn’t it? But he follows me anyway.

“You should put a jacket on,”

I tell him when we reach the front door.

“Where are we going?”

“It’s a surprise.”

Nate puts a jacket and his shoes on and follows me outside.

“How are we getting there?”

“The bus obviously. Unless you have a sweet car like Jones?”

Nate shakes his head, “my parents won’t let me have one until I turn twenty-one.”

That’s smart. A surprise, but it’s smart. Maybe that’s why Nate doesn’t act like a spoilt brat even though his parents are rich and he practically lives in a mansion?

“You do know how to catch the bus don’t you?” I tease.

He cocks his head, “obviously, I get the bus to class every day.”

“Okay, good.”

We walk in silence for a few minutes. The gravel driveway leading out of Nate’s parents’ house going on forever.

“You’re really not going to tell me where we’re going?”

I laugh. “If I tell you, you won’t come.”

I see him swallow hard and want to reassure him.

“Don’t worry. Do you think your brother would let me put you in danger?”

Nate seems to relax and I realise he actually was considering that I might let him get hurt.

We don’t have to wait long for the bus and when we get on, it’s so busy, we don’t even get a seat next to each other. At least it saves us having to make conversation I guess, but I was looking forward to sitting next to him. So he’s Jones’ brother and off-bounds. I can look, can’t I?

I have to nudge him to let him know we’re getting off and when he follows me, I realise he’s putting a lot of trust in me and I hope he doesn’t regret it.

The building I lead him to from the bus stop must look super sketchy. From the outside it just looks like a big garage or storage units. I push the big fire doors open and the sound of balls thunking against baseball bats hits me right away. The smell of rubber and wood.

I was never very good at baseball, but I always loved hitting balls with my dad. It was hockey my dad had played in high-school, and so hockey he focussed on with my training, soon pushing baseball out altogether.

When I look at Nate, he looks like he’s going to turn around and run.

I force a laugh, though I’m seriously wondering if I’ve made a mistake bringing him here - he looks like he’s about to have a panic attack.

“Don’t look so scared,”

I say, “it’s just for fun.”

He follows me around the perimeter of the cages where I go to pay and collect our bats and balls. He flinches when a baseball catches in the net near his face.

“Don’t worry,”

I say, stopping in front of him, “I won’t let you get hurt.”

He looks up at me, his eyes huge, and nods. Fuck he’s cute.

We take a free cage at the end of the row and I put the bucket of balls down by the wall and take my jacket off. Nate is just standing in the corner and I don’t know whether to laugh or carry him back to the car before he starts crying.

I hold the bat out to him and ask him if he wants to go first. He shakes his head.

“Okay, I’ll go first.”

I set it up and wait for the machine to send me a ball. When the ball comes flying towards me, I swing and my bat makes contact with the ball and sends it flying with a satisfying thunk. Fuck that feels good!

When I look at Nate, he’s still looking awkward and I know if I don’t get him involved now, he’s going to hate every second of this and I’ll have made a big mistake.

I just wanted to help him loosen up. To thank him for helping me with my essay and to remind him that there’s a big world outside, and that he should probably move every now and then.

I hold my hand out to him and he looks at it like it belongs to an alien. Making sure I’ve got a non-threatening smile on my face, I tell him to come here.

After a second’s hesitation, he takes the bat from me. I make sure he’s not in the direct path of the machine while I help him get his posture right and another ball comes flying out and hits the wall behind us.

He has no idea what he’s doing and I have to tell him everything, from the position of his feet to his stance.

“Square your shoulders, like this,”

I say, putting my hands on his back through his jacket. I’m not going to tell him to take it off, he already looks stressed out. “And bring the bat back like this. Okay, now step a little to the right and wait for the ball.”

This close, I can smell that shampoo from his shower. Feel the shape of his body through his jacket. I pause for a second with my hand on his shoulders and catch him glancing my way from the corner of his eye. I drop my hands and tell him to get ready.

Nate looks terrified, and when the ball comes at him, instead of swinging, he drops the bat and jumps out of the way.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

I burst out laughing.

“Nate, have you never done this before?”

He nods, “years ago, with my dad and Harrison, I was terrible at it then as well.”

He looks so sad, like I’m going to shout at him.

“Listen Nate,”

I walk back over and put my hands on his shoulders so he lifts his head to look at me, “you don’t have to be good at it, that’s not the point. The point is to have fun.”

“How can you say that when you literally play sports competitively?”

I shrug and drop my hands, “I don’t play baseball competitively. And neither do you.”

Nate looks back at the bat on the floor.

“Do you wanna have another go? We have another twenty minutes on the clock, take your time.”

He frowns and it’s kind of funny how conflicted he looks over picking up a baseball bat.

When he picks it up, I celebrate internally. What the fuck happened to him to make him so scared of sports? I guess if his dad was anything like my dad when he was teaching me stuff like this, then yeah, I get it. At least I was kind of good at this stuff. I can’t imagine how pissed my dad would have been if I’d been bad at it or shown no interest and wanted to read a book instead.

He kind of gets the stance I showed him and this time, when the ball comes at him, he doesn’t drop the bat and run away. He doesn’t hit the ball either, but that’s okay.

He looks at me and I must be grinning like an idiot, because he smiles.

“I told you I was bad at this.”

“You’ve got it, go on, here comes another one.”

This time, he hits the ball. It doesn’t exactly hit the bat in the right place and it doesn’t go very far or make a very satisfying noise, but he hits it and that’s an improvement. The next one is better, and there’s that thunk and the ball almost reaches the other side of the cage. When Nate looks at me again, he’s beaming and my heart starts to pound.

“That was… actually kind of fun.”

“Why do you sound so surprised?” I laugh.

We’re waiting to catch our bus back home and it’s getting cold and dark. Nate’s hands are stuffed in his jacket pockets and I have to resist the urge to put an arm around him to warm him up.

“It’s just that sports have never really been fun to me.”

He looks down at his shoes and I wait to see if he’s going to say anything more.

“When we were kids, dad took us to every batting cage, every ice rink, football field, you name it, looking for the sport we were best at. Harrison was pretty good at everything, but hockey was his biggest strength. Me…”

Nate smiles but it doesn’t reach his eyes, “I was terrible at everything. I’m uncoordinated and I’m not athletic. I was bad at playing in teams…”

He looks at me shyly and looks away.

“I always felt like my dad was disappointed because he gave Harrison so much attention after that, coaching him in hockey until he was ready to join a proper team.”

“That must have sucked.”

Nate shrugs. “It’s not like I wanted to play sports anyway.”

“But sports are supposed to be fun.”

Nate smiles at me, this time it does reach his eyes.

“Has hockey always been fun for you?”

I snort. “I dunno, yeah, I guess. I mean, it’s not always good having the attention on you. Sometimes it’s too much pressure.”

I can feel Nate looking at me, watching for my reaction, but I can’t meet his gaze.

“Does your dad put a lot of pressure on you?”

I swallow. “Sometimes, yeah.”

Nate shuffles his shoes across the floor. His feet are so cute and small next to mine. Everything about him is so delicate and graceful. It makes me look bulky and clumsy and I want to tell him there’s nothing wrong with not being good at sports. Being him is kind of amazing too.

“I’m not gonna make it to the NHL,”

I say. The more I say it, the less is stings.

“I wish my dad would accept that, I have.”

“What does your dad want you to do?”

I snort, “fuck knows, miracles.”

Nate sucks in a breath and I wonder if it’s because I cursed.

“Sorry.”

“What for?”

“Cursing.”

Nate laughs, “I curse.”

“No you don’t.”

“I do.”

“Go on then.”

“Fuck.”

I gasp. Nate laughs. It’s such a nice sound, and his eyes when he laughs like that, holy fuck!

“Everyone keeps asking me what I’m gonna do next year, and I have no idea.”

“You don’t have to,”

Nate says.

“but I’m a senior, shouldn’t I know by now?”

Nate shakes his head, “I’ve learnt that making plans doesn’t always work. Sometimes, having plans just disappoints you.”

He looks up at me and meets my gaze for a second before looking away again, “since I was a kid, I’d planned to go to M.I.T.”

“The college?”

“Yes, the college.”

He smiles. “I had posters and flags and sweatshirts, everything, I was going to M.I.T. But then I applied, and I didn’t get in.”

Fuck. I imagine Nate’s disappointment and it feels like a rock’s been dropped into the pit of my stomach.

“I didn’t even want to go to college after that, but I realised I had to, so I let my mom make the decision for me and ended up staying at home with my parents. Now I don’t expect anything. I know that whatever plans I make could be ruined and I’ll have no control over them.”

“But you study so hard.”

“I have to.”

“Why?”

“Because…”

he swallows and his cheeks get pink, “because I realised I’m not as smart as I thought I was.”

“Bullshit.”

I don’t mean it to come out so aggressive. Nate’s head snaps in my direction, his eyes wide.

“M.I.T are fucking idiots. It’s their loss and our gain.”

A smile tugs at one side of his mouth, but I can see he doesn’t really agree.

“Seriously, colleges reject people for stupid reasons. Like, you didn’t volunteer at the right outreach programme, or you don’t have an interesting back story, like, fuck them man, don’t let it make you feel like you’re not smart enough, because you are.”

He looks down at his shoes and laughs.

“Maybe,”

he mutters.

“I’d tell you I got rejected from plenty of colleges, but that wouldn’t make you feel any better.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m dumb, so it makes sense that I’d get rejected.”

“You’re not dumb.”

A little firework sizzles in the pit of my stomach, but doesn’t quite go off because I know he’s just being polite.

“It’s okay, you don’t have to say that.”

“I’m not just saying it. You’re not dumb.”

I swallow. I want to tell him to stop being so nice. I already like him way more than I should. But I can’t. I like hearing him say nice things about me.

“You’re here aren’t you? You passed three years of college so far, and you played college hockey while doing it, which I know isn’t easy. Instead of studying over the summer like I did, you had to go and play exhibition games in Europe. I couldn’t do that.”

I nudge him with my shoulder, gently, because I don’t know what to say. And because I don't want to knock him off the bench.

The bus comes crawling down the street and Nate stands up. I want to grab his hand and pull him back down and… what? Kiss him. Yeah right. Like he’d want me to do that.