Working out with Ethan and the Club

As soon as Carl let us in through the glassy doors, he scooped me in for a hug and kissed me in front of Ethan.

“Missed you today.” He said.

“Me too.” I lost myself in him for a couple of seconds until Ethan coughed to warn us of his presence again. “Right! This is my roommate Ethan.”

“Hello, lad.” Carl put on his best masculine straight moves and fist bumped him like he wasn’t hugging another man on his left arm.

“I won’t kiss anybody.” Ethan joked and made us laugh.

We went down the lockers with Jim, Jeff and Simon going their way up, leaving us alone down there. We were quickly exchanging into proper clothes until he dropped his phone from his pants. I got down to pick it up for him, but tilted my head to the right confused. It was a weird looking iPhone that had a black detail over the screen on the top, with the front camera in the middle, dividing the notification bar in two tiny portions. Where was the main button? And who would do something like that to lose the screen space? And the thing was fucking huge, a slim brick.

I handed it back to him, checking again behind if it was an Apple original.

“Dude, what the fuck happened to your phone?” I asked him.

“Did it break?” He checked it himself. “What do you mean?”

“What kind of iPhone is that? I’m an Apple boy and I’ve never seen them releasing it.”

“What are you talking about? It’s from last year.” He twisted the phone in his hand, double checking if it was broken.

“No. Last year, as in 2012, Apple released this one. This is the latest they have.” I showed him my tiny white iPhone 5.

“No. Last year, as in 2018, they started selling this: the iPhone XS Max.” He paused and looked at me with a funny face, smiling. “We’re in 2019, Michael!”

And he froze there. Even the humming sound of the AC machine had stopped.

“Ethan?!” I called him, confused. He had the same pose as he did seconds ago, like he was a statue. What the fuck?!

I heard footsteps running down the stairs and saw who it was - Chris. Was that guy going to stalk me everywhere?

He was crying, tripping on his right foot, for what I could tell. He was shouting something, but all I could see was his mouth opening and closing. I instantly got scared he was trying to attack me again and I took a step back, falling down sitting on the bench behind me. He got really close to me, like we were intimates. He took both my shoulders and shook my whole body while still screaming soundless words at me.

For a second, I thought he was really gorgeous even while he cried. I wanted to brush the back of my hand on his left cheek to collect his tears. He lowered his head a bit and closed his blue eyes, so I focused on his mouth. I tried to read his lips and managed to understand something like “please, get out”. Looking at his crying face, my memory took me back to us kneeling down in the middle of an airplane corridor and his same suffering expressions facing me.

I had my face looking down at the floor. How could I have so many intimate memories of this lunatic? He took my chin up, just like Carl used to do, and we joined lips.