“You get a gold star,” Ben said. “That’s what those overweight middle-aged guys forget. Did you know that they find the majority of dead scuba divers on the bottom with their weights still in their BCs and their tanks full of air?” He shook his head. “If they’d just stop for a minute and not panic, they wouldn’t be dead scuba divers,” he concluded.

Hudson set his tank next to Ben’s. “Well, I can assure you that at the first sign of trouble, I will be happy to drop my weights and head for the surface,” he said. “But right now I’m heading for those showers. I’m freezing.”

“Sissy,” Ben called after him as Hudson trotted toward the locker room.

Hudson was standing beneath the hot spray of the shower when Ben came into the room. He was naked, and for a moment Hudson was shocked to see his body so openly displayed. He himself still had on his bathing suit, which clung to him in an unpleasantly cool way.

“Do you always shower with your clothes on?” Ben asked him, turning on a showerhead and waiting for it to heat up.

Hudson kept his eyes on Ben’s face. “It’s a holdover from gym class,” he said. “I hated showering in front of everyone.”

Ben nodded and stepped under the water, his back to Hudson. Hudson took the opportunity to examine Ben’s physique. It was what Marty referred to as “comfy chair” in shape, not fat but definitely twenty pounds on the far side of slim. Still, it wasn’t at all bad.

“I think it’s a generational thing,” said Ben, turning around so that Hudson had to pretend to be looking at something on the floor. “They made us shower whether we liked it or not. I guess I got used to it. Besides, it’s just a body, right? There’s nothing exactly exciting about it.”

That’s because you’re straight, Hudson wanted to say. If I were a naked woman, you might feel differently. Instead, he turned the water off and reached for his towel. Only when it was safely around his waist and he was in front of the locker holding his clothes did he remove his swimsuit.

“By the way,” Ben said, walking in as he dried himself, “I meant to tell you, you were right about Caddie.”

“How so?” Hudson asked as Ben, who had the locker beside his, stood close enough that Hudson could feel the heat coming off his bare skin.

“She finally talked to me,” said Ben, turning so that Hudson’s arm brushed against the hair on his chest.

“That’s great,” Hudson said, shutting the locker door and retreating to the sink. “What did you talk about?”