Thorn is less than pleased to see Dylan at their first major fencing tournament of the semester. He and Dylan had had a brief but hot and passionate fling after the championships half a year ago, but then Dylan cut Thorn out of his life with no explanation and they haven’t seen each other since. A fencing tournament is a good place to vent frustrations -- it’s one of the few places where it’s okay to stab your ex with a sword -- but Thorn doesn’t just want to vent, he wants answers.
However, when Dylan does apologize and give his side of the story, it doesn’t make Thorn feel better. If anything, he’s even more conflicted between accepting Dylan’s excuses so they can be together again, or holding firm to protect his wounded pride and giving Dylan the same cold shoulder Thorn received months ago. But as they meet as rivals on the fencing strip, can Thorn really retreat from this chance to rekindle what they had before? Or will he lunge for this opportunity to see where it takes them?
Despite the fact that our “relationship” lasted about an afternoon, when Dylan walked into the gymnasium with the rest of his team my first thought was, “Shit, it’s my ex.” I should have guessed he would be there. Fencing isn’t the kind of sport where everyone on the team has to attend every tournament, but you do want to send your best and, I gotta admit, Dylan was pretty good. It was how we had both made it to the championships my university hosted, and how that boosted confidence led to our flirtatious banter and eventually to the bed in my dorm room. I had a lot I wanted to say to him then and there, but none of it was flirtatious or simple banter.
It was too early and I was too tired to make a scene though.
Colton, our club captain, walked over with Coach Derrick to let us know that we were all registered and ready to go. That of course meant that Coach Derrick wanted us to start limbering up. He clapped his hands and we all shuffled into our lines. Each participating team had to compact themselves along the walls of the gym, since the majority of the floor space was taken up by the fencing strips that had been rolled out for today’s tournament. There was no assigned placement, it was more of a first-come-first-claim situation. We had a space about twenty feet wide and ten feet deep, though in order to get a dozen fencers lined up for aerobics we had to spill out into the main floor to avoid crowding each other or encroaching on the teams to either side of us.
It had been a long carpool down from Swarthmore College up in Pennsylvania all the way to the University of Maryland, College Park campus on the outskirts of Washington, DC, and the exercises were slow going at first. Coach Derrick started us off with stretches. Any time the stretch didn’t involve facing downward, I snuck glances over where Dylan was staking out his space with the rest of the George Washington University team. Mainly I wanted to know if he was looking my way too, or if he couldn’t bear to look at me after what he did. We finished the stretches and moved on to the more dynamic exercises, jumping jacks and burpees and that sort of thing where my attention needed to be on myself so I wouldn’t get out of rhythm or hit anyone near me.
Then it was time for the actual fencing drills. “Halfway down!” Coach Derrick instructed. We all lowered into the position, knees bent, feet at a ninety-degree angle from each other, some of us even raised or tucked our back arms reflexively as though we were already facing an opponent and had to keep our unused arms out of the way. I let my arms hang loose at my sides. My attention was divided between listening for further orders and watching Dylan get ready.
“Advance!” We all took a step forward, leading with our front foot and bringing the back foot up the same amount. Dylan rifled around in his duffel bag.
“Advance!” Another step forward. Dylan pulled out the three pieces of his fencing uniform. The white nylon emphasized how dark his skin was.
“Retreat!” A step backward. Dylan tucked his gym shorts into his pants as he pulled them up. They weren’t the same shorts he had worn that last time, but I imagined it would feel the same to slip my hand under the waistband.
“Lunge!” We all thrust our front feet out, jabbing imaginary swords ahead of us. Dylan strapped on his plastron. I had always found that part of the uniform to be a little slutty, something about how it only partially covered your chest and the one shoulder, though that was typically all you needed. It looked especially hot on Dylan.
“Recover!” We stepped back into the regular halfway down position. Dylan took a hairband out of his pants pocket and used it to tie up his thin dreadlocks into a ponytail.
“Lunge!” Forward again. Dylan paused with his hands still in his to answer a question from his teammate that I couldn’t hear over the ambient chatter that echoed off the gym walls. Fuck, he looked sexy standing like that in his plastron ...
