Lace and Lockers

My locker sticks again. I jiggle the handle, hip it once, and it pops open like it always does. Old rec center. Old everything, really. The wood paneling, the flickering light over the benches, the smell of chalk and liniment that never leaves. I'm twenty-four and this place makes me feel eighty.

I sit on the bench and start tying my shoes. And that's when I remember the navy blue stockings.

It was two years ago. I was twenty-two, still married, still pretending I didn't notice things. Lauren and I had both just joined this dump through our friend Leon, and one Saturday she showed up in shorts instead of sweats. Navy blue stockings, sheer, with a line up the back. She acted like it was nothing. Like people wore those to leg day.

I noticed. Believe me, I noticed.

"Oliver. Earth to Oliver."

I look up. Lauren is standing over me, twenty-three years old, towel around her neck, hair stuck to her forehead. She's been my friend for two years now and she still catches me spacing out at least once a visit.

"Sorry. Zoning."

"You were staring at your shoes like they insulted you."

"They did. The laces are too short. It's a whole thing."

She laughs and drops her bottle into the cubby above my locker. "One more set of rows and I'm done. You coming?"

"Yeah. Give me a sec."

She walks off toward the cable machine and I finish tying my shoes and think, not for the first time, that I don't know what I'm doing here. Not at the gym. Here, in my own head. My wife died when I was twenty-three. Fifteen months ago now. And for fifteen months the answer to everything has been work, gym, sleep, repeat. Catering keeps me busy. Busy is the whole trick. You keep moving so you don't have to sit anywhere quiet.

Then Lauren goes and sits next to me on a bench and it's not quiet at all.

We finish the workout. She does her rows, I do mine, we trade the bench back and forth the way we always do. She talks about a wedding she's going to in October. I complain about a bride who wants a seven tier cake with five different flavors. Normal stuff. Easy stuff. The stuff that keeps a friendship alive without anybody having to try.

But when she racks her last weight, I linger. I slow down my stretches. I take forever re racking plates that were already racked.

I want her to stay. I want to see if tonight is the night something happens, and I don't even know what "something" means. I just know the gym empties out around nine and after that it's her car and my van and the drive home alone.

She dries her hands on her towel. She looks at the clock. She looks at me.

"I should probably..."

"Yeah. Probably."

She doesn't move. She stands there holding her towel, and then she huffs this little laugh at herself and sits down beside me on the bench. Close. Closer than bench sharing requires. Her knee touches mine and stays there, and I can smell lavender on her skin, over the sweat smell of the room. Lavender. Of course. She's the kind of person who smells like lavender on purpose.

"Can I tell you something weird?" she says.

"I'm a caterer. Nothing is weird to me. I once saw a groomsmen fight over a crab puff."

"This is weirder than crab puffs."

"Big if true."

She picks at the towel. Then she just says it, fast, like ripping tape off. "I always wear stockings when I come here. Always. Every time."

I blink. "Stockings."

"Like, real ones. With garters sometimes. Under the sweats. Nobody knows. I change in the locker room and I'm careful about it and it's my thing and it's completely ridiculous and I've never told anyone."

I should laugh it off. That's the safe move. But my heart is doing something in there, and what comes out of my mouth instead is the truth.

"I've noticed."

She turns her head. "You what?"

"The navy blue pair. Two years ago. You wore shorts that day and there was a line up the back of the stocking and I remember thinking, huh, that's not gym wear. And I've been noticing ever since. I just never said anything because, well." Because I was married. Because it felt like a door I didn't get to open. "Because it didn't seem like my business."

"Oh my god." She covers her face with the towel. Her voice comes out muffled. "You noticed the navy ones. That's the pair I got caught in the rain in and decided, whatever, life's short."

"Life's short," I say, and we both laugh, and the laugh has a nervous edge on it that I can feel in my teeth.

She lowers the towel. Her ears are pink. "This is so stupid. It's just underwear."

"It's not stupid. I get it. More than you'd think."

"You get it?"

I look down at my hands. Here's my own weird thing, and I've told maybe two people, and both times it went badly. "I love stockings. Like, a lot. The way they feel, the way they look, the little details. The top band, the seam. It's not a costume thing for me. It's... I don't know. It's the whole point of the thing. Lace and silk and the way it changes how a person carries herself."

She's quiet for a second. "Oliver."

"Yeah."

"I have a collection. Like, a real one. A drawer and a half. I've been dying to show someone for years and there was never anybody who would understand."

"So show me," I say, and then my brain catches up with my mouth. "I mean. If you want. No pressure. Forget I said it."

"No, I..." She looks around the locker room. It's empty. The light over the benches flickers its flicker. "Okay. Okay, actually, yes. But you have to promise to be normal."

"I'm never normal. I'm a guy who arranges fruit by color."

"Close enough."

She unzips her gym bag. She does it carefully, like she's opening a present for somebody else, and digs past the shoes and the wrap and the spare shirt. What she comes up with is a sheer black stocking, rolled into a soft ring. She holds it up between two fingers like a prize fish.

"Oh," I say. My breath catches. I hear myself do it and there's nothing to be done about it.

"This is the good pair," she says. "Silk blend. They cost more than my electric bill and I regret nothing."

"Can I?"

She puts it in my hand. I run my thumb over it and it's so fine it barely feels like anything, just warmth and slip. The seam is a delicate darker line. The top would have that lace band, the kind that grips a thigh all on its own.

"You're making a face," she says.

"I'm having a moment. Let me have my moment."

She laughs, and then she goes quiet, and I can tell she's deciding something. I sit still and let her decide. That's the rule I've made for myself lately. Wait. Let people get there.

"Nobody's here," she says, half to herself. "And it's just a leg. People show legs at the beach."

"People do show legs at the beach. I've read about it."