The Air That I Breathe (The Game 3.5)

Tightening the drawstrings of my trunks, I picked the closest lane and peered into the water.

No matter what I did, Reese would always stay close in my mind. He’d become better than me at swimming too. When we were kids, I beat him in pretty much anything. He’d been my shadow, and I had led the way. Then I’d developed my love for reading, for psychology, geography, chemistry, and math. He’d continued with football and martial arts and swimming, while I had opted to stay at home with a book about analysis in behavioral changes or strategic warfare.

Maybe it’d made me too cocky.

I dove into the pool and swam half the length underwater before I resurfaced and started slicing my way through the water.

When I read, specifically on psychology and human behavior, Reese was often my accidental lab rat because he was always there. I observed him for tics, patterns, and clues. Perhaps that was my problem—reading too much into something.

I gritted my teeth and picked up the pace.

It fucking sucked when my brain wasn’t on the same page as the rest of me.

And “the rest of me” knew exactly what I wanted. Him. Always him. Every inch I could take, every moment we could spend together. That was what my body and heart screamed for, as stupid as it might sound.

Yeah, you’re an idiot.

Getting Reese out of my head was working really well. I’d already lost count on the laps.Chapter 3An hour or so later, I dragged myself out of the pool and just barely resisted the temptation to collapse in one of the chairs. Instead, I grabbed my towel and the rest of my stuff and trailed toward the “relaxation room.” A fancy term for a small room with a swimming hole that seated eight people and had jets.

There was another plastic chair in a corner for my bag, and I placed everything there before I walked over to the hot tub’s staircase. I opened a little latch on the outside and turned on the jets.

I blinked and rubbed my eyes. They felt like they were properly bloodshot after my swim.

The clock on the wall told me it was almost eleven. Reese and Brian had been out for two hours now.

Were they fucking yet?

I grabbed the bottle of Jack, the smokes, and the lighter, then stepped into the hot water and shuddered violently.

How many times had Reese and I come here at night over the years?

Never gotten caught either.

Always with a bottle, always with a pack of smokes, always just the two of us.

First a swim, then relaxing. We’d crack jokes, shoot the shit, and talk about farfetched “one day, we’re gonna…” And even then, in our childish dreams, we’d stayed together. We’d talked about college together, starting a business together, seeing the world together.

We never spoke in terms of me, my, mine, I. Everything was ours, we, us.

At least for me…

“Fuck,” I exhaled. After opening the bottle, I took a swig and felt the booze burn its way down my throat. I was getting too pathetic. My observations weren’t based on guesses and wild dreams, goddammit. I’d seen the way he looked at me sometimes; I’d seen the confusion and uncertainty. I knew the conflict in his eyes because it mirrored the one I’d been experiencing the past year.

I filled the little cap with some whiskey and lit up a smoke. Then I took another swig from the bottle and sank into the water. Arms draped along the edges.

The only thing missing was music.

And Reese.

I exhaled some smoke and flicked the ashes into the bottle cap, then closed my eyes and waited for some goddamn peace to settle in my mind.

He wasn’t gonna fuck Brian. Not a chance. It seemed we both drew the line at receiving blow jobs, so maybe he’d—

“River?”

My eyes flashed open, and my heart jumped up into my throat. He was here. As faint as it was, there was no mistaking Reese’s voice. It sounded like he was in the changing room or had just set foot in the main pool area.

“Riv—”

“In here,” I croaked, then promptly cleared my throat. “I’m in the hot tub.”

I heard his footfalls long before he finally appeared in the wide doorway, and he looked almost otherworldly in the dark. The faint, blue light from the pool turned his face paler and his lips darker. His usually copper-tinted hair was almost black, like the clothes he wore.

“I thought you’d changed your mind about comin’ here.”

“I thought you’d be on a date.”

He nodded with a dip of his chin and walked over to the chair. He hadn’t brought anything, but that didn’t stop him from shedding his jacket and unbuttoning his shirt.

“I lasted about an hour before I asked him to drive me home,” he replied, unbuckling his belt. “I waited for you at first, and then…” He shrugged.