Out of the Pocket (28 page)

“Thanks, Coach,” I said, looking directly into his eyes.

There was nothing strange at all as he smiled and spoke back to me. “God bless you, Bobby.”

Rocky looked so deflated, standing alone on the sideline, his head hung low.

“Hey,” I said.

He didn’t look up. “Hey.”

“You’re gonna come back next year and you’ll get another chance,”

I said, not sure that was true. We were a pretty good bunch of seniors.

But still, what can you say to a kid after something like that?

“I ruined it for you,” he said, with tears in his eyes. “I let everyone down.”

Austin and Rahim walked over, their helmets in their hands.

“Don’t think like that,” I said. “We lost as a team, not because of you. If I made that two-point play, we win the game and none of this happens.”

Rahim put his arm around Rocky. “Chin up, bro. It’s okay.”

“Yeah,” said Austin. “It’s all on Bobby.” I looked up at him, shocked. “Kidding, dude. God, you’re so sensitive.”

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At least that made Rocky laugh, and the whole bunch of us walked him to the locker room, where we were doing pretty well for a team that had just lost a title game.

“Do you wish you could have that two-point play back?” a reporter asked me as we stood in the parking lot after the game. A bunch of them ambushed me, and I gladly took the questions, knowing it might never happen again, depending on what happened with college.

I thought about it. “No,” I said.

“Why not?”

“What’s done is done,” I said, picturing the five-iron Blassingame gave me. “We make that play, who’s to say what would have happened after that? The game is over. We lost, but at least we played well, you know?”

The reporters were silent. Maybe what I’d said wasn’t what they’d expected, I don’t know. The same guy who had asked me before the game about being a gay quarterback spoke.

“So how was it, being openly gay and quarterbacking a team to the championship game?”

In the ensuing silence, I could feel the tension. First lines for newspaper stories across the area and even the country were being devised as I spoke.

“I don’t know. Sort of like being an openly straight quarterback, but with a lot more media attention on me,” I said.

And with that, I walked off, unsure that what I’d said made any sense at all, but still glad I’d said it.

260

“Whoever said ‘turnabout is fair play’?” I asked Austin.

We were in my front yard on Christmas day, having just returned from our annual Christmas breakfast at Coach’s house. He’d presented us with league-championship pins to attach to our varsity letters.

“Dude, I don’t even know what that means,” he said.

I laughed. “I’m saying that we beat La Habra on a muffed kick, and then they did the same to us.”

“Yo, kid, all’s I know is if Rocky had some freakin’ balance, I could say I was on a championship team in high school.”

“Well, you can still say that,” I said.

He just looked at me.

“I mean, don’t say it to anyone who might actually check to see if it’s the truth.”

He laughed a little. “I’m surprised you aren’t more pissed off,”

he said.

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“Me too,” I said. “I don’t know.”

A football rested under the tire that hung from the oak tree. I jogged over and grabbed the ball and tossed it to Austin.

“I’ll miss this,” I said.

“Shut the hell up,” he said. “You’ll do this the rest of your life.”

I threw the ball hard at his midsection. He caught it. I’d meant I would miss doing this with him. We’d probably never play football on the same team again.

“By the way, it’s not a bad picture of you.” He tossed the ball back to me. I knew he was talking about the cover of
Out & About
magazine’s December 28 issue. After my article came out, another guy called who was much nicer, and this time I agreed to do it.

“Thank God they convinced you to put a shirt on.”

“Screw you, they wanted me naked,” I said. “It was my modesty—”

“Yeah, dude, you’re way modest,” Austin said. “Still, it’s cool.”

“Yeah, I mean, how many gay guys can claim to have almost led their team to a title for one of California’s three hundred and thirty zillion divisions?”

“I don’t know,” said Austin. “Five? Six?”

“That’s probably true,” I said, and we laughed together.

Austin caught a pass and tried to dunk the ball like it was a basketball, over a branch that’s about ten feet high. No good. “So where do you think you’ll be next year?”

“I have no idea,” I said. “Stanford probably won’t recruit me.”

“Yeah, I saw they’d already recruited a quarterback. Biggs from Los Alamitos.”

I hadn’t known that. I felt my stomach fall a bit. “Oh well.”

“I’m hoping for Fresno State,” Austin told me as he chased the ball.

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“That would be awesome,” I said. “Probably Colorado State for me, but I still have a few I hope to hear from.”

“Cool, we’ll stay in touch,” he said, and I nodded.

Austin tried to sit in the tire, but it wouldn’t hold his weight. It buckled under him, and he skipped away from it. “So the tier formation. Turned out okay, huh?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Better than I thought. Remember how we hated it?”

“You, mostly.”

“Yeah, right,” I said.

We sat on the grass, which was cold but dry. “How’s Rhonda?”

He sighed. “Shit if I know.”
Austin still
went
through girls like I
went
through pizza.

“Oh well,” I said, pulling out a tuft of grass and throwing it onto Austin’s lap.

“Plus, I’m done with all that running around,” he said.

“Get out.”

“No, really,” he said. “It’s stupid.” He took the grass off his lap and sprinkled it onto my head.

“Okay,” I said, wondering where my friend Austin was and who they’d replaced him with.

“How about Bryan?”

I wiped the dirt and grass off my head. “How’d you know his name?”

He screwed up his face at me. “What am I, an idiot? I saw him at the party. Plus, people talk,” he said.

“He’s good.” I smiled.

“What’s he like?”

“He’s nice. I mean, he does weird stuff, but he’s cool.”

“What’s weird, and do I want to know this?” he asked.

263

“Weird like refi nishing old furniture.”

“Yeah. I don’t know anything about that,” he said. “I guess that’s like if I’m dating a girl and she likes to go shopping.”

“Just about exactly,” I said, smiling at him.

Bryan is coming over later for Christmas dinner. It’s a little weird,
because my parents clearly like him more than they like me. He knows
exactly how to listen to all my dad’s stories and ask good questions,
and he laughs at my mom’s jokes. It’s a little annoying, tell you the
truth.

I’m not sure what any of this means yet. What does it mean that
I’ve just been through the worst months of my life, lost the title game,
and feel so happy I could almost burst? I’ll probably wake up out of
this soon and everything will be back to normal. Bobby the gay football star will be gone, and Bobby the regular guy will be back, and
it’ll be like putting on a well-worn sweater. I’m pretty sure that’s what
will happen, because life isn’t like this. We don’t get to live a life where
the good is so purely good that you can taste it, like the sweetness of
an orange.

But until that time, I guess I’ll enjoy this make-believe, fairy-tale life. Because it feels better, you know? Better than anything has
ever felt.

264

• Cover Page
  
• Title Page
  
• Copyright Page
  
• Acknowledgments
  
• Dedication Page
  
• Chapter One
  
• Chapter Two
  
• Chapter Three
  
• Chapter Four
  
• Chapter Five
  
• Chapter Six
  
• Chapter Seven
  
• Chapter Eight
  
• Chapter Nine
  
• Chapter Ten
  
• Chapter Eleven
  
• Chapter Twelve
  
• Chapter Thirteen
  
• Chapter Fourteen
  
• Chapter Fifteen
  
• Chapter Sixteen
  
• Chapter Seventeen
  
• Chapter Eighteen
  
• Chapter Nineteen
  
• Chapter Twenty
  
• Chapter Twenty-One
  
• Chapter Twenty-Two
  
• Chapter Twenty-Three
  
• Chapter Twenty-Four
  
• Chapter Twenty-Five
  
• Chapter Twenty-Six
  
• Chapter Twenty-Seven
  
• Chapter Twenty-Eight
  
• Chapter Twenty-Nine
  
• Chapter Thirty
  
• Chapter Thirty-One
  
• Chapter Thirty-Two
  
• Chapter Thirty-Three
  
• Chapter Thirty-Four
  
• Chapter Thirty-Five
  
• Chapter Thirty-Six
  
• Chapter Thirty-Seven
  
• Chapter Thirty-Eight
  
• Chapter Thirty-Nine