Page 57 of Beautiful When He Breaks
And yet…
No, I think immediately. Don’t be insane.
The problem is that I can’t stop watching now. Not in an obvious way. I’m not trying to corner him or catch him at anything. I’m just suddenly aware that something has changed in the room, and I don’t know whether it’s him or me. Eli’s gone weirdly quiet again, and the side of his neck is flushed high enough that I notice it even across the space between our lockers.
Luca says something about Coach wanting us in earlier on Thursday, and Eli responds half a second too late. “You hear me?” Luca asks, glancing over.
“Yeah,” Eli says too fast. “I heard you.”
Luca gives him a look and then shrugs, clearly deciding it’s not worth the effort right now. He pulls on his shirt and starts stuffing his practice gear into his bag. “I’m heading out. Sage wants food from that café by Greek Row, and apparently, I’m a delivery service now.”
“You say that like you don’t love it,” I tell him.
“I do love it,” he says, disgustingly honest. “That’s beside the point.”
He leaves a minute later with a muttered, “Don’t be late for film tomorrow, assholes.”
And then it’s just me and Eli and the low hum of the mostly empty locker room.
That should feel normal too.
It doesn’t.
I go back to toweling off because standing there watching him would definitely cross a line, but all my attention is tuned toward him anyway. I can hear the rustle of fabric, the metallic click of his locker, and the too-careful way he’s moving now.
When I speak again, I keep my tone light on purpose. “You okay?”
He startles a little. Actually startles. “Yeah,” he says, and his voice does not sound like yes. “Why?”
I shrug one shoulder and hang the towel around my neck. “You’re acting weird.”
He laughs, but there’s no ease in it. “That’s vague as hell.”
“You want specifics?”
“No,” he says immediately.
That almost makes me smile because it’s honest in a way he probably didn’t mean to be. “Thought so.”
He finally looks at me then, full on for a second, and whatever I was expecting, it isn’t this. There’s too much in his expression. Not anger or embarrassment, exactly. Something hotter and more alive than I know what to do with.
Then his eyes drop again. I follow the movement without meaning to, and this time I catch it clearly. His gaze slides over my chest, lower for one dangerous second to my stomach and the towel hanging loose at my hips, and there is absolutely nothing neutral about it.
No. No fucking way.
He looks back up so fast it’s almost violent, and whatever’s on his face now is worse because it confirms he knows I saw. His mouth parts slightly, then shuts. The flush in his neck spreads higher. For one suspended beat, we just stare at each other across the locker room. Both too still., Both too aware.
I have to be seeing things. That is the only sane explanation. I’m overtired and projecting. Eli is my best friend. He is the straightest, most internally conflicted, catastrophically Catholic-adjacent man I’ve ever met. He is also the guy who pushed me away for a woman and only recently stopped treating any emotional intimacy between us like a live grenade. There is no universe where he was just looking at me with heat in the middle of a football locker room.
And yet, that’s exactly what it looked like.
“Eli,” I say, and my voice comes out lower than I intended.
He grabs the rest of his clothes in one fast motion and starts shoving them into his bag. “I should get home,” he mutters. “Mrs. Alvarez said Mila was fussy after her second nap, and I told her I’d be back as soon as I could.”
The words trip over each other enough to be obvious. Even he seems to know it because he winces slightly halfway through the sentence.
I don’t stop him. I don’t know if I even could without blowing whatever this is wide open in a way neither of us can survive right now. I just stand there in a towel, still damp, still staring, and say the only thing that feels possible.
