Six Ways from Sunday (8 page)

But there they were. Both of his parents waving from the sidelines. Maybe the heat had finally gotten to him and he was mistaking another guy’s mom and dad for his. He grabbed a bottle of water from the water boy and started the jog across the field. They were done for the day. Time to deal with the interviews and the photo ops and he’d rather just go hug his family and fuss at them for not telling him they were coming.

That’s when he saw her. Slightly taller than his mother. Same type of hair. Except brown. Straight, styled to the side with a little lift on top. She wore a dress in this heat. A black one. He hadn’t seen her since that morning seven years ago when she’d walked in on him and Dylan. And screamed and ran out.

Bo faltered a step, his jog coming to a halt. He couldn’t see anything but her. He couldn’t hear anything but his own blood pounding through his head as it roared past his ears. He dropped his helmet and the water and just stood there staring at her. She wouldn’t be here. Unless. Unless.

“No,” he said, shaking his head, hoping he really was hallucinating. “No, no, she can’t be here.”

“Hey, ‘Cephus, you okay, man? You look…” Bo didn’t know who was shaking his arm, or who was speaking. He just heard the words. He couldn’t look around; he couldn’t take his eyes off her. Not even when she started across the field.

“She can’t be here. She can’t,” he told the guy shaking his arm. But she was and he didn’t need her to say a word. He could see it in her eyes. “No. It’s a lie. No.” His legs wouldn’t hold him up. His knees screamed at the impact. But not as loud as his heart. “No.”

There was noise all around them. Her arms were around his shoulders and she looked down at him. Tears tracked down her face.

“Nooo, it’s a fucking lie. Noo. No. God dammit, no. You can’t be here, it’s all lies. You can’t.” There were hands on him from all around. He shoved them all off. He couldn’t stop staring into her eyes.

“Dammit, Bo, get up. Get up and stop acting like this.” His father’s voice intruded and in that moment he hated him. Hated him for all the bullshit he’d put Bo through. All the years of riding his ass. Of treating Dylan as if he were dirt under his feet.

“You never liked him. You never got it. You never…he was mine. I won’t let him be gone. Not now. Not when he promised. One year. He was coming back to me in one year. We were going to be together. He never lied to me. Never. The only person I ever trusted to tell me the truth. He isn’t gone. He isn’t dead.” Bo tried to shrug off the hands that grabbed his arms. He tried to get away but there were too many. Too many hands. All stronger than him. They dragged him off his knees and across the field into the building, away from the cameras that were recording everything. Away from the mother with the tears who never said a word. But not his father. Never his father.

“Was that why?” Bo screamed at him the moment his ass hit a bench. His father just stood there, looking lost and small next to all of those uniforms around him. “Is that why you hated him, because you knew he loved me? Is that why none of the coaches would help him get a scholarship. You didn’t want him going with me. Is it?”

“Bowen…” His dad glanced around at the startled faces. Bo dragged his practice jersey over his head, his pads followed. He couldn’t breathe. The room moved. The worn out t-shirt he wore to keep his pads from chaffing suffered a few more rips. “This is grief. He was your best friend. We’ll get through this. We’ll—“

“He was my everything. My best friend. My first love. My only love. We were going to be together. Twelve months. It’s all he had left.” He screamed the words as if giving voice to the truth would bring him back. It didn’t. Nothing would.

Silence filled the room. His father looked as if he’d been slapped. His teammates backed away. More silence followed when he bent over. Those standing beside him could see the tattoo. He heard the comments.

“He has one just like it. With my name. It’s all we had to give each other. I have his high school ring. He has my team ring.”

“You need to think about your career right now.” This from his dad. Anger in his eyes. His son doing exactly what he’d trained him not to do. Showing weakness. Fuck that noise, Bo knew he was falling apart. He just didn’t give a fuck.

“Fuck my career. Fuck football. And fuck you. He’s gone and that’s all you care about. Saving fucking face. I don’t want this without him. His path—his path is ended. And mine…he should have been with me. Here. He’d still be alive. He’d still be…” he felt the sharp stab in his arm, the burn of the drug in his veins. The room cleared quickly after that. “I can’t walk this path without him. I can’t.”

He saw his parents leave with one of the coaches. A couple of the team doctors hustled them from the locker room into the bowels of the training facility and Dale Shannon sat down on the bench right in front of him. His eyes curiously blank. His hands cold when he took Bo’s hands. And Bo let himself go then. There wasn’t anyone else around to see. Fuck ‘em all. He didn’t need them. Or this job. His body betrayed him and he lay down on the bench, looking for some relief to his own personal hell. The drug they’d stuck him with finally dragged him under. And that’s where he hoped to stay. Fuck 'em, six ways from Sunday….just fuck ‘em all.

Chapter Seven

Bo sat uncomfortably on the love seat across from the blonde. She wanted an exclusive and he didn’t really know who she was. The next Barbara Walters is what his PR person told him. Hell, he didn’t even know his PR’s name. He didn’t care either. Just some guy his dad hired to deal with the mess he’d created.

“One year ago this weekend, the world watched as you and Sergeant Dylan Sunday were reunited.”

“I don’t want to talk about him. If that’s the exclusive you’re looking for, you’re not going to get it.” Bo shifted to move the microphone pack that was pressing into his spine. “Football. The playoffs. The Super Bowl. What I eat for breakfast, how much I bench. Politics… Whatever… but not about him.”

“Okay, Bowen, sure. Earlier tonight, you repeated your Super Bowl win from last year. Congratulations. That’s a huge accomplishment.”

“Especially when most of the football world would preferred that I’d gone quietly away. I guess.” He shrugged, thinking about it. “This last season was difficult. We shouldn’t be here but we are.”

“You said that most of football would prefer that you had gone away? Care to elaborate on that?”

He knew she was fishing. He wasn’t inclined to talk about that any more than he was about Dylan. “Not really, no.”

“So what can we talk about? Your work with the Wounded Warrior Project? But that would bring us back to the subject you’d rather not discuss. Dylan Sunday.”

She stared him down. He stared back. She knew he was here under duress. “I have more money than I know what to do with, and if it helps…” He shrugged again, evading the real question.

“It’s more than money. You made this your personal cause. When so many other projects could use your money and your time. Like gay rights. The only out gay football player in the NFL and you ignore that cause altogether. Why is that?”

“It’s not easy being the only queer in the locker room. I’d rather not call any more attention to it. Simple math. Make them forget. They can’t forget with it in their faces.” He felt disloyal to the other guys struggling with their sexuality in this sport but he shook it off. He wouldn’t be the poster boy for anything getting better in football.

“You said this year was tough? Tell me what that means.” She cocked her head to the side, waiting for him to step into her carefully laid trap. This was a dance. One he’d side-stepped all season. “The silent treatment isn’t working, Bo, people want to know you. They want to know what makes you special but you hide and evade. The photos of you and Dylan Sunday last year made international newspapers. The touching reunion of two best friends separated by war. But you were more than that. His death—“

“I said leave him out of it. He didn’t ask to be dragged into this. My parents handled that day wrong. If they hadn’t brought the news to practice, then the media wouldn’t have seen me fall apart. I’d still be just another tight end. And oh, aren’t those jokes just hilarious. It’s a fucking position. The locker room jokes weren’t funny the first million times. My teammates acted like I was…well, let’s just say I figured it out. The fear, they were afraid of me even though they knew me; they were afraid that I’d treat them like they treat their women. Like all of a sudden I’m sizing a guy I work with up for sex and objectifying him. I never did that before and I didn’t do it after. But that’s how it became. I showered at home. Or alone. I had to run faster, jump higher, play better than everyone on the team just to get the same respect I had last year. Scoring four of the five touchdowns last year to win the Super Bowl didn’t matter. I became this inferior person because I am gay.”

“But you stayed. You made them respect you. You made them pay attention. You could have left; you didn’t have to put yourself through any of this just to prove something. Especially after his death.”

“I wanted to. That first week. I envy those players who can play through grief. I wanted to go out on that field and kick ass and take names but I couldn’t even drag my ass out of bed that first week. I was ready to hang up my cleats. The owners would have taken my resignation and they would have heaved a huge sigh of relief because they didn’t want the drama. They had my contract almost in the shredder; okay, that’s just me being dramatic but there was conversation. I could just walk away, and they’d pretend nothing happened, have a nice life. No drama. And certainly no negative press for having a fag on the team.”

“But you didn’t. And the press would have been worse if you had been let go. Did you ever think about it that way?”

“I didn’t. I didn’t care what the press thought or said; they didn’t matter, none of that mattered. I didn’t walk away because Janine wouldn’t let me. And yeah, it was brought to my attention that I was paving some roads. Roads I didn’t want to pave. I don’t want to be the first. The role model for all the closet cases. Or the kids. Kids like me that want to play but can’t because of their sexuality. I did that because Janine called me every morning and told me to get my ass out of bed and make her son proud to have known me.”

“Janine? Dylan’s mother?”

“Yeah, I always called her Ms. Sunday. Because that’s what she was to me. Dylan’s mom. She picked us up from practice. She sat in the rain to watch our games when we were little. She gave up time at work to make sure Dyl and I had football. My dad coached the high school team, and my mom couldn’t take the time. Dylan’s dad was military until he retired but we were older then.” He knew he’d stepped into her trap when the first smile touched his lips. “Those were great days.”

She smiled at him now, a real smile not just a TV smile for the cameras. “And Janine called you every morning.”

“She did. I think it became our way of dealing with it. She was all alone now. Her husband and son gone. I was it. My dad still isn’t speaking to me. My mom just doesn’t know what to say. It’s been tough. But Janine would call me, she’d tell me to get my ass out of bed because Dylan wouldn’t like that I’m lying there feeling sorry for myself. Get up and run. And then run when you want to stop. So I ran. And I went back to work because she told me to. She reminded me that I used to be the one who ran the bullies off Dylan. And that I’m bigger and meaner than anyone. Don’t let them bully you. She told me that as if I was ten again. Stand up for yourself because you’re better than everyone. Get up.”

“She sounds like a great woman. Dylan would be proud of her.”

“I’m sure he is. She needs to know that. She kept me going when I didn’t want to. We’ll get through what the future brings, Janine and me.”

She nodded, he could have sworn he saw tears in her eyes. “I understand there’s a legend behind the hair?”

He tugged at a strand then realized what he did and flipped his hair behind him. “I always kept my hair really short. My dad gave me one of those ridiculous buzz cuts every summer when I was little. It helped with the heat and it was easy enough just to rub some soap and rinse and it just really never occurred to me that I was not fashionable. Dylan liked his hair longer, he’d wear it in whatever the current boy band style was. He owned a hair dryer and a straightening iron, for Christ sake. Should have known then, you know?” He grinned, remembering. “It was cute the way he fussed over his hair. I gave him shit for it. When he went into the Marines and they shaved his head. I think we both mourned. I promised him that I’d never get a haircut again in protest. That was seven and a half years ago. I can’t cut my hair until he comes home. I made that promise.”

“Given the circumstances, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if you—“

“No. Not until Dylan tells me it’s all right.”

“Even though that may never happen? I think at some point you’ll have to cut some of it off.”

“Given the circumstances, yeah. It may never happen. And I get it trimmed once every so often so that it’s not down to my ass. One day I’ll be able to get to a point that I can let go and then I’ll donate it to that group that makes wigs for cancer patients.”

“Locks of Love?”

“Yeah, them. I’m not there yet. I might never get there. Besides I like having long hair. Promise or not.”

“One year ago tonight, I tried to get you to sit down for an interview but you disappeared. I thought you were just ditching me.”

“Yeah, sorry. I had something more important to do that night.”

“More important than celebrating your win with your team?”

“Yeah. More important than that.”

“Would you tell me if I asked nicely?”

He thought about it; he could lie. Or he could look her in the eye and make her wish she’d never asked. “Reuniting with Sergeant Dylan Sunday. We had six years to get out of our system and only a week to do it in.”

She turned red; her eyes went wide when she caught on to his meaning. “Oh.” The laugh was nervous and a little embarrassed. “Well, I did ask. Guess that’s what I get for being nosy.”

“Pretty much.” It was his turn to go red faced. Now that it was out and he couldn’t take it back.