151 Days (10 page)

An arm draped over my shoulder, and I looked over to see Josh leaning against me. “So, Kyle, how does it feel to be the boyfriend of the captain of the varsity baseball team?”

For some reason his question made me blush, and I looked down in embarrassment.

“I guess it means I have to start coming to games,” Kyle answered, which seemed to be the right answer.

“To the Cowboys!” Josh shouted, looking at the rest of the team. “Future state champions!”

The hallway erupted into cheering, which was deafening in the small space but felt good nonetheless.

S
O
THAT
Saturday we had our first real practice as a team, and it was brutal.

Kyle had offered to come to watch, but I told him not to bother since all he would see would be Coach Gunn screaming at us no matter what we did. As I stood in the dugout drinking water, I was doubly glad that he hadn’t come to see us because it was embarrassing. You’d think by this time we would have learned that no matter how cocky we may have felt on Friday, we were going to have our faces pounded into the grass on Saturday.

Last year I resented the hell out of it because I felt like it served no purpose whatsoever. Coach would just work us until we puked, but now as team captain, I understood the logic in it. If we started the season thinking we could walk on water, then it would take at least four to five games to actually get our heads in the game, which meant we’d have to play catch-up. This way Coach Gunn broke us down and got all that garbage out of our heads so we could actually concentrate on our first game instead of how good we looked in our varsity jackets.

“Is he ever going to stop?” Josh panted as he came to a stop next to me. He had taken his water and just poured it over his head, a good idea considering, but I was too thirsty to try it.

I shook my head. “He wants state this year, and so do I.” He kind of smiled at me and then looked at my water. I sighed and handed it to him. “Better hurry, day is just starting.”

“
Get on the field
!” Gunn’s voice echoed throughout the dugout. If you didn’t know him, you might think he had a bullhorn to be that loud. You’d be wrong.

We didn’t finish until almost three in the afternoon. By that time we were lucky to be still standing, and even that was iffy.

“I sure hope you girls have more in you than that,” Gunn berated us as he walked up and down the line of guys. “Because if that was the best you got, then I might have picked the wrong guys to be on the team.” We all held our breath waiting for his next words. “We’re done for today. Hit the showers.”

Half the team just fell down into the grass; the rest limped back toward the locker room in silence. Coach walked over to me, and I forced myself not to wince from the pain I was feeling. “Here is the list of measurements,” he said, handing me a sheet of paper. “Make sure you get it to Parker’s sporting goods store by Monday.” I glanced down at it and nodded. “Not a bad first day,” he said in a lower voice and gave me a small smile.

Suddenly the pain diminished a little bit.

I stripped and lumbered over to one of the tubs we had for ice baths. One of the assistant coaches helped me sink into one—the freezing cold making my muscles go numb and the pain fade away ever so slightly. I remember when I’d first started playing and I saw older guys resting in these tubs and thinking there was no way in the world I would ever want to just lay in a pile of ice. But to be completely honest with you, it had been all I could think of since about noon. I know the normal person would think that sitting in freezing cold water would wake you right up but honestly, it’s as relaxing as hell. And I had almost dozed off when Josh’s voice woke me up.

“Hey, scoot over there, chief. I need some icy love.”

Now the tubs were designed for two people, but lately no one had dared get into one with me in case they might catch the gay. So I was caught way off guard when Josh dropped his towel and edged into the other side. I scooted back to give him space, but honestly, we were pretty big boys, and there wasn’t all that much space to share.

“Oh Christ, that’s the shit.” He sighed, settling in to his chest. I knew exactly how he felt. “They offered to set another up but there’s enough room, right?”

I nodded silently as I tried not to think that I was naked in a small tub with a guy who wasn’t Kyle.

“Cool, because I was about thirty seconds from breaking down and crying, I was in so much pain.” He closed his eyes and leaned back against the tub wall. “And no matter how much swag you think you got, there is no way to recover from openly crying like a bitch in the locker room.” He opened one eye and looked at me. “You know?”

I nodded again, wondering why this was fucking me up so bad.

“So… how’s things with Kyle? You guys hitting it off?”

His question was so random, so nonchalant that it came across suspicious as hell. No one had asked me anything about my relationship with Kyle, good or bad. In fact, it was as if we all had made a silent pledge to ignore the fact that I was gay when we walked into the locker room from now on. So this question, this innocent question from nowhere, set off just about every alert I had.

“Why?” I asked him in a tone of voice that could only be referred to as a demand.

Both eyes opened now, and he looked over at me with concern. “I was… I was just making conversation. I mean, it’s just a question, you know?”

His attempt to make his response seem innocent only made it seem that much more sinister. “A question you never asked before,” I pointed out to him.

He shrugged. “And? I never asked you about a lot of things. Is that a crime?”

I decided to just play along with him. “Kyle and I are just fine. Thanks for asking,” I said, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Cool,” he said, as if trying to distance himself from the topic altogether. I tried to ease myself back into the ice and relax again. Neither one of us talked for several minutes. I had almost dozed off again when he asked. “So, then, you and Jennifer are just friends now, right?”

My eyes opened slowly as I looked across the tub at him. “As opposed to?”

I saw him blush slightly and then look away for a second. “I mean, it’s not like you, her, and Kyle are, like… together, right?”

I tried to keep myself from laughing, but there was no way to stop.

“That’s a no?” he asked when I began to snort. “Okay, I get it, it’s a ‘no,’ but you see why I had to ask, right?” I really think I was crying, I was laughing so hard. He muttered under his breath, “You could have just said no and left it at that.”

For a few minutes, I couldn’t breathe, and my stomach was cramping because I had laughed so hard. After I caught my breath, I said to him. “You watch way too much porn, dude.”

From the way he looked away, I knew I was right. I didn’t think much about the conversation until much later.

“H
E
ASKED
if we were all, like…?” Kyle asked, making a gesture with his hands.

I paused in front of Tyler’s store. “Dude, I have no idea what that meant.” I pointed to his hands. “But I am pretty sure he was asking if the three of us were banging each other.”

Kyle’s face got a deep red as the mental image hit home.

I pushed open the door and found Mr. Parker sitting behind the counter nursing a Coke while he watched something on his laptop. “I know I am not paying you to watch movies, young man.” He looked up at me and flipped me off as Kyle closed the door behind us.

“That didn’t work coming from my dad. I have no idea why you think you’ll do any better,” he said, closing the computer.

“I have the uniform order,” I said, holding up the piece of paper. “So you may want to be nice to me.”

He rolled his eyes and looked at Kyle. “Can’t you control him?”

Kyle laughed and shook his head. “I suppose I could buy a collar and leash, but he’d still jump up and try to hump people.”

I looked over at him with a hurt look at my face. “Hey!” I protested.

He kissed me on my cheek. “But you are the cutest mongrel in town.”

I wasn’t too sure if mongrel was another hit, so instead I just took the compliment and passed the paper over to Tyler. “So here are the sizes for this year.”

He took it and glanced it over. “Looks about right.”

I looked over at Kyle, who knew what I was about to ask, and he nodded back at me. I took a deep breath and asked Tyler, “So what if I wanted to change something real small on that order?”

Tyler looked up at me and then over to Kyle. “Why do I have a feeling I am going to hate this?” His voice sounded worried. And the fact that neither of us answered made him even more skittish. “Brad? I am going to hate this, aren’t I?”

T
HAT
WEEK
flew by as we practiced harder and longer than we ever had before.

The pain and the discomfort became commonplace as our bodies grew accustomed to the rigor of actual season practice. That Thursday, the uniforms were delivered, and I had to admit, I had already forgotten last week’s talk with Tyler in the confusion of getting ready for our first game.

“
Greymark
!” Coach Gunn’s voice bellowed from his office. I had no idea what I had done wrong until I saw the delivery guy race out of the office as if he was on fire.

And then I remembered.

I got up, tossed my towel into my locker, and looked over to Josh. “When they speak of this, and they will, be kind and tell them I didn’t look scared walking in there, will ya?”

He had no clue what I meant but nodded anyway.

When I got into the office, Gunn stood there holding one of the uniforms. “Close the door,” he said, not even looking up at me. I closed it behind me but wasn’t sure why—not like his voice couldn’t be heard all the way to Oklahoma, door closed or not. “Is this some kind of joke?” he asked, holding the uniform up to me. I shook my head because I just didn’t trust myself to talk yet. “But this was your doing, right?” I nodded. “You want to explain yourself before I kick you off the team?”

I looked at the uniform and then back to him, trying hard not to show one iota of emotion. “I am pretty sure it speaks for itself.”

He waited for me to say more and then threw the shirt at me. “Goddammit, Brad! I went to bat for you!” I caught the shirt as he kept shouting. “There were more than a few people who wanted you gone, wanted you off the team and out of the school, forget being team captain. I spoke up for you, and this is how you repay me?”

And there it was. It seemed like a simple question at the time, but the answer was so much more than that. I was still looking down at the uniform, my fingers tracing over the left arm of the sleeve. “No,” I said in a quiet voice. “I was trying to repay him.”

We both stared at the black band that had been sewn around the left arm. An identical black band encircled every left arm on every uniform; and unless he wanted to hire a seamstress to come in and pull the threads out one by one, they were on there for good. “Do you know what the school board will say? No one cleared this with them. They are going to lose their minds.” I just stood there, not saying a word because I knew there was nothing to say. I had made my choice, and now it was time to pay for it.

“You’re off the team,” he said, grabbing the shirt out of my hand. “Clear out your locker.”

My eyes stung, but I wasn’t going to cry, and I wasn’t going to beg him. Instead I turned around and opened the door and was shocked to find the team standing there looking up at me. They moved as I walked out. Josh put his hand on my shoulder for support as I walked by. It was a nice gesture.

Coach Gunn walked out and saw everyone standing there. “Walker, you’re team captain.”

Josh tensed up for a moment, looked over at me, and then looked back at Gunn. “Then I quit.”

Every single person in the room froze.

“What did you say?” Gunn asked him dangerously.

“I said if Brad isn’t captain, I quit.” His voice gained some strength as he stood next to me.

I began to say to him, “You don’t have to—” when someone else stepped up. “I quit too.” And then another. “I quit too.” And then everyone else. “We quit.”

What the fuck?

Josh took a step toward Gunn and said, “We either play under Brad, or we don’t play at all.”

Coach looked at them all and then back to me. It looked to me like he was trying to figure out if he could kill me and get away with it. “Tell me this is legal,” he said, holding the shirt up.

Thanks to Kyle, I did know this. “The only rule says that nothing can be added to the uniform that is distracting, and if something is added, it needs to be on all uniforms of the team.”

He looked back at the stack of uniforms and thought for a couple of seconds. We all held our breath as we waited to hear if he was going to just cancel the season or let us play. With Coach Gunn, either choice was just as likely. Finally he looked up and said, “Then I guess this season is for Kelly.”

Without another word he turned around and slammed his office door shut. The team erupted around me in cheers, but I was stunned. Not from the coach’s words but from the small smile I saw on his face as he turned away. I had the feeling I just missed something, but I didn’t have time to think about it as someone dumped a bucket of ice water over me from one of the tubs and screamed, “
To Brad
!”

All my suspicions faded as I turned around and swore revenge.

It was the start of a great season.

K
YLE

I
AM
going to be honest with you when I say I don’t know who was more nervous about Brad making the team, him or me.

That Thursday I paced around his car waiting for practice to end. He had said that he would have a good idea if he was on the team or not, even though the list didn’t go up until Friday. I kept oscillating between being sure he was on the team to worrying that the school board or Raymond would keep him off out of sheer spite. It wasn’t that I disliked Coach Gunn; I just knew how much trouble the teachers could get into if they went up against Mr. Raymond.