I break past the surface of the pool like a brick through glass. It hurts about as much, too.

At no point on my way down from the deck’s ledge had I thought to tuck in my legs. I didn’t belly flop – thank God – but whatever I did do wasn’t much more graceful.

My momentum is still carrying me down towards the bottom of the pool, slowly now. It feels like sinking through molasses. I can hear the crowd outside – muffled, distorted, blunted by the water. But it sounds like cheering. And maybe it has something to do with the inhumane amount of alcohol I downed just a few minutes ago, but that sound is making my face feel warm.

I suddenly realize, somewhat relieved, that the water isn’t cold after all. Our host keeps a heated pool, apparently.

I kick off from the bottom of the pool and glide towards the top. My head pokes up above the surface and I flick water from my hair and wipe it from my eyes. The cheering is still roaring at full blast, unfiltered now, and a bout of dizziness is starting to creep into my head.

“Watch out Gretz!” I can hear Liam shouting above me. But it’s like the words are far away, traveling towards me in loops and twists. By the time they reach me, it’s too late.

They hit like a cannonball.

Frankie – buck naked with his knees tucked up to his chest – barrels into my left shoulder from above and we’re both taken under. For a few moments, we’re nothing but a mess of bubbles and pain and flailing limbs.

When the water calms, Frankie’s face pops up close to mine looking apologetic.

Sorry! He shouts underwater. It’s garbled, but he gets the point across. I flash a wincing smile and give him a thumbs up with my right hand. My left arm is feeling a bit too numb to move.

I’m hovering near the bottom of the pool – the impact knocked the air out of my lungs, so I’m hardly buoyant at all. I can see from the look on Frankie’s face that he’s short on breath too. He starts kicking his feet to swim up towards the surface for air.

I linger and watch him go. His whole body, from his face down to the soles of his bare feet begin to glide past me just a few inches from my face. It’s a view worth enduring the tightening panic in my empty lungs.

He’s two weight classes below me – the one I’d been aiming for – but already better built for the sport than I am. We’d both started at the boot camp this past summer as scrawny, inexperienced featherweights. We’re both heavier now, but he’s more muscular.

I trace the muscles with my eyes as they rise past me. A thicker neck, broader shoulders. His chest is rounder and fuller. He’s wider everywhere than when he’d started. And tanner, too, I notice.

I might not have recognized the tan if it hadn’t ended so abruptly just below his waist where a bush of hair cropped up surrounded by pale skin and… more. If I’d had any breath left, it would have caught in my throat.

A thousand thoughts rush through my head at once. More impulse and instinct than anything else. It feels like my brain is being flooded.

My lungs remind me that the prospect isn’t far off. I fight a powerful urge to kick off from the pool’s base and race Frankie towards the surface to catch a much-needed breath. I’m not ready to give up watching him go just yet.

His tan begins again almost immediately, right at the very top of his thighs. He’s a Speedo guy, then.

Like the rest of him, his thighs are wider around than they’d began in the summer. The tan accentuates rope-like lines where more developed muscles now frame his legs. His calves might have been bigger too – I have a hard time pulling my eyes away from certain other vistas on his body as he makes it to the surface of the water.

I feel a throbbing in my chest and decide it’s time to stop starving my lungs of air. I kick up and float towards the surface behind Frankie, gliding a little more slowly than I might have otherwise. His tan lines offer a pleasant view from behind as well. Like a gilded picture frame bordering fine art.

So cheesy, I think to myself. I can’t help but smirk. A tendril of water slips past my lips and I nearly gag. I kick a bit harder to reach the pool's surface before I can accidentally drown while staring at Frankie’s naked backside.

My head emerges and I take a huge gasp of air. I feel my chest immediately begin to relax in gratitude. And then two arms are wrapping themselves around my neck and shouting more gratitude into my ear.

“Oh, thank God you’re okay!” Frankie yells.

His elbow is cutting into my bad shoulder, but I stifle the urge to wince because his entire body is pressed up against me as he hugs my neck. I don’t want him to let go before I’m able to memorize the feeling of his skin against mine.

At the same time, I’m acutely aware of the risk that he’ll feel something from me, and I’ve already been down that path with one teammate today. To be safe, I let out a wince and he springs off of me apologizing. I smile and wave off his concern.

He swims around behind me and comes up under my left arm so that it’s strung across his shoulders.

“Let me help,” he says. “We should get out of here before history repeats itself three more times.”

I look up, and sure enough, the other three freshmen are leaning over the edge of the second-story deck, bits out, waiting for their turn to make a fool of themselves.

I shake my head. “You go first, just need a second.”

Frankie ruffles my wet hair and slinks out from under my arm. “I owe you a drink, Gretz.”

He swims up to the edge of the pool and I close my eyes — a few moments too late, perhaps — as he lifts himself up and out of the water, trying to think of anything else.

I used to have a method for this. Think of a chair, think of a chair, just an empty chair. And it even used to work.

But all I can see now is a chair with Frankie’s wet, bare body sprawled out in it. His tan lines daring my eyes.

I shake out the thought.

I open my eyes and Frankie is at the edge of the pool, crouching down. Mercifully, someone has brought him a towel which is now wrapped around his waist and keeping his tan lines from view.

He reaches an arm out towards me. “Hurt pretty bad?”

I take my time swimming over and then grab his hand with my good arm. “You’ve put me in worse,” I say with a grin. Frankie and I were frequent scrimmage partners during camp. He has a mean figure-four hold.

As he pulls me up and out of the water, a Sophomore on the team – Kai – approaches carrying a stack of folded towels. I accept one and wrap it hastily around my waist.

The party’s attention has already returned to the deck above us, and the next naked diver. Miguel is standing at the deck’s edge, hands still folded behind his head, soaking in the attention. He wiggles his hips, crouches down slightly, and then launches off of the edge into a forward flip.

The party explodes in cheers, much louder than either Frankie or I garnered.

“Splash zone!” Frankie shouts as he pushes me forward. We avoid most of the fallout, but Kai does not. He’s soaked, and while his towels might have otherwise survived, he ended up dropping them into the pool as he flinched to turn away.

He stands there for a moment, mouth agape, but it quickly turns to a grin.

“Miguel!” Kai shouts when a head of dark brown curls emerges from the pool. “That was wild!”

“But good luck air-drying out here,” Frankie snarks.

Miguel laps over to the edge of the pool and pulls himself up and out. He stands at the edge, hands on his bare hips, and shrugs. “Feels just fine to me.”

He steps past us, trailing a puddle of water behind him. He pauses and shakes out his loose, wet curls, spraying Frankie and me with a light mist of water. At the same time, he makes finger guns at a few of the girls gathered by one of the outdoor kegs and starts walking in their direction – completely unabated by his utter nakedness.

Before he can reach the girls, one of the older guys on the team – Russ – runs out from inside the house and catches up with him. He hands Miguel a red oven mitt, which must have been the only absorbent thing that Russ could find on short notice.

A number of phone cameras are still trained on him, recording. Miguel seems to enjoy the attention. He places the mitt on his right hand and makes a show of drying himself off by slowly patting around his body. He gets a few hoops and hollers. Then he uses the mitt to cover his crotch and continues on his path towards the girls and the keg.

Another splash in the pool calls everyone’s attention back to the main event, and Frankie and I start walking back towards the house. He scoops my toga up off the ground where it had landed from the deck and hands it to me. I put it on over my towel.

“Sorry about the shoulder,” he says. “I maybe could have waited for you to get out of the way.”

I punch him lightly on the shoulder with my good arm. “Trying to cripple me so you can be the star rookie?”

“Oh, I don’t have to cripple you for that,” he laughs. “I’ll just let you continue to skip up weight classes until some juicer pops your head between his thighs like a grape.”

He makes a squelching sound and pounds a fist into his palm. “And thus ended the short life of Adam Gretzky, friend, lover, human smoothie.”

I shove him, and with the towel constricting his legs more than he’s used to, he nearly trips. To keep balance, he clamors onto my arm – my bad arm – and I wince.

“Oy, sorry again.” He says, letting go. “Two drinks, then?”

He flashes me a hesitant thumbs-up, and then speed walks back towards the house. As he passes through the open sliding door, another older teammate – Andre – places a laurel wreath on his head and shouts, “Now introducing brother Franklin!”

The crowd inside claps and cheers and raises their drinks. To brother Franklin! they chant back. I watch Frankie take a brief bow and then make a beeline for the kitchen.

I walk in a few moments after him, and Andre announces me in the same way. Another round of cheers and chants. I don’t know most of the people in the house, but their voices feel good wrapped around my name. It feels warm.

They don’t know me either, really, but I’m as good an excuse as any to drink and be merry.

And maybe that’s all that matters, I think, as Frankie re-emerges from the kitchen. He’s carrying a drink in each hand, and Michael is close behind him carrying the same.

They cross the room to meet me, and each of them places a drink in one of my hands.

“To brother Adam?” Frankie asks, looking at Michael.

“To brother Adam,” Michael responds softly, with a smirk.

His voice feels warmer than the crowd’s had.

We drink, and laugh, and cheer as new brothers are announced. I hear Michael chant new names, but not as soft. Not as warm. Not accompanied by that same coy smirk.

I wonder, against all hope and reason, if he reserves that voice for me.

Brother Adam, I repeat in my mind, grasping at the wisps of his voice.

Brother Adam.