The Locker Room the Former Player Could Never Forget

The bus dropped Mikel Aranburu in the town square just as the September sun began to sink behind the mountains. The stone of the houses took on a warm golden hue, and the air carried the smell of cut grass and the distant sea. It was the same smell as his childhood, of the summers when he still did not know how to name what he felt.

He wore a backpack over one shoulder and carried a small suitcase. The rest would come later. The rest always came later.

At thirty-three, after an entire career in the big leagues, Mikel was coming home with no one waiting for him. He was fleeing the city, the spotlights, and above all himself. He walked along the cobbled streets, feeling the neighbors' gazes on his back. He was nearly two meters tall and carried the body the sport had left him: broad shoulders, a chest marked beneath his T-shirt, long legs that still answered when he went out running at dawn.

Outwardly he was an intact man. Inside, he was still the kid who left at twenty, terrified by what stirred in the locker rooms. Those erections that came without permission, the looks he learned to hide, the nights locked in a hotel bathroom jerking off in silence while thinking of other men and coming with a guilt that lasted for days.

The family home welcomed him with the smell of stale air and suspended time.

***

For weeks he renovated it from top to bottom, as if tearing down partitions could also tear down the past. On the ground floor he left an open-plan space with an open kitchen. On the middle floor he set up a small gym where he sweated alone, pounding the bag until his arms burned and desire quieted down for a while. Upstairs, in the attic, he made his bedroom: a huge bed and a bathroom with a whirlpool tub where the hot water loosened his body and set his imagination free.

For the first few months he tried to live like a monk. He ran through the forest, trained until exhaustion, didn't turn on the television or open his phone. He believed silence would heal him. But silence only amplified everything else: the throb low in his belly when he crossed paths with a young man at the fronton, the heat in his face, the wanting that clung to his throat and wouldn't let go.

One November morning he passed an empty storefront on the main street. Something moved in his chest. He remembered the catalogs he had secretly leafed through as a teenager, the clothes he had never dared wear for fear they would give him away. Oversized sweatshirts, cargo pants, all of it that in his mind meant freedom. The next day he rented the place without thinking twice.

The renovation was quick: white walls, polished flooring, shelves neatly arranged with the clothes he would have wanted to wear at twenty. On the sign he put a single word, Aske. Free. A promise to others and a private joke to himself.

***

The shop slowly started to attract customers. College guys from the valley, thirty-somethings who came back from the city on weekends, men who walked in out of curiosity and stayed. Mikel served them in a low voice, folding fabrics with his large hands, and inside he burned. He watched jeans fit their bodies, watched them smile when they tried something on in front of the mirror. He imagined stripping off the clothes he had just sold them, running his tongue along the sweat line on their backs. And every night, when he lowered the shutter, he went up to the attic to put that fire out the way he had always known how: alone.

One of those nights he got into the tub with a glass of wine. Hot water wrapped around his naked body and he closed his eyes. The memories came mercilessly, as always. The locker rooms after matches, his teammates' bodies, the quick glances he turned away from in time and then relived alone with desperate fury. He touched himself slowly, his hand slipping in the water, imagining one of those young men from the village coming into his shop and undressing to try something on. He came with a muffled groan, pleasure and guilt mixed together as they had always been.

He didn't know that a few streets away, at the sports center, someone had just heard his name for the first time.

***

Unai Goikoetxea was twenty-two and had no intention of hiding anything. He had just finished training and took off his sweat-soaked shirt without the slightest embarrassment, his firm torso shining with sweat under the gym lights.

—Hey, have you seen the new shop on Main Street? —he said, wiping his neck with the shirt—. They say Mikel Aranburu, the former player, runs it.

Aitor Mendizabal, the fitness trainer, twenty-seven and with a calm he struggled to keep, felt a pull in his groin at the sound of the name. He had spent half his life pretending he didn't watch Unai when he changed.

—Aranburu? He's come back to the village? —he asked, his voice rougher than he meant it to be.

Unai smiled, slyly, adjusting the waistband of his pants without any attempt to hide it.

—Looks like it. I'll stop by tomorrow. If he's there, maybe I'll ask for more than an autograph.

Aitor frowned and turned his face so the other wouldn't see his body's reaction. He wasn't the only one in that village who had spent years keeping quiet about what he wanted.

***

Unai pushed open the door to Aske the next day, in the middle of the afternoon, when no one else was left. The little bell rang and Mikel looked up from the counter. He recognized him at once: the confidence in the way he walked, the smile that asked for no permission, the way he took up space as if it all belonged to him.

—I was looking for something to train in —the boy said, wandering among the shelves—. But I might end up taking something else.

Mikel swallowed. He had learned to read men in locker rooms, to tell curiosity from desire, and what stood before him left no room for doubt. Even so, he forced himself to answer like any ordinary shopkeeper.

—The sweatshirts are over there. The fitting room's at the back.

Unai grabbed a couple of items almost at random and slipped into the fitting room without fully drawing the curtain. Mikel looked away out of habit, out of fear, out of all the years of practice. But when the boy called him, his voice carried a different weight.

—Will you tell me if it fits me well?

He said it from the back, with his shirt half off, his bare back and muscles tense under young skin. Mikel approached. The fitting room was narrow and the air inside was thick with the boy's scent, of clean sweat and something that made him clench his fists.

—It suits you —he murmured.

Unai turned slowly. They were a handspan apart. For a second neither of them moved, and in that second fit all the life Mikel had spent holding himself back.

—You've been staring at me the whole time like you're about to break —the boy said quietly—. You're not going to break.

And he kissed him.

***

It was Unai who made the first move, but it was Mikel who shoved him against the fitting-room wall with a hunger he'd been drowning for half his life. He bit his neck, dragged his hands down his firm chest, over his belly, to the bulge tightening his pants. The boy gasped and tipped his head back, offering himself.

—The door —Mikel managed to say.

—Closed —Unai replied with a smile—. I shut it when I came in.

He dragged him out of the fitting room, into the back room, where there was an old sofa the boy didn't even look at. He ripped off his shirt and stood looking at Mikel's body for a moment, the broad pectorals, the dark hair trailing down his abdomen, before pushing him down to sit and kneeling between his legs.

He unfastened his pants slowly, savoring the tremor running through that enormous man. When he took him in his mouth, Mikel closed his eyes and let out a sound he had kept locked up for twenty years. Unai knew what he was doing. He licked him slowly at first, watching from below, measuring every reaction, and then gave himself over without restraint until Mikel's hands closed in his hair.

—Stop —Mikel panted—. Stop or this will be over before it starts.

The boy stood up, took off what little clothing he had left, and sat astride him. Skin against skin, at last, the real weight of another body after so many years of imagining it only in hot water. Mikel ran his hands over his back, his firm buttocks, while Unai rubbed against him and bit his lower lip.

—How long has it been since you let someone touch you? —the boy whispered in his ear.

—Too long —Mikel admitted, and the word came out broken.

***

They did it slowly and then without restraint. Mikel laid him out on the sofa, prepared him patiently, attentive to every gesture, and when he finally entered him, both of them held their breath at the same time. The boy clung to his shoulders, dug his heels into his back, and asked for more in a voice that left no room for doubt. Mikel moved deep and steady, watching pleasure change that young man's face, watching what he had imagined alone for years now happen for real, hot and loud and real.

There was no silence this time. For the first time in his life, Mikel didn't cover his mouth.

Unai came first, arching with a long groan, and the spasm of his body dragged Mikel after him. He emptied himself inside with his forehead resting on the boy's shoulder, trembling, while incredulous laughter rose in his chest. It wasn't guilt he felt. For once, it wasn't guilt.

***

They lay there on the sofa for a while, catching their breath, their legs tangled. Unai lazily traced circles over Mikel's chest.

—You know half the village was dying for you to come back? —the boy said—. Aitor, the guy from the sports center, has been mentioning you for days.

Mikel lifted an eyebrow.

—Aitor?

—The trainer. —Unai smiled against his skin—. You're not the only one around here who's bad at hiding it. Maybe you should invite him to the shop one of these days. I wouldn't mind being there.

Mikel laughed for real, a laugh that came from a place he thought had been sealed off. He looked up at the ceiling of his back room, at the shop he had set up to hide in and that had just become the opposite. Outside, the village remained as quiet as ever, unaware of everything.

For the first time since he got off that bus, he had no desire to run.