In March 2013, Nickelodeon asked me to fly out to Los Angeles as a guest of The Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards where I had won the ‘Favorite UK Sports Star’ category. Whilst I was in LA, I had an invitation to dinner from a friend, who told me to bring a couple of my friends; they said that they would bring a couple of theirs. I took some of the Nickelodeon team with me. We were about forty minutes late to dinner because the Nickelodeon guys had spent ages at the bar; I remember trying to cajole them away from their drinks and feeling really flustered arriving at the table, where everyone was already sitting and waiting for us. My eyes were immediately drawn to a man with huge broad shoulders, sitting in a corner seat at one end of the table. He was wearing a thin red hoodie and a worn leather jacket. Masses of sandy blonde hair partially obscured his eyes; as my own lingered on him for perhaps a few seconds too long, I saw a smile appear. Immediately, I thought, ‘Who is that?’
I had no idea about who Lance was or what he did, and after a few seconds it seemed that he didn’t know anything about me either (he later admitted that he had watched me at the Olympics, but just didn’t let on to me at the time). We made awful small talk about what happens in the Olympic Village and how it might make a great romcom. Everyone at the table was talking about TV, films and screenwriters. I got the sense that he was a big deal and started fumbling with my phone to Google him at the table—this was not something I would ever normally do, but I usually make a point of finding out who I will be meeting, and what they do, so I’m prepared. It’s important for conversation starters and I didn’t want to make a fool of myself or, even worse, embarrass anyone else. I clocked quickly that he was a screenwriter, filmmaker and Academy Award winner, and a big LGBTQ+ campaigner. Later on that evening, my friend who invited me told me to guess Lance’s age, and I thought he was probably about 28. When he told me that Lance was twenty years older than me, I didn’t believe him. Even when I clocked his birth year on Wikipedia, I thought it was wrong. I was intrigued by him and it felt like the chemistry was instant. As the dinner progressed, I kept looking at him and he kept catching my eye, which was awkward at times because I just couldn’t look away. Whenever he looked at me and saw me staring, I would look away, feeling as though I had been caught.
After dinner, the group went to have a few drinks and Lance’s assistant asked me if Lance could have my number. I punched my number into the notes in his phone and added an emoji winking face. I hoped that was enough to convey my interest—he later said that no straight man puts a winky face after their number!
Sure enough, the next morning when I reached for my phone, there was a text message saying how great it was to meet me. I felt an unfamiliar surge of butterflies.
That evening we met again and spent six hours talking. Because I was still not 21 and I couldn’t drink legally in public, he came over to my hotel, bringing a couple of Diet Cokes from the In-N-Out Burger next door, and we made some drinks with the miniatures in my mini bar. We bypassed the small talk this time, and very quickly chatted on a much deeper level. My dad, Rob, had died of a brain tumour in 2011 when he was just 40, and Lance had lost his brother Marcus to cancer in 2012, so we talked about our respective losses. He had won an Academy Award in 2009 for Best Original Screenplay for the biopic, Milk, about the life of the assassinated gay rights activist Harvey Milk. He said that winning the Oscar was amazing, a whirlwind-like two weeks when you’re everything. And then it was over. Back to work. But it wasn’t just about work anymore, it was about working to a level that could win more Oscars. That resonated so much with me. He had also been at the top of his game, and so I felt that he understood what I was going through: now I had won an Olympic medal, I needed to stay at that altitude. We both knew that after the highest of career highs could come the lowest of lows.
After hours of talking, I asked him if he had ever been taught to dive.
I stood up and said, ‘Clasp your hands above your head—that’s how we enter the water when we dive.’ As he did, I leaned in and kissed him.
Suddenly, everything felt joined up. It made sense. Whilst I had had relationships before, I guess it had never felt completely right and, until that moment, I couldn’t quite see why. I thought I’d been in love before but it was nothing compared to this.
I very quickly fell head over heels for Lance. I felt lovestruck—we spoke, FaceTimed and messaged each other constantly; I couldn’t get him out of my head. It was intense and my feelings just grew and grew.
When I got back from LA, the first person I told about what had happened was my friend Sophie. We had been on a night out to some bars in Plymouth and were eating pizza back at my house. We had both had quite a lot to drink, and I guess at that point I was never going to tell anyone about my feelings when I was completely sober.
‘I’m just going to come out and say this now in the hope that you or both of us will’ve forgotten we had this conversation by the morning,’ I muttered.
She looked at me, confused.
‘So, I met someone in LA. I think I’ve met the person I want to be with.’
‘Oh great, what’s she like?’
‘Well, it’s a guy.’
‘Oh right,’ she replied. She didn’t even bat an eyelid.
‘Is that all you are going say?’
‘Yeah, I don’t care. I’m happy for you.’
She gave me a hug and we continued tucking into our pepperoni pizza.
It felt good that someone knew, and there was someone I could talk to about Lance. I felt for the first time that I could be myself. I didn’t have to hide away like some sort of hermit crab.
Lance was, and still is, a real workaholic. He never took any holidays or days off. With a previous boyfriend, the best he had managed was the commitment of a weekend away; he left on the Friday evening and by the Saturday morning, he was freaking out that he didn’t have his laptop with him, so he had to go home. So, it was quite a leap of faith to start dating someone who lived over 5,000 miles and an eleven-hour flight away, and with an eight-hour time difference to boot. But we made it work.
We planned to meet up around my nineteenth birthday in May 2013, a few weeks after we had met. He told me he was scouting for locations in London for one of the projects he was working on. When I picked him up from the airport, I felt exactly as I knew I would: completely besotted. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. We went straight back to the hotel and got changed to go out for drinks and dinner for my birthday with my friends. After three lychee martinis, I was telling all of them and anyone else who would listen that he was my boyfriend. It might sound like a cliché but it happened quickly and I knew he was ‘the one’ for me. We spent a few days in London and whilst I did some media and sponsorship work, Lance went out taking pictures for his film project and we met in the evenings. We went to the Oxo Tower one night for dinner, for our first proper date. I didn’t know London that well, but had been for dinner there for my eighteenth birthday with my friends and family, and the views of London are pretty special. We spent a wonderful evening getting to know each other and played a game where we would ask each other questions and had to answer truthfully. He asked if I would be his boyfriend; I guess we both wanted to make sure we were reading the situation correctly. Then the following day, he told me that he loved me. I felt the same. I loved the fact he was so sensitive, protective and amazingly supportive. I had unwavering trust in him. We still go back to the Oxo Tower sometimes now, and it feels special because it is our first date spot.
Reprinted with permission from Coming Up for Air by Tom Daley, published by Hanover Square Press
Coming Up for Air is available from Amazon and Bookshop.