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They broke up the spring following graduation.
Rin would say it was mutual, but he’d marked the peak of cherry blossom season on his calendar, planning to walk through the trees together.
Haru would say he was the one who'd ended it, and that he’d wanted to, but only one of those statements would be true.
Neither of them had wanted to.
“I’m going to Tokyo,” Rin had said, standing on Haru’s front stoop, because if he stepped foot into the house he knew he couldn’t say it.
Haru had looked away, trying to swallow the words burning in his throat.
“Haru?”
“I guess that’s it, then.”
“Haru, c’mon, we can still—”
“No, we can’t.”
Haru watched every one of his meets on television. He read the newspapers. He’d started using his computer, just to see if his name was mentioned. Rin was openly gay, but would casually laugh when asked if he was seeing someone.
“Not right now,” he’d reply with a wink, which made Haru’s stomach lurch.
Haru never left Iwatobi. He hadn’t wanted to—he enrolled at the local college, taking classes because it was something to do. He worked at the swim club, teaching and being a lifeguard.
Rin had traveled the world. They kept in touch at the beginning, when he was still in Tokyo. Haru hadn’t expected the mutual correspondence to last as long as it did. “You’d love this, Haru,” he’d write, in his nearly-illegible handwriting. “All I do is swim! You and the others should come to one of my meets.”
He never did, but not due to lack of wanting. He never had the chance to, before Rin left Japan again.
Rin had gone to the Olympics, as they knew he would. He’d done some modeling, and Haru never got used to seeing his face in the newspapers.
He kept every one of those advertisements.
Rin’s letters stopped coming.
No one else heard from him, either, so Haru didn’t take it personally.
During one interview, Rin finally admitted to having a boyfriend. Haru wasn’t surprised—Rin was charismatic and talented. His body was irresistible, and he was good in bed. He could do better than a quiet boy in a small fishing town. Makoto asked if Haru was all right, but he felt nothing at all.
(That was a lie, which Makoto knew, but Haru stuck to it.)
Besides, they hadn’t seen each other in five years. And Rin had never returned to Iwatobi. It was a loneliness Haru had learned to accept, long before he’d left for Tokyo. Before high school.
Nagisa tried to set him up with his friends from university. Haru would only meet them in groups, never alone, and it was obvious in the first ten minutes that the men weren’t interested—despite, Nagisa later told him, how gorgeous they’d all found Haru.
“Maybe you could try girls,” Rei suggested.
Haru narrowed his eyes.
Rin’s hands, Rin’s mouth, the gentle suck on his skin, the hard muscles against his body . . .
“I don’t like girls,” Haru said plainly.
Gou said her brother had come home a few times. The others wouldn’t believe it, because he’d visited no one. Makoto wanted to know if she’d seen his Olympic medals. There was one at home, she said, and brought it to dinner the next time they all met.
The bronze medal was passed around the table, much heavier than they’d all imagined. Gou sat beside Haru, and she didn’t mind when he held it the longest.
“Try it on,” Gou said, as Haru stared at the medal, remembering how the medallion fell to Rin’s chest, and how Rin had cried all over it. Haru brought it to his face, as if he could smell Rin’s skin and his tears, but there was only the bitter scent of metal.
He shook his head, and draped it around Gou’s neck instead.
“Looks good, Gou-chan!” Nagisa chirped, raising two thumbs-up.
The end isn’t something to “get over.” It’s an adaptation; it’s relearning how to live without him, forgetting what occupied the days without his smile and his gentle teasing. It’s turning over in an empty bed and remembering he was never there. It’s accidentally cooking dinner for two, telling yourself that was intentional so there is something to eat the following day.
It’s carefully placing newspaper clippings and greeting cards and movie ticket stubs in a scrapbook, and then hiding that book beneath your bed.
It’s finding his T-shirt in your closet, convincing yourself it was yours to begin with.
It’s ignoring his sister’s phone calls, because some days she looks too much like him.
It’s removing his name from email news alerts, because it’s time to stop.
Sasabe promoted him to manager at the swim club. It was a good-paying job, but it never felt like work. It also meant he was in charge of locking up at night, but he never left after the doors were locked tight.
He could still swim. It didn’t matter that it reminded him of Rin; over time, the memories stopped being painful and were fond now. He could look at the wall of winning relay teams and smile, rather than avoid it.
But he missed Rin. As he dived into the pool, lit by only the emergency lights, the pain had dulled. It was a distant memory, the days he’d raced Rin, the times they’d swam relays together. Rin raced new people, he had a new relay team. He had a new boyfriend.
But Haru had been first.
Haru had been his first everything.
Everything.
It used to hurt. Remembering how Rin would sprawl across the bed, hogging the sheets. They would try sharing a bath, even though the tub was too small. They’d stay up until the night sky had shifted from blue to black, whispering, touching each other. Haru shivered to remember the way Rin felt from within, and how Rin felt inside him.
Haru dipped underwater to hide the salt tracks on his face.
“Are you nervous, Rin?”
“N-No!”
“Tell me if you’re nervous.”
“Of course I’m nervous! Do you want to bottom?”
“. . . You said you’d do it first.”
Sometimes he felt the phantom of those hands, the damp kisses on his skin, the fingers between his thighs. Sometimes, he saw that smile when he dipped into the water, when the blood pulsed in his groin.
But sometimes, he forgot.
Makoto moved in. He’d accepted a job teaching at Iwatobi Elementary, and decided it was time to live independent of his parents. Though they saw his family often, anyway, the arrangement was better suited for Makoto. For them both. Haru didn’t accept his check when he’d tried to pay rent, so he took care of household chores instead. That, too, Haru was used to handling by himself. But it was nice having someone else to cook dinner, even if Makoto was still learning. During summer break, he took to repairing and painting the fence outside. He started a small vegetable garden. Haru had been living alone for what felt like his entire life—besides the nights Rin would stay over in high school—but having Makoto there was nice. It felt good to come home to someone who knew him, who wouldn’t force conversation.
Sometimes, Makoto would join him at the swim club at night, long after closing. That was when they’d reminisce, looking through old photos or the wall of relay winners.
“Haru,” Makoto said, straightening one of the frames, “do you ever talk to Rin?”
He shook his head.
Haru knew he was being watched, even as he swiped a layer of dust from the top of a frame. He wiped the dust on his pants. “Have you tried?” Makoto pressed.
“It doesn’t matter,” Haru replied, turning toward the pool.
That used to be more of a lie.
He thought maybe Rin came home sometimes, to see his family. Haru talked to Gou on occasion, but never asked. He only knew that Rin had spent some time in Australia, and now he was back in Japan. Somewhere. But he might as well still be overseas, for all Haru knew. If not for Makoto, who spoke to Gou more than he did, he wouldn’t have known anything at all. He would’ve preferred it that way.
There was only one photo with Rin in the house, one from the high school relay surrounded by their friends. The rest were tucked in the scrapbook: the evidence of dates, or strips from photo booths, or doodles of Rin he’d drawn during class.
He’d wanted to throw them away, but it had seemed premature at the time. Now, they still lay beneath his bed in the scrapbook amongst the dust.
Haru had come home once to Makoto flipping through the scrapbook. He’d felt his heart in his throat, trying to spit out “Why are you looking at that?” but choking on the words instead.
“Sorry, Haru!” Makoto said, hastily slamming the book shut. “I was looking for our high school yearbook. I didn’t mean to spy on you.”
Haru shrugged. “You know everything, anyway.”
He didn’t say anything when Makoto peeked at the pages again. Haru was half-tempted to join him—it had been several years since he’d opened the scrapbook himself—but remained in the doorway. “Do you miss him?” Makoto asked.
Haru looked away. His hesitation was his confirmation.
“We had a lot of fun together,” Makoto said. “But I’m really happy for him, too.”
“Why do you want the yearbook?”
There had been no concrete reason—he’d just wanted to look at it—which made Haru think it had been an excuse. But he dug the yearbook out from the closet, anyway.
I miss Rin.
He thought of it as he dressed, over-conscious again of the scrapbook beneath his bed. He thought of it at work, when he taught a group of bright-eyed, eight-year-old boys how to swim.
He spent longer nights at the pool. Sometimes, he’d only get out because his phone was ringing in his swim bag. It was always Makoto, wondering where he was. Haru promised he’d come home soon.
It always saddened him to lock up, to stand outside the swim club and slowly turn the key in the lock. He felt the weight of the deadbolt click into place. Inside, the emergency lights dimly lit the hallway, leading down to the locker rooms, as if a permanent invitation.
A shadow slipped beneath the sliding glass doors, someone softly approaching from behind him. “We’re closed,” Haru said.
“Aww, come on. Please?”
He didn’t think he could turn around. A frost crawled up his body, rooting him, his fingers still curled around the key in the lock. He heard the thwump of a bag hitting the ground, but no other sound. No advancing footsteps.
He managed to unstick his feet and turn around.
Rin looked every better than he’d remembered.
Was it possible to grow taller since high school? He did look taller, and his face leaner. He smiled easily, his jaw line sharp in the streetlight. He wore a warm-up suit, red with white stripes down the sides. Haru could see his muscles even beneath the jacket; he could see how he’d bulked up since high school, broad across the shoulders and thick in the chest. His hair was longer, too, nearly brushing his shoulders, that unruly strand in the front tickling his upper lip.
“You’re back?”
The déjà vu rattled him, and Rin’s eyes widened for a fraction of a second as he felt the aftershock.
Rin smiled. “Yeah.”
“You . . .” It was getting harder to look at his eyes. He knew those eyes too well. “Congratulations.”
If not for his altered appearance, the knowledge of his travels and his victories, Haru would believe the years had never passed. He’d have thought they’d been standing there since high school, close enough to touch, staring into the depths of the other’s soul.
“I have to go home,” Haru said, rushing past him.
“Haru, wait.”
But he didn’t.
He didn’t tell Makoto. It had been Makoto’s turn to make dinner, and Haru’s portion sat on the table, now cold. Makoto had eaten hours prior but still sat across from him, sipping tea, asking how his day was.
“Gou said Rin’s coming home,” Makoto said carefully.
Haru swallowed his cold, over-salted fish. “Oh.”
Makoto set down his teacup, watching Haru push more fish into his mouth. He was deliberately waiting, and Haru chewed the fish to shreds to postpone replying to any further comments. “Do you want to see him?”
Haru shrugged as he stabbed his chopsticks into his rice bowl. “Why?”
He didn’t see Rin again, but Gou showed up to the swim club.
“I’m working,” Haru said, leaning an elbow on the lifeguard’s chair. Though it was adult lap swim, and everyone in the pool had proven to be adequate swimmers, he watched carefully like they would drown at any moment.
“Please talk to my brother,” she said.
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
Gou huffed. “Stop being a pain in the ass.”
“We’re not picking up where we left off.”
From the corner of his eye he saw the quiver of Gou’s chin, a distinct Matsuoka trait. He focused on lane four, on the man who really needed someone to show him the right way to swim breaststroke. “It’s not like that and you know it.”
He hadn’t planned on replying, but felt guilty when she stormed away. He leaped from the chair, rushing to catch up before she cut through the women’s locker room. “Where is he staying?”
Haru wouldn’t have guessed Rin found an apartment in the city.
He can probably afford it, he thought, staring out the train’s window as they chugged toward the city. He had an idea of how much Olympic athletes made, but between the modeling and Rin’s high-end sponsors he could probably live a few years without working at all. When he’d looked up the train’s timetables, he’d written down every return trip starting from the moment he reached his destination. Just in case.
He was still standing on the platform as his train left, and when the next one passed going home. Haru felt in his pocket for the slip of paper bearing Rin’s address, though had read it on the way over so many times that he didn’t need to reference it.
He never spent much time in the city, at least by himself. But the streets were on a grid, so they were easy to navigate; since he was walking, he didn’t have to worry about turning down one-way streets the wrong way. He arrived at the building a lot sooner than he’d expected. Haru stared at the array of buzzers by the door, visually tracing each character of “Matsuoka” on the label beneath number nine.
He pushed the buzzer, and waited.
He watched a smiling group of college students pass by on the sidewalk.
He sighed, turning away and taking a step away from the door.
The speaker crackled. “Yo.”
Haru froze again, one foot on the step below, listening to the crackling of the speaker and picturing Rin rolling his eyes on the other side.
“Hey. Someone there?”
He took a step up again. “Hi. It’s me.”
Rin’s apartment was surprisingly small. It had a bedroom, and a separate room for the kitchen, but the living area was just big enough for a couch and a low table. He had a TV propped up on an old dresser—it probably came from his mom’s house—and a few framed photographs of himself on the wall, most of which Haru recognized from the Olympics. He was surprised to see none of his modeling jobs on display.
“Have a seat,” Rin said from the kitchen. “You want something besides water?”
Haru shook his head, belatedly realizing Rin couldn’t see him. “Water’s fine.”
When he sat on the floor, he studied a pile of books beside the couch. Half of them were in English, but they all looked to be about swimming. He vaguely wondered how many of them Rin was mentioned in.
Rin didn’t say anything as he returned from the kitchen, the glasses in his hands splashing slightly onto the floor. He gripped them too hard, trying not to spill water on the table as he set them down. Haru watched him lower to the floor, crossing his legs, holding his overlapping ankles with both hands.
“Nice place,” Haru said, not yet touching his water.
“Thanks!” Rin beamed as he looked around. “I’m still settling in, so I don’t know where everything is yet. I checked three cabinets before I found those glasses.”
He felt obligated now to drink the water, knowing how much trouble Rin went through the find them. Haru’s hand remained steady as he drank, even if his insides were bubbling and ready to burst.
“You’re my first friend to see the place,” Rin said.
Friend.
Haru set down his glass. “I haven’t seen all of it.”
Rin took him on a tour, which didn’t take long. He paid more attention to Rin than the apartment—he could easily see how much he’d bulked up now, wearing only shorts and a T-shirt as he guided Haru around. The kitchen had a lot of cabinets (he could see why it took so long to find the glasses), and the bedroom was only big enough for the bed, but there was a small balcony off it with an impressive view of the city.
“Romantic, right?” Rin grinned.
Haru stared at the street below. “Rin . . .”
“Sorry, sorry.”
But it was romantic, if Rin had taught him anything of romance. It was easy to imagine standing on the balcony late at night, staring out at the glittering lights of the city, wrapped in a bed sheet that held the lingering scent of sex.
“How’s your boyfriend?” Haru asked.
Rin stood so close on the small balcony that Haru felt him freeze. He could hear Rin’s breathing over the sounds of the city. “Oh, Haru . . .”
“What?”
Rin wouldn’t look at him. He looked out past the balcony, focusing on an indistinct spot on the building opposite. “You didn’t see my interview in Monthly Muscle?”
“I don’t read Monthly Muscle.”
I stopped reading your interviews.
His grip let up on the railing, the color returning to his knuckles. “I’m surprised my sister didn’t show you.” He went back inside, rummaging through a stack of boxes in the corner of the bedroom. “Where is it . . . ?” Haru stood in the doorway, watching as he opened boxes seemingly at random, until he noticed each were labeled—school books. Photos. Magazines. “Ah-ha!”
Haru took a step forward to peer into the box. It was chocked full of magazines, the sides of the box straining from being over-filled. “How many do you have?”
Rin nervously laughed, scratching the back of his head. “I get a few extras. Here.” He pressed the magazine into Haru’s hands. “Read it at home.”
“I’ll read it here.”
“Haru, wait—!”
He shuffled out to the balcony, carefully turning the pages as he walked. Rin’s interview wasn’t hard to find—not when he had a full-page photo on the page opposite, grinning as he propped his hands behind his head. Gou would likely comment on his perfect triceps. He skipped over the introduction and scanned the two-page interview.
MM: Have you received any negative attention for being openly gay?
RM: Oh, yeah. But there’s no point hiding it. It doesn’t make me any less of an athlete.
MM: But you don’t talk about your boyfriend at all.
RM: He keeps to himself, and I respect that. We’ve known each other since we were kids.
MM: High school sweethearts?
RM: [laughs] Yeah, something like that. We were a couple of stubborn high school boys, so it wasn’t an easy ride. Our mutual friends got the worst of it, having to listen to me talk about how great he is all the time.
MM: Let’s talk about that win at the Pan Pacific Championships.
RM: [smiles] Which one?
Rin was still standing in the bedroom where he’d left him.
“Rin, this doesn’t make sense.” He held the magazine up between two fingers.
“Don’t you get it, Haru?” Rin turned to close the box, laying the tape back over the flaps though it no longer stuck. “There was no one else.”
Haru stared at the magazine cover. Rin wasn’t the model on the front, but his name was still displayed in big, red letters advertising his interview inside. “But we broke up.”
It was endearing how Rin could still look nervous over simple things. Haru had seen his swim meets, he’d watched him glow at the Olympics and in interviews. But it was there, in his new apartment, standing before his old lover that he blushed. He scowled slightly, picking at the tape on a moving box, staring at Haru’s feet.
He looked older. Rin was experienced, he’d traveled the world; he’d become an Olympic gold medalist. The corner of his mouth twitched into a hopeful smile when he looked up. “Do you want to try again?”
Try again meant something had broken. It meant someone had screwed up, gotten angry, sworn the other off. Try again was a last-ditch effort for a dying love.
Haru shook his head. “I want to pick up where we left off.”
Rin’s hug smelled of cherry blossoms and chlorine, the long-familiar scent of just having showered after swimming. It felt like water and naked skin, of air-dried sheets. It felt like squeezing together into a single bed or a tub intended for one.
It felt like Rin.