The news of Ted Robertson's auto accident, relayed to us just before we were closing up the gym for the night, was a crushing blow to Daren. I had been watching Daren work out alone for the past hour and had even spent more time than usual with him in my capacity of the trainer on duty, and I could tell that he was in a dither. Ted Robertson, a good twenty years older than Daren, had become Daren's spotting partner at the gym in support of Daren's post-high school bulking up program in preparation for taking up his football scholarship at a prestigious university. And Ted hadn't shown up tonight.
To most Daren's near-total collapse in response both to Ted's absence when Daren expected to be working out with him and to the news that Ted had had an auto accident would seem an overreaction. Ted had not suffered life-threatening injuries and had been taken to the hospital in time to ensure a full recovery. But I knew what most didn't and what Daren didn't know I knew. I knew that Ted had finally convinced Daren to go home with him after the workout tonight and let Ted make love to him. Ted and I had both been cultivating the handsome young man for a couple of months, and Ted had not been able to resist gloating to me that he had won in the "deflower Daren" contest.
As the last of the clients were getting their gear together and preparing to leave the gym, I walked over to Daren, who was just sitting on a weight-lifting bench with a deer-in-the-headlights look of confusion and dismay about him.
"Daren, buddy. He's going to be all right. The hospital said it will just take him some time to recover. Why don't you hit the showers and then work out that tension for the shock in the hot tub?"
"But you're closing," Daren muttered. "I should go on home. Or I should go over to the hospital and check on him. Or . . . I just don't know. It's just such a shock."
"I don't have anywhere I need to be this evening, Daren," I said in the best soothing voice I had. "No problem with staying open for you for a while. I don't really think you should be driving home until the shock wears off anyway."
"Well."
"Tell you what. I've got a bottle of wine in the fridge here. I think a little bit of alcohol will help calm your nerves. And I'll hit the hot tub too. We can talk it out. I feel you need to talk about it to get your bearings."
"Well, OK," Daren said, and he stood and shuffled almost zombie style toward the shower—or at least as zombie style as a hot young blond bulking up for a college football scholarship could look.
I hurried and opened the wine and got two glasses and stripped down and entered the hot tub before Daren had finished showering. He came out in a pretty skimpy Speedo that started my juices to boiling.
When Daren entered the water and sat down across from me in the tub, I poured him a glass of wine and then another while we luxuriated in the hot, swirling waters. When I thought the moment was right, I opened up my campaign.
"You're taking Ted's accident a little hard," I began. "Tell me what you're feeling about that."
"I don't know. I don't know why it's hit me like this," Daren was saying. And I heard the catch in his voice. He was on the edge of control. I poured him another glass—and not really to steady his nerves as I claimed to him but to bring him closer to that edge.
"Maybe it's that immortality thing," I suggested gently.
"That immortality thing?"
"Yes, guys your age are just coming out of the phase where they assume they are invulnerable. That they'll live forever and never have to think about death. And then, wham, sometime a long about now, when you are approaching twenty and facing the world on your own, things start to happen to upset that apple cart. Ted could have died. One moment you expect him to be coming through the door and doing a gym routine with you and then the next moment, poof, he's gone. Is that what has you so choked up over this?"
"Yeah, I guess," Daren answered. "Well most of it . . . Maybe in part. It's just that. . . ."
