all right.
One of those things was not in the cards, but he held out hope for the other.
He was falling in love with Tim, wasn’t he?
It didn’t scare him the way it once might have, back when he was still drinking and living by the seat of his pants. Instead he embraced it, and embraced Tim. He put his arms around Tim, who in turn pressed his palms into Isaac’s back, and they stood like that, kissing against Isaac’s locker.
A clang on the other side of the row of lockers snatched Isaac’s attention away, though, and he pulled away from Tim gently. “This feels like… I think this might be one of the greatest moments of my life,” he said, his voice low.
Tim nodded. “I’ll sing the national anthem extra loud during the medal ceremony. Just for you.”
Isaac laughed. “You know, I never sing. I always forget the words when I’m up there.”
“It’s okay.”
“I don’t even think I know the words to the second verse on a good day. That probably makes me a bad American.”
Now Tim laughed. “Your secret’s safe with me.”
Isaac sighed and said, “I have to change, but thank you, Tim. So much. It means… well.” He shook his head. “It means a lot that you would come back here to see me.”
“Say, when are you flying home?”
“Uh, week from Monday?”
“Really? You’ll be here next week?”
“Yeah. I know a lot of the swimmers take off once swimming is over, but when I booked my trip, I thought it might be my last Olympics, so I wanted to take advantage of the experience. Figured I’d take in some of the events, do some tourism in Madrid, the whole nine.”
“Come to see me dive.”
Isaac smiled. “Yes. I will definitely do that. I want to see that.”
Tim stood up on his tiptoes and kissed Isaac’s nose. “Good. Now go get your medal. You’ve earned it.”
Chapter 20
Day 8
“SO, OKAY,” Ginny was saying, “it says here that the world record in this event stands from two Olympics ago. Isaac Flood swam the breaststroke lap in that race.”
It was Saturday night, and although most of the divers had gone off to find parties after practice—well, except for the women competing in the springboard finals the next day—Ginny, Jason, and Tim had gotten tickets to the last night of swimming. The Aquatics Center was packed, likely with people there to see if Isaac would win his sixth gold medal. A bunch of other American athletes were there. A tennis star fresh off her gold medal in women’s singles was seated in the adjacent section of the stands, and Tim recognized a bunch of basketball players and part of the women’s soccer team.
Tim had spent the previous night with Isaac again. Isaac had been so high on adrenaline that he’d wanted to have sex as soon as they closed the door to his room, and Tim had accommodated him, stripping him naked and pushing him into bed, where they made out like teenagers for a while and then exchanged blow jobs. Isaac passed out mere seconds after he came and then slept the sleep of the dead for the rest of the night, but Tim was content to lie next to him, phasing in and out of sleep as the night went on. It gave him time to fantasize about the kind of life they could build together if they could make this work once they got back to the real world.
Because Tim was determined now to make something work.
But for now, he was going to cheer Isaac on to victory in his last race.
He looked around the stands while Ginny babbled. Almost everyone in their section wore Team USA T-shirts—a good half of them were swimmers; Tim recognized them from seeing them around in training all week—and a handful of people had handmade Here comes the Flood! signs.
“The lineup for this race,” Ginny said, looking at her phone, “is some kid named Dylan on backstroke—I guess he won bronze in the 100 backstroke a couple of days ago—Randy Manning on butterfly, Isaac on breast, and Luke Rogers on free. That’s pretty killer.”
“Yeah, I overheard someone say the Americans are favored to win, and everyone thinks it will be by a huge margin,” said Jason.
“Takes some of the suspense out of it,” said Ginny.
“It’s the Olympics, though. Tom Daley didn’t make the finals.”
Ginny hissed. “Tom Daley didn’t make the finals” had become their code for “expect the unexpected.” Because sometimes the best diver in the