Going the Distance (19 page)

“I know,” I said, trying not to sigh.

“Well, then go make some friends. Or better yet, go get some. I mean, you’re not a bad-looking guy.” I stared at him, and he shrugged. “I mean, I’m guessing here. People say I look okay, and you have the same build as I do. If you were straight, I’d say come up here for a party and I could get three girls on you, but I’m fresh out of gay guys….”

“Your advice is to go get laid?” I asked him, not believing what he was saying.

“Danny, as we spend more time together, you’re going to find that’s my answer for a lot of things. Depressed? Get laid. Bored? Get laid. Have a test tomorrow? Get laid so at least you have something to think about when you’re failing. You’re sixteen! For Christ’s sake, loosen up.”

“It’s not that easy to just go get laid,” I muttered. “At least with guys. I mean, what if someone found out, and—”

“I get it. There just has to be a way around it.” He seemed to think about it for a second and then snapped his fingers. “I got an idea; hold on.”

He started typing something on his keyboard and moved his mouse around some. I’m not sure if he had minimized the Skype window, but I could still see him. It took about a minute, and then he said, “Okay, check your Facebook.”

I flipped screens over to a browser and pulled my Facebook account up. There was a friend invite from Amy. “What’s this for?” I asked, not accepting it.

“Amy is a theater major. Like, all of her friends are gay. Accept the invite and look through her friends. If you see anyone you like, I can be sure he’s gay and then see if he’s into you.”

“Dude, it’s Facebook, not a yellow pages to get laid.”

He chuckled. “You’ve been using it wrong. Click the invite.”

I did, not knowing what I had just agreed to.

The next few days, I ignored Facebook like a plague. I wasn’t sure what I was going to catch being on there, but I knew it couldn’t be good. Three more days of grueling PT, along with having to watch guys play basketball when I couldn’t, left me completely frustrated by the time Friday rolled around. I took the bus back from PT, once again cussing out the guy who’d totaled my [dad’s] Jeep not just for fucking my leg up but for making me ride public transportation.

By the time I got back to base, I was cranky and exhausted. I threw myself into the shower and hoped the hot water would somehow bring me back to life. Most likely I was overestimating the magical power of a hot shower, but at that point I needed something to cheer me up. There was a note on the table along with a couple of twenties from my dad telling me he had duty all weekend and I should order a pizza.

Friday night at home watching TV. It’s official, I was living the high life.

So it should come as no surprise that after a medium hand-tossed with extra cheese and three episodes of
Arrow
, I ended up on Facebook. I still had no idea if Amy even knew Nate had friended us, but I was so bored that I had nothing better to do. She had over a thousand friends, which was just silly because there was no way she knew all those people in real life. I mean, I was pretty sure I hadn’t even met that many people in my entire life, much less to be friends with. There was no mistaking that most of these guys were in drama and gay from the pics they had for their profiles. I know that sounds shitty, but I mean, there is being gay and then looking
real
gay. These guys looked flammable. I kept flipping through them, my boredom overriding the feeling I was just using a really skeevy dating service.

I was about to give up when I saw his picture in the middle of a dozen others.

It wasn’t just his blond hair or ridiculously white smile that made me notice him; there was something more. I clicked on his profile, and I was stunned by the guy I saw. His name was Sam Parker, and I was instantly attracted to him. I can’t lie. Anyone would have been attracted to him. He had shaggy blond hair that framed a face that on its worst day would be described as angelic. His eyes were such a bright blue that it looked like he was wearing contacts, though from the numerous pictures he had up, I could tell they were natural. He had a kicking body. He’d posted numerous pics of him with some friends at the beach, and I had to admit I would have stared at him relentlessly if I’d seen him in person.

He went to high school in Dallas, and from what I could tell, he was insanely popular.

I cyberstalked him most of the night. I found his Instagram account along with his Twitter and absorbed as much as I could. He played baseball for his high school, but he was openly gay, which blew me away because we were the same age, and he had already come out? If people had a problem with him being gay, it didn’t come up on social media. There was no way a guy like this was real. I left Nate a message on Facebook to call me no matter how late it was and tried to close my laptop.

That lasted, like, ten minutes before I was back online looking at this guy’s profile.

He had two older brothers who both looked like they were models too. From his pictures I could see he had been to Disney World twice with his family, and there were a ton of pics of him in Australia surfing. In fact, as I kept digging, there were a ton of pics of him in surfing trunks and nothing else. He had a flat stomach with a decent six-pack that looked like he took keeping in shape seriously. The more I learned, the more I became obsessed. Sam Parker was the perfect guy.

At some point I passed out, because I woke up with my cell blaring “Space Jam,” meaning Nate was calling me.

“Hey,” I croaked into the phone.

“Man, what were you doing all night?” he asked me in a cheerful tone that was not appropriate for this early in the morning.

“Um… nothing,” I said, rolling away from the sunlight coming through my window. “Ate pizza and….”

And I remembered.

I sat up and instantly regretted it as the sun killed me. Covering my eyes, I said, “I found someone.”

“Cool!” he said, sounding really happy for me. “Where did you meet him?”

“I haven’t yet,” I explained quickly.

“Wait, what now?”

“On Facebook, Amy’s Facebook. I saw someone on there.” Oh my God, this seemed so legit last night, but now I just sounded pathetic.

“Oh,” he said, confused, and then I heard him get it. “
Oh!
Yeah? Who’s the lucky guy?”

“Sam Parker,” I said, trying to push past how stupid I felt.

“Sam?” he asked. “Blond surfer-looking guy?”

“Yeah, that’s the one. He’s from Dallas?”

“Richardson—he goes to high school with Amy’s brother,” he confirmed. “Yeah, pick someone else, dude.”

“Say what?” I asked, sitting up in bed. “Why?”

From his hesitation, I knew he was searching for the right words. “Sam is… Sam is intense. He came out when he was, like, fourteen, is on the baseball team, I think he’s class president. I don’t think it would be a good fit.”

“Why not?” I asked, trying not to whine.

“Um… he’s… he’s pretty out” was all Nate said.

“Are you trying to say he acts like a girl?”

“Oh no, I had no idea he was gay until Amy told me. He comes off like a normal jock. I’m just saying he is pretty vocal about being gay. I don’t know if that’s your thing.”

“What would be so wrong with that?” I asked, even though I had a feeling what he was going to say.

“Dude, no one knows about you now, and that’s a good thing if you’re heading towards getting a scholarship. I’m not sure Sam is a date-on-the-DL kind of guy. I’m pretty sure if he was going to date someone, he would have to be out.”

“But he lives in Dallas,” I protested.

“Richardson,” Nate corrected me.

“He doesn’t live
here
,” I amended. “If I went out with him there, no one here would know. I mean, how could that hurt me?”

I heard him sigh and knew I was talking out my ass. “Look, man, I know what you mean. Sam’s a good-looking guy. I’m not gay and I know that. But he’s, like… I don’t know, like some kind of weird alpha gay male. I don’t know if you’re ready for that. Why don’t we stick a pin in that and keep looking?”

“Nate, are you saying he wouldn’t go for me? ’Cause if you are, just say it.”

“It has nothing to do with your looks. I just don’t think you’re gay enough for him, that’s all.”

We talked about the upcoming season a little, but my heart wasn’t in it.
Not gay enough?
Was that a thing now? I hung up and lay there in bed, staring up at my ceiling, wondering what I had done so wrong that life seemed to delight in kicking me in the balls. I mean, bad enough that I turned out liking guys, but now I didn’t like them enough? I just wished I could skip this part of my life and jump to the part where I was out of school and didn’t have to worry about what other people thought about this crap.

I put it out of my mind for the next few weeks heading up to the season.

The guys were good, but it was pretty obvious that we weren’t strong enough to make it to state this year. If they played their asses off, they might get to the playoffs, but past that, there wasn’t much chance. I didn’t say anything, of course, because people have a way of surprising you just when you thought you had everything figured out. I just helped where I could and encouraged them the best I knew how.

But it was hard.

As the season started, I saw plays they were missing, opportunities they were passing up on the court, and it took everything I had not to stand up and scream at them to pay attention. By the third game I was pretty sure I was on my way to an ulcer or a heart attack, and then I saw the coach looking at me, smiling.

“Welcome to the sidelines,” he said just loud enough for me to hear. “
This
is the hardest part of the game. Watching it and not being able to affect it.”

I suddenly had a huge understanding of how hard it is to be a coach.

I followed Nate’s season as closely as our own, and it looked like he was having about as much fun as I was. Their team was getting dominated by the other schools, not because they were lacking in talent but because the other teams had some incredible talent. I wasn’t sure how much A&M put into its basketball program, but whatever it was, they needed to spend a little more.

It was no surprise that we didn’t make it to the playoffs; we had played our hearts out, but at the end of the day we didn’t have the extra oomph that would have pushed us further. I had a sinking feeling that was on me. No one said the reason we lost was because I hadn’t been playing, but I knew it, and it made me work that much harder at getting better. By the time Christmas break was over, I was feeling a thousand percent better, and my hip barely ached at all.

“So you’re as good as you’re going to get,” PT guy said on a cold afternoon in December.

I was wiping myself down and looked up at him in shock. “I’m fixed?”

He shook his head. “No, I said what I meant. You’re as good as you’re going to get. Coming here or just doing it at home, it’s all the same from now on.”

I felt like it was my birthday and Christmas all wrapped up in one. “So I can play basketball again?” I asked eagerly.

He didn’t say anything for a long time while he picked up the mats we had used. The longer he was silent, the more scared I got. Finally he sighed and looked over at me. “Look, Danny.” I was shocked he knew my name. “I’m going to say something, and I know you’re going to want to argue and fight against it, but don’t, because I’m just telling you the truth. I don’t think you should play basketball anymore.” I felt the ground fall out from under me. “Normally a sport like that will cause repetitive stress injuries. With a part of the body that’s already weak, stressing it more is just asking for trouble. Does that mean you can’t play basketball? No. It just means sooner or later that hip is going to give out on you, and then you’re going to need, at the very least, a cane to walk for the rest of your life.”

It was the most he’d talked in the months I’d been coming there, and what he said was even worse than I’d imagined it would be.

“That being said, you’re going to do everything you can to play again, so it doesn’t matter, but I think you need to hear it at least once. Keep playing basketball, and you’re going to destroy your body. Period.”

I swallowed hard. “Are you going to put that on my evaluation?” I asked, talking about the piece of paper he needed to sign to let me back on the team.

He sighed again. “I should, but there is no earthly reason to do so. They want to know if you’re well enough to play basketball now, and the answer is yes. No one is asking me if you should or not. So I’m telling you. Don’t do it.”

I said nothing, knowing anything that came out of my mouth would be an argument.

“You still want me to sign off on you playing basketball, don’t you?” I nodded like a bobblehead. “Fine, I tried.”

He signed the paper and thrust it out at me. “When your hip gives out on you, don’t come back here. I hate seeing my all my hard work destroyed by stupid people.”

“Thank you,” I said, taking it before he changed his mind.

“And don’t ever thank me for helping you be stupid again.”

I changed and practically ran out of the gym.

I texted Nate on the bus ride back to base, telling him I was cleared to play again.

He texted back, asking if that meant I could come up to College Station for the weekend.

I literally made a
yahoo
noise when I read what he had sent. The old lady next to me moved a few inches farther away from me, but I didn’t care. I told Nate it meant exactly that.

My dad, on the other hand, thought it meant nothing like that.

“You just got off of disability,” he said as I set the table. “What if something happens up there?”

“Like what, Dad?” I pleaded but not whined, because my dad did not respond to whining at all. “I’ll be with Nate the whole time. It’s not like I’m going to fall down and not be able to get up.”

He didn’t say anything, which meant he was trying to find another reason to say no.

“Look, I’ll have my cell the entire time, and I promise not to be on my feet a lot.” He didn’t say anything. “Come on, Dad. You know Nate will be all mother hen on me as well.”