I’m just starting to feel a buzz when Michael reaches for me. I see it happen in slow motion.

I’d zoned out. It was easy to do. The living room was so full – of noise, of bodies, of the stench of liquor – that it almost felt empty. Like I was standing alone surrounded by dead space.

Michael and Frankie were both still standing near me, but they’d turned to make conversation with other people. Frankie was talking to a boy our age that I didn’t recognize. A friend, or maybe a rival from the tournament.

I’d thought about Jason, my best friend that had woken up early just to watch me through the weigh-in and the tournament earlier today. I hadn’t told him about the party. I didn’t know what initiation was going to look like, but I didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of him. Or maybe I just wanted the opportunity to be alone. In case... something happened. With someone.

Michael was chatting up a girl. Blonde, like him. She was playing with her hair. And laughing a lot. She liked to touch him when she laughed. On the arm, or the hand. A quick thing. A pulse. He didn’t seem to mind.

I’d zoned out staring at the way his toga cut across his torso. It was a tight rope of white cloth that passed down from his shoulder and unfurled as it got lower, forming the wrap around his waist. It was teasingly short. It pulled and folded when he shifted his weight, exposing a little more thigh before falling back into place. I was reminded of that moment after the weigh-in, sitting next to each other in our towels, his leg moving restlessly in my periphery.

When he turns to me, my mind snaps back into the room and my heart freezes. I pull my eyes up, hoping it seemed like I was just drunkenly staring off into space and not obsessing over the place where his toga ends.

He reaches towards me, and try as I might, I can’t help but stare again. At the way his chest moves. At the metal band wrapped around his bicep, hugging his muscle as he extends his arm towards me. At the plump softness of the palm of his hand as it reaches for my shoulder.

“Hey, are you okay?” he asks. He touches my left shoulder, and I flinch – letting out an unexpected wince.

“Still hurts, huh?” Michael slaps the back of Frankie’s head, who yelps and turns around.

“What did I–” he starts to ask, but sees me rubbing my shoulder and stops. “I really am sorry!”

“Let’s get some ice on it,” Michael says. He grabs my right wrist and starts leading me through the crowd towards the kitchen. It’s nice to feel his palm against my skin.

He lets go of my arm once we’re in the kitchen and I miss his hand immediately. It’s quieter in here, and empty for the moment. He taps the counter and tells me to hop up onto it.

The marble counter feels cold on my thighs where the toga ends, and suddenly I wish I was still wearing a towel underneath it.

“Frankie hit you like a bag of bricks,” he says. He crouches down to go through a cabinet, and I watch his toga bunch up around his legs just enough for a sliver of his cheek to peek out beneath it. I give a silent prayer of thanks to ancient Greece and whoever introduced the theme to college campuses.

I might have gotten the full show during the weigh-in this morning – it’s an image I’ll never let go of – but something about the teasing bit of his skin that slips out now is so much more tantalizing.

“Not that I saw it happen, of course,” Michael continues. He’s digging around deeper in the cabinet, his toga creeping higher with every movement. “For liability reasons, I am officially unaware of any life-endangering rituals that the team gets up to.”

He stands back up from the cabinet, ending the game his toga had been playing with my eyes. He has a plastic storage bag in hand, the kind that seals with a zipper.

He looks over at me sitting on the counter, and his eyes trail down. “You might want to close your legs,” he says. “The living room is getting an eye-full.”

I can’t tell if I blush, but my face feels red hot. I bring my knees together and fold the front of my toga down between my legs. I try to play off my having flashed him – and the rest of the living room beyond the kitchen entrance, I suppose – casually.

“Nothing they haven’t already seen falling from the second story,” I say.

“Oh, give yourself some credit,” he responds, walking over to the freezer. “It was almost a dive.”

He opens the freezer door, disappearing behind it. I hear his hand rummaging through the icebox. “I thought you weren’t watching,” I say.

“Officially, I wasn’t,” Michael replies. He closes the freezer door, facing me with the plastic bag now full of ice cubes. “And I certainly don’t have it on video.”

I groan. “You and everybody else. I suppose it’s too late to petition everyone in attendance to preserve my modesty?”

A half-smile leaks out of his mouth as he walks over to me. “Oh, that ship has sailed.”

He holds the makeshift ice pack to my shoulder, and I bite down a wince at the cold touch. The pain might have been worse if I hadn’t been distracted by the closeness of Michael’s body to mine. Sitting on the counter, I’m closer to his height. Closer to his face. His mouth.

His eyes are trained on my shoulder, leaving mine free to roam down his neck, chest, and torso.

“I’m sure it’s making the rounds already,” he continues. “Hold this for a second.”

I take hold of the ice pack with my good arm and he steps away. My shoulder throbs and I feel colder immediately.

He’s back to rummaging around in the kitchen drawers and cabinets again. ”Mine still pops up every few months,” he says.

It takes me a moment to realize he’s referring to a video of his initiation. Of him jumping – naked – from the deck.

“But it’s dark out tonight,” he continues. “You might eke out a shred of plausible deniability. That’s more than I made out with.”

“Why’s that?” I ask.

“We used to keep the floodlights on in the backyard.” He’s crouching again, with his head tucked away inside a cabinet. His toga is pulled up even higher, leaving the bottom half of his ass hanging out in clear view. I wonder if he knows. If he’s taunting me.

“They offer remarkable definition and clarity to even the shakiest phone footage,” he continues. I hear an aha! and he resurfaces holding a long, thin box of plastic wrap.

“I’ll find mine and send it to you later,” he says. “Believe me, you won’t feel so embarrassed after.”

The notion brings a fluttering to my chest. I wonder if he realizes what he’s offering – if there’s a wisp of recognition somewhere behind his eyes.

If there is, I’m unable to spot it.

Michael steps over with the plastic wrap and unspools a long sheet of it, cutting it on the serrated edge of the box. He bites into one end of the sheet and then rips it in half lengthwise. It’s not an even shred, but I can’t say that I don’t try to rewind the moment in my mind to watch him do it again.

He lifts my hand off of the ice pack and I feel warmth ripple up my arm at his touch. He takes the two sheet halves and begins wrapping the ice pack onto my shoulder, looping the sheets under my arm. The plastic clings, so it stays in place.

“In the future,” he starts, looking me in the eyes now. I can feel my throat go dry. “Please remember that you don’t have to do anything you’re not comfortable with. No matter what Liam says.”

I swallow and nod.

He’s done wrapping my shoulder but hasn’t stepped away. He’s so close. Still looking into my eyes. I can’t tell what he’s searching for.

The sound of the party becomes more distant for a moment. I think about leaning forward – shortening the gap between our faces. Our lips, maybe.

But his eyes start to pull away, and then so does the rest of him. The chaos of the party bleeds back into our little pocket in the corner of the kitchen.

I’m not ready for the moment to dissipate.

I lean forward and grab his wrist as he starts to turn away. He looks at me, and we’re both unsure of what’s supposed to happen next.

“You okay?” he asks. “I can wrap it with another layer, or–”

“You didn’t tell anyone,” I interrupt. “About what happened before the tournament. On the mat.”

I let go of his wrist. “Why?” I ask.

He shrugs. “It happens.”

“Does it? Has it happened to you?”

His brow scrunches and he purses his lips. His eyes wander up towards the ceiling. He’s silent for a few moments. Excruciating moments, I should say. I can’t tell if he’s sincerely searching his memory or deciding whether or not to reveal a secret. It feels like there’s a hand tightening its grip on my lungs.

“I don’t think so,” he eventually says. But he’s still staring up above our heads. Another few moments pass. “But who knows, blood rushes all kinds of ways on the mat.”

He brings his eyes back down to meet mine and claps me on my good shoulder. “I wouldn’t dwell on it.”

I take in a breath. “The guys would eat me alive if they’d been there.”

He shifts forward and leans with his forearms on the counter next to me. “Don’t sell them short.”

He bumps my leg gently with his shoulder. “We all know the sport that we play. The singlets. The grapples. The holds. You don’t sign up for men’s wrestling if you can’t handle your fair share of jokes and insinuations from the rest of the world. We try to steer clear of that amongst ourselves.”

Jokes and insinuations, I think. Right. But all I say is “You’re a good captain, Michael.”

He smiles. “I’m really glad you think so. Now keep that ice pack on, Adam.”

He claps a hand down on my leg. Right below where my toga ends. “Captain’s orders,” he adds.

He stands and walks away. Just before he steps out of the kitchen, he pulls the back of his toga up to flash his bare ass and makes an even louder, more ridiculous attempt at a farting sound than he had earlier in the locker room.

I’m still processing when he looks over his shoulder to see my face. I push out a laugh, but it’s a few moments too late. He laughs too, though I think I catch a flash of nerves behind his eyes. I want to say something, but he ducks out of the kitchen before I can remember any words.

I rest my head on the cabinet behind me. I can feel the balmy haze of alcohol rolling in quickly now – a cloud that had been kept at bay by the rapture of Michael’s touch and attention.

I close my eyes. I think I’ll stay here for a few minutes.

Those minutes don’t come. My rest is intercepted by a quartet of voices shouting, “Gretz!”

I open my eyes to see Frankie, Miguel, and the other two initiates – Neil and Ren – standing at the edge of the kitchen. Miguel is still naked, covered only by the oven mitt on his right hand. He has a toga, it’s just strung around his neck like a massive scarf rather than covering his body. He seems to be enjoying the attention.

The other three boys are dressed normally – and dry, too – so Kai must have found more towels by the time Neil and Ren took their dives.

They’re all looking at me expectantly, though for what reason I can’t parse out. “You rang?” I say.

“We’re being summoned,” Frankie answers.

“Another initiation, I think,” Neil adds behind him.

Neil is a full head taller than the rest of us, and the only Briar student competing in the heaviest weight class. He has dark brown skin and fine black hair pulled back in a short warrior’s tail. I scrimmaged with him a few times over the summer. To say I was manhandled each time would be polite. I don’t think he ever broke a sweat.

Ren, beside him, is fidgeting with his toga. He has a few tattoos in black ink that flash in and out of view as he moves the fabric – some of animals, some of kanji. I’d asked him what the kanji meant, once. I’m not a signboard, he’d replied. The middle of grappling practice may not have been the right time to ask.

Ren keeps glancing down, possibly at Miguel’s exposed backside in front of him. I wonder if his pulse races in the same way that mine sometimes does, or if he simply thinks Miguel’s nudity is in poor taste.

“They want my other shoulder, do they?” I snark and hop down from the counter. The room tilts a bit in my head, but I keep my footing.

Guilt flashes across Frankie’s face. “Feeling any better?” he asks.

“The drinks helped,” I say. “Maybe too much.”

“Hold it together, Gretzky,” Miguel says. “You don’t want to embarrass the new class of brothers, do you?”

The other three boys turn to him with hard stares.

“What?” he asks, throwing both his hands – including the oven-mitted one that had been keeping his last sliver of modesty – to the side in daring incredulity.

“Is there something on my face?” he asks teasingly.

Ren shakes his head and turns out of the kitchen. Neil and Frankie follow.

Miguel turns back to me, hands at his side, completely uncovered. I lock my gaze on the wall behind his head, not daring to venture further down.

“Well, come on Gretzky. Let’s go meet our fate with dignity,” he says. He turns and I let my eyes break from their spot just quickly enough to watch him step around the corner.

Before I follow out of the kitchen, I grab a cold water bottle from the fridge and chug it down. I hope it keeps me coherent long enough to make it to the end of the night.

When I step back into the living room, it’s strangely calm and quiet. Most of the people seemed to have moved elsewhere. I can still hear the ruckus of the party in the distance and follow the sound back to the sliding doors that lead out to the backyard.

I open the door and a wall of sound greets me – cheers and shouting and groans of sympathetic pain. The crowd is gathered around in a circle on the grass beyond the pool.

I push through the crowd to find Frankie and Miguel standing in the innermost ring of the gathering. A wave of movement behind me ends up pressing me into Miguel’s back, and my hand grazes one of his cheeks.

“Ay!” he says playfully, turning with a devious grin on his face. When he sees that it’s me, his face straightens a bit – though that grin doesn't disappear completely. “Just buy me dinner first, eh?”

I offer him a mock laugh. “So what’s going on?”

Before he answers, I get most of the picture. In the center of the crowd is an inflatable kiddie pool, about three feet deep and eight around. Inside the pool, Neil and Ren are wrestling. They’re drenched in some kind of red goop, which also spills over the sides as they tangle. Their togas are saturated in the stuff, sticking to their skin wet and nearly transparent.

“It’s genius, isn’t it?” Miguel says. “Jell-O wrestling.”

“And one of us is next,” Frankie adds.

I watch Neil and Ren tussle. Their togas lift and pull and part and cling as they move. Half the time they’re hanging out of them completely. They’re thigh on thigh, arms tucked around a waist, hands searching for purchase on a slippery canvas.

I can feel my pulse pounding. I take in a few shallow breaths to calm it, only to have it ramp up again as Neil takes Ren down, folding his knees to his chest in a pin that leaves him completely exposed.

I stare down at the ground.

I’m living in either a nightmare or a fantasy pulled from the most unruly corners of my mind.

Either way, I think, I’m completely screwed.