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Just my name. Nothing else. My name the way it sounds when there’s nothing between it and the person saying it.
I bury my face in his neck and I move and the pace is not slow anymore. His hand goes to his cock and he strokes himselfwhile I fuck him and I can feel his hand working between us, the knuckles grazing my stomach on every stroke.
“I’m close,” he says. “Don’t stop. Don’t change anything.”
I don’t stop. His body tightens around me and I feel it happen, the clench, his hand stilling on his cock, his breath cutting off, and he comes between us, hot, pulsing, his whole body arching up into mine. The tightening of him around me pushes me over. I come inside him with my face in his neck and his name in my mouth and the sound I make is not the sound of a man who has spent twenty-seven years being the version everyone wants him to be.
His chest rising and falling under me, fast, then slower. His hand on the back of my neck, still holding. I pull out slowly. He makes a small sound. I kiss his shoulder. I go to the bathroom, clean myself off, and get a wet cloth for him. I come back and clean him.
Back in the bed, he pulls me into him, his back against my chest, my arm across his waist. His hand finds mine.
He’s falling asleep. I can feel it in the weight of him, the way his body goes heavy against mine. His hand is still on mine.
I’m not falling asleep.
I’m watching my hand on his hip. The way the lamp makes the tattoo line into a shadow. I can feel my own breathing getting more controlled. Not because I’m choosing it. Because the part of me that controls things is waking up.
The sentence he said at the bleachers. The kid’s mistake is a mistake. Your mistake is a verdict. He said it like weather and now I’m lying here giving myself the verdict for what happens tomorrow. Because tomorrow I’m going to walk back to the hotel and put the schedule back on and sit in a room with his brother. And tonight will become something I carry without showing it, the way I carry everything, the way I’ve been carrying the coffeeshop on Moreland. Another thing I walked to on purpose and can’t keep.
I close my eyes. I sleep for what feels like minutes.
My eyes open. The room is dark but the window has the first pre-dawn blue at the lowest edge. 5:17 on the clock. Tobík hasn’t moved. His hand is still on my stomach. His breathing is slow and his mouth is slightly open and there is no version of Tobík that is not him. Even the sleeping version is just him.
The weight of him against my chest. The specific shape of his hand on my stomach, the fingers loosely curled. I’m memorizing this.
I move slowly. His arm to the pillow. He makes a small sound and resettles. I slide out of the bed.
My clothes on the floor, found by feel. Pants. Shirt. Shoes in my hand. The belt buckle that I catch before it clinks.
I stop in the doorway. The sheet is around his waist. His back is to me. The cities tattoo visible on his ribs.
I cross the room. I bend over the bed. I kiss his forehead. The kiss is the thing the schedule doesn’t have a line for.
He stirs. His eyes stay closed.
“Are you going?” Quiet. Half-asleep.
“Yeah. Go back to sleep.”
“Okay.”
His breathing evens out. He’s already back under. I stand up. I leave the bedroom.
Shoes on at the door. The latch as quiet as I can make it. The stairs because the elevator makes noise.
I walk back to the hotel. Šíma is asleep in his bed, still in his clothes. I undress. I get into my own bed. The sheets are cold.
His hand on my stomach. His breathing. The forehead kiss he won’t remember.
I set the alarm for seven. The day is coming. I’ll be ready for it.
Chapter 15: Tobík
Tomáš picks the restaurant the way Tomáš picks everything, with the confidence of a man who has never once considered that someone else might have a preference. He chooses a place in midtown. The kind of place with good steak and enough chairs for fifteen men from two different sports who have no reason to be in the same room except that my brother decided they should be.
Marchetti arrives with Šíma, which is a friendship I didn’t predict and can’t control. They’ve been texting since the Brazilian match. Šíma taught Marchetti the Czech word for offside and Marchetti has been using it incorrectly in every context since.
“Hájek.” Marchetti drops into the chair beside me. “I told Šíma about the spoiler policy and he says in Czech football there’s no such thing as a spoiler because everyone already knows the result.”
