The Locker Room

by Amy Lane

  Xander was in the room, alone with Andi and Jed. Uh-oh.

  “You know,Penny,” he called, “youre a grown-up now! You dont have to leave the room just because—”

  “Shush, Xander,” Andi said softly, a smile on her face. “She left the room for us, not you.We like to think shes still a little girl, even when we know different.”

  “Ill be fine,” he said abruptly, staring past the two of them through the large bay window that overlooked the lake. It was actually a pretty bleak view, even in the winter when the grass was green. In the summer there was the high contrast—blue sky, blue-green water, yellow hills, green oak trees—but now? Everything was a varying shade of swampwater. Under the murky sky, even the bright green grass was muted. The lake was a shifting glitter of tarnished gray. Xander had always found a sort of spare beauty in that view, and he longed to be outside with the dogs. He could pretend that when he walked back in the door, Chris would be there.

  “Xander, we heard you last night,” Jed said now, and Xander flinched his attention back to his only family.Jeds hair used to be darker, he thought. The color of wet sand. It was threaded with silver now, longer than his collar, without the irrepressible curl that made Chris look so young. But his narrow face, with his pointed chin, was still as steady as it had ever been.

  And he still hadnt responded. “That happens all the time,” he said, not wanting them to know about it.

  Jed and Andi exchanged glances.“Even when you lived with us?” Andi asked, and Xander shrugged.

  “I used to hide it better.” He didnt used to have Chris there, quieting him down before he got too loud—hed had to do it for himself.

  “Xander….” Andi trailed off and ran her hands through her riotous gold curls. Bottle-blonde now? Yes. But her face was nearly unlined, and her smile was as serene as always.“Xander… God. You cant just live here in this house alone—”

  “Im not alone,” Xander said staunchly, standing up. His body had just called a halt to this conversation when his mind couldnt think of the words to do it.“Chris still lives here. Hes just away on business. You understand that, right? Business. Lots of guys have an on-season home and an off-season home. This is his off-season home.Hell get himself an onseason home in Denver, and Ill visit during the downtime and hell come back here. Its easy. Its elementary. Lots of people do it—”

  “But you dont!” Andi shouted, standing up and stamping her foot. She was five foot five, and Xander thought that to most people, she wouldnt look small. “My son might—might, mind you—be able to do this alone.But you cant. Pennys moving in here, whether you like it or not.Youve got what? Six guest rooms in this place, not including the room thats supposed to be yours? Good.Shell be all moved in two days time.”

  “Grown men dont need a babysitter,” he said with dignity, although a private corner of his mind was jumping around singing, “Hallelujah, I dont have to live alone!”

  “Xander… .” Andi trailed off and looked at her husband.“Help me out here, Jed.Youre a man, you get that whole pride thing. Talk to him!”

  “Xander,” Jed said mildly, “do you love us?” Xander blinked. Hed never said it, but of course he did. Theyd taken him in, given him luggage, and become a part of his heart like nobody else in his life.“Of course,” he said, worried for a moment that this had been in doubt.

  “Do you remember how upset Andi was when she saw your first apartment when you were just a kid?” Xander flushed. He hadnt been able to make that work. Some grown-uphed been! “Yeah,” he said, embarrassed.

  “Dont put her through that again, okay? Penny can save for a house while shes living rent-free, and she works in Folsom anyway. Youd be doing us a favor.”

  Xander smiled a little. It was transparent, and silly, and, well, yeah. It worked.“Okay,” he said, flushing. “Can I go for that run now?”

  Andi gaped at him and shook her head, then looked at her husband, who was smirking at her. As Xander ran up the stairs for his running shoes and some dog toys and his ticket out of the emotional void that was threatening to consume him, Andi was smacking her husband on the arm, completely at a loss for words.

  Jack-in-the-Box

  XANDER took his cell phone and called Chris as he started his run. Chris answered, groggy, but happy to hear his voice, and said he had to sign papers in an hour and a half, and then asked about his folks, and his family and….

  The conversation was just so normal. Xander could almost believe that they could make it work. It would suck, but it was only six months, right?Hed endured worse. How long had he lived with his mother before hed broken away? Hed been scrounging for his own clothes at thrift stores when he was nine.Hed been getting himself off to school at the age of seven.He had a vivid memory of trying to forge his mothers signature on a field-trip form at the age of six. (He had no idea how he ended up on the field trip, but he knew his teacher hadnt been fooled for one damned minute). He had memories of an Operation Santa van pulling up to his house when he was eight years old, because hed asked for pants that came down past his calves.Theyd been appalled at the drug mess, and had even called Social Services, but his mother had managed to clean up her act for a visit, and they were never heard from again.

  Xander had toughed it out as a kid, right? He could endure phenomenal amounts of pain and punishment, rattling his outsized body down the floor as a giant-sized adult. He could do this. He could live apart from his lover for six goddamned months, right?

  Then Christian said, “Xan, mom called me about the nightmares. She wants to take you to someone so theyll stop.”

  Xander tripped on a rock and went sprawling, sending the phone out into the stratosphere and giving what felt like a nasty sprain to his wrist. He finally found the phone (thank God, not in the poison oak) and redialed Christian, feeling scratched and sweaty and irritated.

  “Fuck no,” he said when Chris picked it up on the first ring. To prove his point, he took a picture of himself with bramble scratches down his face and a big old rip in his favorite running shirt and a scrape down his gingerly held left arm.

  Chris choked into the phone and said, “Damn, Xander—Im not sure if that proves that you like being crazy or if crazy makes you clumsy!”

  “I have nothing to say to anyone but you,” Xander growled, and Chris gave a weary laugh.

  “Okay. I hear you.Im surprised half the lakefront houses cant hear you, youre damned near shouting.”

  “You had to move out last night and your mother tried to shrink my head this morning, Chris.Its going to make me grumpy!” Underfucking-statement of the goddamned century!

  Chriss sigh practically gusted his hair back from the phone alone. “I love you, goddammit. I will love you forever.I just dont—” Chris made that grunting noise he always made when he didnt want to finish the sentence.

  “Dont what?” Xander demanded, irritated.

  “Dont want to see you in pain.”

  “Then make sure you see me in six months, when you come back to me!” Xander snapped, completely out of patience, and Chris snapped back.

  “I didnt leave you, you know!I just left….” And then Chris completely deflated like a blue sound balloon over the telephone.

  “Youre on a business trip,” Xander said now, just like hed said to Andi and Jed.

  “A business trip,” Chris repeated firmly.

  “And well see each other between times,” Xander said, more to make himself feel better. They both knew—hed taken a look at Denvers schedule, and Sacramentos schedule, and the practice schedules,and it was a real possibility that the man hed seen every day since he was fourteen might not be able to touch his hand or quiet his fears or touch his body until the NCAA break in March. At least they were both playing the All-Star Game.

  “All-Stars,” Chris murmured glumly, and Xander was so pissed off to hear Chris say it, he kicked a rock lying in the road.

  It was attached to a basketball-sized boulder, lying under the decomposed granite of the pathway, and Xanders f
ollow-through and connect broke his toe—truly, broke it.Hed done it the year before when he ran into the bleachers during the game, and had played on it for the entire season, and he remembered the pain, and he remembered the feeling and oh, fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck it fucking hurt, and now hed have to play on it all-fucking-over. His swearing could be heard out over the lake, and the dogs came back to whine at him worriedly, and Chris, not sure what to do about the situation from a thousand miles away laughed bitterly over the phone until Xander hobbled through his front door, desperate for some ibuprofen, some Pepto-Bismol, and some motherfucking ice.

  HE PLAYED on it. Of course he played on it. And when he was running during practice, no one even noticed he was in pain.It wasnt until the coach blew a whistle for a halt that he started to limp, and as the court doc came running up to check him out, the coach snapped, “Its just because his little boyfriend isnt there to carry him! Leave him the hell alone!”

  Xander wasnt really sure what happened to the ball in his hand. One minute he was dribbling it slowly, and the next minute it was rebounding off the wall by Wallicks head. Wallick was fit, though— hed ducked, and now he glared at Xander through narrowed eyes.

  “Karcek!” “Im bout done with practice, Coach,” Xander said numbly.“Ill get my foot wrapped and finish up at home.”

  With that he walked past the guy, and wondered if anyone else could guess that he had just barely missed committing assault.

  The court doc wrapped his bruised, tender toe, and then secured it to the rest of Xanders long toes, and pressed some pain relievers in his hand.

  “You drive today, Xander?”

  He barely remembered to nod. Chris usually drove, but yeah, Xander had dusted off the big black SUV (Chris had gotten it as a birthday present and had it “pimped out” with gold rims and flashy fixtures, just because he knew it screamed the things that Xander was uncomfortable with) and driven himself.

  “Yeah,” he whispered, tucking the painkillers into his gym bag. They were more powerful than the ibuprofen, but a lot harder on the stomach, and Xanders stomach was already starting to churn this morning. Pancakes and strawberries were not sitting well, and Xander wondered sourly ifit wasnt time to eat oatmeal or granola or something, since he was being so damned grown-up about all this bullshit.

  “Dont take those when youre driving, okay?”

  Xander shrugged.“Dont like taking them in general,” he said. He never had. Ibuprofen was about as hard as he got.

  Doc Malloy grunted.“Thats going to hurt a lot, Xan—and youve got a game tomorrow.Id go home and put that up if I were you.”

  Xander grunted.“Sure, right.”

  “Yeah, well, before you go out and party all night, at least let me wrap that scratch on your arm. What in the hell did you do to yourself this morning?”

  “Tripped on a rut in the road and kicked a rock.”

  Malloy was an older black man, with buzz-cut graying hair and small, laser-point black eyes. The gaze he leveled at Xander was disconcerting, to say the least.“Hows Chris doing?” he asked quietly, and Xander looked away.

  “Hes settling in. Staying with Cliff in Denver.”

  “With that harpy of a wife Cliffs got? God, were going to miss him here.”

  Xander must have made a sound, because Malloy patted his shoulder.

  “Well, you dont have to be married to a guy to miss him. Roommates, brothers, whatever. You spend some time with someone; they leave a hole when theyre gone. You take care of yourself, Xander. Youve got to get your head in the game. Chris could read your mind out there, and Pollack out there—he can barely read a newspaper!Youre going to have to bust your ass to keep this team in the playoffs, right?”

  “Playoffs?” Xander had been wandering.Hes not my roommate. Hes not my brother. Hes my lover, my husband, my reason to live. What would Malloy say to that?

  “Well,yeah!” And now Malloys laser-point look had changed, become fathomless, and he was looking at Xander in mute supplication. “Xander… man, Ive been working for this team for fifteen years, and Ive seen us in two places. Ive seen us in “almost enough” and “two floors down from the basement.” God… you and Edwards? Thats as close as this teams been to winning, you know?”

  Its only a goddamned game! He thought it, but he couldnt say it. The guy had just wrapped his toes and listened to the shit he didnt say. Xander might be pretty good at self-pity, but he was usually awesome at keeping it to himself.He wasnt going to smack poor Malloy down for loving the same thing that had given him Chris in the first place.

  “You really want to see the win, dont you?” he asked quietly—but he felt the question, deep down in his heart.

  “Boy….” Malloy straightened up and looked away.“See, I was in my thirties when this team came to town. I was trying to finish nursing school, because they didnt have a sports medicine degree or a physicians assistant degree then. There was just two-year nurse and four-year nurse, and I was going for four years because, dammit, I wanted to be on the floor.Id blown off my college education for this game, and Id do it again, and now I just wanted a chance for it again. But this town? This is a weird sort of place, man. About twenty miles up the road youve got rich white people living on converted farmland. Down here, youve got a mix of people, and out here, with the Arena? Twenty years ago, this was a coyotes toilet. So youve got all these people, all these different people, and its like theyve got the worst of being poor—theyve got the ghetto poor and the redneck poor, and a town full of dirty politicians.About the one thing theyve got that holds them all together is this goddamned basketball team.”

  “I remember,” Xander said, swallowing hard. He remembered being a kid, living in that shitty apartment, and living and dying with the Sacramento Kings.He remembered the night theyd lost the playoffs to the Lakers—not in truth, but in spirit—the whole night had been cursed between the terrible calls and the freak three-point shot by Robert Horry. Jesus… Chris had been in tears. Xander had needed to take him out to the hoop in front of the garage and play one-on-one, just to make him feel better. It had been before their first breathless kiss, and the only thing between them had been their desperate need to make the ball sweep through the net, and their joy of moving their bodies, sweating in the late May darkness.

  “Youre it, boy. You and Edwards were going to take us there. Now I dont know what bug crawled up their ass about Edwards, but youre who weve got. And youre good. Not as good as the two of you combined, but… but you can do it alone. Everyone can see it.Its nice of you to play with the team, and the team appreciates it—but youre it. Youre our Magic, our Larry Bird. Youre our guy. You just need to stop kicking shit and falling down!”

  Xander smiled faintly, and blinked hard.“Thanks,” he said softly, not knowing how to respond to all that other bullshit. He got out there and he played.Thats what he did. When he was on the court, the ball made sense, he knew where shit went, and he could make the world into his place. It did not make him special—it just made him safe.

  Malloy seemed to know he hadnt gotten very far. He patted Xanders shoulder and told him to “hang tough,” and then left him to his shower.

  When Xander got home, Chris wasnt there. Obvious, but that didnt make it hurt any less.

  Lucia was in their room, wordlessly cleaning up the lotion mess on the wall, and Xander had a moment to think that maybe he needed to find something better to do with his temper.Wasnt that a girl thing? Breaking shit on walls? God, one minute he was all congratulating himself on his adult decisions, and the next he was a whining, tantrumthrowing girl. How in the hell did that happen?

  Lucia looked at him as he came into the room and started hunting for his “home sweats,” the ones that no one saw unless they lived in the house, and sighed.

  “You want to tell me what happened?” she asked quietly. “Or am I just the help?”

  “Youre a friend,” Xander told her, still rifling through his drawers. “Youre a friend, and a confidante, and Chris got
transferred and I got pissed, and apparently I throw stuff when Im pissed. Thats what I do. Watch out, I almost killed our coach with a basketball. Im dangerous, need to remove myself—”

  “Youre not fooling anyone, you know!” she said. “Miss Penny, she told me shes moving in. Chris called, he told me to worry about you—”

  “Okay, thats it!” Xander shouted.“Whos babysitting him!”

  “And Mr. Leo, hes in the front room, waiting to see how youre doing.”

  Oh fuck.Xander hadnt even seen him.

  “Christ,” Xander swore. “Im fine! Im fine! Im fine!” He was changing, and it wasnt until hed gotten his jeans off and pulled on his sweats and then sat down to re-lace his tennis shoes that he realized that hed just given his housekeeper an eyeful. He looked up at her with big eyes, and she was pretending not to notice.

  “Youre wonderful, Mr. Karcek. Youre amazing. You have the body of a Greek god.Its your heart thats laying in a thousand tiny pieces.”

  “AAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!”

  Xander went thundering down the stairs, ignoring the pain in his foot. He hardly paused at the bottom, where Leo was lounging on the couch.Jesus, hed thrown his workout bag right next to the guy.

  Leo arched a sculpted ginger-colored eyebrow at him.“Feeling a touch distracted, Xander?”

  Xander grunted, reached into his battered, licensed, franchise bag, and pulled out his battered, licensed franchise ball. Without another word he ran out the front door to the regulation-sized half court that he and Chris had installed in their driveway, and started doing two point/three point/half court drills. Free throw line, shoot, retrieve the ball, run to the half court, back to the three-point line, shoot, retrieve the ball, run to the half court, shoot, retrieve the ball, run back to the half court, then back to the free throw line, shoot… and so on. It was mindless, it was mechanical, it was Emily Dickinsons poetry, where the secrets of the universe were encapsulated in body and motion, sweat and breath, physicality and physics, and best of all, he could do it alone.