The Locker Room (18 page)

don"t know, Xan. I just know that….” Chris ran his hands through his

short-cropped hair. Xander missed his curls—he"d kept it super short,

ever since “Bigot-man” had showed up. One less thing for that acid

tongue to drip bile on. One less thing to not try to ignore. One more thing

to hide.

“Something?” Xander asked, feeling hope. They could talk to Leo.

They could trade to another team, keep the house here, and play

somewhere else. Hell, they could come out and let the NBA make the

choice. Something. Anything. Anything but two condoms in their

pockets, every third home game of the month.

“Let"s not get traded mid-season, and then, yeah. You"re right.

Something"s got to change. We"ll change it. I swear.” His breath caught.

“God, Xan, I love you. You know that, right? You know… I mean, we

never say it, because our whole lives, it"s just been us. It"s like saying it

is sort of silly, but….” Chris shook his head again, and Xander reached

across the distance between them and pulled him against his chest.

“It"s not silly,” Xander whispered. “I love you too.”

“You need to eat more,” Chris muttered, probing at his chest.

“Ibuprofen and Tums are not a good breakfast.”

98

Amy Lane

“It was Pepto and a croissant,” Xander said back with dignity.

“And it"s better than vodka.”

Chris tried a smile. “Sometimes there"s tomato juice—that"s good

for me, right?”

“No,” Xander said seriously. “No.”

Chris huddled in his arms, a child seeking protection. Xander

wondered how it was that they"d managed to be more grown-up at

fifteen than they were at twenty-eight.

XANDER KARCEK pounded down the glossy wood of the court, thigh

muscles straining, huge biceps pumping, and sweat dripping into his

eyes from his black bangs. The ball sang against the boards in front of

him and popped back into the palm of his wide-fingered hand as he

dribbled furiously, strides ahead of the enemy, in perfect position to

score....

OH,
GOD
, it was a good game! Xander and Chris—they were poetry in

sweat, an orchestra of heaving muscle, sinew, and bone. The crowd

roared like the ocean, and the hollow thunder of their feet on the boards

and their hands against each other made even the air tremble in their

ears. They were high on the game, blinded by the magic that flowed

from player to player to player.

The score was tight—the Kings had a two-point lead through most

of the game, and then, in the last minute, Xander was shoved backward

by the Blazers forward, falling on his ass and feeling something

obnoxiously painful ping in his wrist. But his blood was up, and he was

already on painkillers, so he was on his feet before Chris could even look

at him twice and hurtling down the court again, coming up underneath

and behind William Skaarsgard and stealing the ball.

The crowd erupted, the noise so overwhelming that Xander started

hearing under it, so that the blood in his ears, his harsh breathing, Chris"s

whoops of triumph, they were all louder than the cheering as he whipped

a neat one-eighty around Skaarsgard and threw a high, looping pass to

The Locker Room

99

Chris before anyone realized he"d stopped dribbling. Chris caught it,

dribbled, and then behind-the-backed to Washington, who made it down

the court and… missed the dunk.

Chris was right up there, though, and he made it, and then the ball

was in the opponent"s hands for a scant second as Oregon set up to

recoup the lost two points.

They never made it down the court. Xander told the press after the

game that it felt like reaching out to the sky and picking a bird out of

flight. The words were bandied about for weeks, because Xander was

supposed to be “stoic” and not “poet,” but he didn"t care. That"s how it

felt—charmed, magical, personal—and before the other team even

realized they"d suffered a turnover, Xander was on the outside of the

key, where he executed a running three-point shot in front of a raging

crowd.

That made it in right before the buzzer.

His team was surrounding him, thumping him on the back, rubbing

his sweaty hair, patting his ass, and he was right back with them, in their

midst, surrounded by family and light and happy, happy noise. Christian

was there, although after the initial hug with the rest of the team he did

what he did in high school—showboated, held clenched fists to the

heavens and reared back and roared, leapt impossible heights into the air

and whooped—and Xander was not alone, far away, in a box.

He was as happy here as he was in Chris"s arms, only the happiness

was louder, brighter, and sharper on the nerves. Even Xander, in the eye

of the maelstrom, knew it wasn"t the sort of happiness that was meant to

last—but that didn"t mean it wasn"t sweet.

The mood at the team watering hole was triumphant, and the

women who had managed to filter in through bouncers and propriety

seemed to double in number every time Xander looked. They celebrated

for a couple of hours, they talked with their teammates, relived their

shots, and everyone lifted their glass to Xander and the “magic-bird-ball”

even as the sound bite was replayed again and again on the monitors

above them.

Things wound down, though—they had to. Chris put a heavy hand

on his shoulder, and Xander looked up to where a group of girls milled,

looking at the unattached players in a faintly predatory way.

100 Amy Lane

“Should I guess which one you"re going to pick?” Chris asked

bleakly, and Xander narrowed his eyes.

“I don"t even know which one I"m going to pick,” he all but

snarled, and Chris"s hand tightened, and he bent down to talk privately in

Xander"s ear.

“It hurts me worse when they"re like me,” he whispered, and

Xander looked at him accusingly.

“They"re all like you,” he said, wondering if that came out right.

“Even when I try to pick the ones that aren"t.”

He sighed then and stood up, shaking off Chris"s hand and going to

the bar to get a beer and a spare. He was on his way back, keeping an eye

out for someone who didn"t look
too
predatory, someone who looked

like she could make him laugh, when he practically walked over a tiny

little woman with dark hair, who was urgently texting on her cell phone.

She looked up, an apology on her lips, but when her neck kept

falling back before she could actually see Xander"s face, her mouth

literally swung open at the jaw—but her hands
never
stopped texting.

Xander had to laugh. He looked over the front of her and down (a

long way down) to her phone and started to laugh. “OMG,” he read,

“Xander Karcek just ran me over. He"s as tall as an ogre!”

“Oh shit!” The poor girl turned pink, right to the pale end of her

nose, and Xander got a good look at her. She was, in essence, the anti-

Chris. She was tiny and feminine, wearing a frilly little black skirt and a

white blouse that looked like a pirate shirt. She had a wealth of straight,

shiny dark hair, and vaguely Asian features, and she was not laughing or

bubbling or socializing without compunction. Instead, she was clinging

to her phone, and probably to the friend on the other side of it, with a

little bit of terror in her eyes, and looking at Xander with quiet adoration.

Very rarely was Chris quiet.

And Xander liked her already.

“I"m not really an ogre,” he assured her with a smile, and she

nodded avidly. “Although,” he added, looking around as though this

hadn"t just been reported on some special about athlete grooming, “if I

miss my waxing appointment, I look like one.”

The Locker Room 101

It was socially awkward, and maybe, if his face wasn"t up on ten

television monitors around the bar, it wouldn"t have worked, but she

burst into giggles, and he knew he had her.

“I saw that,” she confessed. “It looks painful.”

Xander shrugged, and went to his fallback line on the subject—one

cooked up by Chris, of course. “Well, when your father was half-yeti….”

She giggled again, and then looked at the beer in his hand. “So, um,

does that have a home?” She was looking at him hopefully, and he

smiled, feeling resignation steep down from his spine to his balls.

“It does now.”

Audrey was funny, and a little bit shy, and she had heard his sound

bite and told him that she was majoring in English and thought that his

poetry was beautiful.

Xander had actually blushed. “I was a history major,” he said,

embarrassed, and she"d nodded, like she knew this.

“I
know!”
she told him, excited. “Everyone else majors in business

or computers or technology. Do you
know
how rare it is to have a

basketball player major in the humanities?”

“Probably not as rare as you think,” he said, thinking it was true. A

lot of the players had enjoyed their educations as much as he had. For

some of them, it had been an opportunity they"d never dreamed about.

Audrey shook her head. “I"d need to do stats,” she confessed. “I

just thought it was interesting, you know? The press calls you Cave Man,

but really, you"ve got this sort of erudite specialty. It"s like they don"t

know you at all!”

Oh God. She was actually looking at him like a
person,
and Xander

had a sudden, real conviction that he couldn"t do this. He was smiling at

her, getting up the courage to tell her that it had been nice, but he had an

early morning, when she suddenly looked him dead in the eye.

“Hey—do you want to get out of here?”

And he felt trapped, as locked into sex with her as he had been

locked into this whole encounter, and his eyes sought Chris"s across the

bar. Chris nodded and held up two fingers. Xander nodded back, and

Chris held up his index finger and his thumb, perpendicularly, like a big

L. Xander laughed like his buddy was chiding him for being a Loser, but

102 Amy Lane

he knew the code. It meant “locker room.” They both had keys, and it

was a convenient place to meet.

“Do you live nearby?” he asked smoothly, because his silent

exchange with Chris had lasted less than a second.

“Only about ten minutes,” she told him, and Xander looked up at

Chris and made a little X with his fingers. An hour and a half, max, and

so he left.

She actually lived less than five minutes away, although it seemed

longer because he went in her car. It was tiny, and he felt as though his

knees were at his ears, and Audrey laughed and chattered nervously the

entire way. He got to the apartment and was a little surprised; it was

about a block away from that first apartment he"d had, the one with the

couch and the garbage bag, and his heart started to flutter in his stomach

and his throat and behind his eyes.

It was pounding like a kettledrum when he got inside.

She had a couch in the front room, and a laptop on the coffee table

as a television. There were stacks of books and a printer and computer

paper in the corner, but no table to put them on. He looked beyond her to

the one bedroom and saw that it had clothes—not a lot, but enough to

indicate she"d moved from somewhere—and a dresser, but no bed.

She saw the direction of his gaze and looked sheepish. “I hope you

don"t mind. I just moved out of my parents" house, and I"m still earning

the money while I study, you know?”

Xander nodded stupidly. “What"s your major?” he asked, buying

time. There were a couple of standing lights in the living room, and he

could get a better look at her face than he had in the darkened bar. She

looked improbably young.

“Poetry,” she chirped, turning back to him, and he smiled, thinking

she"d be a wonderful English major—hell, probably a wonderful writer,

and then he looked around the apartment again. When he looked back at

her, she was texting again, and he had to laugh.

“Telling your friends?”

She grimaced and closed her phone, turning it off. “They keep

giving me shit, you know? Because I haven"t put out yet…. I told my

best friend that I had Xander Karcek in my living room, and she about

The Locker Room 103

shit her pants. She won"t believe it in the morning!” Suddenly, Audrey

looked abashed. “She asked for a picture, but I couldn"t send one. I

mean, you know. I know you"re just here for sex, but that"s sort of