Page 9 of Wedge

“Bad, huh?” he snickers.

I let myself laugh.

“Not too terrible.”

“Liar,” he chirps.

“I’m gonna hit the showers, rinse off before lunch,” I tell him. “There’s a full selection of stuff for us to eat. Take anything and everything we want.”

“Shower sounds nice,” he muses. “Is it like in high school, just a row of shower heads, or are there stalls?”

I don’t bat an eyelash. He just doesn’t know. “Stalls with doors,” I answer. “Soap, shampoo, towels all provided. Lock the door if you want. Sauna, steam room, hot tub, the usual. I can store your golf bag with the equipment guys if you want to head down.”

“Wow,” he says. “Aurora doesn’t have any of that.”

I cough. “No. It does not. Head downstairs. Enjoy it. Part of the pass.”

He nods and heads in that direction. I check his golf bag in at the equipment shed and walk back and down the stairs to the locker room. It smells of cedar and eucalyptus steam, all dark wood and white tile, with thick towels stacked in neat rows. It’s fairly empty today, which suits me fine.

I toss my sweaty clothes into an empty locker near mine and grab a towel. I hear a shower running, but there are several, so I pick one at random. The hot water running over my back is lovely. Adrian’s bag isn’t the heaviest I’ve looped with, but I haven’t carried a bag in a few months, and I feel it in my shoulders, a good ache, an honest one.

Shampooed and rinsed, I flick the water off and grab my towel off the back of the door, wrapping it loosely around my waist and pull the door open. And almost run right into Adrian, who is gaping at the shower across from me. His towel is wrapped tight around his slender body like a shield.

“Whoa…” I catch myself against the doorframe, my towel nearly slipping.

Adrian jumps like he’s been caught at something, eyes snapping to me instead. His face has gone red, all the way up to his ears.

“Sorry,” he blurts. “I wasn’t… I just…” He stops. Starts again. “There’s a guy just showering. Like, with the door open. In public.”

I follow his gaze. Some older guy. Plump, balding, a member probably, humming to himself under the water two stalls down, not a care in the world, shower door wide open.

“Yeah,” I say slowly. “He is just showering. He doesn’t care.”

“I care,” he mutters, and there’s something underneath it. Not quite a joke.

I don’t push on it. Just reach behind me for my stall door and step back, giving him room to breathe. He’s wrapped tight in his towel, arms crossed over it like it might not be enough on its own, like he’s bracing for the room to look back at him the way he’d been looking at that stranger.

“Nobody’s paying any attention to you,” I tell him quietly. Not unkindly, just a fact. “No one is going to mess with you. That’s the whole point of a place like this. Everybody minds their own business.”

He nods, but his shoulders don’t drop. His eyes flick down to the tattoos running up his forearm, like he’s the one waiting to be stared at instead. Then he glances at my chest. Possibly at my Semper Fi. Maybe the bulldog. His tongue licks at his lips nervously. Behave yourself, cock.

“There’s an open stall at the end,” I say, nodding toward it, giving him somewhere to go instead of standing in the hallway working himself into a spiral. “More towels are stocked inside if you need extra. You can lock the door.” I think for a moment longer. This is a high end clubhouse and clearly he is out of his element. I nod toward the grooming area. “There are clean club polo shirts if you didn’t bring a spare. You can take one if you want it. Ben gives them away.”

I was going to head to the dining room, but I hesitate. “Want me to wait for you?”

The look of relief punches me in the gut.

“Yeah. Thanks,” he manages, then hurries to the back stall, keeping his eyes down the whole way there.

I’m dressed when he emerges a few minutes later, sitting on a bench with my back against the lockers, the steam from the shower room still drifting along the ceiling. He’s flicked his mohawk back smoothly against his head, all in the middle, flattened. Once again, he secures the towel tightly around his waist. His tats gleam in the low light, damp and vivid against the white tile.

“I think they have hair pomade over there, but you might not like it,” I say, gesturing toward the counter with my chin.

Adrian huffs, half a laugh. “Pomade. Right. Very clubhouse of me.”

“You’d fit right in,” I say. “Sixty-year-old men love a good pomade.”

He snorts, actually snorts, and drops onto the bench across from me, towel still tucked tight, but his shoulders finally loosen. He reaches into his locker and tugs out his boxers, wrestling them on under the towel with the kind of practiced modesty that tells me this isn’t new for him. Just new here.