We stood sweating our
sweat,
half out of
breath.
The conversation
stopped dead.
You reached up
to my face.
And I
inhaled,
and it was involuntary,
and
I met your eyes.
Your almost-
feminine
brown fingers
flashed in the corner of my eye.
They plucked a bit of lint
from my
beard.
It was
tender,
perfect like the
chaos of your hair.
And then it was gone:
the lint,
your hand,
that heavy moment.
And the
weight-lifters
and their
silly little girls
didn't even notice.
We didn't hug.
We didn't mention it.
We're so damned
comfortable with each other
that it all seemed somehow expected.
And we went back into the court,
continued our game of
racquetball,
just as we were supposed to:
two boys, missing shots we should have made,
and
watching the pretty girls go by.