Here Comes the Flood Read online

  Tim understood that desire, and he could feel Isaac’s conviction wafting off him in waves. “You really think this is your last Olympics?”

  Isaac nodded. “I mean, never say never. I’m not even that old. Four years from now I’ll only be thirty-three. I might still be competitive then. But I think… I think for my own sanity, I need to find another purpose. Because I could do another Olympics, but I’ve got maybe five years of competition left in me at the outside before my body gives out and I won’t be able to compete with the younger swimmers. My lack of a purpose got me in trouble last time. So now’s the time to figure out what to do next.”

  “Any ideas?” Tim wanted to ask more about what Isaac meant, but didn’t want to push it when Isaac seemed open to sharing. And Tim of course knew that one day he’d have to do something with his life that was not diving, but a graduate degree in sports medicine called to him when his career ended. He always figured he’d set up a practice or consulting business once he finished school. Each elite athlete had a shelf life, which Tim had known from the moment he’d opted to train instead of going to grad school. Not having a real plan? That was anxiety-inducing.

  Isaac laughed. “Nope. I mean, usually swimmers my age? They get married and have kids. Family becomes their purpose. Then they get coaching jobs or whatever. Or nonswimming jobs. I know a guy who swam in three Olympics and then became a lawyer.”

  “Wow.” That seemed so normal. Getting married, getting a nonsports job. That much normalcy felt surreal in a way, foreign from life as Tim had known it, something he saw on TV but hadn’t experienced much of himself. He doubted Isaac could relate to it much either.

  “Yeah.” Isaac stared unfocused toward the TV. “But who the hell would marry me? A has-been Olympian alcoholic.” He shook his head. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to invite you to my pity party.”

  “It’s okay.” Tim searched for something to say. He had some experience with feeling unwanted. “I just mean, I don’t think you’re some loser, and I don’t mind you saying what you feel. I’ve been there. I felt like the biggest idiot after I broke up with Pat.”

  Isaac nodded slowly. “Yeah. I can’t even imagine what it must have been like for you to do that with everyone watching.”

  “That did kind of make everything worse.”

  Isaac looked off into the distance again. “I called my doctor a little while ago. My doctor from rehab, that is. I talk to him when I’m struggling. I’m happy to be here, I am, but I’m surprised by how pulled apart I feel. I want to win, and I’m worried I won’t, and that makes me want to drink.”

  “You drank during your last Olympics.” It wasn’t a question. Tim tried not to judge Isaac for it, though. He understood intellectually that Isaac had been in the grips of addiction. Isaac’s honesty surprised Tim but made him admire Isaac too, for being so plain about it.

  “Yeah. It’s surprisingly easy to get booze in the Olympic Village.”

  “Did you swim drunk?”

  “No. I respect the sport too much for that.” Isaac let out a sigh. “Still, I felt like shit most of the time four years ago. Now I feel good, I trained right, and I’m clean and sober. If I can win a silver medal with a hangover, I should be able to do anything now.”

  Tim admired Isaac’s determination and found himself drawn to it. He wanted to touch Isaac, to comfort him, but despite the frankness of this conversation, they barely knew each other. He shifted his weight on the sofa and his knee brushed against Isaac’s.

  “All that training should mean something,” Isaac said.

  “Yeah,” said Tim. “I miss chocolate cake. I’m on a strict diet now. My chef won’t let me near sugar.”

  “You have a chef?”

  “You have a chef.”

  Isaac nodded. “I can afford one now. At least when I was drinking, I was too busy being drunk to spend my endorsement money. God knows when I’ll ever get another endorsement deal.”

  Tim wrinkled his nose. “I hate endorsements. I shot a commercial a few months ago. Most humiliating thing I ever did.”

  “What was the commercial for?”

  Tim held up the protein bar wrapper. “A different brand of these things. It’s supposed to air during the Olympics broadcast.”

  “Nature of the beast.”

  “I shouldn’t be mad. A few hours’ work with some of these companies, and I’ve got enough money for my mortgage.”

  “You have a mortgage?”

  “I bought a house when I left Pat. I mean, it’s in the middle of nowhere and I got it for a song, but it’s mine, you know? Pat and I were bouncing between Boulder and LA for a long time, but can I tell you? I fucking hate LA. I can’t breathe there. So I bought a house in the mountains.”

  “Sounds nice.”

  “It is.” Tim loved his little house. It was quiet and peaceful and comfortable, the best thing to come out of his breakup with Pat.

  “I live in a shithole apartment in a city I don’t even like that much, but I want to stay near my coach while I’m still training. Well, and my family is close by. My sister has a toddler who hasn’t figured out what a loser his uncle Isaac is yet, so that’s fun. And my mom’s about a ten-minute drive from my place. She still makes me come to Sunday dinner if I’m in town.”

  “Aw.” Tim had to smile at that. He’d read that Isaac and his mother were close. But he didn’t want to press Isaac to talk about it. “I mean, I love the mountains, but I’m mostly in Boulder because that’s where my coach is. I started working with him in college.”

  “Kids come to Raleigh from all over to work with Adam.”

  “And work with you, I’m guessing.”

  Isaac rolled his eyes. “I’m nothing.”

  “That’s really not true.”

  Isaac sighed. “I know.” He leaned back and rested his head on the back of the sofa. His blanket fell away enough to reveal that he wasn’t wearing a shirt.

  On the screen, the commentators announced that the Parade of Nations would be starting shortly. Tim sat up a little. Before he’d been an Olympian himself, this had been his favorite part of the Opening Ceremony. “My sister and I used to watch and critique the costumes,” Tim said.

  “Yeah? I’ve never watched the full Opening Ceremony before. I mean, the last Olympics that I did not participate in happened when I was thirteen. My mother probably made me go to bed before we got to this point.”

  “Ha, really?”

  “Yeah. She was strict when we were kids. Especially when I started swimming competitively. TV went off at nine, I had to be in bed by ten. I didn’t argue, because usually I was so wiped out from swim practice that I couldn’t stay up that late anyway.” Isaac wiped his face. “Your parents still together, Tim?”

  “Yeah.”

  “My dad took off when I was three. Mom worked two jobs to pay for my swim lessons.”

  “Yeah, I… yeah. I was lucky.” Tim’s parents had a great marriage and had always been supportive. And he knew quite a bit about Isaac’s family, since his mother and sister had so often been shown in the stands when Isaac had raced in previous Olympics. There had been lots of human-interest pieces during previous Olympic broadcasts. None of them had mentioned the alcoholism, though. Whether it was because people didn’t know or because it didn’t fit with the picture of the athlete the network wanted to portray was anyone’s guess.

  On the screen, the athletes from Greece entered the stadium. “What made you take up diving?” Isaac asked.

  Tim smiled. He liked that Isaac was trying to get to know him. He didn’t mind answering questions, especially not after Isaac had shared so much, and it was nice, sitting with him, just the two of them, as athletes from all over the world paraded across the screen. Tim’s pulse kicked up at the thought of those athletes marching only a few miles from where they currently sat. It struck Tim again how incredible it was that he was here.

  He swallowed and said, “My parents enrolled me in a bunch of activities when I was little. I started gy
mnastics as a toddler. I swam by the time I was five or six. Somehow my parents still found time to take me to the park near my house, which had a pool with springboards at three different heights. Mom forbade me from getting up on the three-meter springboard until I was a stronger swimmer, but that was my goal. All the kids at the pool seemed like they were having so much fun. So I worked on my swimming skills. I didn’t even want to dive, I just wanted to jump off that springboard. Then, a couple of years later, I saw this thing on TV about Greg Louganis. I was maybe nine at the time.”

  “Sure.” Isaac turned slightly more toward Tim. He smiled.

  “I remember, the woman who was narrating it, she kept saying how beautiful he was when he dove. And he really was, you know? I’ve since studied his form, and he dove gracefully. He innovated the sport, tried things no one had done before. As I watched, something in me clicked, and I thought, ‘I want to do that.’ I already had the gymnastics skills by then to do some tricks off the platform.”

  Isaac nodded. “Louganis was pretty amazing.”

  Tim scooted a little closer to Isaac. “It certainly didn’t hurt anything that Louganis was also gay. I knew I was, by then. I don’t think I could have articulated what it meant, and I sure as hell didn’t tell anyone, but I knew. And, I mean, I can’t even imagine what it must have been like for him. Being in the closet. Knowing he had HIV when he hit his head in ’88.” Tim let out a sigh. “That’s part of why I went along with the coming-out video. I weighed staying in the closet like Louganis or being ‘the gay diver’ like Tom Daley. I knew the media would label me, but that seemed better to me than staying in the closet. It was more important to live authentically, to not have that hanging over me when I dove.” Tim looked at Isaac for a reaction, knowing Isaac would likely understand. It was hard to sum up how agonizing that decision had been in a few words, but something told Tim he didn’t have to explain himself much more to Isaac.

  “Do you regret it?” Isaac pulled his blanket a little tighter around his shoulders.

  “I regret a lot of things where Pat is concerned, but I do not regret coming out.”

  Isaac nodded. He focused on the screen, where the Belgian team walked into the stadium. Tim had just been talking; he hadn’t meant to imply anything where Isaac was concerned. Tim didn’t know if Isaac’s bisexuality was public knowledge or not. Maybe it was, but the rest of the nonsense in his life overshadowed it.

  “I got to meet Louganis at the last Olympics,” Tim said, trying to blow past any awkwardness. “I almost died. He’d been hired to mentor the team. The first meeting we had, I blabbered like an idiot about how he was my idol.”

  “I imagine that was a lot like the time I met Michael Phelps.”

  “Did you pass out or what?”

  Isaac laughed. “No, but I did get really nervous. Actually, the first time I met him, he was doing a product launch or something in Baltimore, and I begged my mother to let me go. I was… sixteen? It was before my first Olympics, for sure. My mom drove us there. Phelps signed a swim cap for me. I still have it. Then we were teammates a few times. And everyone kept saying, ‘Isaac Flood is the next Michael Phelps.’ I fell short of that.”

  “Not yet.” Tim leaned closer. He wondered sometimes if the media knew how much pressure they put on athletes, how detrimental it could be. Because Isaac wasn’t just being self-deprecating; he beat himself up for not rising to the bar everyone set for him.

  “You know, it’s funny. A few minutes ago, I told another athlete that the medals and whatever didn’t matter. All that mattered is pushing your body to do what you love. And I have done that. I’m doing that this week. But I have to keep reminding myself of that, and try not to feel bitter.”

  Tim shifted over on the sofa, closer to Isaac. He wanted to hug the younger Isaac who felt like he didn’t measure up, because of the shadow of other athletes or even just his own brain chemistry. “That’s a good outlook.”

  “Yeah.”

  Onscreen, the Chinese delegation marched into the stadium. Tim and Isaac sat and watched silently as a few countries walked in the parade. Team USA would be coming in soon, since “United States of America” translated into “Estados Unidos de America” in Spanish.

  The floor seemed quiet. Tim hadn’t heard or seen anyone walk by in a while. Likely everyone was either sleeping, trying to sleep, or they were down at the stadium. Tim sidled a little closer to Isaac. Their shoulders touched now, and heat radiated off Isaac.

  “You ready for tomorrow?” Tim asked softly.

  “As I’ll ever be. I should be sleeping, but I can’t turn my brain off.”

  “Do you… want some help?” The intimacy between them had stoked the fire of Tim’s physical desire for Isaac. Isaac was compelling and sexy but troubled too, and part of Tim wanted to soothe all his ruffled parts….

  Isaac turned his head and met Tim’s gaze. Tim slid a hand under Isaac’s blanket and splayed his fingers across Isaac’s chest to make his intentions clear. Lord, Isaac’s chest was a thing of beauty, wasn’t it? All those flat planes, broad shoulders, hard muscle, soft skin.

  “You don’t know how badly I want to say yes,” Isaac said.

  “But?”

  “But I have a race tomorrow. I really do need to sleep. But you should know, I have a single room.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah. You have a roommate?”

  “My dive partner, Jason.”

  “You do this shit four times, and your coach can pull enough strings to get you your own room. I’m just saying, if there’s some night when neither of us has to be anywhere the next day, I’d love to spend a night with you.”

  Tim’s heart pounded at the thought. “So noted.”

  “But I want to drag you down the hall right now,” Isaac whispered. “I want to get you out of your sweaty gym clothes and into my bed. I want to fuck you until we both forget all about gold medals and dives and races and all of it.”

  Sweat broke out all over Tim’s body. “I want that too.”

  “Everyone’s right, though. It’ll screw with my focus tomorrow.” Isaac looked away. Then he seemed to decide something. “Tell you what. First one of us to win a medal names the time and place. Hell, maybe resolving the tension between us will help us relax. But for now? I’ve got a date with my coach at seven in the morning.”

  “I’m gonna win a medal, then,” Tim said.

  Isaac smiled. “I mean, just given the sheer number of races I’m scheduled to swim in, my odds are better than yours.”

  “But you’re saying that if I win a medal, then I can say, ‘Isaac, we’re having sex tonight,’ and you’ll do it?”

  “You know what?” Isaac paused and appeared to consider. “Yes, that is exactly what I’m saying.”

  “And if you win?”

  “Then we do it my way.”

  Tim laughed. He curled his hand around Isaac’s side and pressed his chin against Isaac’s shoulder. Isaac put his arm around Tim and held him close for a moment before letting him go.

  Tim said, “That’s not much of a threat. I’m pretty sure this is a win-win bet. And what if you win a medal at your first race? You’ve still got all those races after that. Won’t us sleeping together screw up your focus or something?”

  “Why deny myself pleasure?” Isaac squeezed Tim’s shoulders. “I figure, if I win a medal here, who gives a shit about my focus after that? I will have won a medal.”

  “Mmm.”

  Isaac smelled really good. Faintly of chlorine, but clean. He used some product, deodorant or aftershave, that was kind of piney. And his skin under Tim’s hand was warm and smooth.

  “You have no body hair,” Tim said.

  “Nope. Nada. I even get my pits waxed. I know it’s insane, but hair could create enough drag to slow me down fractions of a second, which means the difference between winning and losing.”

  “Hey, I get my chest waxed. I get it. It’s just kind of a new thing for me to feel up a guy and find him so smoo
th. Down below too?”

  “Everything I can’t shove under a swim cap.”

  Tim wanted to lift up the blanket and take a peek inside Isaac’s pajama pants. He wondered if Isaac had tan lines.

  But he had to pull away. He was hard and wrapped up in Isaac and if he didn’t leave, he’d end up banging Isaac right on this sofa.

  Only he couldn’t pull away. He kept running his hand over Isaac’s chest, and he canted his hips closer to Isaac’s. Isaac moaned softly.

  Then Isaac said with a bit of a groan in his voice, “If you don’t kiss me right now, I’m going to go insane.”

  Tim tilted his head up and let Isaac come to him, which he did a moment later, crashing his lips into Tim’s. Tim opened his mouth and let Isaac in, and a lightning bolt shot through his body. Isaac’s mouth was hot and slick. He smelled of pine and pool, and he was all warm skin and the promise of sex.

  Tim couldn’t wait to get naked with him.

  But he knew he’d have to. Isaac had made his feelings on the matter clear.

  Tim pulled away reluctantly and said, “We should probably not get carried away.”

  Isaac smiled ruefully. “You’re right.” He glanced toward the TV. “Oh, and look, they’re already on Finland. We missed the entrance of the American team.”

  “Worth it,” Tim said, grinning.

  Chapter 6

  Day 1

  Transcript: Swimming Preliminary Heats

  DAVIS: Hello from the Domingo Aquatics Center. I’m Nick Davis with my colleague, veteran swimmer and gold medalist in his own right, Jim O’Toole. How are you, Jim?

  O’TOOLE: I’m great, Nick. I think we’re in for some incredible races this week. We’ve got an American team that collectively holds six world records. We’ve got superstar swimmers like Melissa Murphy, Luke Rogers, and Katie Santiago, and we’ve got promising newcomers Conor Smith, Randy Manning, and Jen McMahon. And, of course, we can’t talk about swimming without talking about Isaac Flood.