Going the Distance (21 page)

“I am,” I quipped back. “But it’s okay, Nate. I’ll still tell people you’re my friend.”

He laughed. “Whatever, smartass, just get here already.”

He hung up, and a few seconds later he texted me the school’s address. I punched it into the GPS and took one last stretch before getting back into the car. I was almost there—one more hour and I could stop fucking moving. Dallas was a huge city, and I had to admit I wasn’t ready for it at first. I had been lulled by Corpus, and Texas in general, to believe that it was more a sprawling mass of nothing than an actual modern place, but as I drove into Dallas proper I found I was completely wrong.

More than just big, it was modern, sleek—in a word, exciting.

The traffic was horrible, of course, but even that was cool to me, since the most traffic we ever saw in Corpus was when some dumbass couldn’t figure out how to get off the freeway correctly and tied up traffic for a whole ten minutes. This was actual traffic from too many people all going somewhere at the same time. It was kind of cool.

For about twenty minutes, and then I was over it.

I honked my horn a few times and even screamed at a few people as I slowly but surely made it through downtown intact. I followed Nate’s directions faithfully, and within a half hour, I was through the mess and on my way to Richardson. I pulled up in front of the school and realized I might have actually read the directions instead of just blindly following them.

It was a Catholic school.

Well. I assume Catholic because that was the beginning and end of everything I knew about religion. It looked like a nice place, all things considered, but as I parked, I couldn’t help but feel like I was sneaking into enemy territory. I texted Nate I was there, and minutes later he came out of the school with a huge smile on his face.

“Magellan has arrived!” he called out to me. “I had even odds you would get lost somewhere downtown.”

I hugged him and took a second to relish the fact I was with him again. “Almost, but the thought of food kept me moving.”

He patted me on the back and walked me into the school. “It’s about to start, and then, trust me, Amy’s parents always go to this kickass BBQ place that will fill you up.”

The halls we walked looked just like a normal high school except for the religious imagery all over the place. There was a case with sports trophies just like ours, except there were a crap ton more trophies. “So her brother goes here? Like, for high school?”

He nodded as we walked into a huge auditorium. “Yeah. Amy went here too. It’s a great school if you can get in.” When he saw I was confused, he explained, “It’s a private school, and not a cheap one either.”

I couldn’t imagine, having gone to high school for free; paying for it seemed insane.

There were almost a hundred parents in the auditorium, all of them dressed like they had way more money than my dad ever made. Nate walked us almost to the front, where there was a collection of people sitting waiting for the show to start. I recognized Amy from her appearance on Nate’s Skype sessions.

She gave me a huge smile and stood up quickly. “Danny!” she exclaimed like we had been friends forever. “You’re taller than he said you were.” She hugged me, and I hesitated for a second before hugging her back. You ever meet those people who are just so happy, they make you happy by osmosis? Amy was one of those people.

“Yeah, trust me; ‘little brother’ is a joke on many levels,” Nate said from behind me.

“Mom, Dad, this is Nate’s brother, Danny,” she said after we hugged. Her parents gave me warm smiles, and her dad shook my hand.

“How was the drive? Had to be tiring,” he said as we sat down.

“It wasn’t bad,” I lied, my leg throbbing from being still for so long. “I had a lot of caffeine and music, so it was all good.”

They nodded and laughed, and I looked over to Nate. “Brother?”

He shrugged. “Might as well be,” he said, smiling. “’Sides, what do they care?”

The lights went down, which was good because it hid the huge smile that had broken out across my face.

The first few presentations were from younger guys, like freshman doing some lip syncing and one guy doing a violin thing that looked like it was hard as shit to play. Next were the sophomores, and you could see the routines were getting a little more involved with costumes and set decorations. Some were cool, but it was mainly parents who were digging it.

Then the juniors came out and did their thing, and the difference was like night and day. Where before there were just groups of guys going up there lip syncing, these guys were actually singing and doing a pretty good job at it. After the normal kids sang, the football team came out in their letterman jackets and sang an a capella version of a One Direction song. It was better than it sounds, and the girls in the crowd went ape shit as the jocks bumped and ground to the beat.

Nate nudged me and said the guy on the end was Amy’s brother.

They got a standing ovation, of course, because who doesn’t like seeing jocks sing and dance in rhythm? The juniors cleared off and the announcer introduced the varsity baseball team, and the crowd got quiet in anticipation. The lights went down, and the familiar guitar thrum from “Stacy’s Mom” came blaring over the speakers. I heard a couple of girls scream when the lights flashed once and a spotlight hit a jock who was singing. At the next beat, another light and another jock. Three beats, then the song started, and the lights came up on stage, revealing the baseball team.

In board shorts, sunglasses, a pair of socks, and nothing else.

If I thought people went crazy over the football team, it was nothing compared to the sight of a dozen shirtless baseball players singing on stage. They were all ripped and hot. I mean, that was obvious, but all of them together just multiplied the effect tenfold. They looked like the youngest troupe of male strippers in the world. My mouth went dry, and I felt myself get a little hard as the song began.

I watched the guys on the end push around fake lawnmowers while the guy in the center sang, and I was just blown away over how hot these guys were. They were all wearing white socks, which made the whole effect even hotter for some reason. My eyes had no idea where to look, but when I focused on the guy singing, I knew I had been looking at the wrong guy this entire time.

The guy was Sam.

I want to say “my Sam,” but that’s silly, since I had never even said one word to him. But it was still how I felt. That was my Sam, and he was shirtless up there being the hottest guy in the world. His hair was wild, the shaggy blond locks glowing under the stage lights making him look like an angel. His body was even better than the pics had shown. Every single cut of every muscle was perfectly defined as he stalked the stage, singing to the audience. He owned that song and the crowd. He grinned at the girls, singing how Stacy’s mom might need a guy like him, and I knew if there was a universal symbol for sex, Sam’s grin while he sang was it.

The guys behind him kind of swayed together to the beat, but trying to watch them was useless, because I couldn’t tear my eyes off my Sam.

He pushed his sunglasses up onto his head, and I could see the bright blue of his eyes glimmer at me from the lights. He was leaning forward, and I could see a string of
puka
shells around his neck that made him look like the perfect surfer boy. Girls ran up to the stage and waved their hands at him as he passed by, like he was an actual rock star.

This guy was openly gay? How did that happen?

He paced the stage as he asked if Stacy remembered when he’d mowed her lawn, and even more girls screamed in response. I looked around and no one had anything less than a huge smile on their face. People were standing up and swaying with the music. Most of them women.

What was going on?

I looked over at Nate, and I caught him staring at me with a small smile. He leaned closer to my ear and whispered, “Don’t ever tell me I didn’t get you anything.”

He sat back, and I just gaped at him in shock. Erotic shock, but shock nonetheless.

A few people performed after the baseball team, but I don’t recall them. Every time I closed my eyes, I could see my Sam’s body in front of me, like I had been staring at the sun too long. If I had thought he was perfect after looking at the pictures on Facebook, I was assured he was more than perfect by seeing him in person. Midway through the senior presentations, Amy’s brother, Conner, came and joined us, his letterman jacket under his arm since he had looked like he was ready to pass out on stage.

Amy introduced me to him in whispers so as to not interrupt the people on stage.

“Oh yeah,” he whispered, shaking my hand. “The basketball guy, right?”

I nodded, wondering what Nate had told them about me.

He looked me up and down for a few seconds and then chuckled. “Yeah, Sam’s going to love you.”

I felt my heart skip a beat as he went back to watching the presentations.

Turning to Nate, I grabbed the front of his shirt and asked, “What did you tell them about me?”

He looked a little worried by the intensity of my question. “What, dude? You wanted to meet him, right?” I said nothing. “I talked to Amy who talked to Conner who talked to Sam.” When he saw I wasn’t even breathing, he patted me on the back. “Calm down, man. If we can get a man on the moon, we can get at least one under you.”

If he thought he was being funny, he was sorely mistaken.

The rest of the show passed in a blur. My stomach threatened to climb up my throat and out of my mouth in protest.

No
way
could I meet Sam tonight! I’d just gotten done driving for like a year and a half, and I hadn’t been able to really work out in forever. Not that I would have had a chance if I’d looked my best. Guys like him could have anyone in the world, and he had to know that. Why would he even bother looking at some skinny freak like me in the first place? Somewhere in the middle of some seniors doing a really bad version of “Call Me Maybe,” I felt my stomach kick one last time, and I raced out of the auditorium to find a bathroom.

Luckily there was one across from the doors, and I raced into a stall just in time to see everything I had eaten in the last week come spilling out of my mouth like an upside-down geyser.

On my knees, I kept heaving and heaving as I felt tears falling from my eyes. I hated throwing up under normal circumstances. This was anything but normal. A couple of minutes later, I felt a hand on my back and Nate’s voice telling me it was going to be okay. “Come on, man,” he said quietly. “Get it all out.”

I know it should have made me feel better to have him there, but honestly it just made me feel ten times worse. Bad enough I was having a panic attack over meeting a guy, but worse that my best friend had to see me crying like a little bitch. I knew he was trying to help me, but it was doing anything but.

I heard someone else’s voice in the bathroom, and Nate said to them, “He’s cool. Get him some water, okay?”

I heard the bathroom door close, and we were alone again.

“Dude, what’s wrong?” Nate asked quietly. “Are you that upset about meeting Sam?”

I nodded, face still over the toilet.

“Why?” he asked, his voice straining because he obviously didn’t understand my distress. “Danny, he’s going to like you, and if he doesn’t, that’s cool too. I mean, you can’t stress out so much about meeting one guy.”

Wiping my mouth, I looked over at him. “You don’t get it, Nate. Guys like Sam, they have the entire world in front of them. There is no one who wouldn’t go out with him. You only get one chance to make an impression with someone like that, and on my best day I’d be iffy. But like this?” I said, gesturing to myself. “Like this I’m just a freakishly tall geek who has never gone out with a guy for real. Why would he even bother?”

“Because you’re a great guy,” Nate said without hesitating. “And if he can’t see that, you don’t want to be with someone like that anyways.”

“You don’t get it,” I said, feeling my stomach finally unclench. “It’s different for guys.”

He helped me up as Conner came back in with a bottle of water. “You okay?” he asked me, obviously having no clue what was wrong.

I nodded and took a huge gulp of water. “Yeah, just feeling a little sick. Shouldn’t have eaten gas station hot dogs.” It was complete bullshit, but he seemed to accept it.

“Conner, tell Danny here about Sam.”

I glared at Nate, but he ignored me. Conner started to talk.

“Sam is a trip,” he explained. “On the surface he comes off like a self-absorbed asshole and most people think that’s all he is, but he’s not like that at all. He’s really smart, even though he never shows it. He really gets tired of people just liking him for his looks. So far it’s been mostly girls since he’s the only gay student we have, but the quickest way to piss him off is to just go on about his looks, because they’re the last thing he values.”

Sam sounded like no one I had ever met before. “So then what does he value?”

“Integrity.” Conner answered without even thinking about it. “If you knew his brothers, you’d get it, but Sam lives his life by this weird code, like a knight, and people who don’t, he blows off pretty fast.” He paused for a second. “Wait, you’re not throwing up because of meeting Sam, are you?”

I didn’t say anything.

“Dude, you can’t stress over that. He knows what you look like. He may not be shallow, but he’s not going to meet up with someone he isn’t attracted to. And trust me, he’s attracted.”

“How does he know what I look like?” I asked while glaring at Nate.

“What?” Nate said after a few seconds. “Only you can Facebook-stalk someone? I told him you were into him and he looked you up. Not my fault you have, like, a thousand pics on your wall.”

“They’re from games.” I said lamely. I got tagged by guys on the team all the time when someone posted pics from a game.

“Yeah, well, he liked what he saw,” Conner assured me. “So just chill, it’s all good.”

“You seem pretty open-minded about him being gay,” I said, finishing the last of the water.